THE 
 
 EMIGRANT SHIP 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CLARK RUSSELL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LIST, YE LANDSMEN!" "THE ROMANCE OF A 
 
 TRANSPORT," "THE WRECK OF THE ' GROSVENOR,' " 
 
 "AN OCEAN TRAGEDY," "THE FROZEN 
 
 PIRATE," ETC., ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 104 AND 106 FOURTH AVENUE
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY 
 CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY 
 RAHWAY, N. J.
 
 TO MY VALUED FRIEND 
 
 fl6ajor*(3eneral patricfe 
 
 SOLDIER AND SCHOLAR. 
 
 2022158
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER rAG 
 
 I. BLATHFORD, i 
 
 II. KATE DARNLEY, 6 
 
 III. CAPTAIN CADMAN, 10 
 
 IV. MATE OF THE " HEBE," 18 
 
 V. THE "HEBE" SAILS 26 
 
 VI. A DIFFICULTY 33 
 
 VII. A PLOT, ... 40 
 
 VIII. THE GREAT SALVAGE WATERING SCHEME, ... 47 
 
 IX. THE SALVAGES, 54 
 
 X. THE BARILLA CUTTER 63 
 
 XI. BLADES OF THE " CAROLINE," 71 
 
 XII. THE " EARL OF LEICESTER," 83 
 
 XIII. TRAPPED, .89 
 
 XIV. BRIGSTOCK'S STORY 96 
 
 XV. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING, 104 
 
 XVI. BRIGSTOCK'S SCHEME 114 
 
 XVII. THE WOMEN, 122 
 
 XVIII. I TAKE COMMAND, 132 
 
 XIX. THE " PARDNERS," 142 
 
 XX. A CHAT WITH KATE 153 
 
 XXI. THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER 163 
 
 XXII. A FORECASTLE DANCE, 174 
 
 XXIII. THE WOMEN'S PLOT, 187 
 
 XXIV. IMPRISONED, 196 
 
 XXV. ADRIFT 204 
 
 XXVI. BRIGSTOCK'S VISIT, 213
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 XXVII. THE OATH, 221 
 
 XXVIII. A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE 232 
 
 XXIX. AT PRAYERS, 244 
 
 XXX. MY GIRL CREW, ,253 
 
 XXXI. THE HORN, 265 
 
 XXXII. MY OATH 275 
 
 XXXIII. BULL'S ISLAND, 284 
 
 XXXIV. THE SAILORS DECIDE, 293 
 
 XXXV. THE START FOR SYDNEY, 304 
 
 XXXVI. A SECOND SUICIDE 315 
 
 XXXVII. A NEWSPAPER CUTTING, AND THE STORY PROCEEDS, . 329 
 
 XXXVIII. CONCLUSION 336
 
 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BLATHFORD. 
 
 " STOP ! " said I. 
 
 " Wo ! " cried the driver. 
 
 The old horse, clanking in its harness like a chain topsail 
 sheet in a squall, halted and I mounted upon my sea chest 
 in the cart to take a view of the scene. 
 
 The month was early August, the year 1850. The after- 
 noon was beautiful and rich with a sky full of large, low-float- 
 ing clouds, which as they soared gave their white breasts to 
 the kisses of the distant hilltops. On one side ran a mile or 
 two of level meadows, painted with red and brindled cows 
 and white sheep. Afar glanced a dusty road, snaking past 
 masses of trees to the summit of a green hill. I caught sight 
 of the olive and purple light of the river, and the distant 
 fields were studded with haystacks like giant toadstools. A 
 soft air blew over the country ; to my salt-hardened nostrils the 
 sweets it brought seemed to combine into one marvelous per- 
 fume of raspberry. 
 
 Do you want to know how refreshing and fair beyond all 
 prospects of meadow, hill, and valley which this great world 
 has to offer is an English landscape viewed on an August 
 afternoon, when the land is piebald with the blue shadows of 
 clouds, and when the wind in the trees cools the hot buzz of 
 the bluebottle with a quiet seething as of expiring foam ? 
 Come to it after three years and some months of coarse sea- 
 faring ! 
 
 " Go on," said I to the carter. 
 
 " Jee oop ! " cried the man, fetching the stern of his horse 
 a friendly thump with a truncheon. Again the old brass-
 
 2 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 bound, chain-laden harness rattled ; the wheels creaked. I 
 emptied my pipe and sat me upon my sea chest. We had but 
 a short distance to go. I stared with devouring eyes. We 
 rumbled down a lane, and then into a kind of village street. 
 Well knew I the house that slighted the neighborhood by 
 giving its blank back to the public highway and its face of fra- 
 grant windows and pleasant porch to its own green, sw^et- 
 smelling grounds behind the wall ; also the dirty little cottage 
 with two leering windows and a paralyzed door, and the dirtier 
 little cottage beside it remarkable only for not having been 
 the birthplace of a poet ; also the stone dog's head spouting 
 a stream of crystal water into a trough, and the white-faced 
 inn with a faded portrait of Lord Nelson hanging over a 
 blackbird's wicker cage, which shook with loud melody as I 
 passed. I seemed likewise to remember the yellow cur that 
 eyed us from the doorway of the Nelson inn ; I recollected its 
 manner of wagging everything about its hinder parts but its 
 stump of tail. The mob of hens opposite the little cottage 
 faced by three yews trimmed into a likeness of immense tee- 
 totums were also familiar, particularly the large black rooster 
 which lay in the dust with one leg forked out under one wing. 
 
 We rounded the corner, and I saw the church on my right, 
 the white tombstones in its shadow, and the red flag of the 
 English merchant service floating from the short mast on the 
 top of the tower. Here was a beautiful lane with a fine 
 avenue of trees which carried the eye to the thickly wooded 
 hillside a mile beyond. The cart rumbled me a little way 
 past the church, and then the driver stopped at a gate. A 
 tall hedge went on either hand that gate, and behind the 
 hedge and through the trees you caught with difficulty a 
 glimpse of an old-fashioned house with a red roof and bur- 
 nished windows darkly shining among creepers. 
 
 Scarcely had I jumped out of the cart when the gate was 
 opened, and in a moment my father was straining me to his 
 heart. A few moments later my mother was holding me by 
 both hands, kissing me, and exclaiming in her delight, and 
 stepping backward to look at me, only to give me another 
 hug. 
 
 My father was the Rev. Joseph Morgan ; this parish was 
 Blathford, and he was vicar of it. His church stood nearly 
 opposite his house ; St. John's it was called. He had lived 
 twenty years in the place. His face was beautiful with benevo- 
 lence ; he was now about sixty years of age, very gray, his 
 smile slow and sweet, his figure tall and wonderfully erect. 
 His living was a beggarly yield, and he was a poor man, the
 
 BLA THFORD. 3 
 
 poorer by reason of his having to maintain a married daughter 
 by his first wife, who had died in giving birth to the child. 
 And that is one reason why I went to sea. 
 
 The carter shouldered my sea chest, and with my mother's 
 hand in mine I followed my father into the house. We went 
 into the dining room, and as we entered a girl standing in the 
 window turned her face to us. 
 
 " Kate, dear," said my mother, taking me up to her, "this is 
 my son Charles, fresh from sea. Think, Kate ! we have not 
 seen him, as you know, for three years and three months." 
 
 She then introduced me to the girl, Miss Kate Darnley. I 
 had met her father once ; he was a parson, and lived at Bris- 
 tol ; he was very poor, I recollect, but got along with the help 
 of a trifling annuity topped by an occasional call to preach a 
 sermon or to take duty, as it is termed, for which he received 
 a guinea or two. Kate was in mourning ; the melancholy, 
 depressing attire told me I need not ask what had become of 
 her father. We shook hands, and I looked in her face and 
 admired her. She was dark, with a great plenty of black hair, 
 a soft blushing complexion, and large sparkling black eyes. 
 My mother went out to see after my chest. 
 
 " I told Wilkinson to hoist the ensign," said my father ; " it 
 is the only parish welcome I can offer." 
 
 The table was laid for a late dinner, an alarming departure 
 in the habits of my primitive parents. 
 
 " This is worth going to sea to enjoy, Miss Darnley," said 
 I, looking round the pleasant little room. How familiar the 
 low ceiling, the high mantelpiece, the great picture of my 
 paternal grandfather (dressed in a red coat, and leaning with 
 one hand upon a cannon) hanging over the ancient, dark side- 
 board, which had come sliding into Blathford vicarage through 
 five generations of my mother's people. 
 
 " Call her Kate," said my father. 
 
 But here my mother stepped in to carry me upstairs, where 
 more hugging happened, and though we talked swiftly, our 
 conversation ran us into half an hour. 
 
 " Charlie, you have grown." 
 
 "I have broadened just one inch, but I have not risen by 
 the dark of a finger nail. It is nearly all stooping with us 
 sailors ; it curves our spines, and so we're called shellbacks. 
 Kate Darnley's a pretty girl, rather." 
 
 " Poor Kate ! She is very much to be pitied. Her father 
 died and left her with only a few pounds. She was forced to 
 go out as a governess, but she found so much difficulty in 
 obtaining a situation that she had serious thoughts of becom-
 
 4 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 ing a domestic servant. Only think of Kate, who is really a 
 charming, refined lady, as a housemaid." 
 
 " Where does she live ? " 
 
 " About thirty miles away. The family gave her a holiday, 
 and we invited her here for a few days. She stays till next 
 Monday. How battered your sea chest is." 
 
 "That's through cutting plug tobacco upon it." 
 
 " Do you want any money, dear ? " 
 
 " I have plenty." 
 
 " Plenty; well, come ! " 
 
 I pulled a leather bag full of sovereigns and notes out of my 
 pocket, and plumped the treasure down upon the dressing table. 
 
 " There's above three years' pay there," said I, " less slop 
 chest and other deductions." 
 
 " It's hardly earned money, my poor boy." said she, taking 
 my face in her hands and kissing me again. " How often have 
 I prayed for you on stormy nights." 
 
 " And perhaps we, at the same time, were praying in the 
 speech of sailors for a little of the wind that was making you 
 uneasy. How is old Perkins ? Is little fat Miss Smithers mar- 
 ried yet ? How is the congregation getting on ? Does the 
 plate come back heavier after its Sabbath round ? No more 
 buttons, I hope, and sixpences taken out as change for three- 
 penny bits." 
 
 " It's a struggle," said my mother. And so we talked. 
 
 I stood abreast of a sheet of looking-glass in a wardrobe, 
 and got a good view of myself. This is seldom Jack's privi- 
 lege. He shaves in an inch or two of cracked mirror and 
 knows not what figure he cuts till he steps ashore. I was a 
 great lump of a man for my three and twenty years, not fat 
 no, there is nothing in the harness cask to run the body with 
 blubber. I was a large shape of tough muscle from neck to 
 heel, and when I flung my weight on a halyard or a sheet it 
 was to leave but little more for the fellows to do than gather 
 in the slack. And yet when my father had put me to sea as 
 a boy of fourteen the captain might have drawn me through 
 the neck of his whisky bottle. I was burnt black with the sun ; 
 my eyes we're a dark blue and my hair a dark brown. I had 
 packed some new clothes in my chest at Bristol, but still wore 
 the things I had come ashore in, and so showed somewhat 
 raggedly, like, indeed, the end of a mighty long voyage ; but 
 on my mother's going I smartened myself up, I shaved, and 
 shifted me to the shoes on my feet, and when I joined them in 
 the parlor I was a new man in my fresh linen and shore-going 
 togs.
 
 BLA THFORD. 5 
 
 At the table I did most of the talk. It is a narrow horizon 
 that bounds scarce more than hens and a churchyard and a 
 village pump, yet life goes but little beyond such things in the 
 old parish of Blathford. I spoke of the ports I had visited, 
 described icebergs and gales of wind, the whale spouting its 
 fountain to the moon under the line, and the captured albatross 
 off the Horn with a missive from a shipwrecked company 
 under its wing. My mother could not eat for listening ; Kate 
 Darnley's black eyes glowed as they fastened themselves upon 
 me ; sometimes my father smiled, and occasionally an expres- 
 sion of incredulity mingled with the sweetness of his looks. 
 
 " Oh, that I were a man ! " cried out Kate, dropping her 
 knife and fork to clasp her white hands on a level with her 
 face. 
 
 " Yes, indeed ! " said my mother. " A young man." 
 
 " Would you be a sailor ?" I asked. 
 
 " Not I. Oh, no, Mr. Morgan, I would travel and see the 
 world and settle in the best part of it, which certainly is not 
 England," answered the girl. 
 
 " How long are you ashore for, Charles ? " asked my father. 
 
 " Haven't you heard the news ? " said I. 
 
 " What ? " cried my mother eagerly. 
 
 " Old John Back's dead and his five ships are sold. His 
 son's realized everything, down to the oldest of the office 
 stools, and has gone abroad to live. The firm's at an end 
 knocked clean into staves. A pity, for I've been counting all 
 this voyage on old Johnny giving me command next time." 
 
 " I had heard that old Mr. Back was ill," said my father, 
 " but had no idea he was dead. Poor old Mr. Back ? He 
 received us very kindly when we called upon him at Bristol. 
 But existence at Blathford is the life of an oyster. Little or 
 nothing of news drains through the shell of the placid year." 
 
 " Well, dear, here is a comfortable home for you," said my 
 mother. 
 
 " I shall spend some time with you," said I. " Mean viles I 
 keeps mine vedder eye lifting, as Yon says. I'll stop till I've 
 passed as master. I deserve command, and mean to get it if 
 I can. And after such a sickening spell of brine as I'm fresh 
 from, a few weeks or even months of the scent of the milk- 
 maid '11 not hurt me." 
 
 After dinner I went to my chest and brought down some 
 trifles of curiosities. I gave Kate Darnley a Chinese silver 
 brooch, and I had not guessed how pretty she was till she 
 thanked me for the flimsy fal-lal. It was the first night of my 
 home-coming after a long absence, even as seafaring then
 
 6 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 went, and my father and mother sat up in celebration till 
 eleven o'clock to " make a night of it," as the dear souls said. 
 My father smoked not, neither did he drink. I did both ; so 
 too did my father's curate, who looked in at eight to ask a 
 question, and was invited to remain that light supper might be 
 spread before him. This curate, as the evening advanced, 
 looked with animation at Kate Darnley, and the ejaculations 
 and observations which my stories and recollections provoked 
 him into he addressed chiefly to her. But her ears and eyes 
 were mine that evening. My talk put a spirit into her looks 
 which attracted my calm mother's notice. 
 
 After everybody was gone to bed and I sat alone smoking 
 my last pipe, I could not help thinking how great a pity it was 
 that so fine a young woman should be alone in the world, 
 obliged to get a living by drudging as a governess, and with 
 no brighter prospect than marriage. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 KATE DARNLEY. 
 
 IN this first week of my being at home I never opened a 
 book nor troubled myself with a professional thought. I had 
 received a hundred and twenty pounds when I left the bark 
 Wanderer at Bristol ; the money represented about forty 
 months of service as mate, less certain odds and ends of 
 clothes and advances. I was a sailor, but no sailor's sailor, 
 without taste for the grog shop and the bully-in-the-alley 
 diversions. I hated the Jack of the crimps, the salt and sav- 
 age pet and despair of the waterside missionary, the hairy 
 ruffian who, in fur cap and half Wellingtons, with a hanging 
 face and eyes on fire with over-proof rum, lurches with scowls 
 and drunken yelps through the slums of the dock and shipping 
 districts. 
 
 The mere being in the country with miles of meadows and 
 hedges betwixt one and the wash of the breakers, betwixt one 
 and the sickening rattle of the lifting cranes of the quayside, 
 and the loud melancholy pulse of the capstan pawls, was a huge 
 delight of itself. I let the whole spirit of the country sink 
 into me by lounging and roaming about after the manner of 
 the poet Wordsworth, who waited for sentimental ideas wher- 
 ever he found a stile or a tombstone to sit upon. I'd lay for 
 hours on my back in a field, with my pipe stuck up out of my 
 mouth, and a straw hat rakishly perched on my nose, and not
 
 KATE DARNLEY. 7 
 
 only forget that I was a sailor, but even that I was a man, in 
 watching the clouds slide overhead, in smelling the sweets in 
 the wind, in hearkening to the buzzing, barking, lowing noises 
 of the land. Yes, at such times I was nearer being a daisy 
 than a man, and was certainly much more of a haystack than 
 a sailor. 
 
 I gave Kate Darnley a wide berth at the start, conceiving 
 that my father's curate had a leaning that way, and that if I 
 thrust in I might lose her the chance of a husband. But on 
 hearing from my mother that the curate was engaged to be 
 married to a young lady who lived at Manchester, who had 
 been waiting for him already two years, and who, it seems, 
 was willing to go on waiting for the hopeful young man for- 
 ever, I made up my mind that Kate should have a jolly time 
 of it during the few days she remained at the parsonage. I 
 took her on the river along with a basket filled with cham- 
 pagne and good things, got by sending Farmer Thompson's 
 man in the gig over to a considerable town of shops and streets. 
 Thus we spent one long day. I hired Thompson's gig and 
 drove the girl about the country. She wanted to see the 
 ocean, and we went by rail to a part of the coast that lay some 
 twenty miles from Blathford. Here there would have been 
 ocean enough to look at had the tide made ; unhappily the 
 sea kept stubbornly low throughout our visit ; we saw no more 
 than a gleam of blue beyond the miles of slimy mud. No 
 marine prospect was ever so little like the ocean. I laughed 
 at the efforts of the town in which we found ourselves to give 
 itself a marine character, by boats which were seldom water 
 borne, by a pier which was seldom water washed. The rocks 
 looked artificial ; the boatmen sprawled with the airs of London 
 cabmen disguised in fearnought breeches. Yet Kate's dark 
 eyes were eager and bright with pleasure as she gazed at the 
 distant streak of blue salt water. 
 
 " It is the horizon, at all events," she exclaimed, " and 
 behind it are all the wonders you have told us about." 
 
 " They are wonders until they are realized." 
 
 " Nothing bears realization," she answered. " Heaven itself 
 should disappoint if we are to judge by what we find out down 
 here." She curled her lip, and her cheeks brightened with red 
 as though to some sudden passion of suppressed thought. 
 After a minute she brought her eyes away from the distant 
 sea line, and asked me if I could give her any information 
 about Australia. 
 
 " What sort of information do you want ? " 
 
 " Tell me the parts you have visited."
 
 8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Sydney and Melbourne." 
 
 " What's to be done in those cities, Mr. Morgan ? " 
 
 " If you ask me what a man may do, I answer all that may 
 become him ; if he dares do more there's plenty to be done. 
 Labor that gets fifteen shillings a week here gets ten shillings 
 a day there. One of our crew at Sydney went ashore over- 
 night, and did not turn up in the morning. The skipper 
 charged the absent seaman's wages with the ten shillings he 
 paid to a laborer off the Circular Quay. If I was a very 
 young man which I am, by the way and hated the sea, I'd 
 perpetrate the most harmless of the crimes that are visited by 
 transportation, and get a free passage to the Antipodes and a 
 large start in life on a ticket of leave." 
 
 "Would it not be as easy to emigrate?" said she, with a 
 smile which made way quickly for a grave, earnest look. 
 
 " I know more about convicts than emigrants," said I. 
 "The convict on his arrival is provided with lodgings, food, 
 and occupation ; I can't say what becomes of the emigrant." 
 
 " But many people of all sorts are every year emigrating to 
 America and Australia." 
 
 " Of a good many sorts." 
 
 " I've heard of people who were as homeless in this country 
 as those clouds are up in the sky there," said she, pointing 
 upward, and following the direction of her finger with her dark 
 eyes, " finding a home and friends in Australia and prosper- 
 ing. Gentility is no restriction in the colonies is it?" 
 
 " No restrictions are placed upon the little that's exported," 
 I answered. 
 
 "A gentleman, a lady may do in Australia what they would 
 rather die than do here." 
 
 " Perhaps so," said I. " The snob long ago saddled the 
 British lion and still rides the beast, trampling on oppor- 
 tunity." 
 
 " What chances do the Australian colonies offer young 
 women, Mr. Morgan ? " 
 
 " Marriage." 
 
 " I don't mean that." 
 
 " Are you thinking of emigrating?" 
 
 " I would rather be a scullery maid behind that blue line 
 there," said she, looking at the narrow sweep of distant water, 
 " than a governess in this country." 
 
 I pitied the fine girl, but held my peace. 
 
 "Where can one find out all about the Australian colonies ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " I'll inquire, and v\'hatever is published I'll send you."
 
 KATE DARN LEY. g 
 
 She thanked me. 
 
 " Have you any friends or relatives in Australia ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 " None in England ? " 
 
 " None in the world. When my father died I was alone." 
 With a sudden smile she added, " I should not have said so 
 much. I have friends in your father and mother. But they 
 are not friends in the sense your question implied." 
 
 " Don't think of emigrating without taking all the advice 
 you can get, and without giving the subject plenty of thought." 
 
 She bit her lip and clasped her hands behind her, and 
 slightly swayed her body as though advice vexed her. Then 
 with another of her quick smiles she asked me if I could tell 
 her how emigrants are treated at sea, what sort of ships they 
 are dispatched in, the cost of the passage, a person's require- 
 ments in respect of clothes and the like, how long the voyage 
 occupied, how many of a company were put into one ship. 
 
 I was able to answer some of these questions, and our con- 
 versation on this subject ended only when we had entered a 
 railway carriage and were in motion for Blathford. 
 
 In some of our rambles, down to the day of her leaving us, 
 she talked again about emigration and the opportunities a new 
 country offered to poor and friendless people, but never after- 
 ward was she so much in earnest as when we had stood 
 together looking at the distant streak of sea. However, in 
 fulfillment of my promise I wrote to a firm in London, who 
 sent me a book and a letter full of information ; these reached 
 me on the day of her leaving us, and she thanked me grate- 
 fully and packed them in her box. 
 
 I drove her to the station in old Thompson's gig, and was 
 sorry to part with her. She and I had been much together 
 during her few days of holiday. I admired her, liked her 
 manners and looks, and relished her talk, which often tasted to 
 the palate of my mind like a sharp and yet a sweet and pleas- 
 ant wine to one's lips. And then, again, I felt sorry for the 
 poor girl who was going forth into a friendless life, out of the 
 repose and gentle pleasures and simple affections of such a 
 home as she had passed her little holiday in. 
 
 Well, I bade her good-by and drove home, and I am bound 
 to say that after she had been gone two or three days she 
 went clean out of my head. Indeed, I had something else to 
 think of. I held a mate's certificate, and not very much more 
 than that spoke to was needed to qualify me for a captain ; 
 yet the little involved some study, and to make sure of myself 
 I went two or three times a week down to Bristol to read in
 
 10 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 navigation and do other nautical work with an old retired sea 
 captain. At the end of two months from the date of my 
 arrival home I presented myself and easily passed. This was 
 in 1850. Certificates of competency were made compulsory in 
 January, 1851. 
 
 But passing was not getting employment. For some con- 
 siderable while nothing better than a second mate's post fell 
 in my way. Not till the month of February, which brought 
 me into the year 1851, was I successful in finding a situation, 
 though I had looked about me in the London Docks as well 
 as in Bristol. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CAPTAIN CADMAN. 
 
 IT fell out thus : I was on a visit in the last named city to 
 my old friend the sea captain whom I had read with. He 
 rented a comfortable small house near the docks. I had come 
 from Blathford in the morning intending to make further 
 inquiries after a ship, and had looked in on Captain Brad- 
 ford for a yarn and a pipe, meaning to kill no more than an 
 hour. He asked me to stop and take a cut of boiled beef 
 with him and his niece. While I hesitated, questioning the 
 wisdom of letting slip good time by eating boiled beef with 
 the skipper till perhaps it should be two o'clock in the after- 
 noon, we heard a knocking on the door, and Bradford's niece, 
 looking in, said, " Uncle, can you see Captain Cadman ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," says Bradford. " Walk in, skipper ! " he called 
 out, and Captain Cadman, who stood in the passage, stepped 
 into the little parlor. 
 
 He was a tall man with reddish hair and a reddish dye of 
 skin that was yet not sunburn ; his eyes were small, his nose 
 long and pointed, his beard trimmed so as to correspond with 
 the run of his nose that is, it stood out like a fan, the handle 
 at you ; at the full his elongated physiognomy shaped itself 
 into a very wedge of a face. In fact then he had the look of 
 a goat, all the meaning of him in his eyes. His legs were 
 extraordinarily long, his feet immense ; he wore square-toed 
 shoes, and his knees were defined sharp as the joint of a parr 
 of compasses through his thin cloth trousers. His body was 
 wrapped up in a somewhat rusty monkey jacket. He threw a 
 large black soft hat upon a couch, and shook hands with Cap- 
 tain Bradford.
 
 CAPTAIN CADMAN. II 
 
 I supposed he had looked in on some private matter and 
 got up to go. 
 
 " Don't leave on my account, sir," said he in a high-pitched, 
 not strong, but rather greasy voice. " Bradford, I hope I 
 don't disturb you ? " 
 
 " Sit down there's no disturbance," replied the other. 
 
 " I want your opinion. Here's Flaxman's account. I'm 
 not going to let Mr. Fletcher be swindled. Now if this aint 
 a swindle " 
 
 He pulled a folded paper from his side pocket and opened 
 it into a long sheet full of writing and figures. 
 
 " Mark the total. One eighty-eight thirteen one. Where 
 do the one come in ? In one penn'orth of rope yarn, is it ? " 
 Here he laughed, and the noise was more like the slopping of 
 a cook's bucket of slush drained over the side than any imag- 
 inable explosion of human merriment. " Run an eye over the 
 items," he continued. " What was the valley of a t'gallant 
 jewel block in your time ? And h'ant fids jumped since you 
 was born if Flaxman don't tell lies, which he's incapable of 
 anything else ? I'd fit out a fifty-gun frigate for I was 
 a-going to say almost half the money, and chuck in three suits 
 of canvas for t'other half." 
 
 " Let me read let me read ! " grumbled Captain Bradford, 
 putting on his spectacles. 
 
 After a minute or two of silence, during which Captain Cad- 
 man eyed me all over, finally settling his eyes upon my face 
 with a critical, screwed-up, half-insinuating, half-interrogating 
 expression in them, he said : 
 
 " A sailor, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Pretty fresh ashore ? " 
 
 "Since August." 
 
 " A long spell ! " he exclaimed, looking me over again. 
 " Took sick, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Never had a day's illness since I landed." 
 
 " 'Long to Bristol ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "What was your last ship, sir ? " 
 
 "The Wanderer:' 
 
 " D'ye mean old Back's bark ? " 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " I'm in command of the little Hebe that belonged to old 
 Back," said he. 
 
 " I know the vessel well. Getting on in years, though, isn't 
 she, captain ?"
 
 12 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Oh ! " he exclaimed, with his mirthless, sloppy laugh, 
 " don't ever mention the years of a ship or a woman. Neither 
 gets old. Both can keep all on repairing, yer know." 
 
 All this while old Bradford was diligently reading the 
 rigger's account, his square white eyebrows knitted into a 
 frown of deep interest over his magnified eyes. 
 
 " You was away, I reckon," continued Captain Cadman, 
 " when old Back gasped his last ? His vessels was put up 
 and Mr. Fletcher bought the Hebe." 
 
 " How much ? " 
 
 " 'Twixt you and me and the pump, sir, for as much as she's 
 worth. After she was docked oh, my precious eyes ! " He 
 raised his hands and groaned. " That" he continued, point- 
 ing to the document in Bradford's hands, " is just a muskeety 
 bite compared to the great snake sting of the whole boiling. 
 New sheathing, new starnpost, new wheel, twenty foot of new 
 keel amidships, new main topmast " 
 
 " Cadman," here said Captain Bradford, putting the rigger's 
 bill down upon the table. " D'ye know, I don't think this so 
 very unreasonable. Why ! I see he's put in a complete set of 
 lower fore shrouds," and here he named several items of ship's 
 furniture. 
 
 Captain Cadman slowly shook his head. 
 
 " Knock off thirty per cent, and robbery's still the order of 
 the day." 
 
 A discussion followed. Captain Bradford selected a num- 
 ber of items and justified them by copious extracts from his 
 own experiences. Captain Cadman seemed to protest with 
 heat. I say seemed. He applied many injurious words to 
 the master rigger. But it struck me all the same that he was 
 acting a part. I guessed that Bradford and Flaxman being 
 friends, Cadman's scheme was to get the captain to use his 
 influence with the rigger to cheapen the bill, himself being 
 satisfied that the charges were just. After a while he put the 
 bill in his pocket. Bradford took a decanter of spirits out of 
 a cupboard and the three of us drank to one another. It was 
 hard upon twelve o'clock in the morning, and I was still con- 
 sidering whether or not to partake of my friend's boiled beef, 
 due, as I understood, at one. 
 
 "When d'ye sail, Cadman ?" said Bradford, filling a pipe 
 and pushing the jar of tobacco across the table. 
 
 " Tenth prox., all being well." 
 
 " Got a full cargo, I hope ?" 
 
 " Up to the knocker, as cargoes go. But things are not as 
 they was in your time, Bradford."
 
 CAPTAIN CADMAN. 13 
 
 " I've been down to the wash-streak before now," said the 
 old captain, with a slow smile. " I've known what it is to 
 crawl into the rigging half-mast high in a gale of wind to find 
 out what's become of the ship." 
 
 " All smother and yeast high as the sheer poles. I know 
 I know," exclaimed Cadman, whose voice seemed even more 
 gurgling and greasy now that he was smoking. " Them was 
 the good old times. Now they're always a-coming." 
 
 ' What's your port ? " said Bradford. 
 
 ' Table Bay. Mr. Fletcher goes with us." 
 
 * To look after you ? " said Captain Bradford dryly. 
 
 ' For his health," answered Cadman. 
 
 ' He'll be missed till he comes safe home," said Captain 
 Bradford with an ironical cast of face. " There'll be a little 
 more nakedness and a little more hunger in Bristol till his light 
 shines upon us once more. The psalm won't go up quite so 
 strong on the Sabbath, and there'll be one yellow composed 
 countenance, and one shining new black suit of clothes, and 
 a tall hat the less on Sundays while that good man's missing." 
 
 Cadman without moving his head turned his little eyes upon 
 me. 
 
 " Is the Hebe the only vessel Mr. Fletcher owns ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " The only vessel," answered Cadman. 
 
 "If you weren't in command I'd ask Jem Fletcher to give 
 the charge to my young friend here," said Captain Bradford. 
 " He wants a post, and's too good a sailor to be kept ashore 
 loafing for lack of a job." 
 
 Again without turning his head, Captain Cadman brought 
 his little eyes to bear on me. 
 
 " The brig wants a mate she's got a capt'n," said he. 
 
 " D'ye offer him the berth, Cadman ? If so, bloomed, 
 Morgan, if I wouldn't close if I was you," called out old 
 Bradford. 
 
 " I'm in want of a mate, certainly," said Captain Cadman, 
 letting his words drop slowly, while he held his pipe to his 
 mouth, and now turning upon me the full of his snout-shaped 
 face that he might eye me all over very critically and deliber- 
 ately. " But that's one of them needs you're able to supply 
 without call to go upon your knees and beg and pray." 
 
 "Take the offer, Morgan," said Captain Bradford. "The 
 voyage is short and agreeable, pay good, table excellent, and 
 if Fletcher goes along, then I'll warrant the whole job free 
 from vulgarity, as the music halls say when they're planning 
 something extra coarse."
 
 14 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " There's been no offer as yet," I answered, laughing. 
 
 All this while Cadman eyed me. I seemed to see his mind 
 in motion behind the fixed and contrived expression of his 
 face, like the legs of actors under the curtain that's not quite 
 down. I could swear his considerations about me went fur- 
 ther than my mere professional eligibility. 
 
 " How old are you ? " he asked. 
 
 " Three-and-twenty." 
 
 " What's your qualifications ? " 
 
 " He holds a master's certificate," broke in Bradford, " and 
 is six months home from over three years of washing about 
 in the Wanderer. What more would you have, Cadman, if it 
 isn't a whale ? " 
 
 But Cadman was wary, persistent, and critical in his inqui- 
 ries. He asked who my parents were, where I was born, if I 
 swore and drank hard, and so forth. I resented nothing. In 
 fact, I had made up my mind if the berth was offered to accept 
 it, and I hoped it would come while I sat, for then I should 
 return to Blathford in an easier temper than I had enjoyed 
 for some weeks past. But the offer was hot to be made on 
 the spot. 
 
 " Well," said Captain Cadman, pocketing his pipe, "I'll talk 
 the matter over with Mr. Fletcher, and you shall hear from me. 
 What's your address ? " , 
 
 I scribbled it on a piece of paper. 
 
 " How runs the yarn in the shape of pay ? " said Bradford. 
 
 " Four pun' fifteen," answered Camden shortly. 
 
 "It's the old story," said Bradford. "Wages go down 
 while everything else goes up. Everything else going up 
 means money for them who sell. Why, then, should wages be 
 alvvavs a-lowering and a-lowering ? " 
 
 " Ah, that's it ! " said Captain Cadman. " That's one of 
 them riddles that Mr. Fletcher's given to trying his hand at." 
 
 We were interrupted by a servant girl looking in to ask if 
 she might lay the cloth for dinner. Cadman accepted an invi- 
 tation to partake of some boiled beef. Presently a fine smok- 
 ing silver-side was placed upon the table ; Bradford's niece 
 carved, and we ate and drank. In the course of the meal 
 Captain Bradford proposed that after dinner we should go down 
 to the docks and have a look at the Hebe. Captain Cadman 
 was quite agreeable, and shortly after two we put on our hats 
 and the three of us sallied forth. 
 
 Though I had followed the sea for years, I loved the life, and 
 by the life I don't mean the discipline and the wet and the 
 bad food and the poor pay, but the freedom of the great breast
 
 CAP T A IX C A DM AN. 15 
 
 of ocean, the remarkable beauty of a ship in full sail, and all 
 the rich poetry that in the boundless solitudes of the deep you 
 read in the book of the heavens radiant with stars, or glorious 
 with the newly risen sun, or terrible with swollen black thunder- 
 clouds torn with fire. 
 
 But one condition of the life I ever abhorred, and that is the 
 dock part of it. You see the business of the deep in its rough 
 and clamorous making. Everything belonging to the sea life 
 that's coarse and commonplace, nasty and noisy, is there. 
 Ships are wrecked by the riggers, decks are fouled with stains 
 of cargo, drunken sailors in skin caps and mossy breasts sprawl 
 about the quay-side, quarrelsome and obscene, and the hollow 
 holds of the wooden and iron fabrics re-echo the blasphemies 
 of ruffianly lumpers. Nor do mates and captains look the 
 same in dock as they do at sea ; a something in their dress, 
 a peculiarity in their strut, makes the difference that is quickly 
 distinguished by the practiced eye ; the brown of their com- 
 plexion is faded, they seem somehow at a loss, and though you 
 see a captain go over the side into the cabin of his ship in dock, 
 he does not, somehow, bear himself as her master. He is not 
 as he will be anon when the canvas is spread over his head 
 and the soft milky foam is buzzing alongside. The life of the 
 sea does not begin until the docks are well astern. 
 
 The Bristol docks are curiosities as marine receptacles 
 because of the topgallant and royal yards and pulling bunting 
 they lift above the house tops of the city. You watch a man 
 furling a sail past a church spire, and a topgallant mast slowly 
 descends (to the melody of a sea language happily silent in 
 the distance) seemingly close beside a chimney stack. 
 
 It was a clear, bright, cold February day. A noise of 
 some local celebration was in the air ; the chimes of many 
 bells slanted through and quarreled down the frosty wind and 
 I heard the sulky throbbing of a big drum and the strains of a 
 brass band. The docks were full of vessels ; the picture was 
 such an one of large and busy trade as you shall not see in 
 Bristol to-day. We stood on the edge of the wall and looked 
 at the Hebe before stepping aboard. 
 
 She was a brig of about 290 tons, an old-fashioned ship 
 built probably about thirty years before this time. That 
 a sailor would guess by her beam and butter-box run, her 
 immensely square stern, apple-shaped bows, and cutwater 
 curving at the stem head into the nude bust and face of 
 a woman a device of the old sort : painted staring eyes, 
 red hair, cheeks rouged into strict correspondence with 
 forecastle taste in such matters. This Hebe was no beautv.
 
 1 6 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Her immensely thick bulwarks were almost the height of a 
 man, she had large heavy tops which somehow gave her an 
 over-sparred appearance. Her decks ran flush or level from 
 the eyes to the taffrail. 
 
 " A good, old-fashioned, roomy hold down there for rats," 
 said Bradford, with a sarcastic laugh. 
 
 " She was built in your time, skipper," exclaimed Cadman 
 in a stealthy voice, turning his queer little eyes upon me. 
 
 "Yes, and so was the Thames" retorted Bradford, naming 
 one of the handsomest of John Company's ships. 
 
 We went aboard, and Cadman conducted us into the cabin 
 stateroom we then called it. I stared about me ; every sailor 
 looks with interest at a ship, at the outside and at the inside 
 of her. The cabin was a dusky interior, spite of the large, 
 almost flat, skylight overhead. It contained seven sleeping 
 berths, three little ones of a side, and one big one athwart 
 under the wheel. In her day the Hebe had been a West Indian 
 passenger as well as cargo boat ; had carried several big pots 
 to and fro ; had even risen to the dignity of a favorite trader. 
 
 "If these dry planks could talk," said Bradford, standing 
 on wide legs in the middle of the cabin, and turning his jolly, 
 mottled, broad-beamed face about with his hands thrust deep 
 in his capacious breeches pockets, "there's nothing afloat 
 fastened with bolts and trunnels that could spin more hair- 
 lifting yarns. Morgan, this same craft was once boarded by 
 pirates within thirty miles of Morant Point. They cut the 
 throats of the master and mates and three men passengers ; 
 flung the crew along with two delicate ladies, people of wealth 
 and position out in Jamaica, into the hold ; clapped the hatch 
 on and battened it down ; next they set fire to the galley and 
 went away, leaving smoke enough to persuade 'em the vessel 
 was in flames. The fire went out of itself, but the hatch cover 
 sat tight 'twixt its coamings. The brig was fallen in with 
 ten days later, and when the people who boarded her lifted 
 the hatch they found eighteen dead bodies in every posture of 
 death agony. Lord, the blue, fast-mortifying faces, with the 
 torments of the thirst which had killed them the thirst and 
 the heat and the suffocation in that hold still showing like a 
 living expression in the poor Christian carrion ! Bruised if 
 I'd like to sail with you, Cadman." 
 
 We left the brig, and in walking in the direction of Captain 
 Bradford's house we met a stout, tall man whom Bradford 
 shook his hand at, calling, "How d'ye do, Fletcher? We 
 are fresh from the Hebe, You've made a good job of her, 
 Fletcher,"
 
 CAPTAIN CABMAN. 17 
 
 Cadman left us to speak to him, and Bradford and I waited. 
 
 " Turn yourself that Fletcher may take a good view of you," 
 said Bradford. "They're talking about you." 
 
 From the old skipper's ridicule of Fletcher I had expected 
 to see a different sort of person something long and yellow, 
 well-soaped looks, and a suit of rusty black. Fletcher was a 
 tall, big man, with a pair of strong whiskers, a small pear- 
 shaped nose, and a huge chin betwixt two points of stick-up 
 collar. He wore a low pot hat, and was dressed in a suit 
 of gray. He talked with Cadman, and they both looked 
 toward me. 
 
 " I had thought to see something of the devil dodger's cut 
 in your friend there," said 1 to Bradford. 
 
 " He sings loud in church," he answered ; " has a name for 
 charity, but you'd need a policeman's bull's-eye, I think, to 
 explore for his gifts. He has failed twice once in Sheffield, 
 and once here yet manages to hold his own, to maintain a 
 wife and family, to say no more, and to keep a good roof over 
 his head. He has a well-furnished house, and brags of his 
 pictures. He is now a ship owner. Think on't ! " 
 
 " Captain, you know the people. Shall I close if they offer 
 me the appointment ? " 
 
 " Why, the wages would degrade a footman, and there are 
 sweeter ships afloat. But then, Morgan, you want a berth. 
 You may find a command ready for you on your return. A 
 Cape voyage won't run you into six months. And while 
 you're at sea you're keeping your hand in remember that. 
 What can a sailor do ashore but spend his savings and smoke 
 tobacco?" 
 
 Here Fletcher and Cadman parted ; the former gravely 
 flourished a farewell to Bradford, and the other joined us. 
 He said nothing, however, about engaging me. I just took 
 notice as we walked that twice or thrice he turned his face to 
 stare very critically, as though he would look far deeper than 
 the mere professional skin of me went. I guessed this sort of 
 inspection was a mere trick or habit of his, and thought noth- 
 ing of it ; indeed he sent the like searching glances at the old 
 skipper Bradford, it seemed to me. He quitted us at some 
 short distance from the docks, first feeling in his pockets to 
 make sure that he had my address, and then repeating that I 
 should hear from him. 
 
 I thanked old Bradford for his hospitality and for the intro- 
 duction, and declining his invitation to step in and drink a 
 glass, I made my way to the station and so got home.
 
 1 8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MATE OF THE " HEBE." 
 
 I TOLD my people of what I had been about and the chance 
 I stood of getting a berth as mate of a brig called the Hebe, 
 bound to Cape Town. My father said I should do well to 
 accept the offer if it came. He had noticed that I was grow- 
 ing restless. 
 
 " Blathford is a dull place for a young man," said he. 
 "Your delight in the country has passed. You are again 
 longing to feel the fabric of a ship under you, and to hear the 
 song of the salt wind." 
 
 " There is surely no hurry," said my mother. " And though 
 Blathford is dull, it is safe, and you have been happy at home, 
 Charles. Stop till you get command of a fine ship. When- 
 ever there is a wreck it is a little brig." 
 
 "Charles will be wise to take what he can get," said my 
 father softly, with one of his sweet looks. "You would have 
 him a bishop, even while he waits for a curacy. And remem- 
 ber the words of the old divine : ' Is it not labor that makes 
 the garlic and the pulse, the sycamore and the cresses, the 
 cheese of the goats and the butter of the sheep to be savory 
 and pleasant as the flesh of the roebuck or the milk of the 
 kine, the marrow of oxen or the thighs of birds ? ' " 
 
 "Is that a letter for me ?" said I, going to the mantelpiece. 
 
 " It is from Kate and to me. You may read it," said my 
 mother. 
 
 The girl wrote that she had taken another situation, where 
 she hoped to be happier, though she would be getting a little 
 less money. She said she was weary of teaching. 
 
 "It is bitter hard that girls placed as I am should find in 
 this country nothing to do outside educating children. I 
 am sorry now that I wanted the courage to plunge boldly into 
 domestic service. I would far rather be a housemaid than a 
 governess or a shop girl. The only condition of that life 
 which makes me shrink a bit when I think of it is the people 
 one must associate with. How could I bear to listen to John 
 the footman's talk of the places he's lived in, to hear Mary the 
 cook reading aloud without an aspirate from some vulgar 
 weekly newspaper or some vulgarer magazine of love stories ?" 
 She asked if I had found a ship yet, and, if so, when I sailed. 
 There was no reference in her letter to her old scheme of 
 emigrating.
 
 MATE OF THE "HEBE." 19 
 
 About a week after I had visited Bristol I heard from Mr. 
 James Fletcher. He appointed me to the post of chief mate 
 of the Hebe, at four pounds fifteen a month. My services 
 would not be required until the day before the brig sailed. 
 He had chosen me out of a number, as much because I was a 
 clergyman's son as because of my qualifications (according to 
 Captain Bradford) as a seaman and a navigator. He had a 
 high opinion of ministers of all denominations, and peculiarly 
 respected the clergy of the Church of England. He con- 
 cluded that, as a clergyman's son, pious sentiments had been 
 early instilled into me, and he took it for granted that I was 
 a sober, moral, God-fearing young man. It was his intention, 
 he said, to go out in the brig for his health, and he hoped I 
 would spare no trouble to help him and Captain Cadman to 
 excite religious sentiments in the minds of the crew and set 
 them a good example in all respects. 
 
 I found this on the breakfast table and handed it to my 
 father, who said : 
 
 " He seems an honest, respectable gentleman. I like his 
 sentiments. Well would it be if all ship owners took his 
 views. The degrading and senseless vice of swearing would 
 end, the name of Jack would no longer be the short for 
 debauchery, the tender side of the sailor's nature would 
 appear, his character then would make the profession of the 
 sea truly noble." 
 
 "And how pleased English consuls would be ! " exclaimed 
 my mother, one of whose cousins had been consul at a Spanish 
 port. 
 
 I pocketed the letter, and went out of doors to think over 
 it. I gave no heed to Fletcher's references to my parentage, 
 my morals, and so forth. Suppose the man's piety a sham, 
 there is a no more ancient fraud in the world, and I will say 
 this : that if life has never been the better it has never been 
 the worse for it, for surely you would rather have a man be a 
 humbug in the right, than a candid rogue in the wrong. A 
 man who feigns a religious character must act his part and 
 therefore can't help doing a little good, though against the 
 grain. A pious humbug leers at you as he passes on his way 
 to old Nick, gives you a bow if you are poor, perhaps a 
 penny all to help him on the road to the devil ; but your 
 ingenuous villain who is too honest a blackguard to put on a 
 religious face knocks you down and walks on his path to hell 
 over your body. In fact there is too much imposture every- 
 where to quarrel with the professors of one sort of it. 
 
 No ; it was not the fellow's writing about my helping him
 
 20 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 to make his crew virtuous and so on that struck me : it was his 
 not wanting me on board until the day before the brig sailed. 
 I very well knew what was expected of a chief mate. My 
 experience was that when a ship was in dock the mate was 
 more in command of her than the captain himself. He was 
 everywhere. Work came to a stand unless he was by to refer 
 to. He saw to the stowing of the cargo, standing at the main 
 hatch and watching the business as it went forward ; he looked 
 after things in fifty different directions. Yet here was I 
 requested not to join the vessel I was mate of till the eve of 
 the day of her hauling out. It was strange ; it was something 
 new in ocean procedure ; but then so much the better, thought 
 I, after reading the letter a second time ; three weeks of the 
 quiet parsonage of Blathford with the dear old folks for my 
 company, all night in, and plenty of milk and butter, and 
 tender roast beef and mutton, delicacies which twinkle and 
 vanish in the tail of your wake as it blends with the shore 
 when the curved hawser is hissing to the drag of the tugboat, 
 must surely be sweeter than a like period spent in a dock, 
 looking after the filling up of a brig's hold, yelling to bungling 
 figures on the decks, shouting to dangling shapes aloft, and all 
 for four pounds fifteen a month. 
 
 I wrote to Mr. Fletcher and accepted the berth, and asked 
 him to tell me when I was to sign articles. I received no 
 reply for a fortnight. Then came a letter telling me that he 
 had been away at Sheffield on a visit to a manufacturer who 
 was sending out a valuable freight by the Hebe to Cape Town, 
 and in a postscript which read like an afterthought he 
 added : " Call upon the shipping master on your arrival on 
 the Qth, and then sign the articles." 
 
 The pth came. I had been a long while at home this time, 
 and found good-by hard to say. I hired the carter that had 
 brought me from the railway station in the preceding August, 
 put my stowed sea chest aboard the old vehicle, and with my 
 mother's kiss still moist upon my cheek, and my father's grasp 
 still warm in my hand, I turned my back upon the old home, 
 little anticipating the new and extraordinary scene of life that 
 was to open to me. 
 
 On my arrival at Bristol, after signing the brig's articles, 
 I took my chest on board the Hebe. I found the vessel in full 
 sea rig, the hatches on, and all in readiness for the start. She 
 sat fairly deep in the water of the dock, and showed like 
 a ship comfortably freighted. The only people in the vessel 
 were the steward and the carpenter. I noticed the latter as 
 I went through the gangway, leaning over the windlass and
 
 MATE OF THE "HEBE." 21 
 
 smoking a pipe, and posturing with the easy air of a ship- 
 keeper. He did not know who I was and made no sign. 
 I called to hear if there was anybody in the forecastle who 
 would help me carry my chest below. On this he stepped aft, 
 putting his pipe in his pocket, and made a civil flourish with 
 his hand to his cloth cap. 
 
 " Are you the mate, sir ? " said he. 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 " I'm the carpenter and acting second mate," said he, with 
 a grin. Then going to the companion he bawled out, 
 " George !" A young fellow of some three-and-t\venty came 
 up. His face was dirty, his jacket old and greasy, his canvas 
 trousers colored here and there like the center of a drum 
 where the sticks hit it. He had a cast in his eye, and seemed 
 but a poor kind of creature for any sort of work. I asked 
 him who he was. He answered with an imbecile look : 
 
 " George, the steward, sir." 
 
 I said, " You'll have to freshen yourself up, my lad. Those 
 togs of yours will need a long tow overboard to satisfy me. 
 Is the captain aboard ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 "When is he expected ? " 
 
 " Dunno, sir." 
 
 The carpenter waited till I had done with my questions, 
 then said, " Here, boy ; len's a hand to carry the chief mate's 
 chest to his berth." 
 
 I followed them down the steps, and they put my old box on 
 the deck of my^cabin. In the bunk lay a bundle of bedding, 
 sent aboard tliat morning according to my instructions to 
 a Bristol outfitter. I glanced around and found that other 
 necessaries had been duly delivered. 
 
 " I see you're all ready for hauling out," said I to the 
 carpenter, who seemed to linger as though for a yarn, the 
 steward meanwhile stepping into his pantry, which was imme- 
 diately abreast my cabin. 
 
 " Yes, sir," he answered. " Everything's been done by the 
 riggers. Ne'er a man as sails in the ship Ml have a finger in 
 the pie, aloft or alow. 'Taint as it used to be. If I were 
 master it's my sailors as should reeve and bend, aye, and 
 stow too. There's nothen like knowing what you're aboard 
 of when the whole job means sink or swim " 
 
 " Have they got a crew ? " 
 
 " Yes ; a tidy crew as crews go. 1 was up signing along 
 with some of them." 
 
 " What's the complement ? "
 
 * THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 11 Not counting you aft, eight men and me, and that there 
 George," he answered, with a nod at the pantry. 
 
 I chatted a while with the fellow, rather fancying him. He 
 was a man of about five-and-forty, with iron-gray whiskers, 
 of a frank, sailorly manner, and honest looks. The mate of 
 such a brig as this could lose nothing of dignity in yarning 
 with her carpenter. There is no dignity in 290 tons. Indeed 
 it scarcely begins at a thousand. This carpenter had sailed 
 with a man I well knew ; he also named several large ships he 
 had served in, and he looked around the cabin as though he 
 felt that his present situation was a come-down. 
 
 When he left me I occupied myself in arranging my berth, 
 and then went on deck for a meal at an eating house just off 
 the docks. As I passed through the companion hatch Captain 
 Cadman came over the side. On seeing me he called out, 
 " Ho, there you are ! " 
 
 I saluted him with a quarter-deck flourish, of which, how- 
 ever, he took no notice, being no doubt ignorant of all such 
 etiquette. His wide, flapping soft hat seemed to contract his 
 face, and I found it more snout-like than I had before thought 
 it. He was buttoned up in a rusty monkey jacket, and his 
 long legs were outlined like a skeleton's through his thin, 
 flapping cloth breeches. 
 
 " All ready for sea, sir ? " said he. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said I. 
 
 " So are we," he exclaimed, casting his little eyes aloft, then 
 running them over the decks. " Our trim's good. We sit 
 well, I think. We haul out to-morrow at nine. Nine's the 
 hour, sir. You'll sleep aboard." 
 
 I answered with the customary " Aye, aye, sir." 
 
 " I'm a-dining this afternoon with Mr. Fletcher. We may 
 come aboard to-night." 
 
 He went to the skylight, called to George to tell him if Mr. 
 Fletcher's cabin was ready, then giving him certain instruc- 
 tions which I did not catch, he walked about the deck, looking 
 here and there, getting on to the rail on either side to peer 
 over, and staring aloft. I watched him with a certain degree 
 of interest. I never remember a person more singular in his 
 carriage, manners, and looks. His walk was a wild, flighty 
 stride ; he seemed to have no control over his great, square- 
 toed feet, and he had an odd way of gazing askant at a thing. 
 He'd hold his head straight, and you'd think he was looking 
 in front of him, till on glancing at him you'd find his eyes in 
 the corner of their sockets, fastened upon you. He attentively 
 viewed the brig as though particularly to observe her trim ;
 
 MATE OF THE "HEBE." 23 
 
 then, after addressing a few observations to me about Captain 
 Bradford, the promise of the morrow's weather, the sailors who 
 had signed for the vessel, and so on, he stepped on to the 
 wharf and went away. I waited until he had disappeared, 
 walked to an eating house, and dined. 
 
 I hung about the brig for the rest of the day, smoking and 
 sometimes yarning with the carpenter, who said he belonged 
 to London and had no friends in Bristol, and did not care to 
 go ashore. Ships of many kinds lay round about us, and the 
 scene in its way was hearty and inspiriting, with the spires of 
 masts, the lacework of rigging, the hovering of the bunting of 
 divers nations at peak or royal masthead, and the song of the 
 capstan and the cry of command mingled with the melodies of 
 church bells and the noises of the city spreading beyond in 
 all directions. But it was a sharp, cold day, spite of a high 
 sky of marble and a sunset of spacious splendor ; after I had 
 made a good supper or tea ashore I was glad of the refuge 
 the brig's cabin provided. George lighted the lamp; I smoked 
 a pipe, mixed myself a glass out of a bottle of spirits I had 
 brought with me, and killed an hour or two by reading in some 
 old thumb-marked volume of sea tales which I found on a 
 swing tray under the skylight. 
 
 I contrasted this gloomy cabin with the home I had left 
 the cheerful parlor lighted by the soft flame of oil, the pic- 
 tures, the communion plate glittering on the sideboard, the 
 figures of my father and mother, the one knitting, the other 
 reading and I did not feel joyous. 
 
 I thought of the horrible yarn old Bradford had spun us of 
 the people whose throats had been cut and of the heap of 
 dead bodies in the hold. The gloom upon my spirits was in 
 the atmosphere ; imagination beheld the theater exactly as it 
 had been, and the bloody business was re-enacted with such 
 sharpness of realization as once caused me to glance around a 
 bit nervously, and once even to go on deck to fetch a cold 
 breath and get some briskness of mood out of the life that 
 was in sight. 
 
 But there was little to be seen ; the water in the dock 
 floated like black oil, with a gleam coming you knew not 
 whence in the heart of it ; the moon was dark, the stars pale 
 and few, the ships lay in blocks of shadow spotted here and 
 there with yellow light, and the crowd of masts swarmed into 
 the obscurity till they looked like the gathering of a thunder- 
 cloud with ink-like lines of rain falling. The silence was the 
 silence of the dock when Jack in his multitude is ashore ; 
 when one solitary figure leaning over a taffrail talks to another
 
 24 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 solitary figure leaning over a bow ; when a distant shout star- 
 tles, and the splash of a bucket makes you hearken for the 
 alarm of a drowning man ; when there is a hum of drunken 
 voices beside the shadowy arm of a crane, and a dim chorus- 
 ing from a distant public house. 
 
 Mr. Fletcher and Captain Cadman came on board at ten. 
 I sat in the cabin scarcely knowing whether to expect them or 
 not. Fletcher stumbled in coming down the companion steps, 
 and put on a stately air when he approached me. His eyes 
 were weak, and he was at some trouble to keep his face steady. 
 He was slightly intoxicated. Cadman, on the other hand, was 
 perfectly sober. Fletcher shook me by the hand, and said he 
 hoped I would fulfill the expectations he had formed of me as 
 the son of a clergyman. 
 
 " You shall have of my best, sir I can say no more," I 
 answered. 
 
 " I expect no more," he exclaimed, with a rather tipsy 
 flourish of his hand. " He giveth all who giveth of his best. 
 Is the steward awake ? " 
 
 I called to George, who came out of his pantry rubbing his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Is there any milk on board ? " said Mr. Fletcher. 
 
 " No, sir," answered George. 
 
 " D'ye want a drink of milk, sir?" said Captain Cadman. 
 "Jump ashore with a jug, George " 
 
 " No, I'll drink no milk," said Mr. Fletcher, sitting down 
 suddenly ; " milk lies cold upon the stomach throughout a long 
 night. I mean cow's milk. I'd drink goat's milk if I could 
 get it." 
 
 Cadman slopped out one of his greasy laughs. " I knew a 
 woman," said he, " who brought up her young un on goat's 
 milk, and bloomed if the kid wouldn't turn to arterward and 
 butt at his mother as if he was a goat. He wanted nothen but 
 horns. He had all the feelings and sperrits of a Billy." 
 
 " What's there to drink in this brig ? " said Fletcher, looking 
 at me somewhat gloomily. 
 
 In silence Cadman sped with spasmodic gestures and dart- 
 ing legs to his cabin, and swiftly returned with a black bottle. 
 George then put cold water and glasses upon the table. I 
 was for going to my berth, guessing I was no longer wanted. 
 Fletcher, however, first asking Cadman what the bottle con- 
 tained, requested me to sit and drink prosperity to the Hebe. 
 A mate must be always willing to oblige aship owner. I mixed 
 a glass of weak gin and water, and the three of us lifted our 
 tumblers after Fletcher had said, " Here's prosperity to the
 
 MATE OF THE "HEBE." 25 
 
 voyage. May it find us grateful always for every mercy. 
 And here's to our safe return to the country of our birth." 
 
 " I was sorry to see Mrs. Fletcher take on so," said Captain 
 Cadman, pulling out a paper bag of cigars, one of which he 
 lighted (it instantly raised so vile a smell of bad tobacco that 
 it was like sitting in a ship's hold which you smoke out for 
 rats and other vermin). " But she'll come round. Somehow 
 it's never long afore the empty chair gets to look as homely 
 as when it's filled. I found that out arter my wife died'. 
 When I came home and found her armchair empty the sight 
 of it was enough to drive me into drinking. Now its empti- 
 ness is as formiliaras it would be if it were t'other ways about, 
 that's to say, if I hadn't sold it." 
 
 " Mrs. Fletcher is a bad sailor," said Fletcher, with his eyes 
 half closed. " She'll miss me. We'll miss each other. She'll 
 miss me from my accustomed seat at church, and at our plain, 
 but, I think, not inhospitable table." 
 
 "Fur from that, sir," said Cadman, draining his glass. 
 
 " My daughters '11 miss me," continued Fletcher. " But 
 these separations are useful. They teach us to think. They 
 withdraw us from that fool's paradise in which too many of 
 us are apt to dwell." Here he lifted his eyelids and rested 
 his dim eyes upon my face. " The great and final change 
 when we enter eternity and never return is always at hand. 
 Our small earthly comings and goings prepare us for the last 
 dread leave-taking." 
 
 " I've always said," exclaimed Captain Cadman, " that there's 
 ne'er a man as can dress up his thoughts in prettier colors than 
 Mr. Fletcher of Bristol." 
 
 " With your leave, gentlemen," said I, " I'll turn in. Work 
 starts early in the morning, and there's a long day before us." 
 
 " Good-night, sir," said Mr. Fletcher, extending his hand 
 with the abruptness of drink. As I rose he said, "I hope you 
 left your father in a fairly good state of health ? " 
 
 " He is very well, sir, I thank you." 
 
 " There's no class of society," I heard him say to Captain 
 Cadman as I went to my berth, '"for which I have a greater 
 regard than the clergy of the Church of England." 
 
 I shut my door, but through the bulkhead heard him ram- 
 bling on in this speech about the clergy. 
 
 I got into my bunk and lay thinking. This first day of my 
 entering my duties did not much seem like going to sea accord- 
 ing to one's old notions of the life, whether in dock or out of 
 soundings. I seemed to be treated more as passenger than 
 mate ; Cadman had said nothing to me about the cargo, stores,
 
 26 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 and so on, had barely referred, indeed, to the brig when we met 
 in the afternoon ; here too was the owner, Fletcher, shaking 
 hands and making much of me but, to be sure, he was rather 
 tipsy. I was puzzled, but not uneasy. I knew my work, and 
 though Cadman might be a smarter seaman than I in han- 
 dling such a little ship as this brig, I had small doubt of prov- 
 ing out and away superior as a navigator to so illiterate a 
 man. They sat talking in low voices long after I had turned 
 in. I heard a church clock strike eleven and then the quar- 
 ter, and they talked still. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE " HEBE " SAILS. 
 
 THE crew were aboard next morning by eight. They 
 arrived perfectly sober, handed down their bags and chests, 
 and disappeared through the scuttle. I was satisfied with 
 their looks. They showed as a healthy, able-bodied company 
 of men, and I liked their quiet, orderly manner of coming 
 aboard. 
 
 Shortly after nine we had warped out of the dock ; a tug 
 then got hold of us, and with a pilot in charge the little, 
 square-sterned, ungainly bulk of brig hissed her thick cut- 
 water through the froth of the wake churned up by the pad- 
 dles ahead. My hands were now full ; I had fifty things to 
 look after, and found no leisure to admire the quiet beauty of 
 the scene of river through which we were towed. It was a 
 hard, bright morning, with a keen and nipping breeze out of 
 the northeast. Nothing happened worth noticing until the 
 tug cast us adrift and the pilot left us. Mr. Fletcher, in a 
 great overcoat and a fur cap, stumped the quarter-deck, casting 
 complacent, patronizing looks round upon the sea. Cadman, 
 who had now charge of the brig, was bawling out orders to 
 make sail. I was forward on the forecastle, seeing to the 
 ground tackle, along with the carpenter and one or two men. 
 The wind, though a breeze, blew light, being almost aft ; the 
 vessel was under topsails and fore course, and they were now 
 setting topgallant sails and loosing the royals. 
 
 I paused for a moment or two in what I was about, and 
 could not but smile at the picture of the little brig. She 
 looked from the head the oddest, most old-fashioned, 
 unshapely structure that ever blew along over salt water. 
 Her canvas fitted her ill ; the clews of her topgallant sails, as
 
 THE "HEBE" SAILS. 27 
 
 the hoisting yard tautened the leech, sheeted wide of the 
 yardarms, and I could swear that the fore topsail had never 
 been cut for the little ship. The standing jib and the top- 
 gallant staysail had a meager look, as though the cloths had 
 been stitched for a vessel wantinga third of the Hebe's tonnage. 
 Some of the canvas was dark with time, if not wear, and here 
 and there I twigged a patch. I nearly burst into a laugh. 
 The effect was as that of a tall boy in old clothes much too 
 tight and short. A very Smike of a brig, thought I, though 
 perhaps this image of ribs and shanks was impaired by the 
 corpulence of the hull which lifted its rags to the wind. 
 
 The carpenter looked at the brig out of the corners of his 
 eyes, and the Jacks who were working under my direction 
 frequently turned their heads to fling a glance aloft, as though 
 fascinated by the monstrous exhibition of sailcloth. A light 
 swell, with something, however, of the weight of the Bristol 
 Channel in its heave, was rolling through the pale blue water 
 scarcely more than wrinkled by the wind, and the brig bowed 
 oddly upon it in a sort of squelching way, sousing her bows, 
 and recovering sluggishly. I felt this queer behavior under 
 foot, and could not reconcile it with the excellence of her 
 trim while she had floated down the river or sat on the still 
 water of the dock. 
 
 " Blast me," says one of the sailors standing upon the heel 
 of the cathead, after first spitting a thimbleful of yellow froth 
 over the side, " if I don't think this blooming old hooker's 
 half full of water." 
 
 "If she's going to cut these watter-logged capers here," ex- 
 claimed another sailor, " what's to be her tantrums in anything 
 of a sea ? " 
 
 " Silence there," said I. 
 
 But now the carpenter, coming to my side in a single stride, 
 whispered hoarsely in my ear, " Mr. Morgan " I had given 
 him my name " Mr. Morgan," said he, " I believe the men 
 are right. This here movement means three or four foot of 
 water in the hold." 
 
 Hearing this,I gave some moments of earnest heed to the mat- 
 ter, and was satisfied by the feel of the heave that it was as the 
 carpenter had said. The movement made you think of a quantity 
 of loose quicksilver in the brig's bottom, which, running for- 
 ward, held the bow sullenly soused till the obstinate lift of the 
 swell sluggishly rose her head, when her hinder part sank in a 
 sousing manner likewise, and then the recovery would be sul- 
 len and slow, quite, in short, in the water-logged way. 
 
 I wondered that Cadman did not remark the sickly motions
 
 28 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 of the brig. He was still full of business, leaving the carpen- 
 ter and me to get on with our work on the forecastle. It was 
 not for me to order the carpenter to sound the well while the 
 captain was on deck, but it was for me beyond question to go 
 aft and report my suspicions that the Hebe was sinking under 
 our feet. I went along the deck and stepped up to Cadman. 
 Mr. Fletcher, who was pacing the planks near at hand, stopped 
 to hear what I had to say. His whiskers looked uncommonly 
 bushy and as strong as hedges. 
 
 " Shall the carpenter sound the well, sir ? He thinks there's 
 three or four feet of water in the hold." 
 
 "And so there is," said Cadman coolly. 
 
 Fletcher still lingered, and seemed to view with approval 
 a handsome three-masted schooner that was floating past us 
 at a distance of a mile, brightening the water under her with 
 the glistening shadow of her snow-white cloths. I stared at 
 Cadman in silence. 
 
 " Yes, there's two or three feet of water in the hold," said 
 the captain. " You can tell the men it was run in for sweeten- 
 ing and preserving purposes. Some fathoms of old skin was 
 took out when the brig was overhauled, and the shipwright as 
 did the repairs recommended that we should season the new 
 stuff by letting a quantity of water lie in the vessel's bottom. 
 We know what we're about. It's all right. Tell the crew if 
 there's anything tighter afloat than the Hebe, middle-aged as 
 she be, Mr. Fletcher of Bristol shall hand 'em over my earn- 
 ings for the voyage." 
 
 I looked at Fletcher, who smiled and resumed his walk. 
 
 " We'll pump her out arter dinner," continued Cadman. 
 "There's no call to sound the well. There's nothen draining 
 in. My life's as good as yourn or any other man's aboard this 
 vessel. So if the crew should say anything make their minds 
 easy, will 'ee ?" 
 
 I went forward again greatly puzzled, with a feeling of dis- 
 trust slowly forming and hardening in me. The carpenter, 
 while I was gone aft, had stood looking our way as though 
 expecting a summons to drop the rod into the well. 
 
 " The captain," said I, "tells me it's all right. He knows 
 that there are three or four feet of water in the hold. The 
 water was run in for seasoning purposes." 
 
 " For what purposes ? " echoed the carpenter. 
 
 "For seasoning the new skin." 
 
 He viewed me without speech, then very moodily shook his 
 head. 
 
 " That warn't do," said he. " Water for seasoning ! in a
 
 THE "HEBE" SAILS. 29 
 
 stowed hold too with plenty of muck, I dessay, in the ballast 
 to wash up, not to speak of the dunnage floating on top of 
 the cargo ! No, no. There's no blooming marines at this 
 end of the ship to swallow the likes of such stuff as that /" 
 
 " Look here ! " cried one of the seamen, springing off the 
 rail a wiry, hairy, square-shouldered man, with the looks of a 
 collie dog about the face, and a big clasp knife dangling at a 
 lanyard round his neck. "Not another stroke of work till I 
 larn what the water's a-doing in the hold, and if more's com- 
 ing in. Have I shipped as a rat ? Strike me silly then ! " 
 
 By this time the men were down from aloft. Sail had been 
 made and the crew were clearing up the decks. It was a quiet 
 day, and the man's loud speech was overheard. He had made 
 it particularly significant too by his gesture. 
 
 " What's up, Bill ? " called a sailor from abreast of the 
 galley. 
 
 " What's the shindy now ? " sung out another. 
 
 " Here's this old hooker half full of water, and Bristol 
 scarcely out of sight," cried out Bill, intending his words for 
 Cadman. 
 
 When this was said every man dropped the job he was 
 upon, and came running on to the forecastle, where in a trice I 
 found myself in the center of all hands saving the fellow at 
 the helm. 
 
 " What's this about the brig half full of water ? " said a man, 
 shoving three or four fellows aside to thrust close to me. 
 
 I repeated in a clear voice what the captain had said. 
 
 " Four foot of water ! " shouted a man, with a great oath. 
 " Aint it time to see what boats the old basket carries ? " 
 
 " Fired," cried another, " if she don't feel to be a-settling 
 every time she lurches forrard ! Feel her, bullies." 
 
 " Chips, sound the well ! " shouted a third man. " Aint 
 your life of no account that you stand there a-blinkin' and a- 
 chewing like any blooming old cow ? " 
 
 " Forecastle ! " cried Cadman, with the note of a shriek in 
 his voice, " what's the crew a-doing lumped up together 
 there ? " 
 
 I went aft and was followed by all the men. The language 
 in my wake was far from choice. Some swore they felt the 
 brig settling; others that they'd give the captain two minutes 
 to explain, then head the old fagot for Bristol docks. 
 Fletcher stood large, whiskered, stout in his immense coat, 
 near the wheel, at a safe distance, but within easy earshot. 
 
 " Didn't I tell 'ee what to explain to the men about the 
 water in the hold ? " said Cadman, setting his comoass-like
 
 30 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 legs apart and averting his snout-suggesting face to survey 
 me and the men out of the corners of his eyes. 
 
 " Yes," said I, " and your explanation has been given 'em." 
 
 " But it won't smoke ! " exclaimed the wiry, hairy seaman 
 with the clasp knife round his neck. " D'ye think us men 
 first voyagers that yer spin these blushen yarns o' salting 
 the skin of the old wagon ? If yer don't tarn to and give 
 orders out of hand to man the pumps that we may see what 
 water the brig's making, it's up helium for Bristol City afore 
 five bells, by God ! " 
 
 This was defiance with a vengeance ! It wanted but ten 
 minutes of the time threatened, but you knew by their scowls 
 and savage glances and curse-laden growls that the crew 
 were desperately in earnest and heartily frightened also. We 
 were no great ship with the taut discipline of a Liverpool or a 
 Blackwall liner fore and aft, only a contemptible little brig 
 whose skipper was as mean in origin and " learning " as George 
 who waited on him in the cabin, mean as the meanest man 
 aboard, who, if he could read and count up figures, would be 
 reckoned as well educated as the captain. 
 
 Well do I recollect that strange picture: the crowd of angry, 
 frightened men abreast of the main rigging ; the spider-legged 
 skipper looking at them out of the corners of his eyes ; Fletcher, 
 somewhat pale, near the wheel listening. The breeze was 
 slackening, the dingy old fore course and topsails swung in, 
 and then swung out, with every sputtering, sousing dip of the 
 round bows, and with every dead fall of the square stern, the 
 water flying white and hissing to each slopping chop of the 
 old-fashioned counter, where the words ''Hebe Bristol " were 
 to be read in long, white, staring letters. The sun was in the 
 west ; in the wet, still pale, but slowly reddening light the 
 land showed like a length of formless heaped-up thunder 
 vapor ; it was of the very color of the storm, and you might 
 have watched for fire to spit ; against it the white sails of a 
 large distant bark shone like the pinions of a cloud of gulls 
 startled and suddenly soaring. 
 
 " I tell you," abruptly roared Cadman in a hurricane note, 
 out of which all the natural greasiness was sent flying by 
 temper, "that as much money's been put into this brig for 
 repairs as 'ud build a new un. There stands her owner," he 
 yelled, pointing aft with an arm long, stiff, and curved, like 
 a village pump handle. " He's Mr. Fletcher of Bristol. 
 Who don't know him ? Who, knowing him, don't respect him ? 
 Has he left his wife and charmin' family for the good of his 
 health only to be drownded in the brig whose repairs have cost
 
 THE "HEBE" SAILS. 3* 
 
 him a fortune ? Why, you ballyraggers, there's nothen tighter 
 afloat than the Hebe. If Chips there," he said, bringing his 
 eyes, always in the corners of their sockets, to bear upon the 
 carpenter, " don't know that water swells and seasons and pre- 
 sarves some kinds of wood, and oftentimes them that's mostly 
 used in lining ships, why, then all I've got to say is that, 
 though he may consider hisself a man, he's still got his trade 
 to larn." 
 
 The carpenter began to speak. % 
 
 " No words ! " bawled Cadman. " Get your rod, and mind 
 ye don't spare the chalk. Drop it, and then all hands pump, 
 and if more water comes in the brig's yourn," he cried, ad- 
 dressing the men, " and me and Mr. Fletcher goes ashore in 
 the jolly-boat." 
 
 With that he walked aft and stood beside Mr. Fletcher with 
 his arms folded, his head bowed, and his soft hat drawn upon 
 his nose. 
 
 The carpenter fetched the rod and carefully prepared it for 
 sounding, while the seamen drew one of the pumps for its 
 reception, for the Hebe was constructed on antique theories ; 
 you looked in vain about her for anything modern and con- 
 venient. The sailors, breathing hard, and flinging angry sen- 
 tences and threats against the captain and ship one to another, 
 squeezed round the pump while the carpenter sounded. A 
 trifle over four feet of water was found in the hold. I reported 
 this in a shout to the captain. 
 
 "Pump!" he roared from where he stood alongside of 
 Fletcher near the wheel. "Pump till the brig's all keel! 
 Pump till the butts start ! Pump and bust ! and I'll tally 
 the cargo foryer as its washes through the scuppers." 
 
 He continued to shout out language to this effect, all in a 
 high, screeching, sarcastic note, till some of the men could 
 hardly work the brakes for laughing. But they were the 
 younger ones ; the older hands toiled grimly. The pump 
 clanked like the click of some huge clock, and streams of 
 muddy water gushed over the decks, and fizzed through the 
 scupper holes as though we had veritably sprung a frightful 
 leak and were pumping in a last extremity. 
 
 After a bit the men ceased their labor ; the carpenter again 
 sounded ; there was now a sensible diminution, rapid enough to 
 convince me, and most of the men indeed, that the captain had 
 spoken the truth, at all events that the brig was tight. 
 
 " Pump ! " yelled Cadman. 
 
 The brakes clanked again, and the water, now as muddy and 
 thick as pease soup, bubbled and washed from side to side
 
 32 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 with the heave of the deck, and hissed overboard. I saw 
 Fletcher step to the side and look over, not at the water, but 
 at the brig ; and while he leaned, stretching his neck, his pear- 
 shaped nose drooping past one hedge of whisker, the suspi- 
 cion came into my head that all these tons of water had in some 
 fashion been secretly let run into the brig to sink her a stroke 
 or two to the eye, that it might be thought she had hauhd out 
 of dock with a good load. I can't say why I should have 
 imagined this, nor was it in any way a purposeful suspicion, 
 for it suggested nothing more than the desire of the owner to 
 sail looking deep. 
 
 I stood on the main deck watching the men, ready to give 
 them a hand if the need arose ; the big shaft of the mainmast 
 hid me from the captain. The carpenter was near me ; his 
 words, audible to me, were not to be heard by the sailors 
 owing to the noise of the pumps. 
 
 " I don't want him," said he, meaning by him the captain, 
 " to tell me that they run water into vessels for ' to take up,' 
 as the term is, but it's no yarn to swaller when it's told of a 
 full hold. When was the water let in ? Arter the stevedore 
 had done with the brig ? Bet your legs, Mr. Morgan ! for 
 what man in his senses 'ud stow a hold with four feet of water 
 in it ? " 
 
 " There's some reason in it that's above my tricks of sea- 
 manship," I answered cautiously, for the spirit of the disci- 
 pline of the sea ever worked strongly in me ; I did not choose 
 as mate to talk ill of my captain with his carpenter. " The 
 skipper's an old hand, and knows what he's about, no doubt." 
 
 He looked at me with a slow, acid, wrinkling smile, which 
 was just as good as saying : " Don't argue against your con- 
 victions, but I understand what's in your mind." Here the 
 sailors called upon him to sound the well again, and now the 
 decrease was so marked as to satisfy us that the brig was a 
 stanch keel. The men, however, spell after spell, held on 
 till the pumps sucked ; they then waited a bit, afterward made 
 the carpenter get a last cast, then rolled forward to supper, a 
 grumbling, sweating, wearied body of men, bidding me go aft 
 and tell the captain they were satisfied, though before they 
 signed articles along with him again " he'd have first of all to 
 lift his hatches and sound his own bloomin' well."
 
 A DIFFICULTY. 33 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A DIFFICULTY. 
 
 AFTER this queer matter of the water in the hold nothing 
 happened that recollection can now catch hold of, that is, for 
 a few days ; it was little more than weather and wind with 
 us, reefed topsails and strong bow seas, the water by day a 
 darkling, frothing green, rolling out of a thick and sallow sky, 
 which over our mastheads swept with the swiftness of smoke 
 in flying scud, the breaks between sinister with stormy light ; 
 while by night all was howling and whistling darkness, with 
 the black body of the tub of a brig leaping upon the ghastly 
 pale froth which her capers sent roaring from either side. 
 
 Yet the little craft held her own well with the seas : she 
 jumped the tall surge with a dry forecastle, and though she 
 pitched most abominably, she'd dish at a time little more than 
 a bucketful of yellow suds ; the water flew in living sheets 
 from the ponderous hurl of her round bow, with such a 
 screeching and fiddling and piping and roaring aloft ! Often 
 I'd laugh outright at that multitudinous noise, that orchestral 
 clamor of sweeping hemp and shearing spars, so human it was, 
 so astounding in its suggestions of land-going rowdyism yells 
 and hair pulling in the blind alley, the shrieks and groans of 
 a drunken riot, now swelling into the roars of an enraged mob, 
 now sinking into the moaning of the trampled and the dying. 
 
 This weather fell upon us when we were off the Cornish 
 coast, and lasted us down to about 45 of north latitude. We 
 speedily lost sight of Mr. Fletcher of Bristol, who lay sick unto 
 death in the great cabin he had fitted up for himself, right aft 
 under the wheel, where, of course, the motions of the vessel 
 were to be felt most horribly ; where, too, were to be heard in 
 perfection the sounds of the helm, the shock of the rudder, 
 the grinding of the wheel tackles, the thunderous squash of 
 the square counter smiting the sea. 
 
 I took notice in this time of two or three matters which 
 impressed me even in those early days, though, as in the case 
 of the four foot odd of water in the hold, my distrust could 
 make no use of them. First, the cabin equipment was penu- 
 riously plain ; the table cloths were as coarse, dark, and old 
 as the brig's canvas ; the black-handled knives and forks were 
 of the cheapest and commonest ; the crockery was composed 
 of odd pieces of the poorest sort of ware. The cabin fare was 
 the worst I had ever sat down to at sea ; it was true that the
 
 34 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 beef and pork which we ate, which the sailors forward also 
 ate, was up to the average of such offal ; what I mean is that 
 in the cabin we scarcely fed better than in the forecastle. 
 Such things as were not served out to the sailors were of the 
 worst quality, such as the pickles, the tinned meat, the white 
 biscuit, and the like. We carried no live stock of any sort, 
 not so much as a lonely hen, to furnish us with a one-meal 
 relish. It was certain this brig had put to sea as shabbily 
 victualed as Cadman or his owner durst contrive, only that, 
 the harness cask being up to the average, and the ship's bread 
 with nothing discoverable in the way of worms as yet, no 
 forecastle growls reached the cabin. 
 
 It happened soon after the weather had improved, when the 
 brig was rolling along over a swelling hollow ocean, with a 
 single reef in her main topsail and the topgallant sail set above 
 it,, the sky brightening out ahead to the southward, where the 
 seas were running with frequent quick gleams of light, though 
 northward the heavens were swollen with vaporous masses 
 whose bellies stooped in sulky shadows to the sharp lines of 
 the olive-colored ridges, that I stood beside Cadman a little 
 before noon, sextant in hand, waiting with him for the sun to 
 make eight bells. George, the young steward, in grimy shirt 
 sleeves and bare-headed, came up through the companion and 
 approached the captain. 
 
 " What's it now?" said Cadman, speaking sharply. 
 
 " There's no more rum left, sir." 
 
 " Ho ! " cried Cadman. " Have you squeezed the jar ? " 
 
 " There's ne'er a trickle," said George. " I guess I sarved 
 out the last drop yesterday. There's nowt but the smell 
 left, sir." 
 
 "And haint that to be sarved out too?" exclaimed Cad- 
 man, turning his eyes upon me with a grin, and then looking 
 aloft for the sun. After a pause he exclaimed, " The men 
 mustn't be kept waiting, Morgan. I'll make it eight bells 
 while you take a lighted lantern and mind it aint a naked 
 flame and go into the lazarette and broach one of the casks 
 of rum that's stowed there." 
 
 I put my sextant away, and, followed by George, went with 
 a lantern into the lazarette. This was a part of the brig down 
 in the run, under the cabin ; it was entered by a little hatch in 
 the cabin floor. I dropped through ; George handed down 
 the lantern and came after. I had not before visited this 
 lazarette, nor indeed entered any part of the vessel's hold. It 
 would have been pitch black but for the lantern, black as 
 storm and full of the thunder of the sea outside, with frequent
 
 A DIFFICULTY. 35 
 
 violent shocks running through as the surge hit the brig and 
 swung her. 
 
 I held up the lantern and looked around. There was not 
 much to see ; all the cabin provisions were here, and some of 
 the stores for the crew's use. But the show was extraordinarily 
 poor. I made out a few barrels of pork, a few casks of flour 
 and bread, and a few cases of tinned meat and preserved 
 spuds, along with some jars of lime juice and vinegar. 
 Everything was " few." I spied no rum casks nothing 
 resembling such things. To search was not hard, for there 
 was plenty of room. 
 
 "Who says the rum's stowed down here?" I shouted, 
 making my voice heard with difficulty, so confusing were the 
 sounds of the straining and washing fabric in this lazarette. 
 
 " If it aint here it's nowhere else," answered George. 
 
 I put on the hatch, gave the lantern to the steward, and 
 went on deck. 
 
 As I mounted the steps I found Mr. Fletcher holding on by 
 the companion. He was of a tallowy paleness, and his 
 whiskers wanted their former hedge-like wiriness. I wished 
 him good-morning, and said I hoped he was now cured 
 of his seasickness. He put his hand on his stomach and 
 shook his head. 
 
 " The nausea has passed," he said, " but I am somewhat 
 feeble. Yet those who do business in deep water must be 
 prepared for for this sort of thing," he bleated out after a 
 pause, during which the brig gave one of her vicious kick-ups 
 astern, followed by a long bowel-drawing slant over to lee- 
 ward, till the oil smooth back of the huge sea swelled in a 
 headlong run from the very edge of the bulwark rail. 
 
 I walked up to Cadman, who a minute before had bawled 
 out, " Strike eight bells," and said, "There's no rum in the 
 lazarette, sir." 
 
 " Hey ! " cried he. 
 
 I repeated the sentence. 
 
 He seemed to start ; his dramatic recoil and convulsive 
 straddle were very well managed ; I even fancied he con- 
 trived that his long, snout-like face should turn a trifle pale. 
 
 " Heavens alive, man, what d'ye say? No rum ! " he cried. 
 " Where have you looked ? " 
 
 "In the lazarette, sir," I answered. 
 
 " No rum ! " he cried again. " Man, you must be blind ! 
 I saw the receipt for delivered hogsheads, and if you tell me 
 there's no rum in the lazarette, then Mr. Abraham Winton 
 stands to be convicted of one of the impudentest frauds that
 
 36 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 was ever brought afore the notice of an English court of law. 
 Look again look again ! " he yelled, with a demonstrative 
 motion toward the forecastle, as if he would have the sailors 
 observe what was passing. " Stop," he added, " I'll look for 
 myself." 
 
 So saying he zigzagged off to the companion on his com- 
 pass-like legs and disappeared. 
 
 Meanwhile Fletcher stood holding on, looking palely round 
 upon the sea. Catching my eye he called me to him with a 
 jerk of his head. 
 
 " Nothing wrong, Mr. Morgan, I hope ? " said he. 
 
 I explained. 
 
 He too gave a dramatic start, and ejaculated, " No rum 
 for the sailors ! How's that ? The casks were ordered and 
 paid for, and I understood from Captain Cadman that they 
 had been securely stowed in the lazarette." 
 
 " They may be in another part of the hold," said I. 
 
 " D'ye think so ? I hope you're right. I fear they are not, 
 though. You would know a rum cask at a glance ? " 
 
 " At a glance." 
 
 " If they are not in the lazarette, then I'm afraid they're not 
 in the ship. Am I the victim of a cruel fraud ? Abraham 
 Winton too, of all men a person of the first credit in Bristol ! 
 To cheat me, an old friend ! But there must be some mis- 
 take ! " he exclaimed, letting go his hold to wave his hands 
 with a large, benevolent gesture. 
 
 Just then I noticed the ship's company gathering into a body 
 near the galley, every man holding a pannikin for the "tot " 
 that had heretofore been regularly served out at eight bells. 
 Their uneasy movements indicated impatience, and the head 
 of the cook came and went in the galley door like the comb of 
 a cock through the rails of a hen coop. 
 
 Then a voice bawled, "Aint that gallus young George 
 a-going to show a leg with the grog to-day ? " 
 
 At that moment Cadman came up the companion steps. 
 He carried a manner of excitement, and talked aloud as he 
 mounted. 
 
 " Mr. Fletcher," said he, " you've been cheated ! Boil me 
 alive," he cried, fetching the companion hood a hard blow with 
 his fist, " if there's e'er a cask of rum or anything like it in the 
 lazarette ! " 
 
 Fletcher looked with an expression of dismay from Cadman 
 to me, then round at the man at the wheel, who was easily 
 within earshot. 
 
 " We have Winton's receipt for the money," said he in a loud
 
 A DIFFICULTY. 37 
 
 voice, and he began to flourish his arms and topple about in 
 postures of indignation and wonder and incredulity, all very 
 well done seeing how poorly equipped the dog was as an actor, 
 what with his stiff whiskers clamping his face, and his nose 
 going like a rivet through the surface of his countenance, 
 fixing it. 
 
 " Aye, and the stevedore told me the goods were shipped. 
 There's not only been an artful fraud : wuss lies behind 
 there's collusion ! " cried Cadman. 
 
 " Aint we to have our regular 'lowance of grog to-day ?" 
 sung out one of the crew angrily. By this time the fellows, 
 all hanging together in a little mob, had come some distance 
 forward, the carpenter in the front and the cook in the tail. 
 
 " Speak to 'em, Cadman," said Fletcher. 
 
 " Will the casks have been stowed in another part of the 
 hold ? " said I. 
 
 " No ! " roared Cadman, " if they aint in the lazarette 
 they're ashore. Of all the artfullest, impudentest cheats " 
 
 Passion seemed to choke him, and he shook his fist at the 
 horizon. 
 
 " Speak to them," cried Fletcher. " Tell them how deeply 
 grieved we are to disappoint them in their just and lawful 
 expectations. Explain that I myself have been very cruelly 
 used, and may suffer a heavy pecuniary loss if I cannot prove 
 the non-shipment of the goods." 
 
 " See here, my lads," exclaimed Cadman, going some paces 
 forward with skating, dodging motions of his legs, " I'm sorry 
 to saythere's no rum left in the brig. The little there was is 
 all drunk up. Several hogsheads was ordered and paid for 
 by Mr. Fletcher of Bristol there, and we've got the ship 
 chandler's receipt if you want to see it, but ne'er a thimbleful 
 of that there order has been delivered." 
 
 The hairy, wiry man with the clasp knife round his neck 
 his name was Thomas Beetle bawled out, " We don't know 
 nothen about receipts nor Mr. Fletcher o' Bristol. We signed 
 for the grog, and we must have it." 
 
 " There's ne'er a drop in the brig, I tell 'ee," cried Cad- 
 man, averting his face and looking askew at the man with 
 eyes of murder. 
 
 " What's that got to do with us ? " roared the cook, coming 
 into the knot of seamen with a thrust of his naked yellow 
 elbows. 
 
 Fletcher let go his grasp of the companion hatch to address 
 the men. A sudden lurch ran him violently against the bul- 
 wark rail. He hung on by a belaying pin, and, assuming the
 
 38 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 blandest patronizing manner and benevolent tone of voice his 
 long seasickness and present uncomfortable posture permitted, 
 he exclaimed, " Men, let us discuss this unfortunate matter as 
 friends. There's no need whatever to lose our tempers nor to 
 indulge in violent language." 
 
 " No taffy," shouted one of the sailors ; " gi' us our grog. 
 The grub's bad enough, and suffocate me if it's to be made 
 wuss by your sneaking our 'lowance of rum from us." 
 
 " Men," exclaimed Fletcher, forcing a smile and attempting 
 a large, bland, friendly gesture of arm, " I entreat that you'll 
 not give vent to your feelings in strong and offensive 
 language. My desire is to obtain for the crew of this brig 
 a character for respectability, sobriety, and, let me add, 
 piety " 
 
 " Blather aint going to be sarved out 'stead of rum aboard 
 here! " shouted Beetle, springing in his temper half a fathom in 
 advance of his shipmates. " 'Twasn't to be pump or sink with 
 us, as ye know, capt'n ; that mucking job came all right. We 
 don't want to say nothen more about it. But here's a matter 
 of agreement 'twixt you and us. We want our 'lowance of 
 rum. If it aint to be granted you'll work this here trough 
 yourself. I'm one as goes below." 
 
 He thumped his chest and swung his knife. 
 
 " If you don't belay that infernal, impudent jaw of 
 
 yourn " shouted Cadman. He checked himself with a 
 
 sideways look at Fletcher. 
 
 "What'll 'ee do, hey? What'll 'ee do?" snorted Beetle, 
 with his face full of blood and his head stooped like a ram for 
 the toss. 
 
 " Get away forrard till I talk the thing over with Mr. 
 Fletcher," cried Cadman, and he then stepped across to 
 Fletcher, took him by the arm, and walked with him a little 
 distance aft. 
 
 The men, with rolling bodies and shuffling feet and mut- 
 tering lips, waited. The spirit of mutiny showed strong in 
 every face my sight went to. And indeed I heartily hoped 
 for some bloodless outbreak of it to send us to an English 
 port, for I was already sick of the brig, thoroughly distrusted 
 Cadman, disliked and feared his companion and owner, and 
 was very uneasy as mate under a theory of discipline which 
 apparently made one end of the vessel as good as the other. 
 I had witnessed revolt among seamen, but never such sudden, 
 contemptuous defiance as this ship's company had exhibited. 
 Yet I could have sworn to all hands of them as a sturdy, 
 straight-minded body of sailors, above the average. Was it
 
 A DIFFICULTY. 39 
 
 that they scorned Captain Cadman as a man immeasurably 
 inferior to the lowest among them. 
 
 He came along the deck after a few minutes, and, standing 
 on wide legs, with his hands buried in his coat pockets 
 and his face averted, he told the crew that he had been 
 bidden by the owner of the Hebe to offer them money in 
 lieu of rum. This proposal was received with shouts of dis- 
 approval. Several voices spoke at once. Cadman tried to 
 obtain silence by shaking his fist ; then, finding his oppor- 
 tunity, said that the money given for the rum would be cal- 
 culated on the value of the spirit, duty paid. " This extrary 
 money," he told them, " yell take up at the end of the 
 voyage, and a handsomer proposal never was made on a ship's 
 deck - afore." 
 
 I looked and I listened, but could distinguish little, owing to 
 the uproar. Every man bawled an insult or howled a threat 
 on his own account without regard to what the rest were 
 shouting ; but I presently understood, and so did Cadman, 
 that unless rum to supply their legitimate claims was not pro- 
 cured from a passing ship within three days, they'd do no work 
 except to sail the vessel back to Bristol. When they had 
 made themselves perfectly clear on this point they went 
 forward. 
 
 George came aft with the cabin dinner shortly after the 
 cook had returned to the galley, and Fletcher, who had stood 
 in talk with Cadman, went below. Cadman now approached 
 me, and I naturally supposed that he would at once talk about 
 this difficulty of the rum. Not a word did he say on the sub- 
 ject. He told me to make sail if the wind decreased while 
 he was at dinner, and to report any ship that should heave in 
 sight. Then, looking toward the forecastle, he added, " I 
 haint over-well satisfied with that there carpenter. He's 
 acting second mate, but he's too much in with the men to soot 
 my books. I doubt that he's up to much. A pretty ship's 
 carpenter not to know that wood's to be seasoned by water ! " 
 
 "With a full hold ? " said I dryly. 
 
 " Yes, and with a full hold," he answered, darting a malevo- 
 lent glance at me. "What's dunnage for, hey? And how's 
 lie to know," he cried, with a toss of his chin toward the fore- 
 castle, " what the lower tier of cargo consists of ? It may 
 come to you and me keeping watch and watch," and he walked 
 muttering to the companion way and disappeared. 
 
 He was wise, perhaps, not to fall foul of me in his temper, 
 though there was an unmistakable gleam of dislike, if indeed 
 no darker passion lived, in the look he had given me. I walked
 
 40 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the deck, thinking hard. The fellow at the wheel accosted 
 me, evidently wanting to hear what I thought about the men's 
 grievance. I told him to mind his helm, and continued 
 walking. There was no shadow of doubt that this business 
 of the rum was a conspiracy betwixt Cadman and Fletcher to 
 defraud the crew. The casks of spirit never had been ordered; 
 one might swear to that. No ship chandler durst cheat so 
 nakedly. Had the goods been ordered they would have been 
 delivered, and a receipt given by the person in charge of the 
 brig at the time. That person should have been the mate. 
 Was this one among other reasons why my services had not 
 been required until the day before we sailed ? What was 
 intended ? 
 
 Suspicion lay hard and dark in me, and yet I could not give 
 it a name. Maybe I was somewhat thrown off the scent by 
 the skipper offering the sailors money instead of rum. But 
 the two men's pretended wonder and temper on my discover- 
 ing that no spirit casks were in the lazarette, coming on top 
 of that water which had swamped our hold when we warped 
 out of dock, convinced me that something evil was in the 
 hatching, though that it was to put our lives in jeopardy I 
 could not believe, seeing that Mr. Fletcher of Bristol was one 
 of us. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A PLOT. 
 
 IT turned out, however (to my secret mortification), no 
 later than two days after the trouble about the grog, that 
 Cadman was in luck, and thus it happened : 
 
 I came on deck at eight o'clock in the morning to relieve 
 the carpenter, and beheld one of the strangest scenes of sea 
 and sky that I can recall. The weather was almost a calm ; a 
 faint air blew, light as the breeze off a butterfly's wing, yet the 
 brig under all plain sail was stealthily creeping over an ice- 
 colored sea, heavily hung with curtains of white vapor. The 
 stuff was thin in some places, and eastward you could see the 
 sun through it, hanging dim and small there, like an old worn 
 guinea. 
 
 Though there was little air stirring, the vapor sailed stately 
 over the face of the waters in vast blocks and columns of the 
 sheen of Parian marble ; the white firmament seemed to rest 
 upon them ; they opened in aisles, and presently down one 
 spacious corridor it then wanting eight or ten minutes of
 
 A PLOT. 41 
 
 two bells I spied the figure of a large topsail schooner, her 
 hull resting like a streak of ebony upon the sea, and her 
 white sails blending with the mist till they looked like shreds 
 of the vapor. 
 
 The captain and Mr. Fletcher were in the cabin. I put my 
 head into the skylight and reported a sail within two miles of 
 us. They both came up ; our helm was shifted, and the brig 
 floated slowly toward the schooner, her jib boom on end with 
 her. 
 
 This was the first sail we had sighted since the grog trouble. 
 The sailors, at work on jobs aloft and in various parts of the 
 deck, grinned soberly when they saw our helm shifted for the 
 stranger. The fog thinned down as we advanced, leaving 
 a wide breast of white water with a frosty-misty ripple of 
 light under the sun at the foot of a soft mass of whiteness there. 
 
 " A beautiful little ship ! " said Mr. Fletcher, pulling at one 
 wiry whisker with square-ended fingers, turning up. " A gen- 
 tleman's private yacht, I should think, and not very likely to 
 supply our wants." 
 
 " A fruiter, sir, you'll find," exclaimed Cadman. " Sweet and 
 flush with oranges and raisins from the Mediterranean. If 
 I'm right she ought to be able to oblige us, if not with the 
 sperrit we want, then with summat hot enough to keep the 
 the ahem ! quiet till we falls in with another vessel," and 
 here he stole an askant look around the deck to observe who 
 listened. 
 
 Presently we were within hail. A beautiful model that 
 schooner was a fruiter beyond question, as Cadman had 
 said : long and low, with a saucy, piratic spring of bow, rak- 
 ing, star-searching masts, and such a spread of gleaming wing 
 as seemed to carry her main boom half her own length over 
 the taffrail. 
 
 " Schooner ahoy ! " shouted Cadman. 
 
 " Hollo! " echoed a tall man in a white wide-awake, leisurely 
 coming to the quarter-deck bulwark rail and leaning upon it 
 as though to survey us for his entertainment. 
 
 " What schooner's that ?" ' 
 
 " The Jack-cf-Lanthorn, from Barceloney to the Thames. 
 What ship are you ? " 
 
 The information demanded was vouchsafed. Cadman then 
 sung out to me to back the main topsail, and while this was 
 doing he bawled to the other to know if he had any rum to 
 sell. The man stood upright and appeared to consider ; after 
 consulting with another who had stationed himself alongside 
 him, he cried back :
 
 42 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " How much d'ye want ? " 
 
 " How much can you spare ? " 
 
 " A quarter cask." 
 
 " I'll send a boat," shouted Cadman with a spasmodic flour- 
 ish of his hand. He was about to address me. " No ! " he 
 said, " I'll go myself." He nipped Mr. Fletcher by the sleeve 
 and walked apart with him, and while the boat was lowering 
 I overheard them arguing on the value of a quarter cask of 
 rum. Fletcher then brought some money from his cabin, and 
 Cadman got into the boat and was pulled to the schooner by 
 three seamen. 
 
 I particularly noticed the age and meanness of that boat 
 while Cadman was entering her. She looked as though, having 
 been washed ashore from a wreck, she had been found stranded, 
 blistered, and crazy, and straightway hoisted without a dab of 
 paint or the blow of a hammer to the davits of \heHebe; 
 and scarcely had Cadman scrambled over the schooner's side 
 when one of the men in that boat began to bale. 
 
 The skipper was a long time gone ; I reckoned he was trying 
 to drive a bargain. The vessels had drifted a good boat's pull 
 apart before the cask of rum was lowered to the men along- 
 side. The boat then made for the brig, two hands rowing and 
 one baling, and the cask was hoisted aboard. Cadman, with a 
 purple face, came over the rail, and the boat was hooked on 
 and dragged to the davit ends, discharging a stream of water 
 as she mounted. 
 
 At noon that day a " tot " of grog apiece was served out to 
 the men, who said it was very good rum, better than what they 
 had been having, and this perhaps because it was considerably 
 above proof, too scorching for even the cook to drink neat. 
 
 It held fair and very quiet throughout the day ; before the 
 morning watch was out it was all clear weather, with a high 
 warm sun and smooth, soft, dark blue water. It was my watch 
 below from twelve to four. After I had worked out my sights 
 I ate some dinner alone and entered my cabin, where, lying in 
 my bunk after reading a while, I fell asleep. I was called at 
 four by George, and again went on deck to relieve the car- 
 penter, who, spite of the captain's talks and threats, still kept 
 watch and watch with me. As I went up the companion steps 
 Fletcher came out of his athwart ship's cabin under the wheel, 
 and giving me a large, patronizing nod, went directly to the 
 captain's berth. 
 
 The waning afternoon was very glorious. There was a 
 delicate vagueness of amber atmosphere at the junction of sky 
 and water, which stretched the ocean into a measureless
 
 A PLOT. 43 
 
 breast. Our canvas was yellowing with the afternoon light ; 
 veins of fire were kindling in the tarry shrouds ; the old brass 
 binnacle hood burnt with crimson stars, and the glass of the 
 skylight flashed like the discharge of a gun as the brig slightly 
 swayed. I seemed to find a sort of rude ocean beauty in the 
 old tub this day as she floated on the quiet sea, with her top- 
 most ill-fitting cloths sleeping to the breathing of the light 
 breeze up there. She carried me in fancy to our home waters ; 
 I beheld the white cliffs of the Channel, the black gaunt collier 
 with dark canvas leaning from the breeze, with the green 
 heights of the chalk beyond slipping by over her mastheads, 
 and the wool-white line of the surf upon the sands dim passed 
 her bow in contrast with the%harp white froth breaking in lit- 
 tle leaps from the thrust of the old cutwater. 
 
 I talked for a few minutes with the carpenter, who then went 
 forward for a pannikin of black tea and a pipe of tobacco, and 
 I started to stump or lounge about the deck for the two hours 
 of the first dog-watch, with the promise of nothing to do but 
 to send a lazy look aloft now and again and yawn. But when 
 I had been on deck some ten minutes or so my left boot hurt 
 me ; in short a corn of longstanding began to worry me. To 
 remedy this I went below to my berth for an old shoe, never 
 supposing that I should be longer than a minute from the 
 deck. 
 
 Hearing voices in the captain's cabin, that, as you remember, 
 was next mine, I entered my birth very silently, not wishing 
 Cadman to hear me. All was quiet down here ; the heave of 
 the brig was small and faint. The voices next door sounded 
 plain ; I could not help listening, but in listening I had almost 
 forgot the errand which brought me below. 
 
 " It's no good talking, Mr. Fletcher," I heard Cadman say, 
 and in no tone of respect either ; " putting the brig ashore 
 on the Salvages won't do ! I'll tell you the objection. Sup- 
 pose we make them rocks in daylight : there's no clapping 
 her ashore with a man like Morgan or the carpenter on the 
 lookout. What then ? Are we to keep all on standing off 
 and on until dark ? That 'ud be like my splitting to the crew 
 and ruinating the whole bilin', with a lively chance of an 
 impeachment don't they call it ? to follow, and a sentence 
 of lagging for the brace of us. You're no sailor. If you was 
 you'd understand my objection." 
 
 " I'm no sailor, it's true," answered Fletcher, speaking in a 
 strong, warm voice, " but when a thing's concerted I'm for 
 sticking to the programme. Look at this chart. Here you 
 have an island with rocks and breakers all around it. There's
 
 44 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 not a spot on the ocean that offers better excuses for going 
 ashore. D'ye mean to say you can't contrive to make it at 
 night ? If you question your own reckoning, there's Morgan ; 
 you may depend upon his observations to within a mile ; then 
 work by dead reckoning till nightfall. It's only giving the 
 helmsman the course for the rock, and there you are." 
 
 " Yes, there I am," responded Cadman in a sneering voice. 
 " It is easy enough to say ' there you are.' But ' there you 
 are's' soon mucked up into 'there you haint.' In traverses 
 arter this pattern, sir, I don't put the brig ashore where she 
 may be found a week or a fortnight arterward all stanch. 
 When she strands she must go to pieces. Yer want no 
 salvage job, I hope, along with ortr cargo ? She must go to 
 pieces, I say, and in such a fashion that you and me won't 
 perish in consequence. I want my life and you want yourn. 
 Is that right?" 
 
 " Quite right," exclaimed Fletcher somewhat soothingly ; 
 " of course our lives stand first. But why's Table Bay safer 
 than these rocks ? " 
 
 " How can yer ask ? Fust of all, wrecks is constantly 
 happening there. That's like greasing the ways. What ! 
 Table Bay again ! people say. Time there was more lights. 
 Time the authorities there contrived that ships shouldn't 
 always be going to pieces. See, now" and here I judged by 
 the pause and what followed that Cadman exposed a chart of 
 Table Bay and the coast to Fletcher " look at your oppor- 
 tunities. Here they are, all the way from Moolly Point to 
 Hout Bay. Green Point's the favorite spot. I'll swear to 
 three neat jobs off it in four years. You can do what j'ou 
 like and choose your own time when you've got a coast like 
 that to pick and choose from. No hurry either to make your 
 port keep an offing your sailors '11 find yer a reason. In the 
 calmest weather there's always a big surf a-thundering ! I'll 
 warrant it to float every stick and rag out of her before the 
 morning ; yet in still weather the water's smooth to the very 
 heave of the breaker, and if you've a boat that'll swim there's 
 no risk." 
 
 Fletcher remained silent ; I saw him in imagination over- 
 hanging the chart with hedge-like whiskers and pear-shaped 
 nose, musing upon the observation of the devil at his side. 
 
 " I own," continued Cadman, softening his tone as though 
 he fancied his companion was beginning to agree with him, 
 " that the Salvage lies handy for the job, conveniently in the 
 road and not by no means to be despised if so be Table Bay 
 warn't a dumn'd sight more sootable. But there's no hurry.
 
 A PLOT. 45 
 
 The money to be taken up is good enough to desarve a little 
 waiting for. It'll look a thousand times more natural to go 
 ashore down Table Bay way than on them handy rocks here. 
 Everybody says on such occasions, 'ticularly when there's loss 
 of life, ' What a pity ! Just as they had reached their port 
 too, pore chaps ! ' I'm for putting all the nature that's to be 
 got into jobs of this sort. Make true bills of 'em, Mr. 
 Fletcher, true bills ! That's the tip." 
 
 He laughed sloppily in his old manner. 
 
 " I'll think over the matter a bit more before deciding," pres- 
 ently said Mr. Fletcher. " Not that I mean you mayn't be right. 
 It's a big venture and dangerous. I want to see my way clear 
 in the matter of life my life and yours, Cadman ; and I want 
 also to be satisfied that when the vessel's put ashore she'll be 
 so thoroughly wrecked, so quickly gutted, that nobody will 
 take the trouble to meddle with her. If portions of the cargo 
 should wash up about Table Bay " 
 
 "Who's going to swear to 'em?" interrupted Cadman. 
 " Who's going to prove 'em ourn ?" 
 
 " The Salvages are uninhabited," continued Fletcher. 
 " Wreck the brig there, and a month, two months, might pass 
 without the hulk being visited. In that time the sea's bound 
 to have made a clean sweep." 
 
 " Two months, d'yer say ? I dunno. I'd not kiss the book 
 on that. There's always some blasted Portugee or other 
 a-landing from Madeira in sarch o' roots. 'Sides," he cried, 
 raising his voice in a sudden fit of temper, and continuing to 
 speak loud, though Fletcher called " hush ! " two or three 
 times, " when you talk of casting a vessel away you're not to 
 think only of the advantages of the place you choose. What's 
 agin yer ? Ponder that. Make a ledger entry of them Salvages 
 and credit them with one, and debit 'em with twenty, and nine- 
 teen's the contrary balance." 
 
 Fletcher said something I did not catch ; Cadman then, 
 insensibly, perhaps, imitating the other's tone, also spoke low. 
 I waited, hoping to catch more. Hearing nothing, I went out, 
 and as I did so Fletcher stepped from the captain's berth with 
 a chart rolled up under his arm. 
 
 He stood stock-still staring at me. As he did not offer to 
 move I walked round the table to the companion steps, taking 
 one look at his face it was white as death. I turned when at 
 the foot of the ladder to see if he watched or followed ; he 
 had re-entered the captain's berth. 
 
 On gaining the deck I stood for some minutes gazing aloft 
 and around, scarce able to bring my wits so to bear as to focus
 
 46 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the amazing devilish conversation I had overheard. I'll not 
 say I was astonished all along I had distrusted the scoun- 
 drels, though I never knew what shape to give my suspicions 
 but I was dismayed ; indeed my consternation was extreme. 
 Everything was clear now that I understood the two villains' 
 design to wreck the brig. They had sunk her by a stroke or 
 two of water in the dock that she might look to haul out re- 
 spectably freighted. Their intention accounted for the old 
 sails and bad gear, for the stranded foot-ropes and rotten 
 lifts, for what would turn out to be light anchors and short 
 cables, with chafed stoppers and decayed catfalls, and for the 
 mean cabin equipment and poor provisions. Their motive for 
 cheating the men out of their rum was explained ; they never 
 meant to pay the crew ; in truth they had talked as if they 
 meant to drown them. 
 
 What was I to do ? 
 
 I paced the deck deeply considering. The sun was large and 
 low ; it was a fine, warm, shining afternoon, the breeze gentle 
 and steady, and the sea like an island lake save but for the light 
 lift and fall of old ocean's bosom tranquilly breathing. The 
 sailors were gathered in the forcastle yarning ; the carpenter 
 stood a little away from a group of them with a pipe in his 
 mouth and his arms folded, listening. I debated within my- 
 self whether or not I should straightway tell him what I had 
 heard. But if I do so, thought I, he'll certainly inform the 
 crew, and a hundred to one that they'll lock the two scoundrels 
 up and oblige me to carry the brig home to save the vessel and 
 their lives. That would be piracy and mutiny as affairs stand. 
 What could I prove ? The men below were two to one ; they'd 
 outswear me, and I had no evidence. To be sure, the con- 
 tents of the hold might convict them of fraudulent design. But 
 until the brig was cast away the villains surely would be guilt- 
 less of anything cognizable by the law. 
 
 I paced the deck, resolved to think deeply and prudently 
 ere deciding on action. Would the two rogues judge I had 
 overheard them ? They might hope I had stepped into my 
 berth for a minute and caught nothing material, nothing but 
 the rumble of their voices. Would their fears allow them to 
 think this? They might even now be trying the capacity of 
 the bulkhead by talking either side of it. But granted that 
 they made up their minds to believe I had got their secret ; 
 what then ? Would they make away with me ? I had no fear 
 on that head, somehow. I knew them now to be villains, but I 
 was also cocksure they were cowards, willing to take their 
 chance indeed of being lagged for a good booty, but very
 
 THE GREAT SALVAGE WATERING SCHEME. 47 
 
 unlikely to venture their necks even for the freight of a plate 
 ship. 
 
 I saw nothing of them for half an hour after I had left the 
 cabin ; Cadman then came up humming some tuneless thing 
 as he stepped with zigzag gait to the compass ; he glanced at 
 the card, looked with a leisurely eye and a composed face 
 round upon the sea, and gazed at the men forward without 
 the least hint of uneasiness in his manner. I watched him 
 furtively, but with impassioned attention all the same, and 
 after a little felt so far reassured that I could swear he did not 
 suspect I had overheard a word that had passed. He pres- 
 ently pulled out one of his bad cigars and lighted it at a match 
 held in his soft felt hat, glancing about him in a sailorly look- 
 out way, and saying nothing to me according to his custom. 
 
 It wanted something of two bells, the cabin supper hour. 
 Fletcher now appeared and hung a while in the companion 
 hatch, looking round upon the placid scene of glorious ocean 
 afternoon with a bland patronizing air that pronounced he 
 found it satisfactory. His color had returned, and he was 
 entirely the large-chinned, whiskered, pear-shaped nosed Mr. 
 Fletcher of Bristol again. 
 
 " Lovely weather, Cadman," he called out. 
 
 " Aye, sir," answered Cadman, speaking with his cheap cigar 
 drooping at his lips. " There's no shore-going physic to 
 match this. Here's medicine to restore you to your home a 
 well man, Mr. Fletcher." 
 
 The owner of the brig lifted up his eyes with an expression 
 of gratitude, then stepped over to the captain and they walked 
 the deck. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE GREAT SALVAGE WATERING SCHEME. 
 
 WHEN supper was reported ready Fletcher and Cadman 
 went into the cabin and sat at the table under the skylight, 
 which stood open, so that I caught their talk as I paced past ; 
 it was on indifferent matters, and might have been the chat of 
 two men meeting for the first time. I was mighty pleased that 
 neither of the rogues had addressed me when on deck ; I was 
 young, with a telltale face ; I wanted a little time to master 
 myself. It is an earthquake shock to any man to stumble 
 unawares on a great crime in the hatching, to all on a sudden 
 come across that ancient, foul, black hen Sin on one of the, 
 deadliest of her blood-red eggs.
 
 4 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 I resolved to be decided by the behavior of the two mis- 
 creants ; if they gave me to know by the least hint that they 
 were aware I had overheard their talk, then I should go to the 
 carpenter, tell all, and be advised by him as an old experienced 
 seaman. If, on the other hand, I judged by marks conclusive 
 to my own instincts and apprehensions that the two men did 
 not suppose I had listened, but that they were willing to 
 imagine I had looked into my cabin for a minute, taking what 
 I wanted and leaving quickly, seeing that I had charge of the 
 deck, then I determined to hold my peace, for the present at 
 all events, always keeping a vigilant eye upon the brig's reckon- 
 ing and upon Captain Cadman. If they meant to cast the 
 brig away 'twixt Agulhas and Cape Town I should have plenty 
 of leisure for thinking on what was best to be done. As things 
 stood I could offer no other proof of their design than declar- 
 ing what I had overheard, but by waiting I might be able to 
 bring their villainy home to them, and obtain evidence to justify 
 myself and the crew in taking any steps we might think proper 
 to save our lives and the ship. 
 
 The two men sat in the cabin until shortly before six. Cad- 
 man then came on deck and talked to me about the starboard 
 fore shrouds being slack ; he said those shrouds and other 
 rigging which he named needed setting up afresh. He also 
 told me that next morning he would require me to overhaul 
 the stock of fresh water aboard. 
 
 ** The casks are stowed under the main hatch," he said. 
 " They're easily got at. No need to break out anything. Ever 
 called at Madeira ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " It's a Portuguese island, aint it ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Them Portuguese are just the most swindling people on 
 the face of the yearth. They sarved me some gallus tricks at 
 Lisbon might have ruinated me with their withering charges. 
 Always keep th' horizon 'twixt you and a Portugee. We're a 
 poor ship, and there's nothen in this here voyage that's a-going 
 to set me up for life. Suppose we should need to fill a cask or 
 two with fresh water, will Madeira charge me a shilling a 
 gallon ? More'n likely. Them Portuguese 'ud chouse a ship- 
 master into bankruptcy as easy as lighting one of their 
 dummed paper cigars. D'yer know the Salvages ? " 
 
 " I've sighted them," I answered, meeting his askant gaze 
 coolly. I was now perfectly self-possessed, striving meanwhile 
 to interpret his looks, but his snout-like face was as expres- 
 sionless to my needs as the head of a cod,
 
 THE GREAT SALVAGE WATERING SCHEME. 49 
 
 " I fancy there's fresh water to be got there I aint sure." 
 
 " They're uninhabited, I believe ? " 
 
 " So the yarn goes. Likely as not. So much the better if 
 they're desolate. You take your fill and there's nothen to pay. 
 It's only a matter of rafting a few casks, and there y'are." 
 
 As he said this four bells were struck, and the carpenter at 
 once came aft to relieve me. Cadman turned on his heel and 
 looked down the skylight for Fletcher, and I stepped below to 
 get some supper. I found Fletcher at the table making notes ; 
 he at once pocketed his book, and in his accustomed way of 
 addressing me asked about the weather, our rate of progress, 
 where the trade wind was to be found, and so on. He left 
 me, after a few minutes, to eat my supper alone. 
 
 It now entered my head to imagine that the two men meant 
 to watch me through the mask of their habitual behavior to 
 gather by my looks or speech whether I had overheard them. 
 I munched my supper lost in thought. My situation was ex- 
 traordinary for its tragic difficulty. Nevertheless I determined 
 on holding by my first resolution to carefully keep my own 
 counsel, at all events for the present. What did Cadman 
 mean by talking of watering at the Salvages ? We could not 
 be running short of fresh water yet! Had the two villains 
 concerted during the time they were alone, after I had stepped 
 out of my cabin and met Fletcher had they agreed, I say, to 
 wreck the brig on the Salvages, after all choosing to be quick 
 with the criminal job now they might fear I had got wind of 
 their intention ? 
 
 Again and again in thus thinking I half started from the 
 table or from my bunk, where I afterward lay down to smoke 
 a pipe till eight o'clock, resolved to tell the carpenter what I 
 had heard and to bring the crew into the secret. But I was 
 regularly checked by this consideration : What proof have I ? 
 The two fellows would bluster, talk big, look innocent, swear 
 I was a foul liar, quiet the crew with repeated assurances, 
 meanwhile lock me up, with irons on my legs, leaving me to 
 lie in my cell of a cabin when they actually did put the brig 
 ashore, so that it might end in my being drowned. 
 
 The night passed quietly. Fletcher took a few turns of the 
 deck with me at about nine o'clock. He talked of Bristol, 
 asked me questions about my father, my experience as a sailor, 
 and so on. In a vague way he made me understand that he 
 had taken a fancy to me, and equally vague was the sort of 
 hint he ran through his speech that it might be before long in 
 his power to offer me command of a vessel. He went below 
 with Cadman, and they played at draughts till five bells. I
 
 50 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 would come to a stand sometimes and sneak a look at them as 
 they sat under the open skylight. You precious pair, thought 
 I. It was hot, and Fletcher's face was oily ; his whiskers 
 glistened with distilled devvdrops. He looked a very respec- 
 table man ; I admired his satin cravat with its two large pins, 
 his stiff stick-up collar through whose sharp points his chin 
 seemed to have burst as though, like a pale suet pudding, it 
 had broken through its bag in boiling ; I noticed a large 
 signet ring on his little finger, and his watch chain was of 
 thick gold, and stretched from one waistcoat pocket to the 
 other with a bunch of seals and fal-lals between. Oh, you vil- 
 lain ! I thought. The other scoundrel played with his head 
 on one side and his little eyes leering down upon the draught 
 board out of their corners. His right hand wandered often 
 to a tumbler of spirits. Sometimes they talked, and one or 
 another would break into a laugh. After watching them a while 
 I said to myself : They don't believe I overheard them, for 
 all Fletcher's turning white as death on meeting me at that 
 instant. 
 
 The light breeze freshened at seven bells, and before turn- 
 ing in I had taken the fore royal and flying jib off the brig, 
 leaving it to the carpenter to let her wash along for the next 
 four hours under such sail as he chose to hang on to. We 
 were at this time about 120 miles northeast of Madeira, 
 heading a course that would put that island abreast just out 
 of sight behind the horizon to the westward. If Cadman was 
 aiming for the Salvages he was on the straight road for those 
 rocks, which lie in latitude 30 7' N., and longitude 15 54' W. 
 They are about 118 miles north of the Canaries that is, Ten- 
 eriffe, and within an easy run of Madeira. I had sighted 
 them on one occasion at a long distance. The mariner com- 
 monly gives them a wide berth, though the Great Salvage 
 Island shows a bold peak of 455 feet in one place. I had 
 never heard of a ship watering there, and did not know, indeed, 
 that there was fresh water to be found on the rock. What 
 had Cadman in his mind ? 
 
 It blew fresh during the middle watch and down to six bells 
 in the morning watch. I found the mainsail furled when 
 I came on deck at four, and the brig driving along over 
 a short quartering sea under a main topgallant sail and a 
 reefed trysail. She broke the black water in white masses 
 from her bows, as though the squab tub, like something 
 sentient, pursy, yet vigorous withal, blew for breath as she 
 pitched and burst her way along, with a noisy howling of wind 
 aloft among her rags and slack gear, and much roaring under
 
 THE GREAT SALVAGE WATERING SCHEME. 51 
 
 her counter, where the race of her wake boiled in light like 
 a paddle wheel's back wash. 
 
 But after sunrise the breeze slackened. I heaped every 
 cloth upon the old cask and ran up a fore topmast studding 
 sail, and at eight o'clock she was wallowing over it at about 
 seven knots, having measured about seventy sea miles since 
 midnight. 
 
 After breakfast Cadman told me to hift the main hatch and 
 find out what quantity of fresh water there was in the brig. 
 He hung about the hatch while we were at this work and 
 watched us closely, backing and stooping to catch a sight of 
 me when I got into the gloom under the deck. Fletcher also 
 came to the hatch and looked on for some time. I forget the 
 number of water casks. They were stowed on top of the 
 cargo, which just here rose high and seemed fairly plentiful, 
 though I well knew the brig would have been sunk some feet 
 deeper had the goods been stowed flush fore and aft as they 
 showed in the square of the hatch. The lading appeared to 
 consist of casks and .oases. Knowing what I knew, I might 
 have sworn that whatever they contained was warranted to 
 sink on the brig going to pieces. 
 
 I calculated enough fresh water to carry us to the Cape 
 without risk, a fair average passage being granted. A quan- 
 tity having been already used, there were, of course, several 
 empty casks among the full ones. I came out of the hold, 
 and Cadman stood beside me, watching eagerly while the 
 sailors put the hatch cover and tarpaulin on and securely 
 battened them down. When that was done he turned his 
 eyes upon me with a sort of leering, cocky, expressive look, 
 w'hich seemed to me like saying : You're satisfied now, per- 
 haps, that the brig has a cargo ? 
 
 We then went down into the cabin, where I made the cal- 
 culation I have given above, Fletcher sitting opposite, and 
 Cadman looking over my shoulder. 
 
 " What's the quantity, d'yer say, Mr. Morgan ? " inquired 
 Fletcher, leaning back with his fingers buried in his waistcoat 
 pockets, the thumbs outside, curling up. 
 
 I answered the question. He looked at Cadman, who said : 
 
 " We ought to fill up, sir, I think." 
 
 " You allow ten weeks to the Cape a good margin ; and 
 here's Mr. Morgan's calculations, giving you a supply for 
 fifteen weeks a better margin still," said Fletcher, with one 
 of his large smiles, which his whiskers seemed to stop from 
 overflowing his neck and back as though they were embank- 
 ments.
 
 52 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Yer dunno know what thirst is at sea, Mr. Fletcher," said 
 Cadman. " Morgan '11 tell you there's nothen orfler. I'm for 
 having plenty of water, fresh and sweet, sir, 'ticularly when it's 
 to be got for nothing." 
 
 " We don't want to be unnecessarily delayed," said Fletcher 
 smoothly. 
 
 " It can't be a matter of more'n a few hours, weather per- 
 mitting," exclaimed Cadman. " Suppose a fortnight or three 
 weeks o' calm on the line, and three or four weeks o' hard 
 head winds in the tail o' the southeast trade, the brig blowing 
 to the west'ard on a bowline, or with an athwart ship wake 
 and a treble-reefed main tops'l. It might come to it. The 
 like of such things happen at sea. Hey, Mr. Morgan ? " 
 
 "Aye, indeed they do," said I, who was now standing up, 
 looking from one to the other of them as they conversed. 
 
 Fletcher continued to talk argumentatively ; he seemed in 
 a half-hearted way opposed to the Great Salvage watering 
 scheme, though Cadman gave him several reasons for filling 
 up at that island, all of them very plausible ; indeed they 
 would have been sound had the intention been honest. But 
 I had not listened long when I saw it had been settled between 
 them that we should heave to off the rocks. 
 
 Their project put a new face upon my difficulty. Did the 
 rogues intend to clap the brig ashore under the excuse of 
 filling up with fresh water? Twenty times that day had I a 
 mind to communicate with the carpenter, and through him 
 with the crew. If the captain cast the vessel away, then my 
 statement to the carpenter would be beforehand with the vil- 
 lain ; there would be that man and the crew to prove I had 
 overheard the skipper and Fletcher talking about wrecking the 
 vessel. Yet the old consideration daunted and silenced me; 
 I mean the fear that Cadman would talk the sailors over, lock 
 me up, ruin my professional chances, or so use me as in the 
 end to destroy me. 
 
 Nothing, however, in the behavior of the two men caused me 
 to suspect they knew or feared I had their secret. I particu- 
 larly observed this, and was so astonished, seeing that Fletcher 
 had met me on the very threshold of the captain's berth, that I 
 should have doubted my own hearing and believed I had 
 totally misunderstood all that had passed between them if it 
 were not I was now certain that neither man imagined I had 
 overheard the conversation. 
 
 It was on a Tuesday morning that I made that calculation 
 about the water, and on Thursday, soon after sunrise, a man 
 who had gone aloft to cut away some flapping bit of chaffing
 
 THE GREAT SALVAGE WATERING SCHEME. 53 
 
 gear, sung out from the fore topmast crosstrees that there 
 was land on the starboard bow. It was such a morning as 
 one would expect to find in those latitudes. The sun was hot 
 and sparkling, though but a few degrees above the horizon, 
 and his reflection was a spreading breast of trembling splen- 
 dor ; all the eastern sea was aflame with fires of silver glory. 
 The sky was high, with delicate frost-colored cloud that cob- 
 webbed the blue from the zenith to the western sea-line. The 
 sea ran with a light heave in the wake of the northerly breeze; 
 it lifted and sank with a prismatic sheen in the atmosphere 
 close down over the dark blue of it that made you think of a 
 vast satin carpet swelled with the wind and splendid with a 
 strong light slipping from one glossy rolling fold to another. 
 
 The brig floated slowly forward under ill-fitting lower and 
 topmast studding sails, the watch scrubbing the decks, the 
 scuppers gushing cloudy streams into the blue brine, which 
 passed alongside crisp and beautiful, with little foam bells 
 and twinkling bubbles of froth and lines of ripple breaking 
 from the cutwater like the strings of a harp, musical with their 
 fountain-like notes. The land was in sight from the deck at 
 ten, a double-humped stretch of blue shadow, fining down into 
 a pencil-shaped point southeast. It was the Great Salvage 
 Island, a rock of about a mile broad and little less than a 
 mile wide, then bearing about two points on the starboard 
 bow. 
 
 Cadman was on deck at this time, armed with an immense, 
 old-fashioned telescope, which he would frequently level as 
 though it had been a blunderbuss. Fletcher hung beside him, 
 and sometimes took the great glass from his hand and pointed 
 it. The carpenter had charge of the deck and was walking in 
 the waist. I was too anxious to see what went forward to 
 keep below, and stationed myself beside the galley, where I 
 was out of sight of Cadman. The carpenter, spying me, 
 came trudging a little bit forward, so as to talk without stop- 
 ping in his short, pendulum walk. The watch were scattered 
 about the deck, one at the wheel, two on jobs aloft, a fourth 
 stitching at a sail near the main hatch. 
 
 " Do the captain mean to water at that there island ? " said 
 the carpenter. 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 " George brought the news forward. Our fresh water has 
 given out plaguey soon, haint it, Mr. Morgan ? Looks as if 
 they'd thought more of swamping the hold than filling the 
 casks. D'ye know anything of that island, sir ? " 
 - " Nothing whatever," I answered, smoking stolidly, care-
 
 54 THE EMIGRANT SHIP, 
 
 fully watching the rocks' bearings meanwhile to .observe how 
 the skipper was heading the brig. 
 
 " What's the facilities for watering there, I wonder ? Have 
 the folks ashore got e'er a hose ? Or do it come along- 
 side ? " 
 
 " There's no hose," said I. " The island's as naked as my 
 pipe bowl." 
 
 At this he stopped in his walk and looked at the land under 
 the sharp of his hand, then glanced aft at Cadman and 
 Fletcher, and fell to trudging afresh with the slow, rolling, 
 sulky gait of your true-born merchantman. 
 
 " Are we so hard up for a drink of water as this here stop- 
 page 'ud make out ? " said he. 
 
 " The skipper means to fill his empty casks." 
 
 " If the island's not inhabited how de 'ee know that there's 
 any fresh water to be got there ? " 
 
 " I can't tell you." 
 
 He took another look at the island under his hand, and 
 muttering with a puzzled face, " Blamed if there aint a good 
 deal aboard this brig that's not to be understood," he stepped 
 back to the part of the deck which he was first pacing. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SALVAGES. 
 
 I WALKED aft, meaning to put my pipe away and shave. 
 Fletcher stood motionless beside a backstay, against which he 
 steadied Cadman's huge telescope ; he was viewing the island 
 as though absorbed by the sight, but then after you have kept 
 the sea for many days you'll look at even the littlest fang of 
 rock with interest as representing land anyhow. 
 
 Cadman was walking the deck with quick, agitated strides ; 
 his movements reminded me of a thrush a run of half a 
 dozen steps, then a dead stop and a look up aloft. I had my 
 hand on the companion hood in the act of descending when he 
 called me. 
 
 " Morgan, see all clear with the jolly-boat. I mean to 
 heave to off that there island. You'll go ashore with a couple 
 of hands and see if there's any fresh water to be 'ad. I've 
 always understood there's a spring on that northeast point. 
 If not, hunt about ; if seeking won't find it, try what digging '11 
 do. Git a shovel chucked into the boat. Mr. Fletcher '11 go 
 along with you. He says he feels like wanting to stretch his
 
 THE SALVAGES. 55 
 
 legs on dry land, and since I'm bound to heave to, for them 
 water casks must be filled though, of course," said he, point- 
 ing to the island, " if there aint no. water there, why why 
 what was I a-saying ? Oh, yes ; since I'm bound to heave to, 
 Mr. Fletcher's quite right to go ashore. Why not ? The 
 opportunity of visiting a desolate island dorn't often happen 
 even to a sailor man in a lifetime. It'll be something for him 
 to talk about to his family and friends when he gits home." 
 
 All this he said with his eyes upon me in their corners as 
 usual ; he then started off on his thrush-like walk again, an 
 agitated run of little hops, a dead stop, and a quick look up 
 of his snout-shaped face. 
 
 The jolly-boat hung at davits on the port quarter ; I saw all 
 clear with her her old oars in, rudder ready for shipping, 
 and so forth. It was plain to me now that no mischief was 
 intended to the brig by this proposed heaving of her too off the 
 Great Salvage Island. Indeed she was being so steered as to 
 give the rock as wide a berth as prudence required. We were 
 floating down to it on its western seaboard, keeping it on the 
 port bow ; already I saw the light of breakers at a little dis- 
 tance round about it in eager tremulous flashes on the dark 
 blue water. The wind was north ; we were carrying it almost 
 dead over the taffrail, and the brig, softly swaying, was wrin- 
 kling along at some four knots. 
 
 I thought no more of shaving myself, and having called to 
 a hand to fetch the shovel out of the fore peak the only shovel 
 the brig carried I stood in the gangway looking at the island. 
 Fletcher continuously eyed it through the telescope ; some- 
 times Cadman stopped in his jerky walk to talk with him, but 
 their voices were subdued, and reached me only in a low mur- 
 mur or growl of conversation. 
 
 By this time we had the island over the port-cathead, distant 
 about five miles, little more as yet than a dark blue hazy heap, 
 with a milk-white gleam of surf here and there at its base, and 
 features of the land slowly stealing out of the airy shadow it 
 made against the mackerel blue of the sky low down past it. 
 Cadman called across to me that there was no need to take an 
 observation with that land in sight. So we made eight bells 
 by the cabin clock, and all hands went to dinner. 
 
 When the meal was over the island was about a mile away, 
 and Cadman sung out for a hand to jump into the fore chains 
 with the hand lead. George brought some dinner on deck for 
 the captain and Fletcher, and they ate it standing at the sky- 
 light, while I went below and got through a meal of beef and 
 ship's bread, topped by a pannikin of rum and water, in five or
 
 5 6 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 six minutes. On returning I found the island abeam and the 
 watch running about trimming sail. Fletcher stood at the 
 backstay as before, strenuously studying the lump of rock 
 through the telescope. 
 
 " There's no sign of a place for landing on the west coast," 
 Cadman bawled to me as I put my head through the com- 
 panionway. " We must keep all on till we see what the eastern 
 beach offers." 
 
 The man in the fore chains was silent ; he had, indeed, 
 swung the lead to no purpose ; there was apparently no bottom 
 to be touched with the short scope of the hand line on this 
 west side. The island seemed to be formed of volcanic matter 
 and rocks, with strata of loose clay. I observed an appear- 
 ance of vegetation on top, where the slopes showed of a sullen 
 bluish green. A vast quantity of birds were flying over the 
 island and wheeling and curving low down, looking like pieces 
 of torn and blown paper against the stretch of pumice-hued 
 coast. The sea brimmed smooth to the rocks on the western 
 side, then broke in tall glass-clear combers, and the bursting 
 falls of that white water came along like the rolling notes of 
 an electric storm. The west side, indeed, was wild with surf 
 and inaccessible besides ; but as we hauled round to the south 
 opening, a good wide yawn of bay, past a long, pencil-shaped 
 arm of rock, we saw the sea flowing smoothly in a number of 
 shallow creeks and divisions in the shore, and here the play of 
 surf was very trifling. 
 
 The leadsman in the fore chains began now to chant, making 
 sixteen fathoms, then seventeen, then twenty, and so on, till 
 we hove the brig too in twenty-three, the land then being some- 
 thing more than a mile off, and bearing about N. N. W. 
 
 " Are yer ready to go ashore, Mr. Fletcher ? " cried Cad- 
 man. 
 
 " Quite ready," answered the other. " I have been search- 
 ing the island carefully with the glass," he continued in a loud 
 voice, as though desirous that all hands should hear him, " and 
 can't make out any signs of water." 
 
 " It may be a-flowin' out of sight," said Cadman. 
 
 " I looked for the gleam of a waterfall," exclaimed Fletcher, 
 " but, as you say, there may be water there out of sight. I'm 
 ready, Mr. Morgan." 
 
 The jolly-boat was lowered and brought alongside. Two 
 seamen and Mr. Fletcher entered her and I followed ; she 
 was a tub of a boat, just such a fat and lumpish child as would 
 dangle at the nipple-like davits of the old Hebe. I headed 
 her for a little bit of a bay on the south side of the island ;
 
 THE SALVAGES. 57 
 
 the water lay perfectly still there ; further I had taken notice 
 of a slope of white beach that promised us an easy climb to 
 the top of the rocks. 
 
 " The sensation of being close to the sea after the elevation 
 the brig's deck gives you is, to say the least, a little queer," 
 said Fletcher, looking at the water. " I believe I should be 
 sick if I stayed long in this boat." 
 
 " Give way, my lads," I sang out. " The sooner we're 
 ashore the shorter the spell of baling." 
 
 One of the fellows scowled as he looked at the bottom of 
 the boat, the other delivered a low, grim laugh, while I picked 
 up the half of a cocoanut shell and began to throw the water 
 out. The owner of the boat gazed at his brig with a fast yel- 
 lowing face. I sent a glance at her too while I baled ; she 
 sat high and showed two or three feet of green sheathing ; 
 the long white letters of her name snaked in the blue brine 
 under her counter like streams of quicksilver sinking ; she 
 had the look of a worn-out collier with her dingy, swinging, 
 ill-fitting canvas, main topgallant mast stayed aft, and bow- 
 sprit steeved to an angle of 45. What's she and her cargo 
 and freight insured for ? I wondered. 
 
 " She's no beauty," said Fletcher, meeting my eyes, " but 
 she has carried us bravely and safely so far, and we have much 
 to be thankful for." 
 
 I was now looking at the island, which we were fast nearing. 
 It was mouse-colored in some parts, chocolate-colored else- 
 where, coated here and there with some sort of herbage ; the 
 western peak made a bold show ; it rose to a height of per- 
 haps five hundred feet in rings of soaring ground. A long 
 hill went north and south on the east side overlooking the 
 wide curve of bay. I saw no trees, but upon the seaward sides 
 of the heights were many clusters of bushes, small, thick masses 
 of vegetation like huge green sponges clinging to the declivities. 
 
 Steering with one hand and baling with the other, I headed 
 the jolly-boat into the bay ; her stem grounded on the white 
 sand and I jumped out, Mr. Fletcher following. 
 
 " Haul the boat up," said I to the men. " She'll drain so." 
 
 " Keep by her don't leave her. Mind ! " said Mr. Fletcher. 
 " Mr. Morgan and I will search for water. If the boat goes 
 adrift our situation will be awkward." 
 
 The fellows surlily muttered "Aye, aye." They did not 
 love Mr. Fletcher of Bristol, and the condition of his jolly- 
 boat no doubt put a strong meaning into their thoughts of 
 him just then. 
 
 I shouldered the shovel, and we started, The ascent was
 
 5 8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 easy, but the sun was hot and there was no shade. The climb 
 to the top from where the boat lay was short ; the land ran 
 level for a little distance north and east, rising quickly then 
 into a hill which nearly rilled the east side of the island. It 
 was a walk of about a mile from end to end. Large tracts of 
 the soil, if soil it can be called, were covered by a plant called 
 by ithe Spaniards barilla, by us saltwort, bushes of a pale 
 bluish green, rising a little above a foot high, with prickly 
 teaves like a cobbler's awl. Fletcher stooped his whiskered 
 face to one of those bushes and asked the name of the plant. 
 I have since learnt that and its use (they get carbonate of 
 soda from it), but could not then tell him. 
 
 He stood up, tipped his wide straw hat on to the back of 
 his head, and turned his pear-shaped nose slowly round the 
 island and the ocean. 
 
 " This will furnish me with an impressive memory," said he, 
 slowly clasping his hands and smiling approvingly. " I shall 
 turn to the pages of 'Robinson Crusoe ' with renewed zest. 
 I have not read that story since the days of my boyhood. It 
 comes upon me fresh and strong with this picture of loneliness 
 and desolation." 
 
 His little eyes traveled over the island as he talked. 
 I caught a tone in his voice that was new in him ; his face was 
 yellow, and his mouth and eyebrows twitched and worked. 
 I took these symptoms to mean that the pull in the boat had 
 disordered him somewhat. 
 
 We had the brig clear in sight. The sun was upon our left 
 and raining its splendor upon her, and she lay radiant as 
 though gilt a toy of amber ; all that was glossy with paint 
 or grease or tar was streaked with fire ; her yellow topmasts 
 burned, and golden flashes broke from her wet side as she 
 rolled. I had never seen the plain of ocean look vaster, not 
 even from the royal yard of a twelve hundred ton ship, and 
 bending my eyes steadily into the south while Fletcher with 
 large nostrils and an odd hurry in his way of looking was 
 peering round, I seemed to distinguish in the distant air the 
 faint blue liquid shadow of the Peak of Teneriffe. 
 
 As we moved, rabbits skipped from the bushes and fled to 
 other hiding places. 
 
 " I see no appearance of water," said Fletcher. 
 
 " Nor I, and I doubt if there's any to be found by digging," 
 said I, bringing the shovel down ringing upon the hard, lava- 
 like surface. 
 
 " Where would Cadman have you dig," he asked, "if not 
 on top here ? "
 
 THE SALVAGES. 59 
 
 " Fresh water might be found under the sand down yonder, 
 but not enough nor sweet enough at that to serve our turn," 
 I replied, pointing to the wide spread of white beach extend- 
 ing between the horns of the east bay, which we could now 
 see down the slope of the hill. 
 
 " Let us try on the other side before we wear ourselves out," 
 exclaimed Fletcher, and he moved away with some briskness 
 toward the rising ground on the west seaboard. 
 
 I was sensible in his manner of a peculiarity which I could 
 not define. He seemed hard and frightened also. It entered 
 my head as I followed him to wonder if this visit for water 
 was merely an excuse of his to examine the island with a view 
 to Cadman wrecking the brig upon it that same night. It was 
 certain, supposing we met with fresh water, that we should not 
 be able to raft the casks and fill them till next day, therefore 
 a long night lay before the two villains ; there were shoals 
 enough to choose from, and the sky promised fine quiet 
 weather. Suspicion grew so strong in me as I followed the 
 bulky figure of the rogue that I now determined, on returning 
 to the brig, to acquaint the carpenter with what I had over- 
 heard. 
 
 Scores of birds wheeled over our heads uttering cries like the 
 bleating of lambs ; they were extraordinarily fearless, even to 
 the extent of not getting out of our way; indeed they obliged 
 us on several occasions to step over them. 
 
 " I see no water," said Fletcher. 
 
 " I don't think you'll find any on this side," I exclaimed. 
 
 The ascent was growing painful under the roasting sun, and 
 the soil betwixt the patches had a parched, dry face, full of 
 splits. Still Fletcher pushed forward, moving his head from 
 side to side as though peering for water. Presently striking 
 off to the left he reached the edge of the cliff, and stood 
 staring seaward with his hand sheltering his eyes. The height 
 above the ocean here was about a hundred feet ; on our right 
 the hill soared ruggedly to that tall west peak I have before 
 named. 
 
 " This is a noble view," exclaimed Fletcher; " how truly 
 magnificent is that play of surf at the bottom there." 
 
 I drew close and stood beside him to look ; at that instant 
 he stepped back. 
 
 " Curse you ! this '11 keep you silent ! " I heard him say. 
 
 The next moment he thrust me over the edge. 
 
 I remember hearing of a sailor who, in falling from a royal 
 yard, while in the air said to himself, " This is well enough if
 
 60 THE EMIGRANT SUIT. 
 
 it would but last." I know from experience that a man can 
 think even in the flash of a fall. I recollect the expression 
 the villain used as he pushed me, the pressure of his fists under 
 my shoulder blades as I was hurled forward. I also recollect 
 the sensation of the lead-like drop through the air, followed in 
 a breath by a mighty crash, which did not, however, in that 
 instant render me senseless, because I can remember thinking 
 that I had hit the sea, and that the loud smashing noise was the 
 foam raised by my plunge. But after this all was blank. 
 
 When I opened my eyes it was dark. I tried to lift my 
 arm, but found myself as completely snared and meshed 
 about as though lodged in the heart of a hundred fathom 
 of trawl net. My wits were slowly returning. Presently I 
 got my mind, though feebly, and my first perception was that 
 my head ached most damnably. I could not imagine what 
 gripped and bound me so tenaciously till after a bit, by waving 
 my hands at the wrists without moving my arms, I perceived 
 that I was enveloped by twigs and leaves. Light shone 
 through what resembled a cage of wire fencing, thickly com- 
 plicated by layer upon layer ; it was the light of the moon. 
 While I lay wondering, utterly confounded and thunderstruck 
 by my situation, I heard the deep, organ-like note of surf 
 rolling beneath me, the thunder of the breakers bursting and 
 recoiling with the noise of electric hail. This it was, I think, 
 which gave me all I needed to know, for after I had listened 
 for a few minutes to that sound of the sea everything came 
 to me. 
 
 It was clear that on my being thrust over the edge of the cliff 
 I had plunged into one of those growths of bushes which hung 
 here and there in clusters, sponge-shaped, as before described. 
 The crash of the twigs and leaves in my ears the last thing 
 I recollect made the roar which I had supposed the thunder 
 of foam. With perception of my situation rose with exquisite 
 keenness the sense of horrible peril. I might guess by the 
 noise of the surf that I was hanging at a height of fifty or 
 sixty feet, and if I wriggled nay, if I attempted to move, I 
 might burst through the frail nest of bush and be instantly 
 killed on the hard beach below. 
 
 It had been about three o'clock when we landed on the 
 island; it was now night and the moon shining. How long had 
 I hung insensible ? My head ached cruelly. I imagined I 
 had struck some knob of cliff, and that I should find my hair 
 hard with blood dared I wrestle to clear my arm. 
 
 I lay in a strange posture, doubled up ; I had struck the 
 bush sitting fashion, and the squeeze of the twigs and boughs
 
 THE SALVAGES. 61 
 
 brought my knees close to my face. It was hopeless to think 
 of attempting to release myself till daylight. I did not recol- 
 lect the character of the front of the cliff beneath me, and 
 could do no more than pray with the utmost fervor that I 
 should be able to descend it. 
 
 The prospect of dawn disclosing a sheer wall to the wash 
 of the surf made that time of waiting horrible. Impatience 
 to know my fate rose into torture. The moonshine burnt in 
 little stars among the leaves ; I guessed by the altitude of the 
 planet that it might be about one o'clock in the morning, and 
 I believe I was right when I recall the length of time that 
 passed after I awoke to consciousness before the green of the 
 dawn showed in the sky. In those dreadful hours of waiting 
 for sunlight I thought over the murderous ruse which had 
 betrayed me into the island for this. It was very plain now 
 that Fletcher and Cadman knew I had overheard their con- 
 versation. How would the villain account for me ? I might 
 be sure he had gone down to the boat with a made-up face of 
 horror and sworn I had fallen over the cliff. They'd not stop 
 to look for me, if only because the two seamen would know 
 they could do nothing with the leaky old jolly-boat in the 
 heavy swell that beat where I had fallen. Had Fletcher seen 
 me disappear in this bush ? Anyway he'd consider me as 
 good as dead, and carry that notion on board the brig to his 
 hellish colleague. I had their secret and so was to be made 
 away with ! As God's my hope I had never thought it of 
 them. 
 
 Dawn broke at last after such an eternity of mental and 
 physical anguish as there is no magic in this poor pen to 
 express. The light grew quickly, and now I was able to 
 think and perhaps act. I found I was in the midst of a dense 
 mass of bush. My weight had carried me almost sheer 
 through it ; I judged there was not above the thickness of a 
 foot betwixt me and the open. The plunge of my body had 
 rent the topmost part into a sort of tunnel, but the surface 
 stuff had come together, and I saw nothing. 
 
 My first business was to make sure I had strength enough 
 to hold on with, next that the growth was strong enough to 
 support me if I should require to hang by it. My tests satis- 
 fied me ; taking a firm grip of a heap of the withe-like 
 branches and twigs, I straightened my legs and made a hole 
 through the stuff with one foot. I was now able to see, and 
 sailor as I was, used to reeling spars and to holding on with 
 my eyelids, I confess my brain spun in my aching skull when 
 I looked. A sixty foot height of wall-like cliff is no very
 
 62 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 terrible thing to gaze up at, but peer down over the edge of it ! 
 The surf was rolling in big masses of snow at the bottom ; I 
 could just see through the opening a small expanse of the 
 sheet-calm ocean flowing like blue oil full of light to the very 
 curve of the foaming breaker. 
 
 But I had not been staring long, with my heart beating hard 
 in my ears and imagination working like a madness in me in 
 its struggles to figure schemes of release, when I took notice 
 of a growth like to that in which I lay nested about thirty 
 feet down, and in a straight line. The face of the cliff 
 between was smooth and sheer, but just past that lower heap 
 of bush it stood broken in projections. If I could manage 
 to drop upon one of those rocky ledges I should be able to 
 crawl round to where the island fell into a gradual slope, 
 easily climbed. But how was I to fall thirty feet without 
 dashing out my brains and bounding on to the full distance of 
 sixty, vanishing in the surf a mangled corpse, to be torn to 
 shreds in an hour or two by the wild play there? 
 
 As I thus reflected it occurred to me to drop out of the bush 
 in which I lay into the stuff on a line below. It was my one 
 chance. There were thirty or forty feet of unclimbable rock 
 above me ; therefore I had to determine either to take my 
 chance of dropping into the lower bush or missing it, or 
 remain where I was and miserably perish. 
 
 I durst not consider ; deliberation might prove fatal by hin- 
 dering me ; carefully taking the bearings of the sponge-like 
 mass, I wriggled and worked downward, holding the long 
 twigs and stuff with the grip of a drowning man. In five or 
 six minutes the time ran into //////, for this job of extrication 
 was horribly difficult and dangerous I was hanging clear, but 
 scarcely was I thus poised, asking God to direct my fall, with 
 the thunder of the surf sounding with startling louclness now 
 that my ears were clear, when the stuff I grasped gave way, 
 and down I went like a lightning stroke, plunging sheer into 
 the very heart of the growth. 
 
 I kept my senses, but I believed that my eyes had been torn 
 out of my head, and the skin off my face, and that I had lost 
 my ears, so lacerating was that plunge, so crunching and rend- 
 ing the shock. I rested motionless to breathe, in the posture 
 in which I had arrived, straight up and down, feet first. The 
 growth here was stronger than that above, the twigs thicker ; 
 this hanging tract of vegetation was about twice the size of 
 the other. Where the roots found soil and whence they drew 
 nutriment I don't know ; the cliff seemed all hard rock, but 
 in this I was doubtless mistaken.
 
 THE BARILLA CUTTER. 63 
 
 I now considered myself comparatively safe ; my heart beat 
 full of rejoicing, and my old strength came back to me. I 
 tried my eyes and found all right with them, then with some 
 difficulty felt my face and ears and brought my hands away 
 smeared with blood ; but I suspected that my wounds were 
 neither deep nor serious. I had come ashore in a camlet 
 jacket and a sailor's check shirt ; these garments hung in rags 
 upon me, and my white drill trousers were covered with 
 blood. 
 
 When I had thoroughly taken breath and rested I exerted 
 my whole strength to make an opening in the interlacery of 
 green stuff facing that part of the rocks I desired to gain, and 
 judge of my delight on perceiving a wide ledge within an easy 
 drop, and other ledges trending away in a broken front round 
 to where the hill shelved gradually. Using all my force, I 
 broke my way through the twigs and branches, leaving the 
 remains of my jacket and a goodly portion of my shirt behind 
 me. Then, letting myself down, I dropped cleverly on to the 
 ledge that was about four feet under foot as I hung. 
 
 In another quarter of an hour I had crawled to where the 
 slope began. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BARILLA CUTTER. 
 
 SOME scarlet, thunder-swollen clouds were hanging low in 
 the north, and the oil-like surface lay bronzed under them ; 
 otherwise the sky was as clear as glass from line to line. I 
 tore the sleeve off my shirt to make a cover for my head ; my 
 clothing now consisted of little more than my vest and trou- 
 sers, but these sufficed. Man wants but little in the shape of 
 apparel down the Salvages way. 
 
 I looked up at the height over which I had been thrust, and 
 my heart turned hot with rage. Would it ever be in my power 
 to punish the treacherous scoundrel ? How sly and deliberate 
 the dog had been, feigning to admire the view, then courting 
 me to the brink O Heaven, I could not have used a rat so ! 
 I guessed that my face was looking black with blood while I 
 sat with my fists clenched thinking of Mr. Fletcher of Bristol. 
 
 When I was rested I climbed up the slope and easily reached 
 the top of the island. I walked to the place where Fletcher 
 had thrust me over, and looked for the shovel I then held, and 
 not finding it, concluded that it had been hurled into the sea 
 when I fell. My deep, imperative need now was fresh water,
 
 64 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 and I spent till noon in hunting, thinking of nothing else, 
 spitting the white froth from my lips as I walked, and feeling 
 nearly suffocated. At about midday, as I guessed the hour 
 was by the sun, having descended a spur of hill in the north- 
 east point of the island, I caught the sweet music of the 
 bubbling of a brook, and in a minute later I was kneeling 
 beside a little crystal spring gushing from under a rock, and 
 chattering along in a channel of its own through obscuring 
 tracts of barilla to the margin of the cliff, where it spread and 
 disappeared. I drank deeply, and then collecting the water 
 in the hollow of my hands I repeatedly bathed my face and 
 head. 
 
 Now being deliciously refreshed, my thirst gone, my face 
 and head cool, the pleasant chill of snow sinking into my very 
 marrow out of the icy coldness of that water in my hands, I 
 felt hungry and looked about me somewhat desperately. Rab- 
 bits in plenty were frisking shadowily among the vegetation, 
 and big sea birds were to be had at the cost of knocking them 
 over. But I was not yet so sharp set as to eat raw things, 
 and how to get fire ? I plunged my hands into my breeches 
 pockets in a fit of musing and pulled out a little burning glass 
 which I carried for lighting my pipe by the sun, fire being as 
 scarce as news on board ship, where the lucifer match is rarely 
 found, and where the galley furnace is not always at your 
 service. 
 
 While I held the burning glass, looking about me for stuff 
 that would burn, I spied a rabbit within a dozen feet ; I 
 stooped very warily, picked up a large piece of stone or rock, 
 and took aim with so much dexterity that I knocked the poor 
 brute over. It was alive when I picked it up, so I cut his 
 throat with my little penknife and skinned it. 
 
 While I was at this dirty work I looked round the sea ; 
 nothing was in sight. Indeed nothing, if it were not steam, 
 was to be expected. The calm was profound. The silence of 
 the now blazing day lay in a fiery hush upon the ocean ; the 
 bronzed and thunderous stuff in the north was gone, and the 
 blinding white dazzle about the sun sloped with a coloring of 
 azure in its silver to the light tropic blue over the horizon, the 
 whole cloudless. 
 
 I found plenty of dry stuff among rotten parts of the salt- 
 wort tracts, and easily kindled a fire, leaving a hollow in the 
 ring of flame for my rabbit to bake in. It was but a red and 
 black repast, that a nasty cannibal compound of cinders and 
 gushing flesh, yet it made me a meal and satisfied my crav- 
 ings. Enough was left to serve me for a supper by and by,
 
 THE BARILLA CUTTER. 65 
 
 and hiding the remains near the spring that the birds might 
 not rob me, I made my way to the east beach, a wide tract of 
 sand betwixt two horns of rock. Here I found shade for my 
 aching head, and I sat down under a huge oversheltering 
 ledge of cliff to think over my situation, and how I was to 
 escape from this lonely island. 
 
 It was then that a vision of Blathford rose before me ; I saw 
 the water spouting from the old stone dog's head ; I saw the 
 church and the parsonage, the silent trees, and the long, 
 fragrant shadows in the garden at sunset. I saw Kate Darn- 
 ley bending over a flower bed, and my father standing at the 
 dark, gleaming window of the parlor, and I heard my mother 
 calling me. Did I fall asleep and dream this ? 
 
 When a boy I'd think there could be no happiness to equal 
 the being alone on a desolate island ; I was now in that bliss- 
 ful state, and my heart sank in me as I thought of it. How 
 was I to get away ? Was this spot of rock ever visited ? 1 
 tried to remember what I had read about it in an admiralty 
 dispatch addressed as I noiv know by Admiral, then Captain 
 Hercules Robinson, to some official big-wig, but could recol- 
 lect no more than that the island abounded in cormorants and 
 rabbits, which I found true, and that both the Great and the 
 Little Salvages are surrounded by perilous shoals. Ships 
 might sight this rock, but would seldom haul in close enough 
 east or west of it to distinguish a signal, even of smoke. I 
 might be forced to spend weeks here, and then be found mad 
 a gaunt, naked specter, all beard and ribs, like that frightful 
 Peter Serrano in the old, true sea story. 
 
 This imagination sent me crazy for a time, and I started up 
 and walked about in a state of distraction. 
 
 It was smooth water here; the breakers were little more than 
 big ripples rolling with summer softness, and expiring with long 
 seething sounds which ran like heavy sighs betwixt the points. 
 The small undulation was westerly. The swell was on the 
 other side, therefore, and the dulled roar of it was like the 
 thunder of an engagement between line-of-battle ships miles 
 away. 
 
 I calmed myself after awhile, for I was young in those days 
 and hope had a strong hold of my soul. I have had a narrow 
 escape, I thought. I am not dead yet. I must keep myself 
 alive and pray to God to deliver me. To occupy my mind I went 
 to work to collect crabs and shellfish for eating, and soon had 
 store enough for a supper that would be better than a nearly 
 raw rabbit. Before sundown I sought a sheltered corner for a 
 resting place, and discovered a little cave in the rocks about
 
 66 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 ten feet deep, far above high water mark. But there was noth- 
 ing to furnish me with the smallest convenience, though I had 
 looked narrowly about while searching for shellfish and the 
 like : not a fragment of wreck not a stave of cask nothing. 
 So, wanting a drinking vessel, I invented one by taking the 
 biggest of the crabs and scooping his shell clear of him. With 
 this I climbed the cliffs for a drink. I don't know what L 
 should have done without my penknife. It was in my trou- 
 sers pocket by rare good fortune, brought about through my 
 emptying my waistcoat pockets. I had bought it for a shilling 
 at Bristol and still have it. 
 
 I drank deeply of the spring, and then returned to the beach, 
 fearful of attempting the descent after sundown. The sun set 
 directly abreast of the bay, and never before had I beheld such 
 magnificence of light in the sky. The heavens were a uni- 
 versal blaze of crimson ; the smooth sea reflected the splendor 
 and added fresh glory to the sublime and appalling radiance it 
 mirrored. Before the light died out I ate a small quantity of 
 shellfish. They were a sort of limpet, and relished like oysters. 
 Not just yet could I bring myself to eat raw crab, and now the 
 sun was gone my burning glass was useless. 
 
 The sand was soft and dry in the little cave I had chosen as 
 a bedroom, and when I lay down I immediately fell asleep. A 
 horrible nightmare awoke me : the vision of a wrestle for life 
 with Fletcher on the edge of a cliff as high as the Peak of 
 Teneriffe ! I started up, and in the sheen of the moonlight, 
 which hung like a silver veil before the opening of the cave, I 
 spied the sand I had slept on alive with a score or more 
 of crabs. They were big and little, and some were land 
 crabs, I think. They scuttled away when I got up and dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 I went out and walked about the beach for the coolness of 
 the night and to look about me. A pleasant wind was whis- 
 tling over the sea, which was shivering in a wide breast of flaked 
 silver under the bright moon. The surf poured strongly on 
 the sands, though the wind was north with something of east 
 in it and this side sheltered ; from the eastern board the boom 
 of the breakers came along in notes heavy and melancholy, and 
 they were solemn with the power of the deep. Many small white 
 clouds scudded across the stars ; the life of a six knot wind 
 was in the scene of moonlit ocean, and more briskness still 
 went to it out of the ivory brilliance of the rolling lines of foam 
 upon the sand. I stood intently staring seaward, thinking to 
 see a ship, but beholding nothing, I went back to my cave, from 
 which all the crabs had departed; this time, however, I planted
 
 THE BARILLA CUTTER. 67 
 
 my back against the rocks and slept with ray head bowed upon 
 my folded arms. 
 
 I was awakened by a sound of singing ; it was a man's voice, 
 strong, hearty, and coarse. My senses came to me with the 
 opening of my-eyes ; I sprang to my feet, and running out of 
 the cave saw a man walking along the sands toward the north- 
 east point. It was broad daylight ; the sun was shining behind 
 the island ; the breeze was still fresh, and the ocean streamed 
 northward in little seas, flashing with the light of the foam 
 they melted into. 
 
 When I saw the man I shouted. He was singing so loudly 
 and the surf was so noisy besides that he did not hear me. I 
 shouted again, on which he turned with astonishing swiftness 
 and stood still, beholding me in a posture of wonder and fear, 
 as though I had been some bleeding corpse on end in the 
 sand. 
 
 He was an extraordinary figure of a man, dressed in a blue 
 cap, a red shawl round his throat, a dirty white shirt over 
 which was a jacket with treble rows of pearl buttons ; his 
 breeches were a sort of dungaree, very tight, cut short midway 
 down the calves, which were bandaged as though wounded ; 
 he was shod to a little above his ankles with yellow boots. 
 Through a stout belt over his hips were thrust on one side a 
 small bright hatchet, on the other a long dagger-hafted knife, 
 buried in a leather sheath attached to the belt. His face was 
 as ugly as his attire was queer ; his complexion as yellow as 
 gold, enriched with patches like verdigris about the brow, 
 cheeks, and nose ; his eyes were deep-set, and he squinted most 
 abominably. His nose was of the bigness of a man's little 
 ringer, and after descending straight it started at the extremity 
 into a gouty knob, pierced by two lifting holes full of hair ; 
 under this strange device he carried an enormous mustache, 
 coarse as a horse's tail, mingling on the cheeks with a pair of 
 frill-shaped whiskers which, wide as they spread, still left 
 exposed his huge oyster shells of ears. 
 
 I stared at this amazing figure for some moments, too much 
 astonished by his appearance to speak. He now approached 
 me slowly ; when he moved I called out, " Do you speak Eng- 
 lish ? " He shook his head with frightful energy and con- 
 tinued to approach until he was quite close, and then stood 
 stock-still again, looking at me from head to foot. Ugly as he 
 was I seemed then to find in his face as reassuring an expres- 
 sion of kindness and, I may say, tenderness as nature's utmost 
 effort could inform such features with. Nor, indeed, ought I 
 to have wondered that he stared at me ; it was not my sudden
 
 68 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 apparition only ; I have little doubt I presented a dreadful 
 shape with my scratched face, head bound up with a shirt 
 sleeve, bloody trousers and vest, to which you may add a few 
 rags of shirt. 
 
 He addressed me in thick accents in a language utterly 
 unintelligible ; seeing that I did not understand him, he 
 touched his stomach and then his mouth, and made a show of 
 drinking, all with his poor ugly face full of feeling and kind- 
 ness. I knew what he meant, and nodded my head. Indeed 
 I was both hungry and thirsty. He looked at me from top to 
 toe again, then along the length of sand as though for some 
 sign of a wreck, and with a beckoning gesture of his chocolate- 
 colored hand, hairy as Esau's, he led the way up the craggy 
 face of the cliff. 
 
 I supposed that he meant to conduct me to the spring and 
 point to the rabbits as we walked. Instead he crossed the 
 island to the exact spot where Fletcher and I had arrived on 
 gaining the top after quitting the jolly-boat ; and from the 
 height of the gentle acclivity, looking down, I perceived in 
 the same creek in which the jolly-boat had lain a large two- 
 masted craft of about fourteen tons, sharp as a knife at the 
 bow, painted white, with a boy on his knees before a little 
 stove in the bottom of her, whistling loudly while he plied 
 a pair of bellows. All in silence, merely turning his head 
 from time to time to see whether I followed, the ugly, queerly 
 appareled man led the way to the water's edge. 
 
 The boat lay with her nose on the sand. She was secured 
 by a little anchor hooked to a rock. My heart leapt at the 
 sight. The chimney was smoking bravely, the tawny boy 
 was staring at us with the bellows motionless in his grasp, as 
 though he had been blasted by lightning. The water was 
 smooth in this creek, but at sea the foam-lined ripples were 
 streaming briskly. A length of red bunting attached to the 
 tail of a little gilt cock flogged merrily at the mainmast head. 
 But what I liked most was the smell of cooking. 
 
 The man with the blue cap motioned to me to climb over 
 the bow into the boat. I did so, and found myself aboard 
 a broad-beamed, comfortable, finely lined, very seaworthy 
 looking craft, with a short forecastle deck and white sails 
 neatly stowed upon the yards along the thwarts. The boy, 
 whose dress in some respects resembled the man's, and who 
 was quite as ugly, with long, greasy black hair snaking down 
 his back, and an immense mouth full of huge yellow teeth, 
 continued to stare at me with many marks of alarm. On my 
 getting into the boat he dropped his bellows and made the sign
 
 THE BARILLA CUTTER. 69 
 
 of the cross upon his breast, and let fly a yard of questions in 
 the rapidest, shrillest voice conceivable. The man answered 
 him. Many words passed between them. The boy, then 
 keeping- the stove between him and me, pronounced the word 
 " Anglish ? " I nodded. " You Anglish ? " he exclaimed, 
 again in the note of a scream. 
 
 " I am English," I answered. " Do you speak Eng- 
 lish ? " 
 
 " Yash ; me speak Anglish," he shrieked. " Who you ? 
 How you here ? " 
 
 The other watched me intently, his fearful squint beaming 
 with the soul of goodness, while the boy addressed me. 
 I suspected that the lad's knowledge of English would not 
 permit him to understand much of my story, so I said I had 
 come ashore in a boat from a ship, and that in approaching 
 the edge of the cliff I had fallen over, and I pointed and 
 dramatized and acted the short yarn, indicating the cliff, then 
 the bushes, then making as though I fell, then touching the 
 bloodstains upon my clothes, and so on, afterward by speech 
 and gesture contriving to make the lad understand that my 
 people, thinking me dead, had gone away. 
 
 Both the boy and the man, as I discoursed and dramatically 
 swung my arms, nodded their heads with a like impassioned, 
 demonstrative vehemence. I perceived that I was under- 
 stood. Indeed my appearance and the state of my clothes 
 told a very full story when the first hint of it had been given. 
 Nodding again and again with his hideous squinting counte- 
 nance full of wild, rough sympathy, the man entered his fore 
 peak and immediately crawled out with a tin measure and 
 a large jar. The draught was half a pint of crude Madeira 
 wine. I made him understand that I wished for water to mix 
 it with, and then I drank, bowing and smiling, first to him and 
 then to the boy, before draining the measure. 
 
 " From Madeira ?" said I, looking expressively at the lad 
 and then at the boat. 
 
 The youth nodded. 
 
 " Barilla? " said I, pointing to the top of the island. 
 
 The man grunted an affirmative, understanding the term. 
 
 " Portuguese ?" 
 
 They bobbed their heads with immense energy, and then, a 
 pause happening, the boy fell to whistling with piercing clear- 
 ness, while he kicked the bellows away with a yellow naked foot 
 and dropped a large flat-fish into a frying pan which he set 
 upon the fire. 
 
 I was able to appreciate my escape now that I might con-
 
 70 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 sider myself delivered from the dreadful fate of imprisonment, 
 and madness and nakedness I had terrified my heart with not 
 long before. I glanced at the island, at the height of cliff over 
 which I had been flung, and my whole being was swelled with 
 gratitude when I thought of the horrible dangers I had come 
 safely through. 
 
 While the boy fried the fish, which, seeing some fishing lines 
 in the stern of the boat, I supposed he had caught since sun- 
 rise, the man prepared one of the thwarts for breakfast by pro- 
 ducing some tin plates and knives and forks, a loaf of bread, 
 and a quantity of grapes. He also set the jar of wine under 
 the thwart. When the fish were cooked the man helped me to 
 a whole one and a thick slice of bread, and gave me a panni- 
 kin of wine and water. I looked my thanks, and held him by 
 the hand and bowed, that he might understand my gratitude. 
 He laughed and shook his head, and spoke a sentence or two 
 in Portuguese, which set the boy grinning, while he cried, 
 " Eat ! All Anglish good." 
 
 1 never made a meal which I enjoyed more thoroughly, nor 
 swallowed food that seemed to do me half so much good. The 
 sun was not yet above the island, and the boat lay in the 
 shadow of the cliffs. The wind gushed freely over the arm of 
 reef, trembling the water of the creek into diamonds, and 
 deliciously cooling the shade cast by the island. My mind 
 worked nimbly while I ate. Would this worthy Portuguese 
 convey me to Madeira ? I did not doubt it, since I knew he 
 hailed from that island. And what should I do when I got 
 there ? I was rendered as miserable a beggar by Cadman's 
 and Fletcher's murderous conspiracy as the dirtiest, most 
 grievously stricken wretch that whines for alms on Funchal 
 beach. All my clothes, a considerable sum in money, my 
 nautical instruments property, in short, which I could not 
 have replaced under two hundred pounds, apart from the 
 sentimental value of certain keepsakes and choice home 
 gifts were in my chest aboard the Hebe, and I might reckon 
 upon every farthing's worth going to the bottom. Yes, I had 
 no shadow of a doubt that the villains would wreck the brig 
 somewhere off the Cape Settlement as Cadman had proposed 
 or decided. 
 
 Now was I bitterly vexed that I had not communicated with 
 the carpenter. The crew, as things stood, never would imagine 
 I had been foully dealt with. Then, again, when the brig 
 should have been cast away they'd never know she was delib- 
 erately wrecked, unless, indeed, Cadman's method of going to 
 work roused suspicion. All these things ran in my head while
 
 BLADES OF THE "CAROLINE." 71 
 
 I was eating the grapes and fish and bread with the Portuguese 
 and his boy. 
 
 I endeavored to make some of my thoughts understood to 
 them, and partly succeeded with the help of gestures and the 
 boy's small knowledge of my tongue. The man nodded when 
 he understood I wished to learn if he would convey me to 
 Madeira. I also gathered that he was likely to remain at this 
 island for four or five days, and that if meanwhile a ship hove 
 in sight and he could get at her he'd put me aboard if I 
 chose. 
 
 To this I assented gratefully ; it was all one to me whether 
 I was landed at Madeira, whence I supposed the British consul 
 would send me to England as a distressed seaman, or whether 
 I was transferred to a ship making for another port. Indeed 
 my inclination leaned to the latter. Being stripped, I wanted 
 clothes. If I was sent home I must burden my people till I 
 got employment. I had found it hard to obtain a post, I might 
 again find it hard ; if I should have the luck to procure a 
 mate's berth I'd need a round sum to equip me. My father 
 could not afford a penny. It must come to my having to sail 
 before the mast. Why not, then, ship down here in these seas, 
 if I could meet with a vessel willing to receive me, and hold on 
 as a foremast hand until on my return home there would be 
 wages enough to take up to help me to a fresh start? 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 BLADES OF THE "CAROLINE." 
 
 THE Portuguese and his son as I guessed the lad to be by 
 his face (barring the squint) looking like a copy of the other's 
 reflected in the back of a polished silver spoon the two, I say, 
 made a vast meal, the elder drinking abundantly of the wine. 
 
 When we had breakfasted I expressed by signs and speech 
 my willingness to assist them in cutting the saltwort ; the man 
 nodded pleasantly, and muttered a thank you in Portuguese, 
 but showed no disposition to leave the boat. On the contrary, 
 when he had breakfasted he crawled into his little fore peak and 
 brought out a jar of tobacco and made two large paper cigars, 
 one of which he handed to me. Next, after looking at me with 
 attention, he again crawled into his little forecastle and emerged 
 with a large, flapping, well-worn straw hat, which he put upon 
 my head, grinning and talking in his native tongue. Then he 
 lighted a piece of wood at the stove and gave it to me with all 
 the grace you could imagine ; he afterward seated himself in
 
 72 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 an indolent posture with his back against the mast and his 
 feet upon a thwart, and blew a cloud with great relish and 
 enjoyment, his eyes sometimes lazily fixed on me, sometimes 
 peering through half-closed lids at the rocks. 
 
 His son, on the other hand, stripped himself and jumped 
 overboard, and after wading to his armpits lay afloat on his 
 back buoyant as a cork. All this was true Portuguese fashion 
 genuine Dago style, and characteristic of a race by whom a 
 turn round the longboat and a pull at the scuttle butt is 
 reckoned a good day's work. 
 
 I judged that if they meant to load barilla at this rate they'd 
 need all the four or five days the man had talked of, though a 
 couple of English would have been away, loaded to the wash 
 streak, and the island perhaps out of sight in the south by 
 sundown. 
 
 I was too anxious and troubled in my mind to sit and smoke, 
 and twice climbed the slope to view the sea before the Portu- 
 guese seemed ready to turn to. Nothing was in sight. On 
 my return from the second visit to the top the Portuguese 
 sprang to his feet with the energy of sudden fury, and roared 
 out to his son, who was cutting capers in the sea some distance 
 beyond the mouth of the creek. The boy came swimming 
 alongside as though driven by steam, jumped into the bows, 
 and dressed himself streaming wet. The Portuguese then 
 pointing to his chopper, which lay on a thwart, signed to know 
 if I would accompany him ; I nodded eagerly, being wishful 
 indeed to make the best return in my power for his humanity, 
 and Christian, merciful treatment of me. Upon this he fetched 
 a couple of sacks and a second chopper out of the fore peak, 
 and after speaking to his son a while he put that chopper and 
 a sack into my hands, and leaping on to the sand invited me 
 with a motion of his head to follow. 
 
 We gained the top and went to work to cut barilla. I had 
 supposed we should speedily crowd the two sacks, but I soon 
 found that the Portuguese was exceedingly choice in his 
 selection of the plant, so that after three hours, not so much 
 of toil as of careful search and judicious cutting, we had 
 scarcely filled each man the half of his own bag. At this rate 
 the job of loading the boat was likely to last us a week instead 
 of four days, nor would it need many paper cigars and indo- 
 lent after-breakfast musings to run that week into a fortnight. 
 
 The man killed a couple of rabbits and flung them down 
 the slope for the boy to fetch. When we returned, somewhere 
 about one as I guessed by the sun, those rabbits were seething 
 in a saucepan full of broth, on which, and some fish, grapes,
 
 BLADES OF THE " CAROLINE." 73 
 
 .bread, and Madeira wine, we dined magnificently. In the 
 afternoon we went again for more barilla, and spent two hours 
 in cutting the plant. 
 
 After supper I sat in the boat smoking a paper cigar, and 
 endeavoring to converse with the Portuguese with the help of 
 his boy. It was about six o'clock in the evening. The sun 
 was out of sight behind the island, but he was yet many 
 degrees above the horizon, and his light flashed out the whole 
 scene of ocean in the south and east till even from the low 
 level of the boat's gunwale the horizon there looked seventy 
 miles distant. The breeze had died in the middle of the day, 
 and all had been breathless calm and roasting heat till about 
 five, when a little air of wind sprang up out of the northeast ; 
 the brushing of it darkened the blue, but there was no weight 
 in that draught to make the foam spit. 
 
 The creek in which the boat floated lay open to the south ; 
 a good stretch of water in the east was likewise visible to us ; 
 westward the view was blocked by the fall of the land to an 
 arm of reef which ran about two cables' lengths into the sea. 
 The silence upon the island was broken only by the noises of 
 the sea fowl flying over our heads, and by the rolling roar of 
 the surf along the west side. 
 
 I was gradually making out through the broken, stammer- 
 ing, scarcely intelligible English of the boy, and the dramatic 
 gestures and grotesque grimaces of the man, that this Great 
 Salvage rock was visited at long intervals only by the Madeira 
 cutters of barilla, so that I was particularly to witness the 
 hand of God in the coming of this boat a few hours after my 
 own murderous betrayal into this scene of desolation, when, 
 my eye then resting on the horizon in the southeast, I spied a 
 ship's canvas glowing like yellow satin, or rather like a large 
 orange-hued star that enlarges as it soars. 
 
 I started up to gaze from the elevation of the thwart. The 
 Portuguese looked too, and the boy, pointing, cried out : 
 " Ship ! Ship ! " 
 
 The wind was scanty and the vessel's progress so slow that I 
 could not guess which way she was headed ; so to help my vi- 
 sion I climbed to the top of the island, and there I saw her plain 
 enough, perhaps down to her hull, though the water she floated 
 on was as far off as the horizon itself. I yearned for a tele- 
 scope to determine her by ; if she was steering our way the 
 Portuguese might be willing to put me aboard. I cared not 
 what her nationality should prove. I was heartsick of this 
 island, and my very spirits shrunk from the prospect of cutting 
 saltwort on the scorching top of the land for perhaps another
 
 74 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 week, and then of my arriving at Madeira in rags, to be sent 
 home as a beggar, and stepping ashore in the Thames or an 
 out port without a cent in my pocket or a coat on my back. 
 
 I went down to the boat again and got the Portuguese to 
 understand that I'd be thankful if he'd put me aboard that 
 vessel if she was hauling in this way. He answered through 
 'his son and in his own fashion that he would stand out to her 
 if she grew, on which I grasped him by the hand, and first 
 pointing to the island, then to my clothes, then significantly 
 pulling my empty right-hand breeches pocket inside out, 
 I made him perceive how acutely I felt my situation. He 
 talked quickly to his son, often turning looks of sympathy 
 and pity upon me. 
 
 Presently the boy ran up the slope to the top of the land 
 with the ease of a goat, and after viewing the distant 
 sail betwixt his dark hands shouted. The father fetched his 
 breast a thump in token of satisfaction, and made a gesture 
 with a sweep of his thumb from the ship to the island. So 
 she was heading our way if the boy's eyes did not deceive 
 him ! and again I sprang on to a thwart to look at her. Yes, 
 her motion could no longer be mistaken ; she was on the star- 
 board tack crawling on a taut bowline into the north and 
 west, clearly outward bound and waiting for this island to get 
 large before putting her helm down. 
 
 It was about seven o'clock ; I judged of my time by the 
 passing of the sun, and would have bet upon it within ten 
 minutes. The sky was wild with crimson overhead, and in 
 the east the glory of the west was " reverberated," to use 
 Shelley's expression, by a terrace of bright yellow cloud whose 
 effulgence filled the water under it with a hot brassy luster, 
 while a glory of its own sifted upward toward the scarlet of 
 the sunset. 
 
 The Portuguese went into the stern sheets of his boat and 
 stared at the distant sail, then slowly looking about him and 
 above as though taking measure of his chances of fetching 
 her, he shouted to his son, who was still on top of the land. 
 The boy came running down. The father roared out again, 
 whereupon the lad lifted the little anchor off the rock it was 
 hooked to and brought it on his shoulder into the bow of the 
 boat. Both got out and shoved the boat's nose off, jumping 
 in as she floated. In a few minutes they had an oar over ; 
 then loosing the neatly stowed sails, they manned the halyards 
 and mastheaded the long lateen-like yards. 
 
 No sooner was the boat clear of the land than, catching the 
 soft warm breathing of air in her canvas, she slightly leaned
 
 BLADES OF THE " CAROLINE," 75 
 
 and drove over the calm blue water, shredding it as a plow- 
 share shears through soil, with two soft feather-white lines of 
 foam in her wake. It was the most exquisite sensation of 
 swift and buoyant sailing I had ever experienced. Her hull 
 was white, and her spacious wings were cotton white, and she 
 must have looked to the ship as we went toward her like 
 a star-like gyration of wind-whipped froth. 
 
 The vessel was about seven miles distant from us when we 
 started. She was heading our way, and we were skimming 
 over it at five or six, so that it was not long before we had lifted 
 her into determinable proportions, and there floated right 
 ahead of us, stiff as a church under the light breeze, a black 
 bark of some four hundred tons with a stump fore topgal- 
 lant mast and a white boat dangling at her starboard davits. 
 She made a fine cloud-like picture, all her canvas swollen and 
 stirless, and the red light in the west dying out upon her top- 
 most sails, which showed like bronze shields against the dark 
 blue beyond her. 
 
 Over the terrace of clouds in the east the blue lightnings 
 were running in wire-like rills; the island stood sharp, hard, 
 and dark against the color in the west. It had drawn around 
 somewhat dark, with a deal of cloudy fire in the water, before 
 we were within hail of the bark ; the lunar dawn was grow- 
 ing green astern of the ship, and the stars sparkled overhead. 
 The Portuguese put his helm down, the boy let go the main 
 halyards, and the little white clipper hung without way in 
 the direct course of the bark. Taking my chance of the 
 vessel's nationality, I bawled with powerful lungs through my 
 telescoped hands, " Ho, the bark ahoy ! " 
 
 Greatly to my delight the familiar English echo " Hollo! " 
 came back. 
 
 " I'm an English seaman who has been cast away on the 
 Great Salvage yonder. Will you take me on board ?'' 
 
 " Douse your foresail and look out for the end of a line," 
 was the reply. 
 
 I let go the fore halyards ; it was too dark for gesticulations 
 to serve ; the Portuguese grunted aloud in his native tongue, 
 but in a tone that was like telling me I had done right. The 
 bark now loomed big close aboard us, and all was hushed 
 for some moments save the rippling of the water at her bow. 
 The stars winked amid her rigging and along her yards ; the 
 risen moon was now shedding some light, by which I dis- 
 tinguished a group of figures leaning over the forecastle rail, 
 and a man sitting on the port poop rail holding on to a stay, 
 and leaning backward over the water to view us.
 
 76 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Look out for this line," shouted a voice from the forecastle 
 head, and plump came some forty pound weight of fakes into 
 the middle of the boat. The boy took a turn, but it had never 
 been my intention to parley alongside. I was most devour- 
 ingly in earnest to board that bark and sail away in her 
 anyhow and anywhere ; so, springing aft, I grasped the hairy 
 paw of the Portuguese, motioning to the main chains, and 
 gently obliging him to sheer the boat; then wringing his hand in 
 a very passion of gratitude, and hitting the boy a friendly blow 
 of farewell on the back, I sprung into the bark's chains, and 
 as I climbed over the rail I saw the boy free the boat, while 
 the Portuguese sprawled forward to masthead the foresail. 
 
 " By 'Esus, dot vhas a cool handt ! Did he know dot her 
 boat vhas all gone? "called some heavy Dutch voice out of 
 the shadowy group of seamen in the bows. 
 
 I stood a moment after gaining the deck to look along 
 it. The gloom of the night was betwixt the vessel's rails, 
 but some ruddy gleams darting like wheel spokes through the 
 galley door touched the coils of rigging and bulwarks abreast; 
 there was a hazy sheen of radiance aft round about the 
 skylight. By the small, delicate moonlight now flowing I 
 made this bark out to be a lump of a square-bowed wagon, 
 with a crowded look about her decks, owing to her galley, 
 longboat, pumps, mainmast, and foremast all seeming to come 
 together in a sort of murky huddle, as though everything was 
 too big. I saw the figure of a man aft. It was he who had 
 leaned backward looking at us. He was advancing as I 
 approached him. 
 
 " What d'ye want aboard here ? " said he. " Hail your boat 
 and keep her alongside till I hear your story, anyhow." 
 
 "They're Portuguese and won't understand us unless we 
 talk in their tongue, which I, for one, don't know," I answered. 
 
 The man seemed struck by my speech and manner. We 
 were near the skylight, within the sphere of the sheen of it, 
 and I saw his eyes travel over me. 
 
 " What are you ? " said he. 
 
 " Am I talking to the master of this ship ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I was mate of the brig Hebe of Bristol. One day I over- 
 heard her owner and the captain arranging to cast her away, 
 one choosing that rock," said I, pointing to the island, "and 
 the other the coast near Agulhas. They were in their cabin ; 
 as I came out of mine the owner met me face to face, turned 
 white as these bloody breeches upon me, but said nothing, 
 and I guessed by the behavior of both men that neither sus-
 
 BLADES OF THE "CAROLINE." 77 
 
 pected I had overheard them. I vow to God that the day before 
 yesterday the owner of the brig took me ashore on that island 
 under the pretense of seeking a spring for his water casks. 
 He coaxed me to the edge of the cliff and threw me over 
 the villain! Mr. Fletcher of Bristol that's his name. Jonas 
 Cadman is the Hebe's master. They sailed away, leaving me 
 murdered, as they thought. They've got all that I possess in 
 the world aboard, and the dogs '11 wreck the brig yet, and 
 maybe drown the crew, mark me." 
 
 My companion listened with motionless attention. 
 
 "Fletcher of Bristol," said he. "He's owned some small 
 craft besides this Hebe, hasn't he ? " 
 
 " I dare say. I know nothing of the devil's history." And 
 now, moving a step to get a better view of this man, and 
 advancing my head to inspect him closely, I said, " Pardon 
 me is your name Blades ? " 
 
 " Yes," he answered. 
 
 " William Blades, who was formerly third mate of the New- 
 castle ? " 
 
 "That's right." 
 
 " I made my second voyage as an apprentice in that vessel. 
 You and I were not only shipmates, but messmates." 
 
 " Is it Charles Morgan ? " said he. 
 
 "To the very rags of him." 
 
 " Well, begummers ! " said Captain Blades, and shook my 
 hand. He was stepping to the companionway, as though 
 meaning I should follow him below ; then halted, and 
 exclaimed, looking in the direction of the boat, that was now 
 fast blending with the gloom, though she yet shone dimly in 
 her whiteness like the weak reflection of a large pale star, " I 
 shall be carrying you away round the Horn if you stop aboard. 
 I am bound direct to Callao. Madeira isn't far off, and that 
 boat would land you there, wouldn't she ?" 
 
 I answered briefly that I wished to remain with him ; having 
 lost all I did not mean to go home till I had earned money to 
 take up ; I was willing to serve him in any capacity, forward 
 or aft. 
 
 " By the great anchor, then," said he, " you may turn out a 
 Godsend, after all. Stay here. We'll yarn presently." He 
 then roared out, " Mr. Brace, ready about ! " 
 
 " Ready about ! " was echoed by some figure stalking in the 
 gangway, and the whistle of a boatswain's pipe rang shrill 
 through the vessel, followed by a bull-like roar of "All hands 
 about ship." It delighted me to hear the music of that pipe 
 aboard a bark of four hundred tons, but in those days the
 
 78 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 traditions of the sea were clung to with a tenacity which iron 
 and steam have surprisingly relaxed. In a few moments the 
 dark decks were full of life and hurry ; the shapes of the sea- 
 men, scarcely distinguishable in the gloom, took their stations. 
 
 " Helm's a-lee ! " bawled the captain. 
 
 " Helm's a-lee ! " was re-echoed from the forecastle. 
 
 Then rang the several orders of " Raise tacks and sheets 
 main topsail haul let go and haul," and so on. The black 
 block of island swang along on to our port quarter. The 
 whole life of the ocean was in the hoarse strange cries of the 
 men, and in the shouts of the captain and Mr. Brace. 
 
 "Well the fore topsail yard small pull the main t'gallant 
 yard royal yard too much well all! " 
 
 Presently the ship was soberly dribbling through it on the 
 port tack. The captain, after speaking apart to the man 
 whom he called Brace, took me below into the cabin. 
 
 It was like the Hebe's, the arrangement of the berths much 
 the same, and everything plain to rudeness. A large parrot 
 restlessly clawed the brass wires of its cage that swung under 
 the open skylight near the lamp. When we entered Blades 
 called out "Jackson," and a stout young fellow came out of 
 the pantry. 
 
 "Some supper for this gentleman," said the captain ; " then 
 turn to and get the mate's berth ready for him. You've left 
 your portmanteau on the Great Salvage, I expect?" he added, 
 grinning, as he turned his eyes upon me. "When the berth's 
 ready, Jackson, get some slops up." 
 
 Jackson stared at me when Blades called mo. gentleman. I 
 turned to the captain and said, " I've not had sight of a look- 
 ing-glass since Mr. Fletcher of Bristol took leave of me. 
 How do I show, sir?" 
 
 Blades bade the steward fetch a looking-glass. I took it 
 under the lamp and hardly knew myself. My beard was four 
 days old ; my hair was frightfully wild and curled madly 
 owing to my flight through two bushes ; my face was badly 
 scratched. I looked like a drunken sailor released after a 
 week of lock-up in the same state in which he had been found 
 up a dark alley. 
 
 "You'll not remember me, captain?" said I, with a hang- 
 dog grin, handing the glass to the steward. 
 
 " Only by name," he answered. " But it'll not take you 
 long to scrub and clothe yourself into my fond remembrance." 
 
 I sat down at the table, he opposite, and told him everything 
 as stands here related, all about Fletcher's piety, the four feet 
 of water in the hold, the trick of the rum casks, and the rest
 
 BLADES OF THE " CAROLINE." 79 
 
 of it. He listened with fixed eyes, deeply interested, as, 
 indeed, any sailor was bound to be in such a tale, seeing what 
 a hellish job those two men still had in hand, and how trag- 
 ically the criminal conspiracy had been accentuated by the 
 respectable Mr. Fletcher's heaval of me over a hundred feet 
 of cliff. 
 
 By the time I had made an end supper was ready, and I fell 
 to with a keen appetite on a solid square of harness-cask beef 
 and other shipboard delicacies, all like what the Hebes table 
 provided, only more of them, and very good of their kind. 
 Blades ate with me, and our drink was cold brandy and 
 water. 
 
 This new character in my strange traverses was a fine 
 handsome fellow, rising six feet tall, with tawny hair and 
 reddish beard and mocking sea-blue eyes, brilliant as gems, 
 full of character and spirit. He was an Orkney Islander, but 
 had nothing of the rough accent of the people of those storm- 
 vexed spots of earth. I looked at him and recalled many 
 incidents of a voyage which sterner and wilder experiences 
 had long sunk deep out of sight. He also looked at me, and 
 often, in the intervals of our discourse, very musingly for so 
 merry an eye. 
 
 By and by, when we had supped, he jumped up, pulled out 
 his watch, and said, " Go now and get the wash down you 
 need, and sweeten yourself up with such togs as Jackson has 
 got you. I'll be with you anon. I've something to talk to 
 you about." 
 
 He went on deck, and I heard his heavy footfall along the 
 plank. Jackson had lighted up the cabin assigned me ; I 
 recollected that Blades had called it the mate's, and wondered 
 if that officer had been broke and where he was. I had heard 
 as yet of no mate in this bark ; the man who had whistled the 
 crew to 'bout ship was Brace, and he was no mate. But all the 
 news I needed would come to me from Blades, and without 
 asking questions of Jackson I stripped and thoroughly washed, 
 swept the wildness out of my hair with a strong brush, and 
 clothed myself in a colored shirt, trousers of dungaree, and a 
 shaggy pea jacket, all slop made, rank with the ready-made 
 outfitting smell. 
 
 After half an hour Blades came below. He put a handful 
 of Manilla cheroots upon the table and brought a bottle of Hol- 
 lands out of a locker. The weather was perfectly quiet, the 
 vessel going along with never a creak coming out of her 
 frame, and the lamp hanging as though from a ceiling ashore. 
 Blades now told me that this bark was the Caroline, a trifle
 
 8o THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 over four hundred tons, from Sunderland to Callao with a 
 small general cargo; she belonged to a Newcastle firm. He 
 had sailed with a mate, and a boatswain acting as second mate. 
 A few hundred miles north of Madeira the mate fell ill and 
 kept his bed ; at his own request he was sent ashore at Madeira 
 along with his traps. Blades sought for a certificated man to 
 take his place ; as no one offered he got his anchor and 
 started for his port of destination, resolved to carry the bark 
 there watch and watch with George Brace, the boatswain. 
 
 " That's how matters stand now," said he. " I'm no sea 
 lawyer, and can't tell you whether I'm acting legally in pro- 
 ceeding, under the circumstances, without a mate. What do 
 you say ? " 
 
 " Well, I believe no ship may lawfully start from her port 
 without a mate. But if he falls sick and another's not to be 
 got, what's to be done ? " 
 
 " Why," he answered, breaking into his words with an occa- 
 sional short laugh, "the only thing to do is to head for the 
 Great Salvage Island, where fifty to one but you'll find some 
 cast-away gentleman anxious to obtain a situation. A shirt 
 isn't all front. It isn't always the thing itself that you seem 
 to be looking at. Often a man's best chances get into the secret 
 parts of his life, just as you find a sovereign in a pocket you 
 forgot you dropped it into." 
 
 He nodded over his poised glass at each wise saying, took a 
 deep draught, and sucked his mustache. 
 
 " B'lay your jaw ! Blast that talk ! " croaked a hideous 
 voice overhead. 
 
 " Bury your old nut and turn in ! " said Blades, looking up 
 at the parrot. He then went on : 
 
 " My mate being gone, another '11 make this voyage more com- 
 fortable than I'll find it with Brace alone. I'm a nervous man " 
 here he stiffened his chest, that might have been some forty- 
 three inches in girth ; " I like to have the law on my side. I 
 want a mate. I ought to have a mate I feel it. Well, the 
 very thing I need crawls aboard out of the main chains after 
 dark as if, by the blessed Jemima, my desire had been turned 
 into flesh and blood to solve me a difficulty. In good Ork- 
 ney Saxon, Morgan, will ye sign on as first of this gallant 
 hooker? " 
 
 " I will, and with a thousand thanks," I replied, hot-faced 
 with a sudden flush of delight. 
 
 " Six pounds a month, the voyage to Callao and back to the 
 Wear ! " 
 
 I bowed in silent joy.
 
 THE "EARL OF LEICESTER." 8 1 
 
 " You're pleased and so am I," said Blades. " You'll be a 
 changed man if you're wanting in smartness." 
 
 " You'll find me wanting in nothing, not even in grati- 
 tude," said I. 
 
 " You'll have all night in to rest ye after the Salvage joke. 
 Take till eight bells to-morrow morning to dream the old skunk 
 Fletcher clean out of your skull, then turn to with a jolly 
 heart." 
 
 An hour later I was sound asleep. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE " EARL OF LEICESTER." 
 
 IT was a Friday morning, May i, 1851. Our latitude on 
 the preceding day had been 70 15' S., our longitude 13 21' 
 W. I do not exactly recollect how long I had served as mate 
 aboard the Caroline when this date of May i came round. 
 But I know that I was now heartily liking the ship. My life 
 with Blades was more like a passenger's than a mate's ; he 
 walked the decks with me, we yarned and smoked together, 
 and galvanized a dead hour with cards or draughts. He lent 
 me one of his sextants and made me free of his cabin. I could 
 have gone on sailing round the world with such a man forever. 
 Never in all the time I used the sea had I been happier. 
 
 Old Brace, the boatswain, though a crabbed and sour tar- 
 paulin, was one of the expertest seamen I had ever met. The 
 salt beef of his calling had hardened into marrow in his bones ; 
 he had worn out his teeth in biting ship's biscuit ; his joints 
 creaked with rheumatism spite of the greasing of them by half 
 a century of pork fat. He had been everything that a man 
 can be at sea ; washed through the Channel in December in a 
 barge loaded out of sight with stone, served in a man-of-war, 
 sailed in American liners, traded in contraband walks in the 
 South' Pacific, had been a beach comber, 'longshoreman, whale- 
 man, slaver cook in a West Indian drogher, and master of a 
 little schooner out of Nassau. It was like reading a book of 
 thrilling sea tales to talk with that man. I shall never forget 
 his yarns, nor the time I spent in his company. 
 
 The Jacks of the Caroline were good men, but then Blades 
 was one of the few merchant skippers who have the art of being 
 in perfect sympathy with their crew without sacrificing any- 
 thing of their own quarter-deck dignity. I did my utmost to
 
 82 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 support his theories and carry out his views, and we were a 
 happy, quiet, and comfortable ship. 
 
 May i, 1851. This was a Friday morning, and I came on 
 deck at eight bells to relieve the boatswain, who had had the 
 lookout since four. Blades was sauntering to and fro the 
 quarter-deck in slippers and loose flannel jacket, and wide, 
 petticoat-like drill trousers. The sun shone with a sharp 
 tropic sting ; his wake was rolling in a long white flame over 
 the soft heave of ocean to the very bends of the bark. It 
 was mighty hot, with the heat besides tingling off the water 
 where the dazzle of the soaring sun was, as though the 
 spangled sea was the tremble of countless white-hot needles 
 coming at you. 
 
 We carried but a short awning, and in the shadow of it stood 
 the man at the wheel. The breeze was light, hot as your 
 breath, and out of the northwest. Brace had piled up the 
 studding sails, but the bark's way was scarce perceptible, and 
 the tail of her greasy wake was not a pistol shot off. 
 
 The first thing I saw when I came on deck was the three 
 white spires of a vessel, hull out of sight, away down on the 
 lee bow. The sea line ran unbroken round the ocean to her ; 
 there was a shading of cloud just above the gleam she made 
 on the blue rim, and over our mastheads the sky was freckled 
 with morning vapor ; a high, blue, bright morning, splendid 
 for the sparkling azure space the eye found in it, but hot ! 
 hot ! and the breeze a light air. 
 
 " What have we there ? " says Blades, looking at the dis- 
 tant sail, seemingly for the first time. 
 
 I fetched the glass. 
 
 "A small ship," says he, talking with his eye at the tele- 
 scope ; " she's lying right athwart our hawse. Her yards seem 
 queerly braced : the fore and mizzen square, and the main 
 fore and aft. Look at her." 
 
 I steadied the glass ; the three soft feathery heights shone 
 in the lenses in symmetric spaces, and I perceived the yards 
 braced in the manner described by Blades. The sails hqvered 
 like shreds of morning mist, and their whiteness was shot with 
 airy gleams. The line of the vessel's rail was just visible above 
 the edge of the sea, " dipping," as sailors call it I mean com- 
 ing and going with the light swaying of the bark. 
 
 When I had seen her canvas there was nothing else to look 
 at. I watched her a little, thinking she might be maneuver- 
 ing ; she hung in one posture with her head athwart our 
 course, and I said to Blades, " If she's not derelict there's 
 sickness aboard and she's helpless."
 
 THE "EARL OF LEICESTER:' 83 
 
 " I believe you're right," said he slowly when he had looked 
 again. 
 
 But now breakfast was announced. The captain went below 
 to eat and left me to pace the deck alone. 
 
 The Caroline was a flush-decked vessel, with a large 
 windlass in her square bow, and a heavy littered look of deck. 
 She had the scantling of a frigate ; everything was heavy and 
 large. I stood beside the fellow at the wheel gazing forward ; 
 smoke was streaming from the caboose chimney ; some of the 
 watch below were scrubbing their clothes in the lee scuppers ; 
 those of my own watch were at work about the vessel, one in 
 the maintop, a couple in the fore shrouds. A fellow sat 
 astride the fore yardarm doing something to the lift ; his loose 
 white trousers and naked feet, his straw hat and mahogany 
 face, with one bright eye in profile, and four inches of black 
 beard curling like the edge of a saucer, stood out against the 
 liquid sky as prismatically hued as a daguerreotype. Indeed 
 the ocean light that morning gave a look of silky shifting color 
 to everything. 
 
 The bark made me think of the Hebe, and I wondered what 
 the bleared old fabric's reckoning would be at noon that day. 
 Would Cadman and the other stick to their resolution to wreck 
 her ? Wouldn't the conscience that must come of my murder 
 fright them from the commission of other damnable things ? 
 Alas ! conscience is a flower of slow cultivation, scarce likely 
 to break its tender shoot through the dung crust of such minds 
 as theirs. 
 
 Now and again I looked at the distant ship as I stood or 
 paced, musing. We were creeping southward ; she, with her 
 yards braced anyhow, hung right athwart our road. Slowly 
 we raised her, and by the time Blades came on deck she was 
 showing a white line broken with painted ports. Now, too, I 
 made out a color at her mizzen peak, red, but hanging up and 
 down and indistinguishable. 
 
 Piping hot it was that morning, and sweet was the sudden 
 gushing through the heel of a windsail of a little freshening of 
 the breeze on deck while I breakfasted. When I returned 
 above I found the water darkened into violet by a pleasant 
 breeze, with here and there an instant ivory wink of foam in the 
 curls of brine ; from the bark's fat sides the flying fish were 
 glancing in dozens, and we had a thin white line of water to 
 leeward and a noise of purring water under the bows, with a 
 universal tautening of brace and curving of leech and arching 
 of foot ; the jibs swelled with a yearning look forward ; it was 
 like the cock of a dog's ears at the sight of another dog. The
 
 84 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 bark seemed to know there was a ship in sight. Gods, what 
 life comes into a sailing ship with a little wind ! It is the 
 breath of her being, the soul of her strakes and treenails, and 
 thus possessed she'll do everything but speak. 
 
 We were within hailing distance of the vessel by eleven 
 o'clock. Our helm was then put down and our main topsail 
 brought to the mast, and there lay within easy reach of a man's 
 voice a ship of something less than six hundred tons, with 
 painted ports, metaled to the bends with new sheathing, her 
 figurehead some dark gold device, her quarters lustrous with 
 gilt, but she had a desperately slack look, spite of her smart 
 hull, with her outer and flying jibs hauled down and hanging 
 loose, her three royals clewed up, but unstowed, her spanker 
 half trailed in as though by insufficient hands, with other signs 
 of helplessness which I'll not weary the shore-going reader 
 with. 
 
 Two men only were visible on her short length of poop, and 
 one of them was at the wheel. I saw no signs of any living 
 thing elsewhere. The galley chimney forked up black and 
 unsmoking. In one deep pause before we hailed I heard 
 a cock crow and afterward the bleat of a sheep. We lay 
 within a few ships' lengths of each other. The fellow at the 
 stranger's helm was just such another plain seaman as stood 
 at our wheel ; the other was dressed in a cloth coat and a 
 wide straw hat. He stood watching us until we had ranged 
 abreast. Then, with a glance aloft at the flag, which proved 
 the English merchant ensign, jack down, he came to the low 
 poop rail, got upon it, and stood with a hand at his ear. 
 
 " Ship ahoy ! " cried Blades. 
 
 " Hollo ! " 
 
 " What ship's that ? " 
 
 " The Earl of Leicester from Madras for the Thames. 
 We're in great distress. Will you send one of your officers, as 
 we're without men to man one of our boats?" 
 
 " What's wrong with you ?" Blades called. 
 
 " Most of the crew are dead of the plague," the other cried ; 
 then shook his head and flourished his arm, loudly shouting : 
 " No, I don't mean the plague. It aint the plague, sir. It's 
 a sort of sickness like fever. Some of them shipped with it, 
 and gave it to the others." 
 
 " Whatever it is it's long in killing, since it's lasted them 
 all the way round to up here," said Blades, looking at me. 
 " What's it you want ?" he bawled. 
 
 " Help, sir," cried the other. 
 
 " How many can you muster ? "
 
 THE "EARL OF LEICESTER." 85 
 
 The man pointed to the sailor at the wheel. 
 
 " Too few as a ship's company for a vessel of that size," 
 said Blades, rounding upon me with a bothered look. 
 " Vender's a sick ship, and to send men would mean to them 
 the death that's emptied her hammocks. Yet to bring those 
 two chaps aboard might signify a like beastly quandary for 
 the good bark Caroline, for who's to know how tainted they 
 are ?" 
 
 The man in the straw hat gazed at us from the top of the 
 rail without motion. A hush fell. You heard nothing but 
 the noise of water slopping alongside, the clinking of a chain 
 sheet strained by a slight roll, and from the vessel abreast of 
 us the crowing of a cock. In that pause I took another good 
 look at the ship. To my nautical eye her appearance did not 
 correspond with the straw-hatted man's statement. She 
 seemed too clean to be all the way from Madras, which meant 
 a hundred days of ocean. Her rigging was well set up, her 
 paint work fresh. I saw no growth of grass, no adhesion of 
 shell upon the new sheathing she'd slightly lift. Though her 
 short poop deck lay open betwixt the low rails, her bulwarks 
 stood tall and hid her amidships to as far as the topgallant 
 forecastle, which was railed like the poop. There was no 
 motion in the sea to make her roll her main and quarter-decks 
 into view. Three good white boats, whale-ended, hung at her 
 davits. One boat, the fourth, was gone, and a long, light gig 
 dangled at her stern. I also spied a big longboat abaft the 
 galley under a number of spare booms. 
 
 " Yet it wouldn't do," said Blades, looking at the vessel 
 with one eye closed, "to leave that fine ship to go to pieces 
 down here. He hailed her again : " Have you any dead 
 aboard ? " 
 
 " All are over the side, sir," was the answer. 
 
 " How many sick have you ? " 
 
 The man seemed to consider, looking round as he did so to 
 the fellow at the wheel. He then bawled back in tones that 
 warranted him in lung power if in nothing else, " There's two 
 sick, and us two makes four ; all that's left of three-and- 
 twenty men." 
 
 " What are you ? " called Blades. 
 
 "I'm the ship's carpenter, sir." 
 
 Blades still hung in the wind ; he'd look at me doubtfully, 
 then at the vessel, and indeed the dilemma was no small one. 
 Yonder lay a plague ship so at least her carpenter reported 
 her. If we sent a few hands on board to help her to her port, 
 what was to hinder them from perishing as the original crew
 
 86 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 had, leaving the ship in the same plight ? If we brought those 
 two men off they might infect the whole of our company. 
 And then what was to be done with the two sick wretches in 
 her forecastle ? Again, yonder was a craft the value of whose 
 salving would certainly not fall short of a little estate. All 
 these conflicting reflections worked in Blades' face, and pro- 
 duced twenty expressions in a minute. He said to me, " We 
 certainly can't leave her." 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " What's the nature of the sickness aboard. I'd give fifty 
 pounds to find out." 
 
 " Shall I go over to her and see what there is to report to 
 you ? " 
 
 " But you're no doctor, are ye ? Could you name a disease 
 from a description of symptoms? Suppose it should be small- 
 pox ? " He shuddered .with a sudden face of loathing as he 
 looked toward the vessel. 
 
 " I expect it's some distemper arising from the cargo," 
 said I, " like blindness from wheat or fever from coffee." 
 
 This seemed to give him an idea, and he hailed the ship to 
 know her load. 
 
 " Sugar mainly," answered the man, who continued stand- 
 ing on the rail, holding on by a backstay, apparently eying 
 us intently. 
 
 " Don't some sort of sweating sickness come from sugar?" 
 said Blades, turning to me. 
 
 I didn't know. 
 
 " It may be as you say," said he. " She'll not be the first 
 ship whose cargo has bred pestilence for her people. There 
 can be no harm done, I think, in your taking a boat and going 
 across and looking around. Even if the vessel's not to be 
 meddled with, the men must be saved ; that's the confounded 
 problem. Unless we tow her but then we'll need to board 
 her to furl her canvas. Take a boat that's, if you have no 
 objection. I'm not for putting this sort of job upon any man 
 as a duty." 
 
 I sung out for some men to lay aft and clear away the port 
 quarter boat. Four or five sailors came slouchingly and 
 reluctantly along the deck. 
 
 " Bear a hand. Aft with you," I shouted, for I ever heartily 
 abominated in seamen that sort of behavior which we of the 
 jacket call sojering. 
 
 The group came to a stand at the quarter-deck capstan, and 
 after a little backing and filling, hard biting of junks in their 
 cheeks, and screwing up of eyes at the ship with sulky, woebe-
 
 THE "EARL OF LEICESTER." 87 
 
 gone looks, one of them said gloomily, " Are us men expected 
 to board that vessel ? " 
 
 " To put me aboard," said I. 
 
 " Capt'n, you heard what the covey in the straw hat said," 
 exclaimed the man. 
 
 " I'm not asking you to step over the side. The chief mate 
 takes the risk. You can lay off and breathe and spit," said 
 Blades. 
 
 On this they came to the boat, but sullenly and reluctantly, 
 cleared and lowered her. Three of them entered ; I followed, 
 and we pulled for the vessel. I headed to pass under her 
 stern, to board her to leeward. When the man in the straw 
 hat saw me coming he leisurely stepped off the rail and crossed 
 the deck. I guessed from his motions that he took his calam- 
 itous situation pretty coolly ; there had been nothing whining, 
 nothing whatever of the " Help-us-for-God's-sake " yowling 
 in his cries to us. I saw "Earl of Leicester, London," in small 
 letters on the ship's counter as we pulled under the square of 
 stern, with its large, gleaming cabin windows just under the 
 keel of the gig ; we were close here and could see how clean 
 her sheathing was when the small swell hollowed a trifle under 
 her run, lifting the metal and the copper of her rudder, with 
 a look almost of brand-new light in it, out of the green 
 brine. 
 
 " Mizzen chains, lads," said I ; " then shove off and hang 
 within hailing distance." 
 
 I sprang into one of those platforms to which, in those days, 
 the shrouds of the lower masts were secured by dead-eyes, 
 and the bow oar eagerly thrust the boat clear. 
 
 I found myself on the deck of one of the smartest ships I 
 had ever boarded. Her planks were like a yacht's, with the 
 white grain of the wood and the clean-edged black seams. As 
 I sprang from the rail I glanced forward, but saw not a living 
 creature stirring. Nothing moved but the heads of a number 
 of cocks and hens betwixt the bars of a long coop just forward 
 of the mainmast. The main hatch was closed with a tarpaulin 
 over it in ship-shape, cargo-bottom fashion. The instant 
 impression of distress and dreariness I got out of my first look 
 round is one of the most impressive of my memories : all the 
 running gear slack, the yards wildly braced, the unstowed 
 cloths flogging aloft in the now freshening breeze, the big top- 
 sails silent, one hollowing in, the other swelling out, the decks 
 a lifeless length save but for those quick throbbings of red 
 combs in the coop, the ship without way, course, or meaning 
 in the aspect of her canvas, and a short man with a crumpled
 
 88 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 face and a large mustache holding on to the wheel as though 
 making pretense to steer. 
 
 The seaman who had answered Blades' hail stood beside the 
 mizzen shrouds as I climbed up out of the chains. He was a 
 dark, grave-faced man, between thirty-five and forty years old, 
 with shaven cheeks, and a quantity of black hair dashed with 
 gray upon his throat and chin. His eyes were soft, black, and 
 penetrating, his countenance comely after a rude pattern, the 
 features good, but coarse. His coat was of new cloth ; his 
 waistcoat and small clothes were also new and good. I had 
 sailed with several ship's carpenters in my time, but never 
 before met with one who at sea dressed so well as this man, 
 with fine flannel shirt, silk handkerchief, and good Wellington 
 boots. 
 
 The other fellow, whom I just cast an eye at, was of the aver- 
 age type of sailor, dressed in the jumper's rig, naked feet, old 
 duck breeches, a red shirt which exposed half his breast, and a 
 knife in a sheath strapped round his middle. I supposed him 
 a foreigner with his big mustache, despite a leering blue eye 
 and one of those dry, twisted expressions crowding the face 
 with puckers full, too, of a low, vulgar humor, which I never 
 yet fell in with out of this kingdom. 
 
 The man in the straw hat flourished his hand in a grave 
 salute. 
 
 " I'm thankful to you, sir, for this visit," said he in a sober, 
 smooth, rather deep voice. " May I ask your rank aboard the 
 bark?" 
 
 " I'm her mate," I answered, struck by his very earnest 
 regard of me. " Let's hear now what is this sickness that's 
 reduced you to two well men out of a forecastle full." 
 
 "There's a description of it in r. book below," he answered. 
 " I found it in the capt'n's cabin. I'm no scholar and couldn't 
 give it jer as that there book expresses of it." 
 
 " What is it ? " said I. " A medical work ? " 
 
 " I allow it is, then. It's got pictures of things belonging to 
 the human body heyes and hears, a man's thumbs, and the 
 likes of that. There's a piece in that book that answers to 
 what the men have died of. Kindly step below an' I'll show 
 it jer." 
 
 " What's your cargo again ? " 
 
 " Mainly sugar." 
 
 " Has it sweated ?" 
 
 " Can't say I've took notice of that," he replied, looking in 
 his slow way at the man at the wheel, who grew uneasy, I 
 thought, under this silent reference, since he shuffled and gave
 
 TRAPPED. 89 
 
 the spokes a twirl, and looked aloft as though for a lifting 
 leech. 
 
 I hesitated before entering the cabin, having somehow a 
 fancy of the taste of sickness in the atmosphere down there. I 
 glanced at the skylight ; it was closed, and the crimson blinds 
 under it were drawn. I found nothing significant in this amid 
 such a picture of disorder as the ship presented aloft, the con- 
 fusion up there working down into the whole body of her, so 
 to speak, and affecting the eye as though everything was 
 wrong. 
 
 " Can't you bring that book up on deck ? " 
 
 " I'd take it kindly if you'd step below, sir," said the man, 
 speaking always very soberly and smoothly, with a slowness in 
 the motion of his head and body as though his spirits had 
 been sunk by anxiety. " The log book's in the cabin. I'd 
 like you to see the entries down to the time when the second 
 mate, the last of 'em aft here, was took. Yer'll get the rate of 
 deaths there, likewise, perhaps a sarviceable hint or two. I 
 allow that my answer touching the plague skeered them yon- 
 der." He dropped his head sideways toward the bark. "I 
 gave the thing the first name as rose. We badly want help, 
 sir. You can see it now," and he sent a look along the silent, 
 deserted decks. 
 
 That notion of inspecting the log determined me. More- 
 over, I wanted to see the ship's papers. I moved toward the 
 companion, observing this the man went before and led the 
 way below. 
 
 The instant I was at the bottom of the steps I saw that 
 I was trapped, and turned to rush up, meaning to jump 
 overboard with a shout to the Caroline 's boat, but even 
 while I drew breath with that intention the companion was 
 closed by some hand above, and the steps darkened, and I 
 faced forward again, breathing hard and short, with both my 
 fists clenched prepared for a struggle for life. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 TRAPPED. 
 
 THE cabin, or cuddy, as it might be called, under the poop 
 deck was in shadow owing to the companion being closed and 
 the crimson blinds of the skylight drawn over the glass. But 
 there was light enough to give one a clear view; it shone through 
 little windows forward overlooking the quarter-deck, I saw
 
 90 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 five men in that cuddy in addition to the straw-hatted man 
 who had conducted me below. They were forecastle hands, 
 dressed in the plain familiar attire of the pier head and the 
 boarding house. They had been sitting when we entered, but 
 sprang to their feet on our coming down, while one of them 
 stepped quickly betwixt me and the companion ladder. 
 
 " I am sorry to take you unawares in this fashion," said the 
 man who had styled himself the vessel's carpenter, " but the 
 long and short of it is we want a navigator and we want a 
 captain, and you'll sarve our tarn for both, sir. S'elp me God, 
 as I stand here, we mean honestly. It's all come about fairly. 
 The only dirty part of it'll be this here kidnapping of you. But 
 what must be must be. I beg you'll keep your mind easy; 
 nothen but what you'll presently find right's intended. These 
 are to be your quarters, and here we'll ask you to be good 
 enough to stop till we calls upon you to take charge." 
 
 He stepped to a door, and, throwing it open, motioned me 
 into a good-sized cabin, lighted by a large circular porthole 
 in the ship's side. 
 
 I had stared at him with a wildly beating heart and doubt- 
 less with a stone-white face, so startling, so terrifying had been 
 this sudden, this most unexpected entrapment, while he had 
 delivered the above extraordinary address. Then as he stood 
 motioning me into the sleeping berth, I exclaimed, "You 
 must let me go ! I'm mate of that bark abreast of you, and 
 my services are wanted there. I can't help you here." 
 
 " We beg you'll make no fuss," said one of the seamen, a 
 brown, high-colored man, with thelooks of a fisherman. "We're 
 all agreed. A master's wanted, and now you're here you'll 
 have to stop, sir." 
 
 This was said, not insolently, but firmly, yet with a note in it 
 that threatened temper. 
 
 " But, good God ! men," cried I, " this is an English ship 
 I take it, and you're Englishmen, aren't you ? You can't walk 
 off with a man in this fashion. It's a criminal offense a 
 hanging job not long since. There's many a passing ship 
 that'll help you to a navigator ; don't carry me away against 
 my will without the knowledge of my captain, who'll suppose 
 I've run from him." 
 
 " Mr. Brigstock," said a short, fat seaman with pig's eyes, 
 and full hanging chops, "we don't want to use no force ; all 
 this here's been schemed out, and it's about time we trimmed 
 sail, aint it ? " 
 
 " It's crool hot down here, with everything shut up too," 
 said the high-colored, fisherman-like sailor.
 
 TRAPPED. 91 
 
 " Jump on to the table and open that skylight, Bill," said 
 the man called Bngstock, who was plainly the leader in this 
 queer ocean business. 
 
 "There's more'n us as is finding it hot don't forget that, 
 Mr. Brigstock," exclaimed a lively looking young seaman with 
 ginger hair and greenish eyes, and that sort of clean appear- 
 ance you'd expect in a man who had served aboard a man-of- 
 war or spent a year or two in the ranks. 
 
 " There's this to t>e said first," said Brigstock, addressing 
 me : " whatever clothes and property we may be forcing you to 
 lose sight of no obligation to speak of losing of 'em will be 
 made up for fivefold. There's plenty to pick and choose 
 from, and the first inning's yourn. That, sir, on Thomas 
 Brigstock 's good oath. Now, if you please" and with another 
 grave motion of his arm, but viewing me sternly and even 
 threateningly, he invited, or rather commanded, me to enter. 
 
 I perceived the uselessness of expostulation or entreaty. I 
 had followed the sea too long to mistake any meaning I might 
 find in the faces and talk of sailors. Half stunned with the 
 suddenness of it all, and scarcely yet fully realizing what had 
 befallen me, I obeyed Brigstock's gesture ; when I was in the 
 cabin he lifted his straw hat, and saying with a relaxed face 
 and very civilly, " Your wants shall be seen to. You'll be 
 kept here no longer than is needful," he withdrew, closing the 
 door after him and locking it outside. 
 
 I went to a bunk under the porthole, and leaning against it 
 with folded arms waited for my wits to collect and compose 
 themselves. This was a large, cheerful cabin, the fittings 
 excellent, the bunk, washstand, little chest of drawers, all of 
 polished mahogany, the long, handsome locker of some dark 
 wood, perhaps oak. It had certainly been the captain'scabin. 
 I guessed that by twenty signs by the chronometers on 
 shelves, the fine telescope, the bag of charts, the cases of 
 mathematical instruments on a hinged table, the telltale com- 
 pass amidships of the ceiling. There was good new bedding 
 in the bunk, some wearing apparel hung at the bulkhead, and 
 a square of Brussels carpet furnished the deck. 
 
 On looking through the porthole I saw the Caroline ; she 
 lay toy-like in the radiant disk, diminished by it, though no 
 further off than before. I opened the port to let in air and 
 hear ; just as I did this the powerful voice of Brigstock 
 sounded overhead : 
 
 " Boat ahoy ! You can return to the bark. Your mate 
 means to stop along with us." 
 
 If any answer was returned none reached my ear. In a few
 
 92 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 moments I caught the noise of the voices of seamen pulling 
 and hauling, with a hurried tread of feet, and an occasional 
 shout as of command. The breeze was now fresh and brilliant, 
 and gushed blue and salt with the color and savor of the 
 ocean through the orifice I stood at. The bark still kept 
 her topsail to the mast ; every sail was tremorless. She some- 
 times shot a dazzling flash of sunshine from the glass of her 
 skylight ; it was like a gun, and I wished to Heaven in the 
 wrath and despair which rilled me as I stood looking that it 
 had been one often repeated and loaded to the muzzle. 
 
 What would Blades suppose ? That I had voluntarily 
 quitted the service of his ship ? Would he understand I had 
 been stolen ? I saw him clearly as he stood aft near the wheel. 
 Beside him was old Brace. It was easy to imagine the aston- 
 ishment and consternation which held them dumb and staring. 
 Then I saw Blades spring with motions full of passion into the 
 mizzen shrouds, and as he hung there, lifting his hand to his 
 mouth to direct the flight of a cry, the boat swept into the 
 circumference of the porthole, the stroke oar, rowing, fisher- 
 man fashion, face forward, looking up at the bark and seem- 
 ingly called to old Brace, who leaned over the rail to hear. 
 
 " Ship ahoy ! " came the voice of Blades in one of those 
 sonorous, deep-chested, hurricane roars which years of bawl- 
 ing to men aloft, and amid the thunders of hard weather, had 
 qualified his fine chest to deliver. " What do you mean by 
 keeping my mate ? What trick's this you're playing off on me ! 
 Return the man, d'ye hear? Return the man!" Here he 
 shouted an order down to the boat that was now alongside. 
 
 " I have the name of your ship " The rest was lost 
 
 owing to the bark at this moment sliding out of the ring of 
 the porthole. The seamen had trimmed sail the vessel I was 
 aboard of had gathered way we were off ! 
 
 I fell back, breathing thick and feverishly with helpless rage 
 and alarm. The breeze was now sweeping full and fair into 
 the trimmed canvas of the ship. The water was passing in 
 a glittering hurry of ripples fast growing and racing under the 
 sweep of the wind ; my cabin was full of the twinkling lights 
 of the sliding surface. The ship had gathered way quickly, 
 and the foam of the arching bow wave streamed like a satin 
 ribbon within biscuit toss of my porthole. It was about a 
 quarter to one by the sun. I looked up at the telltale com- 
 pass and found they were heading the ship .due south. Due 
 south 1 What was the meaning of this mess I had suddenly 
 tumbled into ? The ship was homeward bound just now, 
 loaded with sugar from Madras ! What was it a mutiny ?
 
 TRAPPED. 93 
 
 If so, a murderous one surely, for in this sort of vessel you'd 
 look for a captain and three mates, and where were they ? 
 Or was it that the craft had been abandoned and then taken 
 possession of by a shipwrecked crew, who, having settled what 
 to do with her, had been lying in a posture of seeming disorder 
 to carry off the first poor devil their lies or a distress color 
 could court aboard ? 
 
 After I had been locked up about an hour somebody struck 
 the cabin door, the key was turned, and a young seaman walked 
 in bearing a tray. He put the tray upon the table ; it was 
 furnished with the plain food of the sea some slices of salt 
 horse, a ship's biscuit, a cube of cheese, and a bottle of ale. 
 The man went out, locking the door. I did not speak to him. 
 Indeed I had no questions to ask. I took him to be an ordi- 
 nary seaman no man, anyhow, to give me news of the crew's 
 intentions. 
 
 The ale refreshed me exceedingly ; there is no better drink 
 ashore and at sea it tops the list of all draughts when you 
 can get it. I ate some beef and bread, and then to divert my- 
 self took a look around the cabin. On examining the tele- 
 scope, I found an inscription upon it stating that it had been 
 presented to Thomas Halcrow, master of the Star of India, by 
 certain passengers in that ship, 1847. I found the name of 
 Halcrow upon the sextant and chronometer cases, and like- 
 wise read it in some nautical works upon a shelf. Thomas 
 Halcrow, then, I guessed, had been the commander of this 
 ship, the Earl of Leicester. What had the crew done with him ? 
 
 I sought for the vessel's log book and papers, but to no pur- 
 pose. Some clothes were stowed in the locker ; here, too, I 
 found a desk, which, as the lid opened when I handled it, I 
 took the liberty of examining, hoping to meet with something 
 to give me information about this ship, but I came across noth- 
 ing to the point. A bundle of old letters, all addressed to " My 
 dearest Tom," a miniature portrait of a good-looking young 
 woman, and a few odds and ends of a desk's ordinary equip- 
 ments these formed the contents. I hunted with patience and 
 eagerness for the ship's papers, and was heartily vexed at not 
 finding them. Taking a sheet of paper from the desk, I sat at 
 the table and wrote in pencil as briefly as possible the particu- 
 lars of my entrapment. This done I folded the paper and put 
 it in the ale bottle. There was sealing wax in the desk and sev- 
 eral boxes of wax lights on the shelf ; with these I carefully 
 sealed the cork, and then dropped the bottle through the port- 
 hole, hoping that it might prove the means of accounting for 
 my fate should I never be heard of again.
 
 94 TffE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 This, together with my searching the cabin, had occupied 
 my mind ; now that I had nothing to do my spirits sank to 
 the very degree of suicide. What was to happen ? What 
 baseness in the eye of Heaven had I been guilty of that I 
 should be forced into these abrupt and tragic experiences ? 
 First, I sail away in a brig that is to be wrecked ; next I am 
 carried ashore and thrown over the edge of a cliff a hundred 
 feet high ; I lose all my money and effects ; then I suifer all 
 the miseries of loneliness and hopelessness upon a desert 
 island, 
 
 No classic roamer but a shipwreckt man ; 
 
 and no sooner has the wheel gone round and I am comfortable 
 and happy again, earning good pay, living in the company of 
 the best and kindest shipmate I ever sailed with, behold ! I am 
 brought into this ship, made a prisoner of, and sailed away 
 with presently to meet with Heaven alone knows what dread- 
 ful end ! 
 
 Thus ran my thoughts as I stood scowling in a fit of suicidal 
 dejection through the porthole at the sea. The wind had 
 briskened since I came aboard ; the vessel was leaning under 
 a press of canvas ; the heel of her was sharp enough to lift the 
 porthole above the horizon, and I saw nothing but the sky all 
 adrift and flying east and south, so nimbly poured the clouds, 
 white and small, and shining like mother-of-pearl. There was 
 a great noise of washing waters under the porthole, with quick 
 shattering falls of brine leaping from the slope of the metaled 
 bends. The vessel was swarming through it at about nine 
 knots. I guessed the wind nor'nor'west by the telltale, and 
 again looking at that compass I saw they had headed the ship 
 within the hour upon a course a little west of south. 
 
 From time to time during that afternoon I fancied I heard 
 the voices of women. Once I seemed to catch a laugh in the 
 clear notes of a girl just overhead. Sometimes the sounds 
 were as though groups of women stood at a distance talking 
 earnestly. I put all this down to imagination, helped by the 
 mimicry of the wind, whose whistling of laughter, song, and 
 chatter in the rigging would reach me through the cabin 
 window. 
 
 The hour was six by the light when the door was beaten for 
 the second time that day. Brigstock entered. I looked past 
 him, expecting others ; he was alone. He held his straw hat 
 in his hand, and his whole demeanor and aspect were formal, 
 decent, and respectful. His dark hair was smoothed upon his 
 head as though soaped ; it was parted on one side, and the
 
 TRAPPED. 95 
 
 division was peculiarly white, broad, and defined. He had 
 something of a psalm-singing look about him, and my instant 
 thought was of Fletcher of Bristol. 
 
 I was exceedingly agitated, though I sought to compose my 
 face into a stern look. I folded my arms and demeanored 
 myself as an outraged man ; but my spirits ran very low, for 
 when I saw Brigstock I thought to myself, What has he come 
 to say ? What's to be my fate ? I was a prisoner in this ship, 
 unarmed, friendless, helpless, and the men's need of my serv- 
 ices, the services to be rendered, and the story of the vessel 
 herself were yet to be learnt. 
 
 Brigstock shut the door, and, looking at the tray, exclaimed, 
 " I hope you han't been neglected ? I directed that you was 
 to be seen to. We've been carrying on to run your bark 
 below the sea, and my hands have been full what with keeping 
 a lookout and other matters." 
 
 " Is the bark out of sight ? " said I. 
 
 " Oh, why, yes, sir," he answered in his slow, grave way. 
 " Out o' sight ? What's that poor old barge a-going to do with 
 a hull built on the lines of this here vessel ? '* 
 
 " What's your name ? " 
 
 "Thomas Brigstock, sir." 
 
 " I remember." 
 
 "And yourn ?" 
 
 " Charles Morgan. Mr. Brigstock, what motive have you 
 in carrying me off in this fashion ? " 
 
 " A little patience, sir. I know it's hard, but it'll all come 
 right. If the scheme don't fit your own notions to a hair I'm 
 no man. Such a choice as there is saving, of course, this : 
 perhaps you're married ? " 
 
 " I don't understand you. Explain your reason for imprisdh- 
 ing me. Where's this ship bound to ? What was your object 
 in telling me about the plague, and the four survivors of a 
 large company, and of your being homeward bound from 
 Madras with a cargo of sugar ? And what do you mean to do 
 with me ? " I added, speaking with heat, and looking at the 
 fellow with a face of temper that was no longer a counterfeit. 
 
 " It was necessary to stoop to a lie," answered Brigstock 
 coolly and leisurely. " We tarned the matter over, and all 
 agreed there was no help for it ; a lie must be told. Well, it 
 is told. There's several kinds of lies : one, the harmless 
 sort ; no man's ever the worse for being told it." 
 
 "What's become of your captain ? " 
 
 "You shall hear all about that, Mr. Morgan." 
 
 "And your mate ?"
 
 9 6 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "All about that too, sir." 
 
 " How many mates do you carry ? " 
 
 " All about it, all about it, with a little waiting," he exclaimed. 
 " Now, sir, as you're to be master of this vessel, allowing that 
 you're capable of navigating her, which I don't doubt, it's not 
 for us to keep you any longer locked up here. That 'ud be 
 mutiny." 
 
 So saying, he threw open the door, and held it in an attitude 
 significant of his wish that I should pass out. 
 
 I did so, and found myself in an elegant little cuddy, painted 
 white and gold, and furnished with cushioned lockers and a 
 short row of handsome chairs on either side the length of rich, 
 dark, highly polished table. The after end of that table was 
 cut so as to embrace the shaft of the mizzenmast, a solid white 
 column, elaborately fluted and picked out with gold. I had 
 seldom viewed a prettier interior. 
 
 What I have described I saw in a quick look around after 
 stepping out ; now, standing at the table, I gazed forward, 
 and the sight I beheld so astounded me that my reason could 
 scarcely credit the report of my eyes. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S STORY. 
 
 THE cuddy front was furnished with a central door and two 
 windows on either hand of it. Door and windows were wide 
 open; the decks were visible through them to the forecastle; 
 imagine my amazement when I beheld those decks crowded 
 with women! 
 
 At the first look there seemed two hundred. Groups stood 
 about in eager talk ; many came and went at the door and 
 windows, peering in and then passing on. All were in motion, 
 with few exceptions a perpetual shifting and dissolving of 
 small mobs of females. Now in good truth could I hear the 
 voices of women! 
 
 Glancing up, I spied the faces of several females looking at 
 me through the open skylight. They wore shawls and hats and 
 bonnets, and were mostly young, it seemed to me then both 
 the skylight lot and those out on the main deck. Brigstock 
 and I had the cabin to ourselves. I stared at him with a 
 frown of astonishment and inquiry. Of course I was too old 
 a hand to wonder where these women had sprung from ; they 
 had been kept in the drenching heat of the 'tween decks, the
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S STORY. 97 
 
 hatches on, tarpaulined and battened down, that the ship 
 might look a plain cargo carrier, while Brigstock answered 
 Blades across the water, and lied to me about the plague and 
 the vessel's lading. 
 
 " Who are those people ?" said I. 
 
 " Emigrants," answered Brigstock. " There are ninety of 
 them, and there's twelve of us males. One hundred and two 
 souls in all a-washing about without a navigator, and nothing 
 to depend on but the heye of Providence." 
 
 "Why," cried I, rounding upon him passionately, "did you 
 not tell my captain the truth ? He would have seen you to 
 some place of safety put me aboard to keep the ship in the 
 bark's company." 
 
 A slow, peculiar smile worked over his face like a succession 
 of ripples on water. The mirth was out of his eyes while the 
 grin was still on his lips. 
 
 " Will yer sit down, Mr. Morgan, and I'll give you the 
 whole yarn ? " said he. 
 
 I went to the table and sunk upon a chair. A number of 
 women were now clustered at the skylight, and groups were 
 constantly coming and going at the door and windows, paus- 
 ing to stare, and then they'd walk away, talking quickly, 
 making room for others. 
 
 Brigstock, turning up his eyes at the skylight, exclaimed : 
 " You're a-keeping the air out, ladies. 'Sides, the poop aint 
 yourn now that the ship's got a capt'n. Do, like kind, good 
 people, step down on the quarter-deck, will yer, and leave room 
 for that there skylight to let in wind ? " 
 
 " If there's a captain come on board will he tell us if ever 
 we're to get to Orstralia ? " cried a young woman in an old 
 bonnet and shawl, with a club nose, and a rather merry cock 
 in her blue eye. 
 
 "Aye, aye; it'll be all right now it'll be all right now," 
 exclaimed Brigstock soothingly. " Do, like good, kind peo- 
 ple, go away forward, will yer, ladies ?" 
 
 " If you calls yourself a man," cried a gypsy-faced young 
 woman, black and red and curly, with bright eyes and white 
 teeth, "you'll tell the new capting the mischief you intends us, 
 as how we're not to reach Australia at all, but to be put into 
 an ilyand " 
 
 " That aint true," cried Brigstock, " and you knows, Miss 
 Dolly Johnson, while jer're saying of it that it aint true. I've 
 got jer name. I knows you. I've arsted jer more'n wance to 
 be civil. Everything's right in this ship. Our meaning '11 be 
 plain to the new captain shortly. Won't jer go away, then ? "
 
 98 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Captain, I wish you would let us know what's to become 
 of us," exclaimed a pale dark girl in a languid voice, dressed 
 in a round velvet hat and a jacket ; she had the look of a 
 housemaid or a dressmaker ; as she leaned into the skylight 
 her rather pretty figure was peculiarly graceful in its uncon- 
 scious posture of entreaty and alarm. 
 
 I was too puzzled and bewildered to make answer. It was 
 not only the eyes of perhaps a dozen girls now staring down 
 at me, one over another's shoulder, through the large open 
 skylight: the women on the main deck were crowding the 
 doorway and the windows, talking swiftly among themselves, 
 now and again a voice lifting into shrillness as though urging 
 another to speak out ; this sudden confrontment, I say, of 
 women's faces above and women's forms below was enough 
 to scatter the wits of a man who a little while before had 
 never guessed that there was more than sailors aboard, who 
 had not set eyes on a woman for weeks, and who at any time 
 was never much at his ease in the company of a number of 
 the sex. 
 
 " So you won't go ? " cried Brigstock with energy, but with- 
 out temper. " Mr. Morgan, I'll be back in a minute or two." 
 
 He went on deck and bawled for Isaac and Jupe and Bill 
 and Joe and one or two others to lay aft. Most of the women 
 at the skylight then went away ; among those who stayed 
 was the gypsy-faced girl. She screeched down, " Captain, 
 sail us to Orstralia, please. We're female emigrants going out 
 to take situations. We're all respectable girls, and some of us 
 is ladies. The sailors aint got no 'ed, and they talk and 
 they talk " 
 
 By this time some of the men had come on to the poop. 
 " Now, ladies, if you please," one of them exclaimed. In a few 
 moments the skylight was empty of faces, but the gypsy-like 
 girl's voice rang out as she went forward ; others swelled their 
 pipes high in cackling choruses of fear, wonder, temper. As 
 the skylight women drained off the poop on to the main deck, 
 the crowds there gathered about them. A couple of seamen 
 stood sentry at the skylight they stared down hard at me, 
 who sat just under. Others cleared the entrance door forward 
 and kept the windows free, through which I watched a scene 
 strange and wild indeed to light upon in mid-ocean seventy 
 or eighty women, mostly young, attired in as many ways as 
 there were people, a few in black, most in gay colors. The 
 ship was going along smoothly, heeled by the breeze ; on the 
 slope of the planks the women stood crowding around the 
 main hatch and mainmast, filling the deck to the bulwarks on
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S STORY. 99 
 
 either hand, flourishing their arms, chatting with fire, their 
 hands upon their hips, some appearing to spit their thoughts at 
 one another in cockfighting attitudes, nose to nose, as they 
 talked. A few hung silently apart, and they were mainly the 
 soberly dressed women. 
 
 I did not command the whole scene, but what I beheld 
 through the door and windows was an amazing picture of 
 female passions, almost startling with the abounding life in it, 
 so vivid were all colors in the light of the red sun, so dramatic 
 and ceaseless the postures and movements, so vital, too, the 
 whole with the quickening spirit put into it by the play of 
 shadows flung by the rigging, and the sensation of swiftness 
 coming out of the roar of parted and passing waters, and the 
 marble-hard curves of the straining canvas. 
 
 Brigstock came leisurely down the companion steps. He 
 laid his hat upon the table and seated himself abreast of me. 
 
 " Never yet met a woman," said he, " whose tongue wasn't 
 slung in the middle for both ends to wag at wunst. Talk. 
 There's that Dolly Johnson, as her name is. Start her and it's 
 like sticking a gimlet into a full cask. But women's man's 
 weaker vessels, and must be borne with." 
 
 "What about this ship ?" said I, staring him full in the 
 face. " Why am I kept here ? " 
 
 He slowly looked up at that part of the upper deck which 
 was pierced by the shaft of the mizzenmast, and pointed to it. 
 
 " D'jer see that smudge there, sir, as though the stuff had 
 been coated with charcoal ? " 
 
 It was as if the spar had been lanced with fire, chiseled 
 deep, but fine, then blackened with the smoke of a blast of 
 gunpowder. I had not before observed those marks. They 
 ran down abaft the mast, winding toward the table. 
 
 " That spar's, been struck," said I. 
 
 " Right, sir," he answered, with a slow drop of his head. 
 " The master of this vessel was Captain Halcrow, her chief 
 mate was Mr. Billing, the second officer was termed Mr. 
 Jeremy Latto, the bo'sun of the ship was called Cox, and 
 there was Dr. Rolt, a medical gent, in charge of the emigrants. 
 One day the capt'n, Dr. Rolt, and Mr. Billing were sitting at 
 dinner at this table. The captain, as it might be, was there. 
 Here, opposite him, sits Dr. Rolt. Alongside the medical 
 gent was Mr. Billing. I had come aft to put a screw into 
 that skylight, and looking down saw the three gentlemen at 
 their lunch as I've described. I went forward to get a small 
 screwdriver. It was a very heavy day. The hatmosphere 
 seemed full of smoke, long sleeping lines of it. The horizon
 
 100 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 was thick as dust, and the muck overhead hung in heaps close 
 down to the trucks, as if nothen but our mastheads kept their 
 bellies from bustin'. The royals and to'gallan* s'ls were off 
 her, the mainsail hauled up. The second mate had charge of 
 the deck. Everything had been quiet while this weather was 
 a-brewing. I never heard a single note of thunder out in the 
 gloom, and the water was like a looking-glass, with a large 
 heave of swell running through it from the south'ard. I'd just 
 got to my cabin, which I shared with the bo'sun in that port 
 wing o' fo'c's'le," said he, pointing forward, " when there was 
 a traymendious flash of lightning, followed by such a roar of 
 thunder that I actually thought the ship was splitting into 
 pieces under foot. Someone yelled, ' We've been struck ! ' 
 Just then out rushes the mate from the cuddy, bellowing like 
 a cow for it's calf, and flourishing his arms as if he was gone 
 clean mad. While a number of us was running aft there was 
 a second traymendious flash, and another roar of thunder like 
 to what went before, only louder, and down comes the rain in 
 a living sheet. 
 
 " What had happened ? When we ran into the cuddy we 
 found Dr. Rolt lying over the table dead as a chisel. The 
 captain was standing up with his hands over his eyes. 'Oh! 
 I'm struck blind ! ' he was crying. ' Oh, I'm struck blind ! ' 
 You can see how it happened. Here they sat, and the light- 
 ning falling maybe down the topsail sheets strikes through the 
 mast coat, and kills one man and blinds another." 
 
 I got up and walked to the mast to look again at the marks. 
 They were the work of a flash of lightning, and given two 
 men sitting close against the spar on either hand it, what more 
 conceivable than that one should be killed and the other 
 blinded ? 
 
 I returned to my seat. By this time others of the ship's 
 company had gathered at the skylight, and, glancing up, I found 
 myself closely scrutinized by some half dozen sailors. Others 
 who kept the women clear of the doors and windows, con- 
 stantly directed their eyes our way. 
 
 " Well, sir," continued Brigstock, " we buried poor Dr. Rolt, 
 and the body of a kinder man was never tossed overboard by 
 sailors. You should have heard him read the sarvice on Sun- 
 days ! and I'd never ask for a beautifuller sermon than he'd 
 give us. The captain, having lost his sight, was of no use. 
 There was nobody to tell him what to do to get his eyes again. 
 He kept his cabin and Mr. Billing took charge, but we soon 
 saw that things was going wrong with the mate's intellects. 
 It might have been the helectricity ; it might have been the
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S STORY. IOI 
 
 seeing a man struck dead just, maybe, as he was opening his 
 mouth to talk ; something had happened that was too much 
 for his reason, which I'm bound to say was never to be classed 
 A i in Natur's Registry o' Brains. He'd call a man aft, 
 look strangely, and forget what he'd sung out to him to come 
 for. I'd take notice of a wildness in the poor chap's eyes, and 
 wance bid the bo'sun observe it, and Cox he saw it. 
 
 " He came on deck one middle watch, and before two bells 
 was struck all hands was called. What for ? Because Mr. 
 Billing had chucked himself overboard. So help me 'Oly 
 Writ, which I read and believe in, it's the truth I sit here 
 a-telling you," said Brigstock, slowly putting his great brown 
 hand down upon the table, and solemnly inclining his head at 
 it three or four times in silence. " 'Twas the man at the 
 wheel saw Mr. Billing cast himself into the sea," he continued 
 after a pause, during which I had closely watched his face, 
 convinced by this examination that he was talking facts. 
 " He gave the alarm, as it's called. The ship was brought to 
 the wind and a boat sent away with the bo'sun in charge of 
 her. There was some moonlight, too much to miss the ship 
 by, too little to find the man with. They searched long, for 
 the mate's was a valuable life, then returned and we proceeded. 
 
 "It got about that the captain, much the same as Mr Bil- 
 ling had, was beginning to show some weakness in his senses. 
 The news had come along by the steward. We onderstood he 
 meant to transship himself at the first chance. It looked bad 
 that a capt'n, though blind, should abandon his ship. Why didn't 
 he order the second mate to carry the vessel to a port ? Because 
 in my opinion the second mate wanted command himself, and 
 worked upon the feelings of the afflicted commander. Be 
 struck blind, sir, and let the stays of your hintellect fall slack, 
 and it's odds if the first designing chap as comes along don't 
 find jer an easy prey. The steward 'ud tell us that he'd look 
 in on the capt'n and find him with tears on his cheeks. He 
 overheard the poor man tell Mr. Latto that was the second 
 mate's name that he wanted to get back to his wife and chil- 
 dren ; if his sight wur gone he was a ruined man, he said ; he 
 must get home quickly and put himself in the hands of the 
 doctors while there was a shot in the locker to pay 'em with, 
 and the second mate kept on recommending that he should 
 go, taking the first ship for home that 'ud receive him. 
 
 " It'll be ten days ago to-day that we spoke a vessel called 
 the Sovereign^ from Bombay for London. We hove to within 
 hail, and Mr. Latto talked with her master. They had a doc- 
 tor aboard, but he'd hurt his leg and couldn't leave the vessel,
 
 102 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 so the captain invited Mr. Latto to bring our commander to 
 his ship that the doctor might look at his eyes, and tell him 
 whether he might keep all on or whether he ought to retarn 
 home for a hoperation. Poor Captain Halcrow was handed 
 over the side ; Mr. Latto he got in. The bo'sun Cox he went 
 along too. He was troubled with something wrong inwardly, 
 and there being no doctor in this ship,he asked Mr. Latto's leave 
 to get the advice of the surgeon of the Sovereign. They left 
 me in charge of this vessel ; though I'm signed on here as car- 
 penter I must tell you that I'm an able seaman likewise, also 
 sailmaker, and was mate of a coaster three voyages, but I 
 know nothing about navigation. 
 
 " It was blowing a steady good breeze when the boat put off 
 that morning. It was a little afore noon. On a sudden it 
 piped up in a squall that whitened the water, though I could 
 see nothen for more wind to come out of than there was before. 
 The sea began to jump just as though there was a volcanic 
 heruption at work. This vessel lay down to the blast, and we 
 let go and clewed up, but the main topsail was aback. I saw 
 that the yard must be swung if the spar was to stand, and I 
 put my helm up, never doubting that the Sovereign, seeing our 
 situation, 'ud follow with our boat till we brought the ship to 
 again. 
 
 " To cut this yarn, sir : the breeze hardened into half a gale 
 afore two bells ; all to windward it was thick as muck. We 
 reefed topsails and brought the ship to, but t'other vessel was 
 out of sight by this time. She'd faded in the thickness as yer 
 image disappears in ruffled water. Some of our men said that 
 when they last saw her she was running. If so, she was not 
 making our course ; we hove to and kept a bright lookout, 
 but never saw her again." 
 
 He got up as he pronounced these words and entered a 
 cabin two doors from the one I had been locked up in. It was 
 yet the afternoon, but the sun was low. Through the skylight 
 I spied many scarlet clouds, speeding fast athwart our mast- 
 heads. The sailors had withdrawn. One or two may have 
 been hanging about to keep the skylight clear of the women, 
 but there was no more eager, scrutinizing, staring down at me 
 up there. 
 
 The quarter-deck, however, continued filling with young 
 women. 1 heard the sailors stationed at the door talking to a 
 little crowd who had just then swarmed to the cuddy front as 
 though to a general impulse of feverish, overmastering anxiety 
 and curiosity. The hot, blood-red light lay on them, and again 
 J viewed with amazement that singular scene of life and color,
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S STORY. 103 
 
 the continual movement of female shapes, a restless coming 
 and going of white and brown faces and shining eyes, a stream- 
 like mingling of fluttering hues of apparel, the greens and reds 
 and blues of the feathers and ribbons and hats, bright as light 
 itself under the arch of the milk-white staysail, whose clew 
 curved aft like the pinion of a sea fowl. 
 
 In a few moments Brigstock returned with the log book and 
 a tin box ; he put them on the table saying, " You've had my 
 yarn, Mr. Morgan. Now you'll be able to judge of the truth 
 for yourself." 
 
 He sat down with his slow motion and sober face and 
 watched me. I opened the log book and found that the entries 
 under the heading of " Remarks " corresponded exactly with 
 Brigstock's story. The mate had kept the journal down to 
 the day when he took charge, on the captain losing his sight. 
 Afterward the second mate, Latto, kept the log book. This 
 was made clear by the handwriting. The reference to the dis- 
 aster in the cuddy ran thus : 
 
 " The day opens thick and heavy, the weather darkening 
 toward noon with a calm sea and a light westerly swell. At 
 one o'clock, while the captain, Dr. Rolt, and the chief officer 
 were at lunch in the cuddy, the ship was struck by lightning ; 
 the flame cut through the mast coat and burst with an explo- 
 sion like a gun, filling the cuddy with a dazzling violet light. 
 Dr. Rolt was instantly killed, the captain was blinded, the 
 chief mate sustained a serious shock, but was not otherwise 
 injured." 
 
 I looked at Brigstock after reading this to myself and said, 
 " Here is the story of the lightning stroke just as you related 
 it to me." 
 
 He viewed me gravely without speaking. I turned over the 
 pages and read more, all to the point. The burial of Dr. 
 Rolt was entered, likewise the suicide of the chief officer this, 
 of course, in the handwriting of Mr. Latto. There was also 
 an entry recording the death of the steward ; this had hap- 
 pened some days after the tragic incident of the lightning, and 
 was probably referable to it, if, as was likely, the man was 
 waiting upon the captain and the others at the time. The 
 last of the log-book entries was dated eleven days before, sig- 
 nifying, according to Brigstock's statement, the accuracy of 
 which I was now certain of, that on the day following Latto 
 had gone in the boat with the blind captain to the Sovereign 
 and lost his ship. 
 
 " Now look at the vessel's papers, sir," said Brigstock, 
 observing that I closed the log book.
 
 104 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 But there was nothing material to be gathered from those 
 documents ; all of interest concerned the cargo. The vessel, 
 it seems, was freighted with stores for New South Wales ; the 
 goods consisted of agricultural implements, household furni- 
 ture, male and female wearing apparel, and the like. Here 
 were clearly given all particulars of the ship. She was the 
 Earl of Leicester, of 580 tons registered burden, owned by 
 Bull & Johnstone of Fenchurch Street, chartered for this 
 voyage as an emigrant vessel. The number of female emi- 
 grants was ninety, including a matron. There had been 
 originally nineteen seamen, but death and the misadventure of 
 the boat had sunk the number to twelve. 
 
 " Are you satisfied, sir ? " said Brigstock, with one of those 
 strange smiles which passed over his face like a cat's-paw over 
 the sea, shadowing but a part at a time. 
 
 " Yes, that you've spoken the truth," I answered ; "but that 
 doesn't leave me the better off. Will you tell me where you're 
 bound to, and what I've got to expect?" 
 
 " With your leave," he answered, " I'll put these things in 
 your cabin." 
 
 He carried the book and the box to the berth I had been 
 imprisoned in. 
 
 " Now, sir," said he, coming back to the table and picking up 
 his hat, " afore I tells you what our scheme is, I'd like you to 
 take a look at the ship," and without waiting for an answer he 
 slowly stumped up the companion steps. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. 
 
 A FRESH breeze was blowing off the starboard beam, a point 
 abaft it. The sky was red-hot from sea line to zenith with the 
 sunset, and under the great orb, poised yet a few degrees above 
 the horizon, the seas were working in blood. The ship had 
 all plain sail on her and was making noble progress. Masses 
 of orange-colored foam broke from her weather bow, and over 
 the rail to leeward the race was a wide and giddy swirl of 
 froth, whose extremity trembled in a windy sparkle a league 
 astern in the liquid crimson, which down there overhung the 
 blue and breaking surge. 
 
 I stood a minute or two at the companion looking up and 
 around to see what the picture was like. This was a fine little 
 ship, her decks sand-white, brass and glass and paint work
 
 AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. 105 
 
 bright and gleaming, everywhere a finish as of yacht-like pre- 
 cision in smallest details, such as the grating abaft the wheel, 
 the boat fittings, the compass stands, and so on. Her short 
 poop was handsomely railed at its break with brass, where a 
 row of trim buckets were neatly fitted. A central flight of 
 steps led to the quarter-deck. 
 
 A couple of seamen patrolled the weather side of the poop ; 
 one of them was the dark, high-colored, fisherman-looking 
 fellow ; the other a middle-aged man after Brigstock's build 
 and looks, with a sour curl of lip, and a pair of large globular 
 gray eyes, the left lid with a droop that painted a leer upon 
 his countenance. This man I reckoned was looking after the 
 ship in Brigstock's absence, while the other might have been 
 one of the men who had kept the skylight clear. They halted 
 in their pendulum walk on wheeling round and seeing me on 
 deck. 
 
 Brigstock exclaimed : " Our new capt'n, Joe ; Bill, the new 
 capt'n," on which both men flourished a thumb at their fore- 
 heads. 
 
 They were attired in the clothes they had shipped with, Joe 
 in a fur cap and a worn monkey jacket ; the other in the togs 
 of the sailor end of London. Joe had the appearance of the 
 master of a collier, sturdy, sour, and self-sufficient. Their 
 attire made me suspect that Brigstock that he might enjoy 
 his temporary command of the ship up to the hilt had clothed 
 himself in garments left behind by the captain or mates. 
 
 "Joe's been hacting as chief officer," said Brigstock, "but 
 the duty han't amounted to much more'n keeping a lookout. 
 He'll do well as second." 
 
 I glanced at the men, but said nothing. Small wonder that 
 the Caroline should have been quickly run out of sight in such 
 a breeze as this. Her round bows might thunder out eight 
 with half a gale of wind at her stern, but here was a clipper 
 ship with lines for an easy twelve as the wind now blew, rear- 
 ing such spacious heights as she did, everything aloft fitting 
 to perfection, everything set with the critical care and eye of 
 true seamanship, not an inch of the lustrous cloths but was doing 
 its work. Yes, the Caroline had long ago faded out of sight 
 like the honest old cask that she was ; and then, again, the sea- 
 men of this vessel had headed her on a course that was not 
 Blades', whose thoughts would not be of chasing, but of 
 reporting. 
 
 I walked to the break of the poop and looked along the 
 decks. I supposed the women had supped ; there was no 
 coming and going in the galley, at whose door three or four
 
 106 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 seamen lounged, smoking and staring aft at me. The decks 
 were not so full as they had shown. Probably half of the 
 emigrants were below, yet those visible made a goodly num- 
 ber as they hung here and there in groups or restlessly walked. 
 It is women's apparel, I suppose, that, by filling the eye, seems 
 to swell a mob of twenty of them into the bulk of forty men. 
 
 I stood looking, wondering what was to be the issue of this, 
 the latest of my extraordinary adventures. Brigstock came 
 and posted himself beside me. The man Joe resumed his 
 walk, and the dark, high-colored Bill went forward. I took 
 notice that many of those whom I viewed were young women 
 ranging from eighteen to perhaps thirty years of age. Most 
 had the looks of what you would call upper servants ; others 
 suggested the shop and the workroom. Here and there was 
 a refined face. They all seemed in good health, as though 
 picked for the most part, and well treated since they had been 
 in the ship. 
 
 The main hatch lay open with a single grating across it. A 
 few girls were seated on the coamings of the hatch, but they 
 got up when they saw me, and then all the women seemed 
 sensible of my presence at the same moment ; every face was 
 upturned ; a pale girl with dark eyes, clothed in a hat and 
 well-fitting jacket, stepped to under the spot where I stood, 
 and cried out with an hysterical clearness and loudness of 
 voice : 
 
 " If you are the captain will you please tell us, sir, what's to 
 become of us ? " 
 
 " Lady," answered Brigstock, leaning over the rail and 
 speaking with the gravity of a man in the pulpit, " it's not in 
 the captain's power to answer that question, and why? 
 Because he dorn't yet know himself what our plans are." 
 
 " But we know what your plans are," cried the girl, looking 
 around her as though she would summon others to form up 
 and help her with their presence. " They talk, captain, of 
 choosing wives out of our number and settling in an island, 
 and there's them in this ship," she went on, with a scowl on 
 her white brow as she looked around her, " as are base and 
 vile enough to accept the sailors' offers. Oh, sir," she cried, 
 lifting her hands and raising her voice into a harsh, unmusical, 
 wailing note, " if you are a gentleman, as we see you are, 
 you'll sail us to the country we're embarked for. We're many 
 as wishes to have nothing to do with the sailors and who scorns 
 the silly notion of an island." 
 
 ' Mr. Brigstock," said I, " has told you the truth so far as I 
 am concerned. I have no notion as yet of the men's inten-
 
 AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. 107 
 
 tions. Do you know how I was brought into this ship? 
 What's expected of me I've yet to hear. But one thing I hope, 
 indeed I am sure of : whatever the designs of the sailors may 
 be, no mischief is intended you nothing worse, let me believe, 
 than a delayed voyage. Am I right ? " I said, turning upon 
 Brigstock. 
 
 " They know," he answered, spreading his square-ended 
 fingers toward the quarter-deck as though he blessed the crowd 
 of up-lookers, " that no harm's meant. Yer'll larn all pres- 
 ently, Mr. Morgan, but I wanted jer to take a look round 
 fust." 
 
 At this moment I became conscious of being intently 
 watched by a girl who stood alone at the bulwarks abreast of 
 the main hatch. Strange that one out of the many females 
 who were staring at me should catch and fix my eye ! I 
 looked and looked again with growing wonder. I said to 
 myself, " Where have I met that girl ? " She wore a black and 
 white straw hat with a black ribbon round it, and was dressed 
 in black ; her plain robe fitted her so as to yield to the sight 
 most of the graces of her figure. Enough daylight yet lived 
 to see clearly by. I stretched my neck and screwed my brow 
 to distinguish the girl ; observing this she bowed and smiled, 
 and with some color in her face came along to the poop ladder. 
 
 Not until she had reached the foot of the ladder did I recog- 
 nize her. It was Kate Darnley ! 
 
 In a moment I ran down to catch her hand and bring her 
 on to the poop deck. 
 
 " Heaven preserve us ! " I exclaimed, regarding her with 
 amazement ; in truth I was so entirely capsized by this sudden 
 encounter that I forgot how to behave myself. "What on earth 
 are you doing here ?" 
 
 "It is an extraordinary meeting," she answered, with a great 
 deal of color still in her cheeks. " What should I be here but 
 an emigrant ? But to find you in the ship ! " 
 
 I glanced at Brigstock, who had stepped aside on my bring- 
 ing Kate Darnley up the ladder : he was viewing us with com- 
 placency. His mind lay plain in the face : he was glad I had 
 found a friend among the women ; the discovery would recon- 
 cile me to my situation, perhaps. The women on the main 
 deck looked and talked in asides ; curiosity was strong in 
 their countenances, and many of them were smiling. 
 
 " Well, I'm junked ! " said I. "And yet I remember now 
 you'd sometimes talk a bit darkly of emigrating. I recollect 
 certain questions you put to me when we stood one day watch- 
 ing a streak of sea past ten miles of mud."
 
 io8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " I was without friends and I declined to starve," she 
 answered, speaking quickly, " but I never bargained for this." 
 
 I led her aft. When the man named Joe saw me coming to 
 the weather side of the poop, which is the ship's dignity walk, 
 the place for the commander when he's on deck, everybody 
 saving the passengers giving it a wide berth then, he crossed 
 to leeward, joined Brigstock, and they paced athwart ships. 
 Many of the women went some distance forward to watch us, 
 of such importance in the dullness of the sea is any trifle which 
 rises above the nothings of the everyday life spent upon it. 
 
 "I scarcely now credit my eyesight," said I. "Your face 
 brings up Blathford, and I smell the sweets of the old garden 
 again, and we're on the river watched by cows and sheep 
 
 instead of instead of But you are looking well. Are 
 
 not you plumper than you were ? But, great guns ! what a 
 situation to find you in !" 
 
 She kept her dark eyes fastened upon me while I rattled on. 
 Her color had gone, but it brightened again in a soft suffus- 
 ing bloom when I talked of the sweets of the garden and our 
 river jaunts. 
 
 " I am as astonished as you ! " she exclaimed. " It is a 
 wonderful meeting. But then I have been watching you for 
 some time, and my surprise has not the freshness of yours. 
 Have you been wrecked ? Did the sailors find you in an open 
 boat that you're here ? " 
 
 " Don't you know," said I, " that this morning a bark named 
 the Caroline was spoken by this ship and her mate myself 
 courted on board by the most artful infernal lie ever uttered 
 by a respectable pious seaman ?" 
 
 " All I know is this," she answered : " a vessel was sighted 
 this morning, and when it was understood she was steering 
 for us the sailors told us to go below, and covered up the 
 hatches, and there they kept us for three or four hours till 
 some of us were nearly dead with the heat and vile air." 
 
 I now told her my story, afterward going back to my start 
 from Bristol, and working through my adventure down to that 
 morning. She listened with eyes large with wonder and inter- 
 est, sometimes uttering exclamations at the more tragic parts, 
 as Fletcher's throwing me off the cliff. By this time the sun 
 was gone, the shadow of the night was upon the sea, the stars 
 were shining brightly, and there was a piece of red moon 
 down in the southeast. The wind blew strong, and the ship 
 was roaring through the darkness, throwing a faintness as of 
 twilight upon the atmosphere round about her out of the foam 
 she hurled to left and right.
 
 AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. 109 
 
 " Capt'n, she's a bit pressed," called out Brigstock from 
 the break of the poop ; "shall we hease her of the royals and 
 mizzen t'garn s'l ?" 
 
 " I am no captain of yours," I sung back. " There's some- 
 thing to be said and heard before I take that post here." 
 
 " That'll be as soon as ever you're ready to step below, 
 sir," he answered, as respectfully as any man could wish to be 
 addressed by another ; then spoke to Bill, who called out 
 orders to clew up and stow the light sails just named. 
 
 " I hope you'll take command of the ship," said Kate Darn- 
 ley. " What otherwise is to become of us ? The sailors have 
 some wild, dangerous scheme in their heads of choosing wives 
 from the women on board and settling upon an island." 
 
 " They've been reading about the mutiny of the Bounty, I 
 suppose," I exclaimed, not very credulous of what she told me. 
 
 "They've found women," she went on, "willing to accept 
 them as husbands, and to settle with them." 
 
 "What! since you lost sight of the Sovereign with your 
 blinded captain in her ? " 
 
 " I suppose so. The men had very little to say to the girls 
 when Dr. Rolt was alive." 
 
 " In ten days the Jacks have worked out a scheme of 
 marriage and colonization ! I'll hear Brigstock's yarn. 
 What part of the ship do you occupy ? " 
 
 " The 'tween decks with the rest of them." 
 
 " I'll have you out of it and put you into a cabin aft. You 
 have a fine spirit to start all alone on a bread hunt t'other 
 side the world. You've no friends in Australia, I know." 
 
 " None. But I had no idea either of starving in England, 
 Mr. Morgan. 
 
 "You called me Charlie at Blathford." 
 
 "And I'll call you so here," she answered, "but we've not 
 met for many months, and this sort of meeting is being like 
 introduced afresh." 
 
 "So it is. But still you'll call me Charles for auld lang 
 syne, and you shall be Kate. I'll tell you why : if I take 
 command here, the ship certainly must be navigated, and I 
 guess I'm the only one that can do it. I shall be able to 
 make you comfortable without exciting the jealousy of the 
 'tween decks or the criticism of the forecastle by letting every- 
 body suppose you're a connection of mine, or if not that, an 
 old and intimate friend." 
 
 " But," said she after a pause, during which she had caught 
 hold of my arm to steady herself, for on a sudden the breeze 
 had freshened in a shrieking gust, tilting the angle of the
 
 no THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 deck into a sharp slope, and setting Joe roaring out to the 
 men to clew up the fore topgallant sail and to take in other 
 canvas, " but what will you do," said she, " if the men insist on 
 carrying out their scheme ? " 
 
 " I must learn their plans from their own lips before I can 
 answer your question." 
 
 Just then the shape of a woman showed darkly on the poop 
 ladder. The moon made very little light. Her wake was a 
 short scope of broken, leaping silver ; the stars shone finely, 
 yet it was a dark night, though clear, with swift gleamings of 
 the cold fires of the sea-glow in the black ridges ere they 
 broke. 
 
 " Is that you, Miss Darnley ? " called out the woman, stand- 
 ing on the poop ladder. 
 
 The girl answered yes. 
 
 " It's eight o'clock, please." 
 
 " All right," returned Kate. " We're supposed to ' turn in,' 
 as you sailors say, at eight," she added. 
 
 The woman disappeared. 
 
 " Who was that ? " said I. 
 
 " Miss Cobbs, the matron," she answered. 
 
 " Do they still carry out what was done in Dr. Roll's time ? " 
 said I, walking slowly with her toward the ladder. 
 
 " Nearly. Meals are served at the same hours, and we're 
 called below by the matron at eight the time was seven at 
 first." 
 
 " I'm glad to hear that," said I. " It speaks well for the 
 crew. There's no head you can't talk of Brigstock as a 
 head and yet the rules, of Roll's contrivance, I presume, are 
 as much in force as when he was aboard." 
 
 " I'll say this," she exclaimed in a low voice, for the man 
 Joe paced near us while we halted a moment or two at the 
 head of the poop ladder : " the men so far have behaved 
 with perfect propriety. I have not heard a complaint. Good- 
 night. We shall meet to-morrow, I hope." 
 
 "I'll see you to your door," said I, and accompanied her to 
 the main hatch, down which I watched her descend. 
 
 A middle-aged woman stood on the lower deck looking up. 
 I rightly supposed her to be the matron. The ladder that 
 sank to the 'tween decks was a wide flight of white wood steps 
 with a single handrail. A dim sheen of swinging lamps came 
 sifting to this large yawn of hatch large despite the two grat- 
 ings which were now upon it, and the crowding heel of a wind- 
 sail whose white leg was blowing like an escape of steam to 
 the mad swaying of the outstretched phantasmal head of it.
 
 AN" UNEXPECTED MEETING. ill 
 
 Kate looked up with a smile and passed out of sight, and I 
 walked to the cuddy with a design of calling for some supper. 
 
 All the women were apparently below ; the decks ran for- 
 ward dark and deserted, but I saw the figures of seamen in 
 the fore shrouds against the stars coming down from furling 
 the topgallant sail, and I heard the voices of men aloft stow- 
 ing staysails, and the calling of men on the forecastle to others 
 out on the jib boom. The cuddy was in darkness. I sang 
 out, supposing there might be somebody about or in the 
 pantry. Brigstock was busy with the ship on deck, the man 
 Joe, as I reckoned, having gone forward to help the watch. 
 
 I entered the captain's cabin, and feeling on the shelf found 
 the matches, and lighted the bracket lamp in the berth, then 
 the cuddy lamp. The pantry was next to the captain's cabin. 
 The lamp swinging abreast threw plenty of light into it, and 
 in a few minutes I stepped out with both hands full of things 
 to eat biscuits, cold pork, and a piece of boiled fowl. I judged 
 by these remains that Brigstock and others had used the cuddy 
 for eating in, though perhaps not for sleeping in. I sought 
 again in the pantry for something to drink, and found a vinegar 
 jar with a drain of rum in the bottom of it. There was noth- 
 ing more in the shape of spirits, and no beer, but the rum 
 made me a drink when I mixed it with fresh water from a 
 decanter in a bracket over the cuddy door. 
 
 The lee lid of the skylight lay open, and while I was eating 
 Brigstock put his head through and called down : " Ye're 
 right to make yourself at home, sir. There's more wind 
 a-coming, I think, and I'm waiting to get the mainsail off her 
 before I join you." 
 
 I gave him a nod, and went on eating. 
 
 The state of a man's mind is a tedious thing for another to 
 read about, but even though I had the wish to weary you I 
 should be little able to express the confusion of my thoughts 
 while I sat lonely in that cuddy, supping. The sailors were 
 hoarsely bawling on deck, the wind was whistling and groan- 
 ing and hooting like a theater full of maddened people, and 
 the white seas poured from the cleaving stem of the driven 
 ship in a sound like thunder. I had grown tolerably familiar 
 with my new extraordinary situation ; my talks with Brig- 
 stock, my view of the ship, had made a pretty real thing of it to 
 me ; the dreamlike character it had taken at first was passed. 
 Yet now, when I thought of Kate Darnley, the whole passage 
 seemed a wild, romancing vision again, something I should 
 awaken from to find myself with Blades, or even with Cadman, 
 and all between sheer nightmare.
 
 112 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 However, I began to see clearly after I had swallowed the 
 rum and eaten some food. It was certain I was in the power 
 of the crew, and that was to be kept steadily in mind by me, 
 as assuredly it would be by them, in all that was going to pass 
 between us. But I bit the salt pork with the savageness of a 
 wolf when I thought of the trick Brigstock had played me, the 
 lies he had told, the indignity of my imprisonment, his inso- 
 lent indifference to my rights and convenience. Then with 
 the fancy of Kate Darnley all became dreamlike again. 
 
 By and by the noise of men up aloft and on deck ceased ; 
 the ship, eased of the pressure on high, took the seas buoy- 
 antly, with now and again a sharp, hail like rattle forward when 
 a weather lurch of her forging bow flung a bucketful of brine 
 crisply inboard. I heard Brigstock call to Joe ; a few faces of 
 seamen now showed and vanished at the black cuddy windows. 
 Presently Brigstock came down by way of the companion, and 
 shaking a shower of crystals off his coat, he chucked his hat 
 down and said, " I hope you found all you wanted, sir?" 
 
 " I have done very well." 
 
 "There's young Gouger as'll be willing to help aft here 
 when things get settled," said he. " Yer read about the 
 steward in the log book, didn't jer ? Gouger can lay a cloth 
 and bring a dish from the galley, and that's nigh all that's 
 wanted. Did jer find anything to drink ? " 
 
 " A drain of rum." 
 
 " We broke out a cask of bottled ale a clay or two ago. 
 There's some left in that cabin," said he, pointing. "Shall I 
 fetch you a bottle ? " 
 
 " No, thanks. But I'd be glad of a pipe of tobacco." 
 
 He pulled out a clasp knife and a plug of Cavendish, then 
 going to the cuddy door, he called to a man, waited till he had 
 done his errand, then returned with a clean clay pipe. While 
 I was chipping a pipeful of the black tobacco into the palm 
 of my hand he said : 
 
 "Mr. Morgan, will you set us a true course? This sort of 
 sailing's mere rambling." 
 
 "Where are you bound?" I exclaimed, coolly striking a 
 wax match and lighting my pipe. 
 
 " To put it straight," he replied, with the merest shadow of 
 hesitation in his manner, " we're going for the South Pacific." 
 
 " What part? The South Pacific's a big ocean." 
 
 " Well, it mayn't be the South Pacific either ; it might come 
 to what we want a-lying north o' the equator. But anyhow, 
 all this aside : our course is for the Horn, Will you make it 
 true ? "
 
 AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. 113 
 
 I instantly resolved to do so, since nothing could possibly 
 come of stipulating at this moment, up here, too, on the 
 equatorial verge of the South Atlantic, seeing how the man's 
 determination pointed. I pulled off the soft gray wide-awake 
 and the slop jacket I had come aboard in, and, going to the 
 captain's cabin, overhauled the chart bag and found a track 
 chart of the world. This was good for my purpose. I recol- 
 lected the situation of the Caroline at noon on the preceding- 
 day, and could guess the present position of the Earl of 
 Leicester close enough to save me bothering with the stars. 
 
 When I came into the cuddy with the chart and a pair of 
 compasses I found three seamen besides Brigstock standing at 
 the table. They were bare-headed, and saluted me respect- 
 fully. 
 
 " Mr. Morgan," said Brigstock, " these men don't ask your 
 pardon for being here, though there'll be no intrusion upon 
 you when once the horcler and procedure of the voyage is set- 
 tled. We view ourselves in the light of a republic ; every 
 man's as good as his shipmate; but of course all are resolved 
 for the gen'ral welfare to obey orders and behave theirselves 
 as men. More'n a man there's no need to be in this here 
 world. This," said he, pointing to the active, wiry, crumple- 
 faced young fellow with the large mustache, who was at the 
 wheel when I came into the ship, " is Isaac Coffin ; this here," 
 he continued, pointing to a fat, staring sailor with pig's eyes 
 and hanging chops like a monkey's bags, " is Jupe Jackson ; 
 and that man," indicating the dark, high-colored fisherman 
 fellow, " is Bill Prentice three out of twelve of us. The port 
 watch has gone below. These men attend on behalf of the 
 ship's company. You want our yarn and we want your 
 sarvices." 
 
 He pulled a globular silver watch from the band of his 
 breeches, starting it with an effort, and bringing it out like a 
 cork, and looked slowly and gravely upon it as it lay in the 
 hollow of his hand on a level with the bottom button of his 
 waistcoat. " It's a little arter one bell," said he. " Well, it 
 can't take us long to square this here circle, and the ship's 
 a-going along snug enough. Will you give us a true course 
 for the Horn, Mr. Morgan ? " 
 
 " Hold this chart open," said I. 
 
 I made my calculations and named the course S. W. by S., 
 guessing that that would do till I had found the ship's true 
 position. Brigstock stumped with his solemn gait up the 
 companion steps, from the top of which he roared out, " How's 
 her head ? "
 
 114 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 An indistinguishable reply like a half-smothered bark came 
 dimly to my ear. It happened that the course I had given was 
 the course within a quarter of a point the ship was being 
 steered on ; there was no need, therefore, to handle the braces. 
 Brigstock came to the table. 
 
 " Now, sir," said he, " if you'll be good enough to sit down, 
 I'll tell you exactly what us men's intentions are." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S SCHEME. 
 
 I SAT as requested, lighting my pipe afresh ; the tobacco, 
 being thick-cut and damp, yielded a long smoke. I felt 
 nervous on a sudden. But the swing of the lamp threw a fre- 
 quent shadow over my face, which I knitted into a hard, 
 resolved expression, a thing not difficult to manage when you 
 have plenty of eyebrows and slack, sailorly hair upon the brow, 
 and when there's no hurry to speak or act. 
 
 The others did not offer to sit; they stood in the light 
 watching me or Brigstock, who leaned with one hand upon the 
 table, and leisurely and gravely motioned with the other while 
 he addressed me. 
 
 " Perhaps," said he, " it'll be best to say right off what our 
 scheme is. There's a good many little islands in the South 
 Pacific unowned and uninhabited. Some lies near the 
 hequator, some in more temperate climes, where the air's 
 sweet as new milk, where little or no clothes is wanted, and 
 where there's a whole boilin' of a Covent Gard'n Market in 
 one hacre o' soil. Think of what's to be found and cultivated: 
 fish and cocoanuts and burnaneys and breadfruit, vihapples, 
 oranges, sugar cane, yams, and sweet potatoes. Aint that 
 good enough ? " 
 
 He looked slowly round at the three men, who responded 
 with an emphatic nod. 
 
 " Nature is man's father and mother. She gives him bam- 
 boos for bricks, and the cocoanut's his rum cask and his oil 
 can. Us men's scheme is to choose a good, unowned island 
 down in them seas, and settle upon it along with certain 
 females in this vessel who've agreed to be our pardners in the 
 undertaking." 
 
 He paused to observe the effect of this. I sucked my pipe 
 and eyed him in silence, head back and arms folded. 
 
 " Of course you're aware," he continued, " that there's
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S SCHEME. US 
 
 nothen original in our scheme ? Others have hacted in a like 
 way, and they've proved the glory of Britannia, as witness the 
 United States of America, which was long a dependency of our 
 nation ; also Australia and Port Louis ; Berkeley Sound was 
 colonized twenty odd years ago by Lieutenant Smith and six 
 or seven seamen, who built houses and growed radishes, onions, 
 and flowers. Yer'll have heard of the Spanish colonel as set- 
 tled one of the Galapagos. He called it Floriado. When I 
 was off it in 1838 the population had rose to three hundred. 
 They sold us fowls and pigs, and they growed maize and sugar. 
 Had they been English they'd ha' throve. That there colonel 
 was an old fool. 'Stead of colonizing with steady, hard-workin' 
 respectable gells like them we've chose, he loads out o' the 
 gutter, manures his rock with everything that's godless in pet- 
 ticoats in Guyaquil, then takes and plants a shipful of prison 
 weeds in the choice soil and tarns in to dream of 'arvest. 
 You're not going to get any building to stand upright long on 
 mud and slime. Mix your scheme with the vartues if you 
 wants good concrete and a solid foundation. Aint that right ? " 
 
 The seamen looked as though, having on former occasions 
 expressed their opinion on this point, they considered the ques- 
 tion addressed to me. By this time I had judged that Brig- 
 stock was a man who enjoyed hearing his own voice, who 
 also had a high opinion of his flow of language one of your 
 respectable, mulish, perhaps religious seamen, sullen, slow, 
 and stiff, with obstinate and absurd convictions, but of rude 
 powers of mind, and capable of influencing, at all events, such 
 sailors as I might judge composed the remainder of the 
 original crew of this ship. But I also perceived that he had 
 the forecastle project very clearly defined in his brain, and 
 that I was called upon to deal with a man who had made up 
 his mind. 
 
 " Your intention," said I, " is to settle an island when 
 you've discovered something that suits you in the South 
 Pacific ? " 
 
 " South or north." 
 
 " You have found women among the emigrants willing to go 
 ashore and live with you ?" 
 
 " That's so." 
 
 " Are all hands cf you agreed in this ? " 
 
 " To a man, sir," he answered with solemn energy. 
 
 " How many females do you intend to take ashore with you ? " 
 
 " Why, twelve, to be sure a wife for each man," he answered 
 in a raised voice, slightly accented by indignation, and some 
 blood colored his face.
 
 Il6 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " What do you mean to do with the ship and the rest of the 
 people ?" 
 
 " We've given that our serious consideration," said he. 
 "The ship's not to be hurt. The safety of the females left 
 aboard has to be provided for. Mr. Morgan, here's our offer : 
 navigate us to the island that '11 suit us ; the ship's then yourn 
 to do what you like with. D'yer ask who's to work her ? 
 Who but Kanakas, which we'll put jer in the way oi filling 
 your fo'c's'le with before we part." 
 
 The secret fears I just now called " nervousness " were by 
 this time changed into tingling astonishment. It was clear, 
 anyhow, no villainy was intended nothing, I mean, that 
 might correspond in rascality with the stratagem that had 
 brought me into the ship. The fat seaman whom Brigstock 
 called Jupe Jackson exclaimed in a queer female voice : 
 
 " How are we to know that the capt'n mayn't fancy our 
 scheme and be willing to settle down along with us ? " 
 
 " Ha! Why, of course," said Brigstock, "should you arter 
 a bit see your way to make one of our colony, Mr. Morgan 
 and I notice you've already found a party on board as might 
 be glad to take up with yer then it'll be for us to consider in 
 what way the ship and the remaining females are to be sent 
 to a port." 
 
 "There's a-plenty of whalers as 'ud be glad to take the job 
 in hand," exclaimed the man Bill Prentice. 
 
 " Wives for the askin' and piles o' salvage money to keep 
 'em on," said the wiry mustachioed seaman Isaac Coffin. " If 
 whalemen han't changed since I went a-fishing they'll need 
 no coaxing." 
 
 " Do I understand," said I, " that after you and the women 
 who accompany you are landed you'll hand this ship with her 
 cargo and remaining passengers over to me to sail to a 
 port ? " 
 
 " To do what jer like with, I said," answered Brigstock. 
 
 "It's onderstood," said Coffin, "that we takes out of her 
 what o' the cargo our colony '11 need ? " 
 
 " They'll send a gunboat to carry you home and lag you 
 for piracy and other crimes if you meddle with the goods in 
 this ship," I exclaimed. 
 
 " I'm not of that opinion," said Brigstock after a pause. 
 "We'll have a claim on the ship for wages. 'Stead of taking 
 our earnings up in money we pays ourselves off in goods. 
 Where's the piracy ? Put us twelve men's wages together say 
 for four months, and call the amount fifty pound a month. 
 There's then two hundred pound a-howing. We don't want
 
 BRIGSTOCK' S SCHEME. II? 
 
 cash ; we takes it out in goods. D'jer call that piracy ? Let 
 the owners send our wages to the people the goods are con- 
 signed to. That's my way of looking the job over fair from 
 crown to heel." 
 
 I searched his face as he leaned across the table to dis- 
 cover by any twinkle of eye, by any twitch of mouth or curl 
 of lip, that he knew he talked nonsense. But his countenance 
 was as fixed and sedate with mulish and monkey-like com- 
 placency as though it had been a figurehead likeness of him. 
 I had no intention to argue. 
 
 " Did you men sail from London with this scheme in your 
 head ? " I asked. 
 
 " No. It's come along of our washing about here with 
 nothen to do, and talking with the women," answered Brig- 
 stock. 
 
 " In less than ten days' time all twelve hands of you have 
 lighted upon this fancy of a little Pacific commonwealth ? " 
 
 " Commonwealth's the word, and a good word it is," said 
 Brigstock, glancing with a leer at his mates. " Aye, it's all 
 come in ten days, and the job's as ready for launching as if it 
 had been in hand ten year." 
 
 " Are any of you married men ? " said I. 
 
 " Joe Harding's got a wife knocking about somewhere at 
 home, I onderstand," answered Brigstock, seating himself. 
 " But if his yarns are true she's not a sort of party that any 
 right-minded man would allow himself to be hindered by in 
 detarmining to become one of the fathers of a new constitoo- 
 tion." 
 
 " Does the woman who is willing to become his partner know 
 he is married ? " I asked. 
 
 " Sartingly. I asked Bill here to find out, and she said Joe 
 had told her at wanst." 
 
 " Do you expect to find a clergyman on your island ? " said I. 
 
 " I onderstand your meaning," he answered, smiling slowly 
 and gravely at Jackson. " It's agreed that I'm to be president. 
 The president of a republic combines, as the sayin'is, the func- 
 tions of the priest as well as the magistrate. What's a parson 
 at home ? They aint all made, jer know, by what's called con- 
 secration. My powers as a priest '11 be the same as any shore- 
 going parson, whether he's consecrated or whether he aint. 
 Why ? Because I shall be helected by the voice of the com- 
 munity whose hinterests I'm to represent, so that whatever I 
 do '11 be the expression of their minds. My hacts '11 be law. 
 Why ? Because they'll be the construin' of the meaning of the 
 people. I can marry 'em and I can divorce 'em. It was done
 
 1 1 8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 down at Pitcairn and at Tristan, and it stands good. Every 
 nation makes laws for itself. D'jer disput 'em ? Then it's for 
 the police t' find out why jer do. That's how we've put it to 
 the females here. They become as lawfully the wives of the 
 men I marry 'em to as though the Harchbishop of Canterbury 
 had settled along with us and read the sarvice. So when we 
 gets ashore I divorces Joe Harding from the woman he's left 
 behind him. He's satisfied, and his pardner's agreeable. 
 Therefore, Mr. Morgan, the customs and laws and regulations 
 of what you rightly call our commonwealth having been estab- 
 lished, what's the difference in principle between my divorcing 
 of Joe and his being divorced by a judge in England ? " 
 
 The fat seaman Jupe listened with a stupid face of staring 
 attention ; Bill and the others followed the speech with snig- 
 gering appreciation. For my part I was amazed by the man's 
 gabbling fluency, which I was forced within myself to own was 
 not wanting in sense either. 
 
 " I don't think," said he, regarding me earnestly, and feeling 
 in the breast pocket of his coat, " that my views are to be 
 heasily upset. Settle a shipload of men and women upon an 
 island, and the laws they make for themselves are the laws 
 of their country, which all who visit them must respect. Aint 
 that right ? " 
 
 I nodded, wondering now what the hour was and what reso- 
 lution I must form with regard to the command of the ship. 
 It was blowing with no more weight, yet the wind came hard. 
 The dance of the sea was angry, and the roaring under the 
 bows struck aft with the plunges in short thunderous shocks of 
 sound like the bursting of a sail. The windy moonlight ran 
 like a sheet of white silk thrown and then withdrawn upon the 
 skylight glass. I hardly knew what sail the vessel was under, 
 and my instincts as a seaman were teasing me to go on deck 
 and take a look at the weather, and see how things stood with 
 the vessel. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Morgan," said Brigstock, viewing a spectacle 
 case he had pulled out of his pocket as though he could not 
 recollect his motive in producing it. " we should very much 
 like to have your opinion of our scheme, sir ! " 
 
 The seamen looked searchingly at me : one as he lay swing- 
 ing over the back of a chair, the others as they swayed side by 
 side at the table; one with his hands buried in his breeches 
 pockets, the others with arms akimbo, limbs of yellow flesh 
 hard as rocks with muscle, and garnished with twenty wild and 
 barbarous devices in prickings the crucifix, the mermaid, the 
 bracelet, the heart, and other forecastle poetic savageries.
 
 BRIGSTOCK' S SCHEME. 119 
 
 " My opinion ! " I echoed. " I'm an honest man, I hope, 
 and you shall have an honest ans.ver. Your notion of colon- 
 izing a South Sea island is good, and worth encouraging. 
 Let British civilization spread ! especially in waters where the 
 black man's dinner is often still the white man. And you too 
 are honest, Mr. Brigstock, eh you and the remaining ship's 
 company ?" said I, looking at the seamen. " You don't want 
 my opinion on this project ? " 
 
 " Shouldn't have asked it otherwise," answered Brigstock. 
 
 " Then do your duty as English seamen first," said I, " by 
 which I mean that you've got to see the women in your 'tween 
 decks safe ashore in the land the ship sailed for ; then turn 
 to and colonize as hard as you can." 
 
 Jupe Jackson looked quickly and with temper in his little 
 eyes at Brigstock. Prentice and Coffin spoke together ; 
 Brigstock lifted his hand. 
 
 " We can't spoil our plan," said he very respectfully, and as 
 solemnly as if he was talking to me across a dead body, " be- 
 cause your notions of dooty don't exactly tally with ourn. 
 There's twelve of the females us men's going to provide for. 
 All the hinconvenience the others '11 be put to '11 arise from 
 their being kept at sea a little longer than they expected. 
 But then, d'jer see, afore we make the island we want it might 
 happen that other parties Ml be glad to jine us in a motherly 
 and sisterly way to help in the work all around, without, of 
 course, considering themselves servants, providing the pard- 
 ners we've chose are agreeable. Supposing that : then here's 
 a colony that '11 provide at the start for maybe twenty or thirty 
 females who'd otherwise, for all jer to know, come upon the 
 poor rates and raise the cost of livin' in Sydney. Aint that 
 good enough to keep the rest who stops in the ship a bit 
 longer at sea than they bargained for ? " 
 
 " It's not answerable " said Coffin cockily. 
 
 " Another matter," continued Brigstock, putting on a pair 
 of strong magnifying glasses, and standing up under the light 
 to read from the side of an old newspaper which he had 
 drawn out of his pocket carefully folded in canvas. " The 
 notion of most of the parties below," said he, stooping his 
 head to look at me over his spectacles, " is that they'll not be 
 a week ashore afore they'll be all swallowed up in marriage. 
 I've sounded 'em ; it's their idea. Ninety squatters, a-wallow- 
 ing in wealth, '11 be waiting at the dockyard gates for these 
 females to land in order to court and carry 'em off to hupcountry 
 palaces. What's the truth ? Here's a piece we found in a 
 paper that belongs to one of the men named Snortledge ;
 
 120 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 I've read it to many of the women. Some it hinfluenced 
 twelve sartingly, and perhaps more" he slowly smiled at 
 Prentice ; " unfortunately there's but twelve men." 
 
 Then, clearing his throat with a strong cough, he read the 
 following : 
 
 " Viewed as a marriage market, New South Wales must at 
 present be set down as decidedly and shockingly bad. A 
 speculative young woman emigrating without capital in the 
 hope of securing an establishment for life will no more suc- 
 ceed than would the young man without funds make a live- 
 lihood by coming out as a squatter. The reverses of the 
 colony made men cautious, and they continue so. Strange to 
 say, too, the well brought up and pretty maidens of the middle 
 and servant classes of Sydney do not appear to be much 
 sought in marriage. Yet it is undoubtedly in these classes that 
 the well-known preponderance of males exists. The single 
 men do not want wives, and the responsibilities and encum- 
 brances of family life. They prefer working hard, working like 
 slaves for four or five days, and larking the rest of the week ! " 
 
 He dropped his head to look at me again over his spectacles. 
 I had listened with attention, for there was truth in every 
 word of what he had delivered, and all the while I followed 
 him Kate Darnley had run in my head. 
 
 " It's reasonable enough," said he, " that parties going out 
 to a new country mainly to get married should be quite 
 willing to pick up with respectable men as they go along." 
 
 He carefully refolded the newspaper, stowed it away in its 
 canvas cover, and pocketed it along with his glasses. 
 
 "Aint it about time that Mr. Morgan here should tell us 
 what he means to do ? " said Coffin, who had been pulling 
 hard at his mustache, and making nervous grimaces with his 
 eyes, vulgarly arch with looks of low humor, fastened upon me 
 while Brigstock read. 
 
 " Yes," I answered quickly, " but bear this in mind : I've 
 been in this ship since noon only, and have but heard of your 
 scheme within the last hour. I'm not to be committed to 
 a heavy responsibility without reflection. If I voluntarily 
 consent to command the vessel I become one of your number, 
 and I'd like to consider all that your resolution means before 
 I settle with you." 
 
 " Make no mistake about one thing," exclaimed Brigstock, 
 gravely wagging a forefinger at me : " when we was left help- 
 less that's to say, without a navigator in this ship vartually 
 we were as much discharged as though we'd stepped ashore 
 and been paid off."
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S SCHEME. 121 
 
 " I don't think so," said I. 
 
 "Well, then, I'm sure of it," he cried with some show of 
 temper. 
 
 " Isn't a ship's crew discharged when she goes ashore and's 
 wrecked ? What's the difference between a vessel being hard 
 and fast on the rocks and a ship like ourn a-washing about 
 helpless ? " said Prentice. 
 
 "It's as I say," continued Brigstock. "We've been dis- 
 charged from the articles by what the underwriters would term 
 the hact of God. We can't go ashore in the middle of the 
 ocean, can we ? Then, having a ship under our feet, we've got 
 a perfect right to sail her to any spot we may select as con- 
 venient to land on." 
 
 This was a sea lawyer ! one of your rare hands who will 
 play the deuce with a captain's nerves, and just the sort of 
 philosopher to dominate a crew and make the sailors see things 
 exactly from his point of view. 
 
 " You talk of hunting for an island in the Pacific, north or 
 south," said I. " How long do you mean to take to find it ? " 
 
 "Oh, we'll carry on, we'll carry on," answered Brigstock. 
 " She's got heels, has this ship. We shall have the island 
 aboard us in three months." 
 
 " Easy," exclaimed Coffin, with an impatient twist of his 
 wiry figure. 
 
 " There are above a hundred souls on board," said I. 
 " You've already drunk up a good deal of your fresh water, 
 I guess. What stock's left ? " 
 
 " Plenty," answered Brigstock. " I allow that Captain Hal- 
 crow never intended to touch at the Cape. The stock that's 
 a-going to last from the Thames to New South Wales is 
 a-going to last from the Thames to the South Sea. What's 
 the difference ? It'll be only putting her off west 'stead of 
 east when the latitood's run down, with islands to rise every 
 morning a ter a bit when the Horn's sunk well astern." 
 
 " I advi: ; you to count your gallons over again, Mr. Brig, 
 stock," sai I. 
 
 " You're the scholar of this ship we'll leave that to you, 
 sir," he answered respectfully. 
 
 " I'll give you a reply in the morning," said I, getting up. 
 " I hear no bells. They should be kept going. What's the 
 hour ?" 
 
 He pulled out his watch and answered, " Half-past nine." 
 
 I pulled on my coat and put on my hat, designing a turn on 
 deck, for somehow I felt that I could think more clearly out 
 in the wild freedom of the windy, starry night, with its flying
 
 122 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 moonshine, than down here in this horizon of elegant panels 
 and creaking bulkheads. 
 
 " Let it stand till to-morrow, then," said Brigstock. " It's 
 but right jer should have time to meditate a bit. Jupe, there's 
 no rum, and the capt'n '11 be wanting a nightcap. Jump for a 
 lantern, my lad. All the spirits are in the lazarette, Mr. Mor- 
 gan. The hatch is padlocked and I've got the key, but it's 
 yourn when your mind's made up. You'll see your way, I 
 hope? What's the meaning of it but this : You're to put us 
 in the road of getting ashore ; the ship's then to be handed 
 over to you. I'm no swearer," he continued slowly and 
 deliberately, "but I could take a big oath" here he let his 
 heavy fist fall upon the table " that a fairer, straightfurruder 
 offer than ourn was never before made to a man, and that 
 never in all the maritime hannals in the likes of such a trav- 
 erse as this will jer hear or read of a crew of sailormen with 
 honester sentiments and uprighter meanings than's in this 
 ship." 
 
 I nodded that he might know I heard him, and went up the 
 companion steps. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE WOMEN. 
 
 IT was blowing a topgallant breeze. Large shadow-like 
 wings of cloud were spreading across the moon, and the bright 
 stars shot through the rush of dark stuff as though all between 
 was a race of meteors. The flight of the ship through the 
 night was a stirringand splendid picture; at every courtesy she 
 piled the water to her spritsail yard ; the dusky line of the 
 ocean throbbed clear and hard against a spectral, airy, green- 
 ish dimness, but under the moon the long black forms of seas 
 glanced in lines of pale light. 
 
 I walked to the break of the poop lost in thought. The 
 black shape of a seaman trudged to and fro near the wheel, at 
 which stood a second figure. The main hatch windsail was 
 wildly working and yawning like the struggling wearied ghost 
 of a giant under the main yard ; half the hatch lay open as 
 before, buried in darkness. 
 
 I stood looking at that black oblong of hatch, slowly form- 
 ing a resolution ; marveling likewise, as with an undernote of 
 thought, at the deep human significance this rushing and 
 streaming ship took from the crowds of sleepers in her blacH
 
 THE WOMEN. 123 
 
 heart. Had the souls of the slumberers combined into a 
 spirit for her that she should take the seas in that spurning, 
 topping, feverish way, as though she knew what her load was 
 and its trust in her ? Often had the ships I'd sailed in seemed 
 live things to me, but never was ship so living as this that 
 night and then. 
 
 Half an hour after I had left the cuddy Brigstock came up 
 the ladder and told me he'd put some wine and spirits in the 
 pantry ; they were to be for my own private use, he said ; he 
 added that the men continued on their regular allowance of a 
 tot of grog a day, which was all he meant they should have. 
 
 " When I starts my commonwealth," he sung out to me, 
 slanting his figure to my ear, " there'll be no drink. Hintoxi- 
 cation '11 stand next to murder as a crime. I'm for mixing the 
 vartues well in ; my scheme's to stand." He then bawled, 
 " George ! " 
 
 The fellow, who was walking aft, came along the deck. 
 
 " I'll take charge now," said Brigstock. "This gem'man I 
 hope '11 be our capt'n to-morrow." 
 
 The man touched his forehead, looking at me hard in that 
 pale flying light. He then went forward, and Brigstock made 
 a step as if he would have me join him. But I had heard and 
 talked enough. In an offhand way I said, " Am I to use the 
 captain's cabin ? " 
 
 " Sartinly. If you take command you'll make yourself wel- 
 come to what's inside it, I hope merely as borrowings ; every- 
 thing used can be handed back when you've carried the ship 
 to a port. These here clothes I've got on I found in the mate's 
 berth. My own chest's not well enough off to rig me out in a 
 style proper to command that sort of respect which my situa- 
 tion aboard hentitles me to." 
 
 " Good-night," said I. 
 
 " We shall have your answer in the morning ? " 
 
 "By eight o'clock," I replied. 
 
 I went straight to the captain's cabin and turned the light 
 up to shake the mattress and look round. I had noticed some 
 boxes of cigars in the locker while imprisoned ; I took one ; it 
 was a good cigar, and the smoke and fragrance of it soothed 
 my excitement. 
 
 My situation was indeed extraordinary. Yet before I had 
 quitted the deck I resolved to take command, though to hold 
 my peace till the morning that my importance might gain by 
 the crew's anxiety. I was largely influenced by the presence 
 of Kate Darnley. But for that girl I don't know that I should 
 have been quick in deciding. The past had corne strongly
 
 124 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 upon me while I considered what to do ; I lived again with her 
 at Blathford through her holiday time there. She had passed 
 out of my mind when she left, but this sudden, unexpected 
 meeting gave a sharpness to all the lines and tracings of 
 memory. It is always so : you know a man slightly in your 
 own country ; he slips out of recollection ; you meet him 
 abroad, the farther away the better for the sentiment of recol- 
 lection ; scores of trivial things come back, and there may 
 spring up a lasting friendship between you. Meet the same 
 man at home and you'd pass him by. 
 
 Kate Darnley's being on board was like an eloquent separate 
 appeal to me to take charge of the ship. Then there was the 
 safety of the crowd of poor women to think of. I judged I 
 had no need to fear the men. The situation had come about 
 quite honestly. There had been no violence, no mutiny. 
 Certain disasters had left the ship's company without a navi- 
 gating head. They had thought their condition over and de- 
 cided to people an uninhabited island, of which, to be sure, 
 there was no lack in those days in the seas they wished me to 
 steer them into. The women who had agreed to settle down 
 with them doubtless knew what they were doing. What sort 
 of lot was to be theirs in Australia ? In a South Pacific island 
 they might flourish into a free, happy, and prosperous com- 
 munity. As to marriage : Brigstock was right when he implied 
 that the patriarchal government of Pitcairn and Tristan was 
 all himself and followers needed. Besides, how long would 
 they need to wait for the heroic missionary with his blessing of 
 legitimacy ? 
 
 Thus ran my thoughts while I smoked the cigar, sometimes 
 sitting, sometimes taking a turn about the cabin, once opening 
 the door to listen, having caught the sound of men's voices 
 singing out, and the echo in the planks of coils of gear flung 
 down. I never questioned if I refused the command that 
 Brigstock would get a navigator by such another stratagem as 
 had decoyed me. And how would the crew use me then ? 
 Would they transship me and so enable me to start the first 
 propelled pennon we signaled after them ? 
 
 Being thirsty, I took a match and stepped into the pantry, 
 where I found some bottles of claret and brandy, and they had 
 filled the vinegar jar with rum. I knocked the head off a 
 claret bottle and drank half a tumbler of the wine ; it was a 
 cool drink and smelt like a nosegay. I then ate the remains 
 of the cold chicken, and thus refreshed went back into my 
 cabin, where I lighted a second cigar, resolved to make the 
 very best of the state I found myself in.
 
 THE WOMEN. 125 
 
 Nothing stirred in the cuddy saving the leaps of the shadows 
 with the abrupt swing of the lamp when the ship came in a 
 reeling heave to windward, then fell along on the slant of the 
 under-rushing sea, with a forest full of whistlings and wild 
 beast cries in her rigging. I caught all sounds through the 
 lee open lid of the skylight, and knew by them and by the play 
 under foot that the ship was doing a fair twelve under the 
 meteoric dance of moon and stars mid the break of the sweep- 
 ing shadows. 
 
 Brightening the lamp, cigar in mouth, I nicely overhauled a 
 second time the contents of this sea bedroom. The chronome- 
 ters were by a renowned maker ; the sextants costly, shining, 
 beautiful instruments ; all the mathematical gear of the best. 
 Everything essential to the complete equipment of a navigator 
 of those days, when, of course, the sea science lacked the exqui- 
 site mechanic expression it now possesses though I allow you 
 no more skill in the mariners of to-day was here. Alas ! the 
 dark hours of poor Halcrow's passage home would gather a 
 deeper dye from thoughts of his property gone adrift, perhaps 
 never more to be heard of. 
 
 I opened the log book and went through the entries, and 
 again looked at the ship's papers and tried to reckon the value 
 of the property in the hold from the particulars I glanced at. 
 Was it the wine or was it the imagination inspired by the con- 
 tents of the tin box? It is sure my spirits were at this hour 
 of six bells in a little dance. By my heart ! thought I, but 
 here, in this morning's treacherous entrapment of me, have I 
 found such a professional chance as, not having the wits to 
 conceive it, I should not have known how to pray for ? If 
 I safely bring this fine ship to port what should what must be 
 my reward ? Surely nothing less than the command of her 
 next voyage ; not to mention my claim as salvor. And then, 
 thought I, there is Kate Darnley. And then there is Kate 
 Darnley 
 
 I yawned and laughed, put out the light, kicked off my shoes, 
 and sprang into my bunk. Yet wearied as I had imagined 
 myself, I lay awake for an hour, and when I fell asleep I 
 dreamt that, being alone with Kate Darnley in the ship, I 
 found Cadman in hiding under the cuddy table. He made off 
 with Kate in a quarter boat, and I gave chase in the Earl of 
 Leicester. He drew me to the Great Salvage Island, then 
 vanished, and the ship went ashore. I landed, and the first 
 sight I beheld was Mr. Fletcher of Bristol hanging on a gib- 
 bet on the spot of cliff over whose edge he had hurled me. 
 
 1 was aroused by the strong shivering light. Looking
 
 126 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 through the porthole I saw the long seas, of a soft blue, lifting 
 in flashes and chasing gently ; the curl of them showed a fail- 
 ing wind. My porthole was a disk of brilliant morning. I 
 peeped into the cuddy and saw the ordinary seaman Gouger 
 wiping down a bulkhead. I asked him to fetch me a bucket 
 of salt water, and he complied as briskly as though he had 
 signed under me. 
 
 After a refreshing soapless sea wash I pulled on my slop 
 wide-awake, got into my slop jacket, and went through the 
 cuddy door on to the quarter-deck. It was like turning a 
 corner into a busy street. Five or six seamen were washing 
 the decks down, scrubbing the plank and sluicing the bright 
 brine out of buckets. I looked aloft ; the ship was clothed 
 in canvas to the trucks ; the yards were braced a little forward 
 on the starboard tack ; the weather clew of the mainsail was up, 
 and the vessel, slowly bowing, was moving like a body of sun- 
 touched vapor over the waters. 
 
 It put new heart into my resolution to take command when 
 I saw how faithfully the ship's duty was being carried on, 
 lords of themselves as the crew were ; the sight gave me a 
 high opinion of Brigsto'ck's influence and power of mind. A 
 great number of women were on deck perhaps forty or fifty. 
 I glanced swiftly here and there for Kate Darnley. Standing 
 in the doorway of the cuddy, shadowed by the ledge or break 
 of the poop, under which, exactly over my head, was a clock 
 indicating the hour of seven (guesswork time, of course, see- 
 ing they had been eleven days without an observation), I was 
 not for some time noticed. The women stood here and there 
 looking out to sea, or talking, or marching up and down 
 abreast, and some ten or twelve were walking upon the fore- 
 castle. I observed that the men bade them get out of the 
 road in the blunt speech and manner of the ocean ; there was 
 no familiarity in their manner of calling to the women, no 
 laughter, no "chaff." They went on with their work as though 
 the taut eye of a chief mate was overseeing them from the 
 break of the poop, and the women would step aside to get out 
 of the way of the water or the scrubbing brushes without any 
 of those airs of alley or area coquetry you might have expected 
 in females of their class when addressed by men, and when 
 all were in a situation unrestricted by quarter-deck government. 
 
 I found on now looking that I had been right in supposing 
 the women's ages to vary from eighteen to thirty. Some were 
 delicate pretty girls ; others coarse and heavy-featured. One 
 who stood not far from me was pale and flabby faced, with a 
 goddess' figure. Hard by stood one of your rolling, saucy,
 
 THE WOMEN. 127 
 
 hand-on-hip, laughing girls, with white teeth, and a dark, 
 sharp, darting eye. You'll easily get the picture by figuring 
 two score or so of cooks and housemaids, domestic servants of 
 a superior sort, here and there a woman whose looks sug- 
 gested the milliner, here and there a woman with drawn, com- 
 templative, pale face, of a ladylike figure, hinting at the gover- 
 ness ; conceive these on the deck of a ship moving in groups 
 out of the way of the men who are washing down. 
 
 The shawls, bonnets, hats, and gowns were of many fabrics, 
 shapes, and tints ; most of the girls, it seemed, had come to sea 
 in shabby finery. They flew feathers ; Brummagem fal-lals 
 danced in their ears, and brooched and pinned and even 
 ringed some of them ; and though they had been in one 
 another's company for weeks, and by this time probably knew 
 exactly the nature and extent of one another's wardrobes, 
 they'd still glance critically at a passing figure, eye her from 
 hat to heel, look from her to their own dress with downward 
 sweeping glances, all critically, as though, by Heaven ! they 
 were taking the children for an airing in the park ! as though 
 the giant Life Guardsman was close at hand ! as though, for- 
 sooth, all were well with the ship captain and officers hearty 
 and alert, the voyage as jolly as a drive to a tea garden for a 
 romp there ! 
 
 But it's always thus with women : the troubles they find 
 hardest to bear are those they expect. 
 
 As I stepped out of the cuddy door the female whom Kate 
 Darnley had called Hannah Cobbs, the matron, mounted the 
 hatch ladder, and looking up at the poop, nodded and smiled 
 and kissed her hand. I supposed there was some friend of her 
 sex there, and making three or four steps forward, I took a 
 backward peep, but saw no one save Brigstock, who was stand- 
 ing at the head of the poop steps. Good mercy ! thought I, 
 is it possible that she's his choice ? 
 
 Her age was about forty ; her thin bile-darkened face was 
 striking because of its long, lean, high-perched Roman nose ; 
 her eyes were a pale green ; her lips a mere stroke ; her fore- 
 head bare even to the suggestion of baldness, but upon either 
 cheek and against either ear there sat a substantial curl of 
 black hair like a beer bottle with its neck hidden. She was as 
 flat as a wall up and down her, respectably attired in a large 
 bonnet and a gray gown whose cut from the waist was the out- 
 line of a candle extinguisher. 
 
 She came out of the hatch and went toward the galley. 
 Brigstock, seeing me, called out, "Good-morning, sir." I 
 answered with a flourish of my hand, and went along the deck,
 
 128 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 looking here and there, for I wanted to see the ship. But by 
 this time I was perceived by the girls, one of whom, a strange 
 little figure, very short, slightly hunchbacked, with a humor- 
 ous squint and a tight twist of scarlet hair at the back of her 
 head under her hat, approached me in a sort of jumping walk 
 across the deck, and planted herself in my path. 
 
 "Are you the capting, sir?" she cried, speaking harshly 
 and thickly with a cold in her head. 
 
 " Not yet," I replied, with a look round at the women, who, 
 fifteen or twenty of them, were gathering about me even in the 
 instant of the red-headed girl's accost. 
 
 " We was booked to go to Orstralia," she exclaimed, " and 
 I s'y it's a beastly shame that we aint to be taken there all 
 along of our having no orficers and the commin sailors findin' 
 creatures women I'll not call them willing to take up and 
 settle down with 'em in parts which isn't in our way at all. 
 What I s'y is this," she continued, with a fiery nod of her 
 head at every word : " if we aint to be took to Orstralia sail 
 us back 'ome." 
 
 " Miss Cobbs ! " bawled Brigstock from the break of the 
 poop, " there's Miss 'Arvey at her old joke of worritin' again. 
 Clear the road for the capt'n, will 'ee, Miss Cobbs ? He can't 
 answer no questions. And wont the ladies let him walk for 
 his hentertainment ? " 
 
 " Take us 'ome, I s'y," screamed Miss Harvey at Brigstock, 
 with such a lift of hump and butting poise of head as trans- 
 formed the poor soul into the unsightliest woman I had ever 
 seen. " If yer don't mean to sail us to Orstralia take us 'ome. 
 That's what I s'y. Is there e'er a woman here savin' them I 
 won't be so demeaned as to name that wishes to be carried into 
 parts that aint in the way we settled and paid for ? 7 know 
 the law ! " she screamed. " We've got the perfickest right to 
 expect the new capt'n who stands here listenin' either to sail 
 us to Orstralia or carry us 'ome." 
 
 " Do you 'ear what Miss 'Arvey says ? " cried out a strongly 
 built young woman, with a scowling hanging face and the 
 looks of a Jewess with her lemon cheeks and thick eyebrows. 
 " He call hisself a man ! " she yelled, pointing in a most 
 insolent, derisive manner at Brigstock, and then bursting into 
 a loud hysterical laugh. " We ask to be carried to Australia 
 or took 'ome. Why don't him and his dirty sailors do it?" 
 
 "Now, Miss Harvey, and you, Miss Marks, we don't want 
 any trouble, and least of all noise,'\tyou please," here exclaimed 
 Miss Cobbs, the matron, thrusting in with the decision and per- 
 emptoriness of a female warder, speaking and looking indeed
 
 THE WOMEN. 129 
 
 with an air as though choliad learned her art in a prison. Her 
 voice was high, keen, and penetrating, and she stared as though 
 she felt a power of control in her eyes. " The females in this 
 ship have no call to make any trouble of what has happened. 
 What's come about is not owing to Mr. Brigstock or the sailors. 
 All who hear me know that this ship has been unable to make 
 any progress since we lost sight of the vessel the captain went 
 into. We are now fortunate in meeting with a gentleman who 
 will help us/' She cr,nk me an old-fashioned courtesy with a 
 smirk anC. a coy droop of the eyelids. " If there are parties 
 who intend to be set on shore before they reach Australia 
 their vishes have nothing to do with those who desire to get 
 to New South Wales. Perhaps, sir," she exclaimed, addressing 
 mc s " you will kindly tell these young persons that Australia's 
 just as easily reached by the passage of those seas in which 
 the sailors and others hope to settle themselves as by the 
 ordinary course round the Cape of Good "Ope." 
 
 " There are more roads than one to Australia," said I, 
 struck by her volubility and readiness. 
 
 The women had gathered around in a crowd, of which Miss 
 Cobbc, and I formed the center. Wherever I glanced I met 
 the gaze of dark eyes, blue eyes, brown eyes; some soft, appeal- 
 ing, timid, others on fire with curiosity and wonder, others 
 fretful and distrustful. But who can find terms for the sub- 
 tleties of women's faces ? 
 
 " What I s'y is, fust land us girls in Australia, them as 
 wishes Co get there," exclaimed Miss Sarah Harvey, fastening 
 her humorous squint upon the matron, though her posture and 
 looks wholly belied the suggestion of mirth in her perfidious 
 eyes, " and then '.he others may do as they jolly well please." 
 
 " Make room for the gentleman to see the ship," exclaimed 
 Miss Cobbs. 
 
 I pressed forward and drove clear of the poor girls, v/ho 
 broke up as before into parties, though they now talked loudly 
 and confusedly. Brigstock, who had watched the proceedings 
 on the main deck from the poop, called to Miss Cobbs, who 
 instantly turned and went to him. Here and there a sailor, 
 stooping at his work of coiling, scrubbing, swabbing, as it 
 might be, would lift his head and eye me askant, but always 
 respectfully, I thought, though I found an uneasy anxiety and 
 curiosity in two or three of them. Those I had not before 
 seen seemed decent, quiet men, much such as had swung in 
 the forecastle of the Caroline. 
 
 There yet remained a good store of live stock in the ship ; 
 the coop was half full of poultry, some pigs were styed under
 
 13 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the longboat, and in the longboat were a number of sheep. 
 I looked into the galley ; it was large and clean, and furnished 
 for the needs of many souls. The cook, as I supposed the 
 man to be, stood with his back to the door, talking earnestly 
 to a woman. She listened to him with her arms folded, and 
 with a smile of affectionate attention. Her sharp black eyes 
 above his shoulders saw me peering in ; she touched his bare 
 arm, and he turned to look at me. I passed on, tasting a strong 
 smell of cocoa and baking bread in the wind, and gained the 
 forecastle. A few women walking here eyed me earnestly, 
 and looked as though they must speak ; but I put on a figure- 
 head of a face, keeping my eyes steadfastly bent seaward, and 
 they held their peace. 
 
 A small bark was in sight on the weather bow, heading 
 away from us, close hauled, into the north and west, too far off 
 to speak, though I thought I saw a spot of color at her gaff 
 end. She showed like some winter fancy of frost in the blue 
 air, with sparkles upon her dead whiteness as of the colored 
 lights in snow upon ice. She was sliding along fast, and was 
 probably a Yankee, bound from round the Horn to a port in 
 the States. 
 
 Being wishful so to view the Earl of Leicester as to get that 
 sort of notion of the fabric which was to be obtained by look- 
 ing at her at a distance, I sprang on to the bowsprit and got 
 out on the jib boom end, where, catching hold of the stay, I 
 hung some five or ten minutes gazing aft. A noble, inspirit- 
 ing sight ! Faraway beneath me the metaled fore foot, bright 
 with yellow sheathing, was shearing through the clear blue 
 brine ; the white water coiled away from the glittering stem 
 in very hawsers of foam, their strands of glittering snow open- 
 ing fingerlike as they raced aft ; the breeze was failing, but 
 it was still a wind ; the sunlight streamed full upon the canvas, 
 which swelled in breasts of cream past one another, crowding 
 a wide space of the brilliant morning sky, to where the gilt 
 balls of the trucks invited the gaze to the pearly spaces of the 
 royals. 
 
 I had a clear view of the decks under the arch of the courses, 
 and saw the women walking on the quarter-deck, and Brig- 
 stock watching me from the weather side of the poop, and the 
 helmsman right aft rising and falling against the blue line of 
 the ocean, with much lovely tinging of the many lustrous 
 colors by the play of the shadows. Such a smart little ship as 
 she looked from that jib boom end, with nothing lacking but 
 an after quarter boat, the horizon, risen by my altitude to 
 midway her mizzenmast, defining her into a very miracle of
 
 THE WOMEN. 131 
 
 toy-like minuteness with its background of soft heaving blue ! 
 But what is there in ink to give you the spirit of what I saw 
 the salt smells of the ocean that sweetened it, the swell that 
 gave a rhythm and the wind a music to it, the soaring sun in the 
 east that glorified it ? 
 
 I slided inboard, went down the forecastle ladder, and 
 walked aft. Brigstock crossed to the lee side of the poop, and 
 bawled out in his grave note, " What d'jer think of her, sir ? " 
 
 I answered with a nod of appreciation. You need not goto 
 sea long to learn how to talk to a sailor without speaking to 
 him. 
 
 A little crowd of women had gathered at the galley door, 
 all with a sort of big hook pots and tin dishes ; it was break- 
 fast time for the 'tween decks, and those girls were the mess 
 women for the day. I liked to see this discipline of Dr. Roll's 
 time kept going ; it spoke well for Brigstock and the matron, 
 for all hands indeed. 
 
 As I made my way aft, curiously but silently eyed by those 
 whom I passed, I saw Kate Darnley. She stood close to the 
 foot of the poop ladder. Beside her, as though the group had 
 been conversing, were three or four of the few refined-looking 
 girls ; the word for them would have been "genteel " in those 
 times. They drew away as I advanced, lifting my hat with a 
 shore-going bow. Kate's face was in a glow at sight of me. 
 
 " I looked about at once for you," said I, holding her hand 
 somewhat demonstratively, that all who watched us might 
 understand she was my friend. " Come on to the poop. I 
 don't like to think of you as making one of this muddle of 
 slaveys and shop-joys. You must have a cabin in the cuddy 
 there." 
 
 " No," she answered quickly and with resolution. " Favor- 
 itism of that sort would create ill feeling But we can talk of 
 that by and by. Are you in command ? " 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " Why not yet ? " she exclaimed. " What are we to do 
 without you ?" 
 
 I looked at the clock over the cabin door and said, " I have 
 yet ten minutes to decide in. I promised Brigstock " here I 
 glanced up and saw him overhanging the rail looking at me 
 "an answer by eight. What shall I tell him ?" said I, smiling 
 into her eyes, which had grown spiritless with her changed 
 countenance. 
 
 " Advise ! You must take command, of course. Don't you 
 know the horrible situation we are placed in by being without 
 officers ? I don't mean only the helplessness of the crew, who
 
 13* THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 know nothing of navigation ; the men have found women who 
 are willing to settle down on an island with them, and their 
 intention is to hunt about for a suitable spot without caring one 
 jot," she cried with some passion, " what becomes of those who 
 are left in the ship." 
 
 " I know all about it," I answered softly and soothingly. 
 " I'll take command if it's only because you're on board. And 
 you and I will arrange," said I, still softly, with another glance 
 up at Brigstock, " when the fools of seamen and women have 
 left the ship, to carry her into safety." 
 
 " Mr. Morgan," sung down Brigstock, " aint it eight bells 
 yet ? " 
 
 " Just upon it," I answered, " and I'm ready for you. We'll 
 meet again shortly," said I to the girl, whose eyes were alight 
 again. 
 
 She went to the main hatch for her breakfast in the 'tween 
 decks, and I stepped into the cuddy. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 I TAKE COMMAND. 
 
 THE table was prepared for breakfast. Nothing could be 
 more seasonable as a picture to a sharp-set man than Gouger's 
 spread of ship's beef, preserved mutton, biscuit, cheese, and 
 ham. Brigstock overhead called out for Joe Harding to lay 
 aft, and, " Bill," he shouted, "give an eye to the ship, matey, 
 while we breakfasts." 
 
 After a few minutes he came down the companion along 
 with Joe Harding at the same moment that Gouger entered 
 by the cuddy door with cans of coffee and cocoa for us. Brig- 
 stock stalked up to me, Harding close behind him, and look- 
 ing grimly, so severe was the gravity of the fellow with the 
 anxiety in him, he said in a low, level, preaching voice, " Well, 
 sir, how's it to be ?" 
 
 " It's eight bells and I'll tell you," said I. " I accept the 
 command of this ship." 
 
 They both looked Joe's sneering whiskered face just be- 
 hind Brigstock's long, formal, grave countenance as though 
 they did not believe their ears ; both men then smiled, and 
 Brigstock said, " Mr. Morgan, give me your 'and." 
 
 I shook hands with the man ; Joe Harding then extended a 
 large cold fist, which I also shook. While this was doing I 
 saw, in the corner of my eye, the ordinary seaman Gouger, who
 
 / TAKE COMMAND. 133 
 
 stood in the cuddy door, flourish his arm, and a moment after 
 I heard some cheering and laughter in the neighborhood of the 
 galley. 
 
 " I'm glad indeed, and truly indeed am 1 glad," exclaimed 
 Brigstock. " Eh, Joe ? What a lot of messing about that lit- 
 tle word yes ' often saves ! Capt'n, we're here to breakfast 
 with you this morning to talk matters over. Afterward it's 
 for you to give orders as to how things are to be carried on 
 aft." 
 
 I seated myself at that part of the table where Captain Hal- 
 crow had been struck blind, Brigstock opposite, where Dr. Rolt 
 had been killed, and Harding alongside of him. The move- 
 ment of the ship was gentle, the cuddy full of light, and the 
 warm sweet wind of the sea gushed in through the open sky- 
 light with a humming sound like the moaning of doves. We 
 fell to, and while we ate and drank we discoursed thus : 
 
 " I'm to carry this ship," said I, " to an island in the 
 Pacific ? " 
 
 That's so," exclaimed Brigstock. 
 
 ' Have you no island of any sort in your head ? " 
 We must hunt for what we want," answered Brigstock. 
 We shall know what we like when we see it," said Harding. 
 Did you ever chance to cast your eyes upon a chart of the 
 North and South Pacific Ocean, starting from about a hundred 
 degrees of west longitude and running on to about a hundred 
 and thirty of east longitude ? It's all islands, Mr. Brigstock, 
 there, from the parallel of 30 S. to the same latitude north : 
 a mighty big field to pick and choose from." 
 
 " Why, yes ; putting it that way so it is," he answered with 
 his mouth full of preserved mutton; " but now you're in charge, 
 sir, with a knowledge of them seas " I shook my head, but he 
 went on " and good charts aboard, there'll be no difficulty 
 afore we're up to the Horn in settling upon a corner of that 
 field, as you rightly tarm it, to hunt over. No call to chase the 
 whole ocean. It's climate fust. That carries soil and all 
 else we've got in our minds along with it." 
 
 " You go ashore," said I, " with a number of women who 
 have never in their lives, perhaps, slept unsheltered. How do 
 you mean to stow them till you can build a roof for their 
 heads ?" 
 
 " That's what we mean by climate," said Harding, wiping 
 a smear of cocoa off his sourly curled lips with the back of 
 his hand, that was of the very color of the stuff with weather 
 and the tar bucket. " The climate's all the roof that's needed 
 till a village is built. What are we to be told : that poor sav-
 
 134 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 ages with nothen on fit to be took notice of can sleep sound 
 and keep their health under the stars, and hearty English- 
 women all wrapped up in good clothes an' strong as cows are 
 to sicken for the want of shelter ? " 
 
 " No call to talk o' shelter," said Brigstock. " How much 
 temporeery roofing may a man get out of a spare fore top- 
 sail ? " 
 
 " To come to the business of my command : what's to be 
 the discipline with regard to the emigrants ? " 
 
 " It can't be bettered," exclaimed Brigstock. 
 
 " I believe that, always providing the crew keep clear of the 
 women's quarters and interfere with the girls no more than 
 they did in Dr. Roll's time." 
 
 " Then they'll interfere with them less" exclaimed Harding, 
 with a sour nod. " Don't go and suppose, sir, that the doctor 
 was all eye. Our choice is our choice ; there'll be no inter- 
 ference." 
 
 " Trust our pardners to see to it ! " said Brigstock, with 
 a grave smile. 
 
 " I've had all night to think the matter over," said I, " and 
 I can find nothing to stipulate for. When you leave the ship 
 you give her up to me and the rest is my affair. Is that so ?" 
 
 " All so," exclaimed Brigstock with emphasis. 
 
 " It's my intention to sail her to Sydney when you've landed. 
 I shall want men to work her." 
 
 " We'll pick up a crew of Kanakas as we go along," said 
 Harding. 
 
 " That's possible. What put this scheme of settling an 
 island into your head ? " said I, looking at Brigstock. 
 
 " Well," he answered, pronouncing his words very deliber- 
 ately, " for a-many year now it's been a sort of passion of 
 mine to start a new constitootion. It was never one of them 
 rich and shining fancies which lead a man out of his plain 
 walk of life in chase ; but things happenin' as they've done 
 aboard this ship, all hinnocently contrived, everything fallin' 
 out in the lawful and correct course of accidents, why, the 
 occasion being come, I grasped it, sir, and I put it to my 
 mates as a splendid hopportunity to free theirselves from the 
 galling restraints of civilization and the hardships of having to 
 work for four-and-twenty hours a day in frost and wet and 
 muck for two pound ten and three pound ten a month. They 
 seed it as I seed it. There was to be no wrongdoing. We 
 put it to certain of the females. It was like giving them new 
 hearts. They jumped with delight. Worn't it so, Joe ? 
 Didn't that there Nell Wilde of yourn cut a caper or two when
 
 7 TAKE COMMAND. 135 
 
 you offered yourself ? What was it they was to be given ? 
 An 'usband and a 'ome apiece, a pick o' acres, nothen to do 
 but to develop the settlement instead of what ? " He paused 
 with a grimace of deep disgust. if Why, instead of being 
 menials and slaves in a new country, a-drudging in Australia 
 as they drudged in England, grate cleanin', floor sweepin', hup 
 at cockrise, bullied by a mistress as might have been a 
 convick ! " 
 
 He spoke with a slight twang in his nose, and suggested the 
 Sunday street corner ranter. I watched and listened to him 
 with interest. Long as I had used the sea I had never met 
 quite the like of such a sailor as this, though I had been ship- 
 mate with some pious, respectable, worthy fellows too in my 
 time. 
 
 >" Have you ever read about Pitcairn Island ? " said I. 
 He smiled and said, "Often. I could give you the yarn of 
 that there mutiny and settlement off by heart. Old Adams is 
 my model in this here scheme." 
 
 " I guessed as much," said I. " You choose Adams in 
 preference to Fletcher Christian." 
 
 " Recollect what Christian was shot for," he answered. 
 " D'jer remember the description the parties as met with them 
 islanders gave of the settlement : how Adams' daughter, a 
 fine handsome girl, clothed slightly, like a female in a play, 
 stood waiting on the top of a hill for the men-of-war people to 
 land, and how she led 'em through groves of cocoanut and 
 breadfruit trees to a beautiful, picturesque little village. 
 Them's the words of the yarn if my memory aint astray. Ha," 
 he cried, fetching a deep breath, " haint that description 
 fetching enough for the likes of such folks as us and our 
 pardners?" 
 
 " The whole twelve of you, then, are of one mind ? " 
 
 " Aye. Twelve strands all laid up into a rope of resolu- 
 tion ! " 
 
 " Do they and the women realize what they surrender by 
 living on a lonely Pacific island ? " 
 
 " Surrender ! " cried Brigstock, whose dark eyes began to 
 sparkle with animation. " Yes, sir. They realize that they 
 surrender the grog shop and the dancing room, the Sails and 
 Sukeys of the Highway and the out ports, the crimp who drugs 
 and the owner who drowns men, and the capt'n and mates, in 
 whose eyes the sailor's a scoundrel dog, meant by Almighty 
 God to be kicked and cursed and starved, too vile to be 
 prayed for, so that he never hears a prayer, good only as 
 a skin full of bones, which are to be worked and bruised and
 
 136 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 chilled and starved through his rag-covered flesh till they're 
 only fit to be tossed overboard with a stone in the hammock 
 clews, and not a creature in the wide world to tell you whose 
 child he was. Oh, yes, we all know what we're a-going to 
 surrender." 
 
 I was astonished by the man's rude eloquence, and judged 
 of its influence upon the crew by observing how it worked in 
 Joe Harding, who, when Brigstock ceased, threw an empty 
 pannikin at the cuddy door, and, withouts peech, fetched the 
 table a savage whack with his fist. 
 
 " But it aint surrenderin' only," continued Brigstock ; 
 " we're all sick of what we means to give up ; so are our 
 pardners. Aint there to be never any change for a man ? 
 Often when I look at a clock I say to myself, Why are them 
 hands always a-going round the same way ? Is time to be 
 read only in one fashion? No sensible man can think of 
 custom without feeling ill. We're born naked and the rest is 
 habit. I'm for a constitootion where habit shall be all nature 
 just as the baby's all nature. Likewise I'm for founding the 
 religion of my constitootion upon 'Oly Writ. What's a Chris- 
 tian nowadays ? Aint he a cove that believes in everything but 
 what's to be found in the Bible ? " 
 
 " It's the sameness that's killing ! " exclaimed Harding. 
 " Every day's like a shilling, and a bad un at that ; head one 
 side, tail t'other ; whichever side ye tarn it, there it is ; head 
 or tail." 
 
 " It may end in your joining of us, Mr. Morgan," said 
 Brigstock. " I see you're already beknown to as nice a little 
 party as there is aboard." 
 
 " She's a lady, the daughter of a clergyman, an intimate 
 friend, driven by poverty into crossing the sea for bread. 
 Her being in the ship increases my anxiety as to the behavior 
 of your men." 
 
 " I assure you, sir," he exclaimed earnestly, " there's no 
 call to be in the least uneasy." 
 
 " More like t'other way about, I allow," said Harding. 
 " It's us as wants protecting." 
 
 " What's the discipline ? " I asked. 
 
 " We've kep' to the doctor's lines," answered Brigstock. 
 " The females breakfast at eight, dines at half-past twelve, 
 and get their supper at half-past five. Miss Cobbs, the 
 matron, as she's called, is a fust-rate 'and ; everything under 
 her moves as soft and quiet as ile. She was born to help a 
 man to start a new constitootion. I fancied her the hinstant 
 I saw her. She's my pardner in this here traverse," said he,
 
 I TAKE COMMAND. 137 
 
 viewing me gravely. He added, " More'n I'd got a right to 
 expect as a plain working man, whose looks aint perhaps quite 
 what they was twenty years ago." 
 
 I held my face steady, though with difficulty. An inoppor- 
 tune smile must be a perilous thing with men so consumedly 
 serious as those two fellows. 
 
 " None of the crew, I suppose, are ever allowed in the 
 women's quarters? " 
 
 " None. Not likely. All twelve of us has got the same 
 as a wife there. D'jer think I'd relish hearing of my mates 
 cruising about in the dark below in the neighborhood of Miss 
 Cobbs ? Every man haint got the same tone of voice, but we 
 can all sing out when we're hurt. What's my poison aint 
 going to prove meat for Joe there. You take it, Mr. Morgan, 
 that if your young pardner was ashore under her father's 
 roof she couldn't be safer than she is here." 
 
 "And perhaps not so safe," exclaimed Harding gruffly, 
 " if you're to believe all that's told of what happens in them 
 country vicarages. Not long afore we sailed some chap at 
 the house I lodged at read a piece in a paper about a parson's 
 daughter as had been run away with by a nobleman's footman. 
 She shammed it were his doing when they was brought up 
 charged with pawning the church silver. But letters was read 
 in the court house a-proving beyond argeyment that both 
 parties was equally willin'." 
 
 " Well, then, sir," exclaimed Brigstock, making as though to 
 leave the table, " it's onderstood that you take charge of the 
 ship ?" 
 
 " Aye, setting those ashore who wish to leave her, and then 
 proceeding." 
 
 " The course now to be headed is straight for the Horn," 
 said he. 
 
 " It's the road to the South Seas. I shall want to get at the 
 ship's stock of provisions and fresh water." 
 
 " Say the word and it's done, sir," said Brigstock. 
 
 " We'll start at half-past nine." 
 
 " There's nothen to keep me here, I think, is there, Mr. 
 Brigstock?" said Harding, who, on getting a shake of .the 
 head from the other, left the cuddy. 
 
 " Mr. Morgan," said Brigstock after looking at me for 
 a few moments very earnestly, " you now perceive that our in- 
 tentions are hinnocent an' honest ? " 
 
 " There's nothing to find fault with. I'm not for holding 
 that you're still bound by the articles, seeing how things are, 
 but I doubt if the lawyers would let you touch the cargo."
 
 138 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " We'll take for our necessities only, and the value shan't 
 exceed our wages. 'Sides, shan't we have saved the ship for 
 the owners by putting you in command and working her till 
 Australia's almost aboard ? " Then, finding me silent, he 
 said in his low, level, deep voice, " Mr. Morgan, in giving you 
 this trust, us men of course have full confidence in you." 
 
 " I'll carry you to the South Pacific, where it's for you to 
 find an island. Nothing more's expected ? " 
 
 " Nothen." 
 
 " From me, I mean. From you I shall want this : the women 
 must be as faithfully and jealously protected as though armed 
 sentries were betwixt them and the forecastle." 
 
 " The men know my views, and they'll larn yours," said he. 
 " I tell you, sir, there's nothen to be afraid of in that way." 
 
 I gave him a nod, and, our conversation having ended, he 
 went on deck and I stepped into my cabin. 
 
 I lingered lost in thought, my eyes fixed on the sea that 
 swept trembling, brimful of light, past the circle of cabin 
 window. I had reflected long and passionately before decid- 
 ing, yet now that I had accepted command the responsibility 
 weighed upon me as though it had been new and violently 
 sudden. But I was content; I had charge of a fine ship, and 
 it would be my fault if the post proved barren. I might be 
 the instrument for rescuing a great crowd of poor women from 
 a situation of enormous peril ; I should probably be the means 
 of preserving a noble vessel ; I had good reasons to hope that 
 the men would prove decorous in their relations with the 
 'tween decks ; and concern for their own safety and their reso- 
 lution to carry the ship into the Pacific should go the whole 
 length of keeping them obedient. In a word, I was satisfied. 
 
 One thing, however, was plain : I must quickly settle the 
 whereabouts of a suitable island, for I had no notion of keep- 
 ing this ship full of women cruising about in search of a site 
 for a forecastle Utopia. 
 
 Being without a watch, I went on to the quarter-deck to see 
 what o'clock it was, and found the hour just half-past nine. 
 The women had long ago finished breakfast and nearly all of 
 them were on deck, sitting, lounging, flitting; their tongues 
 wagged ceaselessly. Here and there sat one with a book. 
 Three of them were talking to the same number of sailors on 
 the forecastle. I guessed them " pardners," as Brigstock 
 called them. 
 
 Kate Darnley stood alone to leeward of the main deck ; she 
 was upon a coil of rope which raised her head above the rail, 
 and she was looking down at the wreaths and bells of white
 
 / TAKE COMMAND. 139 
 
 foam now languidly streaming past. The heavier canvas was 
 hollowing in to the bowing of the vessel with light reports like 
 the explosions of smallarms up aloft. 
 
 The women stared at me very hard, many breaking off in 
 their speech. The female with the club nose and merry cast of 
 eye approached with protest and passion strong and hot in her 
 face. To escape her I went on to the poop, and when from the 
 break of it I looked forward so as to take in the ship, Kate 
 Darnley turned and saw me. I pulled off my hat, and going 
 down to leeward, called along the line of bulwark rail, " I hope 
 to join you by and by." She gave me a bow with some color, 
 and I noticed that many of the women looked at her and 
 spoke one to another, evidently " making remarks," as they 
 call it. 
 
 Brigstock stood near the wheel talking to the man at it. 
 Before singing out to him I sent a glance round the ocean ; 
 the bark had vanished nothing was in sight. I reckoned that 
 the failing of the breeze might signify the speedy breathing of 
 the trade wind. Southeast it was a bit hazy, with fibrine lines 
 of cloud-like rays of light, and white as milk in the shining 
 morning, striking out of what I judged might be a bank of 
 vapor invisible in the dimness. Yet the wind hung still to the 
 north of west, scanting even as I stood looking, and the slop- 
 slop of the water lifting to the side and falling back was a sure 
 sign of an approaching lull. 
 
 Brigstock now coming to me, I told him to get the fore and 
 main hatches open and call Joe Harding aft to keep a lookout. 
 But before entering the hold I desired to inspect the 'tween 
 decks ; accordingly, followed by Brigstock, I descended the 
 wide main hatch ladder and entered the women's quarters. 
 Under and round the hatchway there was plenty of light, but 
 the fore part was so gloomy that the sight fresh from the day 
 failed to easily determine outlines. 
 
 I found here what I had not expected to see : a row of 
 plain, white, bulkheaded cabins, rudely put together, such as 
 you'd find in a troop ship of that day ; they ran on either hand 
 halfway along the 'tween decks ; the ship's sides then lay 
 exposed, scaffolded with sleeping shelves in double tiers. 
 Down the center betwixt the cabins and open bunks ran a 
 narrow table framed with rude benches of deal plank on short, 
 sawed-off timber uprights. The smell of the newly sawn wood 
 still lingered. 
 
 A few women were sitting at the table, two of them writing, 
 the others sewing. After I had stood a minute looking around 
 Miss Cobbs came out of the first of the cabins on the port
 
 14 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 side. She ducked me a courtesy, and then looking at Brig- 
 stock exclaimed : " Thomas, I hope we may now call the gen- 
 tleman captain ? " 
 
 " Yer may, 'Annah," answered Brigstock, taking her sharp 
 elbow in the yellow hollow palm of his hand as she came and 
 stood beside him, rubbing shoulders with a cat-like slope of 
 her figure. " It's now Captain Morgan of the Earl of Leices- 
 ter. There's to be nothen in the past to discomfort our satis- 
 faction, and the future's to be hall plain sailing." 
 
 " Miss Cobbs, I shall count upon your helping me to keep 
 the routine of Dr. Rolt's time going tautly as it was worked 
 when he was alive," said I. " I pretty well see what the rules 
 are. Let everything be sweet and clean down here, Miss 
 Cobbs. Turn the women up regularly to air their bedding. 
 You're skipper of this part of the ship ; I look to you to help 
 us along through a very queer dilemma." 
 
 " Captain Morgan, you may depend upon my doing hevery- 
 thing that lies in my power," she answered with a mincing, 
 finical, " superior " air, while her mere line of mouth parted in 
 a maidenly smirk as she looked at me, letting her eyes wink 
 down my figure. 
 
 I was too much in earnest to suffer any old fooling and what 
 I may call sausage-curl coquetry in Miss Cobbs, and began to 
 question her sharply and sternly. I wanted to know her 
 methods, what were the rules as to the washing down of the 
 'tween decks, at what time of day and how often the bedding 
 was aired. I'll not trouble you with the questions I put to 
 her ; she answered me intelligently and respectfully, shrewdly 
 and swiftly appreciating my earnestness and attitude of com- 
 mand. Brigstock listened with a grave smile ; the man ap- 
 peared both impressed and pleased. The women at the table 
 ceased to write and sew to hearken to us. 
 
 While I talked a couple of seamen came below and opened 
 the hatch which conducted into the hold ; it lay, of course, 
 right under the main deck hatch. I meant to see more of the 
 'tween decks, however, before going into the question of the 
 stores. 
 
 " Let me look at those cabins," said I. 
 
 Miss Cobbs threw open the door of her own berth. This 
 interior had been specially fitted up for the matron and con- 
 tained a single sleeping shelf and the conveniences of a bedroom. 
 The other cabins were larger, and each contained a couple of 
 shelves for the reception of six women. The shelves were 
 divided into three by coamings or thin strips of plank that 
 each sleeper might rest clear of her companions.
 
 / TAKE COMMAND. 141 
 
 " Where does Miss Darnley sleep ? " said I. 
 
 " In the fore end yonder, sir," answered Miss Cobbs. 
 
 " Upon an open shelf there ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Why should some have cabins and some open shelves 
 when all should fare alike? " 
 
 " I don't know. This is how we found the ship fitted, but 
 the open shelves are the beds most favored. The women 
 don't like being boxed up, more particularly when it's hot like 
 now. There's been a great deal of uncomfortable feeling 
 caused by them open shelves there. 
 
 I walked slowly forward ; the women at the table rose as I 
 approached. One of them, a tall, fair, dough-faced girl with 
 amber hair, and pale blue eyes, and a willowy figure, and large, 
 red hands, eloquent of the grate and the doorstep, exclaimed in 
 a trembling voice, " I beg your pardon, sir ; if you're the new 
 captain may I ask a question ? " 
 
 " Now, Miss Dobree," whipped in Miss Cobbs, her clear, 
 hard voice shearing betwixt me and the girl with an actual sug- 
 gestion of the cutlass in the steel-like sweep of the tone past 
 the ear, " Captain Morgan is not here to answer questions ; 
 he's merely come to look round." 
 
 " What do you wish to say ? " I exclaimed. 
 
 " What's to be done with us, sir ? " answered the girl, and 
 even as she spoke her eyes bubbled. 
 
 " I shall carry you to your destination," said I. " Presently 
 I'll call representatives of you aft and reassure you, I hope. 
 Don't cry ; it's all right." 
 
 " The wrong's this," exclaimed a young woman at the other 
 side of the table, a powerfully built person of some eight-and- 
 twenty, wild with thick black finger-swept hair and heavy eye- 
 brows, but coarsely good looking, with a sort of taking charm, 
 too, in the mutinous glare of her black eyes, richly fringed and 
 steady in [their stare as a portrait's : " here's Miss Cobbs 
 paid to look after us, and she's one of the first to go over 
 to the sailors. Oughtn't she to know better? Aren't the 
 years she's come to called the age of discretion ? " She looked 
 with audacious scorn at Miss Cobbs. 
 
 " Hold your saucy tongue ! " cried the matron. " WLy powers 
 are none the less because things are not as they were when we 
 sailed. You'll do no good to yourself by insulting me. Get 
 on deck and cast your swinish temper into the sea." 
 
 The young woman muttered to one of her companions, and 
 then laughed passionately. Miss Cobbs took no notice, and 
 we walked into the fore part of the 'tween decks.
 
 142 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Here the interior had the look of a prison. I once boarded 
 a convict ship at Hobart Town, and the fittings of that vessel 
 reminded me of what I now saw. A girl was asleep in a bunk 
 in the starboard lower tier ; her hair had been loosened with 
 the friction of the pillow ; it lay upon her brow and neck in 
 such a shadow or dye of raven blackness that by contrast the 
 white face looked like light itself. Miss Cobbs spoke. I 
 whispered, " Speak soft." Never before had the sense of the 
 sanctity of sleep been keener in me. Miss Cobbs whispered 
 that the girl had complained of a splitting headache ; well or 
 ill, she looked as if resting in the sweet and touching calm of 
 death. No voice now sounded in those 'tween decks ; nothing 
 was to be heard but the creaking of the bulkheads ; in that 
 brief pause, vexed only by the weak, fine-weather noises of the 
 fabric, I viewed that lonely sleeping figure. Lonely she looked. 
 Not that she was lonelier than the others, but her solitariness 
 was made appealing by her lying there asleep, and by her being 
 the only figure in those rows of shelves. Whose child was she ? 
 What were her hopes ? 
 
 If ever ship needed a commander this was she ! Poor Kate 
 Darnley ! thought I, glancing round the scaffolding of bed 
 places. To be sure, it would be misery for the refined, well-bred 
 lady, the woman of instincts fastidious with breeding and edu- 
 cation, to suffer and sicken in such a dungeon-like glimmering 
 bedroom as this, with its pretty company of the kitchen and 
 the scullery regaling one another with area memories and 
 recollections of the Sunday evening gent. 
 
 I walked aft in silence, Miss Cobbs in my wake. Brigstock 
 stood at the open hatch. 
 
 "We'll deal with the fresh water stock first," said I. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE " PARDNERS." 
 
 BY half-past eleven I had got at all I wanted to find out. I 
 was an old hand at stowage, and knew the art of gauging. 
 This was the second time since I sailed from England that I 
 had found occasion, for one reason or another, for ascertaining 
 the stock of fresh water, and now the stores of victuals. I did 
 not choose to trust to Brigstock's report. I crawled about 
 the fore hold, then over the water casks stowed under the 
 main deck, then overhauled the after hatch, and with a paper 
 full of figures and writing rudely scratched by lantern light, I 

 
 THE " PARDNERS." 143 
 
 went on deck, made for my cabin, where in five or ten minutes 
 I washed and trimmed myself, and carried my sextant on to 
 the poop. 
 
 While taking an observation I smiled at the eagerness with 
 which I was watched by the women. They crowded up the 
 poop ladder to look at me ; they swarmed upon the bulwarks, 
 more or less gracefully swinging by the rigging. A crowd 
 stared from the head of the forecastle ladder. 
 
 On making the hour noon I sung out for eight bells to be 
 struck in the usual words ; instantly one of the seamen who 
 had stationed himself beside the bell abaft the mainmast 
 struck it, and along with the chimes there ran a very musketry 
 of hand-clapping, accompanied by a chorus of shrieking 
 cheers startling to listen to. Did you ever hear women 
 cheer ? Never did I before that time nor since. It was like 
 the wailing and crying of a hundred children in pain and terror, 
 nothing whatever jubilant or gratulatory in it the wildest, 
 most inhuman expression imaginable of hope renewed and 
 pleasure ; something to sound pitifully and frightfully by night 
 in one of the deeper hushes of the sea. 
 
 I bade Brigstock put the clock on the cuddy front right, and 
 went below to work out my sights and deal with the figures I 
 had brought up out of the hold. This business occupied me 
 till hard upon one. The quantity of fresh water was far 
 greater than 1 had imagined. It was evident the commander 
 had not designed to call at the Cape. 
 
 The discovery pleased me. We should, of course, have 
 found no difficulty in filling our water casks, but unless we 
 hove to off something barren like the Salvage, discovered a 
 fountain there, and rafted our casks for it, the scheme the 
 sailors had in hand would certainly be blown by the women. 
 At no port would it be possible to keep the Pacific project 
 secret, in which case some British consul or other would come 
 upon the scene, dismiss me from the command for all I could 
 tell, to put a friend of his in my room, dispatch the ship to her 
 New South Wales port, and leave me to kick my unoccupied 
 heels about till I found an aforemast berth or something of 
 that sort. 
 
 No ! The closer I looked into my present situation the bet- 
 ter was I pleased with it. In fact I was already as much in 
 earnest as Brigstock that he and his company of men and 
 women, the rude forefathers and grandmothers of some tiny 
 South Sea commonwealth, should go ashore upon an island 
 and leave me to manage the rest. 
 
 I marked the situation of the ship upon the track chart, and
 
 144 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 went on deck to look at the weather before eating. The cabin 
 table was being prepared for the midday meal by Gouger, who 
 was now to regularly serve in my end of the ship. The table 
 looked smart and glistening enough with damask and glass 
 and plate ; indeed the equipment of the vessel was handsome 
 throughout, down to the littlest particulars. I'd often wonder 
 that so smart, well-found a craft should be employed in this 
 low trade ; but then those were bad times in shipping ; wages 
 were poor, the carrying traffic overdone, freights low. No 
 doubt the owners of the Earl of Leicester were glad enough to 
 fill her up with a cargo of women and the colonial stores she 
 carried. 
 
 Looking at the table as I passed on my way on deck, I 
 resolved to bring Kate Darnley into this cabin, out of the 
 twilight and alley chatter of the 'tween decks. Here she would 
 feel herself the lady she was. Here she would sit at a breezy 
 table under a bright skylight, and eat and drink of all that was 
 best in the ship's larder. I was now in command; I was supreme 
 head. My will was the will of the quarter-deck, than which 
 there is nothing more despotic the wide world over. Kate 
 Darnley is my friend, thought I ; why shouldn't I make her a 
 first-class passenger ? 
 
 On gaining the deck I found a calm upon the sea ; the sails 
 were beating the masts to the long-drawn rolls of the ship upon 
 the swell that had come on a sudden chasing out of the south- 
 east. I told Brigstock to stand by for a shift of wind ; the 
 mainsail was already hauled up, and there was nothing to be 
 done but wait. The women were below at dinner ; up through 
 the wide main hatch came the clatter of crockery and the 
 shrewd hum of female voices. A couple of women holding 
 mess utensils stood at the galley door talking to some of the 
 seamen. I stepped to the break of the poop, and after gazing 
 sternly at the group, during which the sailors shifted a bit 
 uneasily from one leg to another, pulling their pipes from their 
 mouths and sinking the animation in their gestures and voices, 
 though the girls gabbled without heeding my surveyal, looking 
 my way once or twice, but talking with tosses of the head and 
 laughter all the same, I called to Brigstock. 
 
 " Who are those women ? " 
 
 " That there big un," said he, " with the projecting teeth is 
 Emma Grubb, Isaac Coffin's pardner. T'other with the great 
 red arms is Kate Davis, Jupe Jackson's choice." 
 
 " Coffin's that man there with the mustache ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " And Jackson's the short fat fellow with the pig's eyes?"
 
 THE " PARDNERS." 145 
 
 44 That's Jupe," he answered. 
 
 I had nothing to say. Since those women were " pardners " 
 of two of the men who were yarning at the galley door, I could 
 not interfere ; the contention of the crew would be that they 
 had a right to talk with the women who had agreed to become 
 their wives, providing they behaved decorously, and did not 
 meddle with the others, and I must look for resistance and 
 difficulties I should be mad to challenge if I attempted to 
 arrest their intercourse. 
 
 As far as I could judge, Jack had chosen with strict regard 
 to his old traditions. There were several pretty women 
 among the emigrants. Some of them might have been glad 
 to accept the sailors as husbands, and welcomed with delight 
 the forecastle scheme of an ocean paradise of capsized customs. 
 But Jack, to be sure, must pick out the ugliest and the coarsest. 
 Emma Grubb was as rough a wench as ever I saw and many 
 have I seen a smack apprentice in petticoats ; while Kate 
 Davis, with arms as massive as a drayman's legs, and a wide 
 spread of flat, coarsely cut, somewhat meaningless face, framed 
 with hair like yarns of coir rope, might have passed as a young 
 butcher in his Mary Anna's clothes. 
 
 Yet Jack might be right, after all. Those Kates and 
 Emmas not your niminy-piminy, fair-browed lollipops of the 
 counter and the servants 'all are your true mothers for a 
 British settlement : broad-backed, deep-bosomed lasses, ugly 
 as sin, but hearty as mules ; the proper sort of creatures to 
 dig, to hew, to help build, to breed, and to rear. I turned 
 away with a laugh after another look ; those arms of yours, 
 Kate Davis, thought I, once the halyards were within your 
 grasp, would hoist the flag of our country moon high. 'Tis 
 the likes of you, you beauty, who do the real work of coloni- 
 zation. 
 
 " D'jer mind letting us know where the ship is ? " said Brig- 
 stock. 
 
 I named the vessel's position. 
 
 " And the course for the Horn ? " 
 
 " Is the course she's heading on," I answered. 
 
 He smiled gravely and turned his dark eyes in a slow, 
 thoughtful stare round the sea. Just then it fell a glass calm, 
 with a sound in the sudden dying of the wind like a strange 
 strong sigh running through the atmosphere ; the canvas came 
 in to the masts with a single clap ; it made you think of the 
 ship sucking in her cheeks in expectation. In a minute I saw 
 a light blue shadow on the sea line off the port bow under 
 some cold streaks of lavender cloud there, and as the wind
 
 146 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 came along I watched the trade cloud rising like balls of pow- 
 der smoke from the mouths of cannon. The water darkened 
 and crisped into wrinkles, and broke in quick flashes, but the 
 blue sky was shaded with sailing vapor to pass our mastheads 
 ere the breeze took us. 
 
 The wind found us ready trimmed with boarded tacks, taut 
 bowlines, the yards well fore and aft, though not " sweated," 
 as we say, for I was ever of opinion that to make a good pas- 
 sage you must make a fair wind. The women came out of the 
 'tween decks when they heard the sailors singing out at the 
 ropes, and filled the ship with the life of fluttering colored rai- 
 ment and trembling feathers and streaming bonnet ribbons 
 like Irish pennants. This was the first of the southeast trade 
 wind, and it came fresh in its earliest breath and hardened 
 quickly, till at half-past one hands were aloft furling the three 
 royals ; the flying jib halyards had been let go, and we were 
 waiting till the light canvas was stowed to take the great main- 
 sail off her. 
 
 All aslant, the white brine bursting from her weather bow, 
 dipping steadily through the seas, which ran with little weight 
 as yet, the fine ship smoked through it in her sudden meteoric 
 flight, a sheet of spreading foam hissing to leeward, silver fires 
 flaming from everything bright upon her decks, her gilded 
 globes of trucks shining like stars at each masthead. In that 
 time of waiting for the men to haul up the mainsail I found 
 myself admiring the picture of that ship as something more 
 shapely and glittering, richer in hue, more radiant where all 
 was whiteness than any fabric I had ever sailed in or that my 
 imagination could have figured. 
 
 I did not leave the deck till I had seen all necessary sail 
 shortened. Gouger had reported dinner ready half an hour 
 befo're, Harding was left in charge of the deck, and I entered 
 the cuddy, followed after a little while by Brigstock, wonder- 
 ing when I was to find an opportunity for spinning a yarn with 
 Kate Darnley, surprised, too, by the heap of business which had 
 kept me occupied all the morning. 
 
 I had taken my seat and was pegging away when Brig- 
 stock arrived ; they had killed me a fowl ; that and a piece of 
 boiled pork was to supply me with as good a meal as the skip- 
 per of a trader was like to get in those clays of pig and old 
 horse, with a mess of fresh pork at intervals when a hog was 
 dispatched. Brigstock stood at the foot of the companion 
 steps and said : 
 
 " If it's not your wish, capt'n, that I should eat aft here along 
 with you say the word. I'm a plain sailor and no mate ;
 
 THE " PARDNERS." M7 
 
 you're a gemman, and it might be that you'd object to sit 
 down with the likes of me." 
 
 I answered by pointing to a chair, and at once helped him to 
 some fowl and pork. 
 
 " I may tell you," said he, looking at his plate, "that the 
 crew have nothen to say against my eating aft of such vittles 
 as is put upon this table. Of course they recognize me as 
 mate, and a mate's got a right to live in the cabin. Still, as 
 I'm but a fo'c's'le hand myself, I shouldn't feel heasy in par- 
 taking of sooperior grub if my mates thought it warn't fair." 
 
 " I respect your shipmatish views," said I, "but you don't 
 want me to tell you that all hands can't live aft." 
 
 " No, sir. But my notions of the laws of property don't 
 allow of my enjoying what the rest of us aint getting. 
 I dorn't say it can be helped here. The only way I can 
 reconcile this here living with my conscience and principles," 
 he added, forking up the leg of fowl I had helped him to, " is 
 to fare just as they do forward. I'll keep this piece of pork, 
 this here leg I'll retarn," and so saying he put it on the dish. 
 
 Come, thought I, this, if not an honest, is at all events a fair 
 man. 
 
 " In your new settlement," said I, " all are to fare alike ? " 
 
 " No, sir. A man '11 fare according as he produces. But 
 we should all be alike. We're all alike when we're dead and 
 aint of no use ; I'm for being alike while we're alive and are 
 of use." 
 
 " You'll find that the little potatoes will get to the bottom 
 quite in the old manner." 
 
 " Aye, but they're potatoes all the same. Joe or Jim aint 
 to forfeit his claims upon us as a man because he aint born 
 with Jack's hintellect or Jupe's cunning. You can't have 
 a family that's all big brothers. In our settlement we'll judge 
 of a man as yer judge of a clock by his works. Do 'e keep 
 time ? We aint a-goin' to quarrel with a man for bein' a three- 
 an'-sixpenny Dutch clock 'stead of a sixty-guinea chreenom- 
 eter. Do 'e keep time at three an' sixpence ? That's it." 
 
 I saw an argument on politics, religion, political economy, 
 and other such things strong in the man's grave face and slow, 
 earnest eyes, and changed the subject by explaining how my 
 calculations as to the stock of water and provisions had 
 worked out. I then said, with a glance at the table, that 
 looked very hospitable indeed with the spirits, the wine, and 
 the bottled beer which Gouger had set upon it : 
 
 " I mean to bring Miss Kate Darnley to live aft here." 
 
 " Will that be hadvisable ? " he said.
 
 148 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "Why not ? " I asked quickly, ill-pleased with the remark 
 that was like running athwart the hawse of my command. 
 
 " Wouldn't it lead to ill feeling?" said he, masticating at the 
 rate of about a bite every two seconds. " There's Miss Cobbs. 
 She'd naturally wonder if your.pardner was here that she 
 wasn't called aft too. That 'ud come personal as 'twixt her 
 and me. The saliors 'ud say, We don't want to live aft our- 
 selves, but our pardners are emigrant folk the same as Miss 
 Darnley, no better and no worse so far as her situation goes, 
 and we've got nothen to do with her hextraction ; and if Miss 
 Darnley's to live and eat in the cabin, our pardners shall take 
 up their quarters there too ! They might reason this way ; 
 I dorn't say they'd talk so." 
 
 I reflected and said, " You may be right. Yet the services 
 I am rendering you give me certain claims, and if it's my wish 
 that Miss Darnley should live here you and your crew should 
 consent." 
 
 " I beg you won't insist upon it, sir," he exclaimed, helping 
 himself to a glass of water he had drunk nothing but half 
 a gill of rum diluted into a pannikinful of almost tasteless 
 amber fluid. " All's going along smooth. All's likely to keep 
 so. I'm for leaving well alone. 'Sides, would it be the right 
 thing for the young party to come and live solitary aft here 
 away from the rest of the females ? " 
 
 All the while we talked the women on the quarter-deck were 
 coming and going as before at the door and windows, staring 
 at us in knots of pale, eager faces. I glanced up at the sky- 
 light and said, not choosing to pursue the subject of Kate's 
 living aft : 
 
 " Now that the ship has a commander, the poop, I presume, 
 is to be kept for the use of him and the mates ? " 
 
 " Aint that as you'd wish it, sir? Us men are for carrying 
 on everything exactly as it was under Dr. Rolt and Captain 
 Halcrow." 
 
 " Are the crew going to grumble if I bring Miss Darnley on 
 to the poop ? " 
 
 " No ; she's your friend ; you must talk with her somewhere. 
 As master of the vessel your place is aft." 
 
 I looked at the man attentively, and thought to myself : 
 there are qualities in that rude, illiterate, unpicturesque sea- 
 dog that, unless I mind my eye, will as certainly dominate 
 me as they've dominated the crew. Pity for him that he'd 
 never learned navigation in his time. What better man to take 
 charge of a ship ? He should have hailed from some New 
 England Quaker settlement, so slow he was, so wary, exact,
 
 THE " PAKDA'EKS." 149 
 
 yet capable of lying like a pickpocket on occasion, that is, 
 when business made demands upon his judgment, though 
 skilled in the art of forgiving himself and discovering reasons 
 that could never fail to convince his conscience. 
 
 " Mr. Brigstock," said I, rising, " when this table is clear get 
 Miss Cobbs to select certain women to represent the emigrants 
 and let them assemble here." 
 
 " Aye, aye, sir," he answered, and walked straight on to the 
 quarter-deck. 
 
 I was half an hour in my cabin ; while there I heard some 
 of the women coming into the cuddy. When I stepped out I 
 found twelve of them at the table. The first my eye fell on 
 was Kate Darnley. Another was the coarsely handsome, 
 wild-haired, powerfully built young woman, Alice Perry ; she 
 grinned with a very glare of strong white teeth on meeting my 
 eyes, and nodded cheekily. A third was Miss Cobbs, the 
 matron. She stood at the foot of the table, evidently waiting 
 for me to appear. 
 
 I stepped forth holding a chart of the world ; the girls eyed 
 it as though it had been a loaded blunderbuss. I at once 
 shook hands with Kate and placed myself at her side. Brig- 
 stock overhead looked down at us through the open skylight. 
 The quarter-deck was crowded with women, who filled the 
 doorway and blocked the windows, but someone, probably 
 Miss Cobbs, had stationed a seaman to guard the entrance. 
 He stood doggedly in the doorway with his back upon the 
 girls, one of whom on catching sight of me snapped out 
 shrilly over his shoulder, "Why aint us all to be let 
 in?" 
 
 I wished to get through this business, and addressed the 
 girls at once. 
 
 " There was no need to bring all the ladies in here. You'll 
 repeat to the others what I'm going to say. I want to make 
 your minds easy as to your ultimate arrival in Australia. I'm 
 in charge of this ship, and hope to see my way, when we've put 
 Mr. Brigstock and his party ashore, to carry you safely to 
 Sydney." 
 
 "How long's it going to take ?" asked one of the girls. 
 
 " Miss Wright, you're not to interrupt," cried Miss Cobbs. 
 
 " It's along oiyou that the respectable ones among us are 
 being made sick and ill with worriting and anxiety," said the 
 young woman Alice Perry, darting a mutinous, flashing look 
 at Miss Cobbs, with a sudden projection of her head that 
 produced the impression of a leap. " What's the like of you 
 got to do with marrying ? You ought to be at your prayers,
 
 15 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 thinking of your soul. You're old enough to concern yourself 
 that way," she added, with a shrill laugh. 
 
 " Captain Morgan, I must ask for your protection against 
 that himpudent woman," exclaimed Miss Cobbs. " If she 
 persists in insulting me I'll seek Mr. Brigstock's protection," 
 and she bestowed a cold, pale, dangerous nod on Alice Perry. 
 
 " Am I to proceed ! " said I, looking round at the women. 
 
 " She's a saucy, bad-tempered woman, but honest and good- 
 natured," whispered Kate. 
 
 Alice Perry got up and came to my side, and said, pointing 
 at Miss Cobbs, " Her very looks riles me. She's hated by all 
 as aint of her party. Oh, I'm not afraid of you nor of your 
 old Tommy Brigstock either," she shouted, looking up at the 
 skylight. " When I'm in earnest the fur flies, as the cat 
 says." 
 
 Some laughter in the doorway and windows attended this ; 
 the sailor's figure shook, while he hid his mouth with his bare 
 arm. 
 
 Brigstock, who all this while was standing above, shouted 
 down, " I'd advise yer to keep a civil tongue in yer mouth. 
 I don't want to fall foul of yer, but I'll ask no man's leave to 
 protect my pardner from the himperance of such trollops as 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! Oh, dear ! Let's hear what the captain has to 
 say," exclaimed one of the girls, a mild-looking creature with 
 a gentle voice, dressed in well-worn black. 
 
 I unrolled the chart upon the table. " Here's the world. 
 Gather around, young ladies, and look for yourselves." 
 
 They came together in a squeeze of eager figures ; some 
 were without hats or bonnets ; here and there a cheap ring 
 glittered upon a toil-reddened hand. I don't know what idea 
 had governed Miss Cobbs in her choice of these women as 
 representatives ; it might be that they illustrated the several 
 walks of the emigrants. The mild young person in black I 
 afterward heard was a governess. 
 
 Pointing to the chart with a ruler, I bade the girls observe 
 that the distance to Sydney, New South Wales, by Cape Horn 
 was much about the same as the distance to it by way of the 
 Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 " Why's the one road always took then ? " inquired Miss 
 Alice Perry. 
 
 " Because of the winds," said I. 
 
 She stared at me distrustfully. 
 
 " I've told the young ladies time out of mind that there's 
 no difference worth naming in the distance," said Miss Cobbs.
 
 THE "PARDNERS." I$I 
 
 " But we've got to hunt about for an island, haven't we ? " 
 said a girl. 
 
 "Yes. That won't take long, and a few weeks more or 
 less must signify nothing to people in your situation. Why, 
 without a navigator in command you might have been blown 
 about the ocean for days and days, so ending as never more 
 to be heard of." 
 
 " That's quite true, and ought to reconcile us to what's 
 happened," said Kate. 
 
 " We hope the captain's telling you something worth hear- 
 ing," cried a voice at one of the windows. 
 
 " If certain parties chooses to act like fools, who cares?" 
 said one of the women. " We took passage in this ship for 
 Australia, and we must go there and git there, and let them 
 who want to live on an island with common sailors hunt about 
 by themselves." 
 
 " It'll be base to keep us poor girls at sea longer than 
 there's need for. And what the sailors represent aint true 
 neither," cried a streaky-faced girl. She was miserably thin, 
 and trembled from head to foot with nervousness. " They 
 say there's no chance of girls getting married in Australia." 
 
 " Old Tommy read out a piece about it," whipped in Alice 
 Perry. " One of them lies yer to believe true 'cos it's in print. 
 Ha, ha ! " 
 
 " But Mr. Brigstock's got to discover folks know the truth 
 for themselves," said the girl whom Perry had interrupted, 
 diving into the pocket of her dress and bringing out a purse 
 which she opened with agitation pitiful to behold. " This was 
 copied out of a newspaper and sent to me by my uncle." And 
 in a high-pitched voice, shivering with nerve, she read out this : 
 
 " WIDE BAY AND BURNETT DISTRICTS THE ORPHAN GIRLS. 
 
 " To the Editors of the Sydney Morning Herald : 
 
 " GENTLEMEN : While the government pretend they do not 
 know what to do with these girls, they entirely neglect the north- 
 ern and rapidly increasing Wide Bay and Burnett River Dis- 
 tricts. On the Burnett, Severn, Dawson, and Boyne rivers 
 there is a large entirely male population ; there are not more 
 than six women in the whole district, and those have arrived 
 within the last six months. If a vessel was dispatched imme- 
 diately to Wide Bay with two hundred of these girls I have 
 no hesitation in stating the whole of them could be married 
 in two months. Yours, etc., 
 
 " A BUSHMAN."
 
 152 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Her shaking hand dropped the purse, and after pocketing 
 it she sank back as though in a swoon. 
 
 "I'll say again that I don't believe a word of it," exclaimed 
 Miss Cobbs, folding her arms and tightening her lips into a line 
 thin as a pen stroke. 
 
 " But we're not all going out with ideas of getting married," 
 said a girl remarkable for the burning scarlet of her scanty 
 hair. " I'm one of most who thinks only of a situation and 
 wages." 
 
 " Will Miss Cobbs tell us there's no situations to be got and 
 no wages to be 'ad ?" said Alice Perry, with a sneer. 
 
 " I can tell Alice Perry that situations are by no means 
 plentiful in Sydney nor in Melbourne neither, and wages not 
 one whit better than she can get at 'ome," exclaimed Miss 
 Cobbs. 
 
 " Cooks 'ave twenty-two pound," said the scarlet-haired 
 girl, "'ousemaids fifteen, and general servants twenty-six. 
 So I was told, and am emigrating in consequence. But I 
 think we've been put into this ship only to be deceived and 
 drownded." 
 
 I was growing tired of all this. " See here, ladies," said I, 
 flourishing my ruler over the chart, " here's the situation of 
 the ship to-day. There's Australia, d'ye see? Instead of 
 going round to it by this cape we'll steer to it by that. All 
 these dots signify islands, and one of them will be the island 
 Mr. Brigstock's party want. Mr. Brigstock and I will take 
 care to be quick in finding it. Suppose that island's situated 
 here," said I, pointing, "look what a straight course we can 
 make for Sydney, which is there. We shall procure the help 
 we need among the islands, and the ship will arrive at Sydney 
 a month or so later than her date." 
 
 I rolled up the chart to let the women know I had nothing 
 more to say. They had no notion, however, of terminating 
 this interview. They wanted to know if I was captain. I 
 answered I was. Couldn't captains do whatever they pleased ? 
 No, they could do only what was right. Warn't it my duty to 
 sail the ship direct to Sydney and see the women safe on 
 shore, leaving those who had taken up with the common 
 sailors to find an island for themselves? I answered that one 
 condition of my command was that I should help Brigstock and 
 his party to find an island and land them on it. If I refused 
 to do this the men would not have me as their captain. 
 
 This raised a hubbub. All talked at once. It was impossi- 
 ble to understand the questions screeched at me. I saw Alice 
 Perry eyeing Miss Cobbs with a nasty face of temper. The
 
 A CHAT WITH KATE. 153 
 
 scarlet-haired girl flourished her fist, yelping out her questions 
 and protests in a voice like a lapdog's bark. The confusion 
 was increased by the women on the quarter-deck calling to 
 those within. To silence and end it all I told Kate to go on 
 deck by way of the companion ladder, and re-entered my 
 cabin. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A CHAT WITH KATE. 
 
 BY and by, hearing nothing, I looked out and found the 
 cuddy empty. I went on deck and was immediately accosted 
 by Brigstock. 
 
 " There's nothen to be done by reasoning kindly. Might as 
 well try to rear a dog on cabbage as to make some of them 
 gurls see straight." 
 
 "They want to get to Australia." 
 
 "What's to stop 'em ? I never kept a servant myself, but 
 I've always onderstood that cholera's mild as a plague com- 
 pared to 'em. If these are the rig'lar style of cooks and 
 'ousemaids it's astonishin' the country han't drawed long ago 
 upon China for domestics." 
 
 " Does your scheme of a settlement include servants ?" 
 
 " No fear ! All '11 be level and sarvice mutual help. Cap- 
 tain," he exclaimed, fastening his eyes with a serious look 
 upon me, " it'll make us men feel heasy in hour minds to larn 
 that your sympathies han't been courted altogether into the 
 'tween decks ? " 
 
 " Mr. Brigstock, "said I with some sternness, " I was brought 
 fraudulently into this ship and forced, as you know, to accept 
 this position of command. I say forced," I added deliberately 
 and slowly, " because, though I heard no threats, how would 
 you have used me had I declined ? It can matter to no one in 
 what direction my sympathies lean. Be you civil and obedient, 
 sir, and let your crew act as though they fully understood I'm 
 master and not man aboard this ship, and you shall have no 
 cause to complain." 
 
 I walked to the break of the poop, leaving him to chew upon 
 what I had said. 
 
 The fresh trade gale was blowing a strong and pleasant 
 wind ; the hard green horizon ran brilliantly clear, as though 
 viewed through a lens, and off the edge of it the trade clouds 
 were soaring and spreading, fleecy and silky and flying, like 
 blown cobwebs. The seas were rolling in steady lines of a
 
 154 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 dark blue, splendid with the translucent veiling sparkles of 
 spray. The ship drove through it with stately steadiness, 
 bursting the sea into clouds of snow ahead of her, with rhythmic 
 rolls to windward which swung the harmonies of fifty organs 
 out of her rigging into the wind. She bore well the canvas 
 she had, but she needed no more. 
 
 After I had stood some minutes in silence, waiting for the 
 temper to cool-in me, I called to Brigstock to get the log hove. 
 Some men came aft ; the reel rattled like castanets as Brig- 
 stock helped the log line. " Stop ! " roared Jupe Jackson, 
 dropping the log glass from the level of his eyes. " Eleven 
 and a 'alf ! " shouted Brigstock after fumbling at the knots, 
 and the line was then dragged dripping over the quarter. 
 
 Eleven and a half on a taut bowline and the royals, mizzen 
 topgallant sail, mainsail, and flying jib off her ! This was 
 sailing to fit the records of something out of Aberdeen rather 
 than a Thames keel. How will I be treated if I save the ship ? 
 thought I, with such a momentary glow of spirits as I watched 
 the motions of the beautiful vessel that, had I been her owner, 
 I could not have felt more pride and delight in her beauty and 
 swiftness. 
 
 Seeing Kate Darnley on the main deck talking to a girl near 
 the hatch, I beckoned and went halfway down the ladder to 
 receive her. 
 
 " Can't we talk down here? " said she. 
 
 " Yes. But the poop's my own territory, so step up, I beg." 
 
 She mounted the steps reluctantly and exclaimed, " I ought 
 not to be where the rest are not allowed. The voyage will be 
 very uncomfortable if anything's done to excite the women's 
 envy or jealousy." 
 
 I answered that my place was aft, that I might forfeit some- 
 thing of dignity if I talked among the women upon the quarter- 
 deck, and told her what Brigstock had said on the subject. 
 This seemed to ease her mind, and she crossed with me to the 
 weather side of the poop, which we forthwith fell to patrolling, 
 Brigstock at once stepping to the fore end, where he stood 
 watching the ship, sometimes motionless at the head of the 
 ladder, sometimes stalking with solemn mien athwart. 
 
 " You can see the ocean up here," said I ; " the bulwarks 
 hide the sea from the main deck." 
 
 " I'd thankfully live aft," she answered, with a spirited smile 
 and a dancing look of kindling pleasure in her eyes, which 
 were as bright as health and youth could make them, nay, the 
 brighter just then perhaps for the color which the strong wind 
 had painted on her cheeks. " But I'm just a poor female
 
 A CHAT WITH KATE. 155 
 
 emigrant, and what's good for the others must be good for 
 me." 
 
 " Well," said I, " I'm glad you hold those views. You don't 
 want me to tell you what I'd like. But Brigstock objects. 
 His objection is the crew's, and we want no trouble." 
 
 " Don't let's talk about me. Will you be able to sail this 
 ship to Sydney ?" 
 
 " Why, yes." 
 
 " Then I suppose they'll give you command of her ? That 
 will please your father and dear Mrs. Morgan. How little 
 they imagine down in quiet Blathford that we are together 
 here ! What a situation to find ourselves in ! When you told 
 us some stories of the sea that first night of our meeting at 
 your father's, I thought nothing could be more wonderful, and 
 suspected that sometimes you invented. Now look at this ! 
 I have come to sea for some purpose indeed ! I shall be able 
 to talk too." 
 
 " And be suspected of invention also. More goes on at 
 sea than it's in the philosophy of the landlubber to compass. 
 Tell me what you can recollect of this ship having been struck 
 by lightning." 
 
 " We had been sent below. The hatch was covered, so we 
 saw no flash, but we heard it, and there was a general shriek. 
 The sound was as though a gun had burst. Some of the 
 women sank upon their knees and prayed. One of the girls 
 went into hysterics and screamed dreadfully. When we were 
 let out we were told that the doctor had been struck dead and 
 the captain blinded." 
 
 " Then the mate jumped overboard in a fit of madness ? " 
 
 " Afterward." 
 
 " Next you spoke a ship, and the blinded captain, second 
 mate, bo'sun, and some seamen boarded her ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " A sudden violent change of weather separated the two 
 vessels ? " 
 
 "All that you say happened." 
 
 " Then for sure," said I, " Brigstock and the men are not 
 responsible in any way for the situation in which I found this 
 ship. But what beats my time's this : how in jokes came 
 those fellows in ten days to find wives, and work out a scheme 
 for founding a republic in the South Pacific ? " 
 
 " They must answer for themselves," she replied. " I keep 
 to myself, and I therefore knew little of what was going on. 
 In that time of our being without a commander I'd some- 
 times see Brigstock standing in the midst of a number of
 
 156 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 women, addressing them after the manner of outdoor preach- 
 ers. I listened to him once ; I did not understand what he 
 said ; he talked of the head of a state as a magistrate too, 
 receiving his powers from the people, could marry, divorce, 
 baptize, decide causes, try people for their lives, and so on. 
 I noticed that in a few days he obtained a wonderful influence 
 over certain of the women. They'd assemble with the sailors 
 on the poop, and the rest of us down on that deck there would 
 hear Brigstock's voice groaning as he sermonized or ex- 
 pounded. We then heard, in a sort of gossiping way, that 
 when the men procured a navigator they intended to carry this 
 ship to an island and settle down with the women upon it." 
 
 " Miss Cobbs is one of those women ? " 
 
 " Could you believe such a thing ? But what will not some 
 women do to get married ? You have talked with Brigstock ; 
 is he sincere in this island scheme of his, do you think ? Or 
 are he and the crew masking something dreadful?" 
 
 She said this, and stopped me as we walked to look me full 
 in the face with a gaze of almost impassioned anxiety. 
 
 " Brigstock's quite sincere," I answered after reflecting. 
 " The man's just a walking heap of vulgar vanity and egotism. 
 He's one of those fellows who fancy that, had they been better 
 born and better educated, they'd be great men. He's like a 
 second mate I once sailed with, who, believing himself a poet, 
 would exclaim, ' Ah, if I had but the language ! ' But Brig- 
 stock and the crew are in earnest. You may believe that." 
 
 From time to time as we walked Brigstock, at the break of 
 the poop, would view us with a grave, thoughtful, askant stare. 
 It was drawing on to four o'clock in the afternoon ; the sun- 
 light was a glorious moist yellow, and the wide roaring hol- 
 lows astern of us were flecked with the following sea birds. 
 Many women were on the main and quarter-decks ; in the 
 heart of a crowd of them abreast of the galley I spied Alice 
 Perry ; she was declaiming as though inspired, extending her 
 hands and posture-making with the skill of an actress. A 
 sailor " seizing " a ratline in the fore shrouds stopped often 
 to peer through the spread of ropes, fixedly smiling at the 
 listening crowd. Now and again, as Kate and I approached 
 the forward end of the poop, some of the women looked as 
 though they talked of us. 
 
 " It strikes me," said I, "they'll be thinking you and I have 
 become pardners, and mean to settle with the others." 
 
 " I'll undeceive them." 
 
 " Poor wretches! If you and I are to leave them with 
 Brigstock, what'll they do with the ship ? "
 
 A CHAT WITH KATE. 157 
 
 " Let's talk of things as they are and may be," 'she exclaimed. 
 
 " Maybe," I answered, smiling at her. " Who's to know but 
 that Brigstock '11 convert me to his scheme, in which case you'd 
 become my pardner, wouldn't you, Kate ? " 
 
 " It would be delightful to be imprisoned in an island with 
 Brigstock and his crew, and twelve cooks and housemaids. 
 I can't believe the creatures are in earnest. And yet I can 
 appreciate the reality of the thing too when I run through 
 the sailors' choosings or look at the consenting women. I'll 
 give you some of their names : There are Emma Grubb and 
 Kate Davis, and two sisters, Jess and Nan Honeyball. That's 
 Jess there, standing by the mainmast, the girl with her hands 
 upon her hips and her mouth open, looking toward Alice 
 Perry. The seamen have picked out the coarsest, and per- 
 haps the ugliest. Would not the heads of such women be 
 easily turned, not only by the idea of getting a husband apiece, 
 but by Brigstock's talk of a lovely island, blushing with 
 flowers and fruits, where there are no mistresses, and where 
 every Sunday is your own Sunday out ? " 
 
 She stopped again, this time to laugh loudly at some absurd 
 thought. Brigstock looked at us, and meeting my eye, smiled 
 gravely. 
 
 " Kate," said I, "you have told me nothing about yourself 
 as yet." 
 
 "'What's there to tell?" 
 
 " Here you are, an emigrant. What's your errand ? " 
 
 " You know I left England that I might not starve. I may 
 not starve on board this ship though who's to tell what '11 
 happen ? " said she, coiling a tress of hair that had blown 
 loose behind her ear. " Perhaps I'm going to a harder lot in 
 Australia than I've left." With a bitter shake of head, " No ! " 
 she added, "that would be impossible." 
 
 "You have no friends in the colony." 
 
 "None." 
 
 " Have you any money ? " 
 
 " Ten pounds," she answered artlessly. 
 
 "You have bought clothes and saved ten pounds. Who 
 helped you ? " 
 
 " Nobody." 
 
 " Why didn't you apply to my father ? He'd have been glad 
 to give his thin purse a squeeze for his old friend's daughter. 
 And why didn't you take me into your confidence? I could 
 and would have helped you. I brought a lump of money ashore 
 with me. You might have found that out by writing." 
 
 She looked seaward to hide her face. After a short silence
 
 158 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 she said : " I know I have good friends in your father and 
 mother, and a well-wisher in you." 
 
 " Oh, ha ! a well-wisher yes ! " 
 
 " I have no claims upon your parents. The being a daughter 
 of an old friend gives me no right to trouble them. Had I 
 told them what I meant to do they would have tried to stop 
 me. But in stopping me, what would they have kept me to? 
 I don't like to think of it. How should they how should 
 you know what it is to be a governess at least in England ? 
 
 I would rather I would rather Governesses can't be 
 
 worse treated in Australia than at home." 
 
 "You have been unfortunate in your experience." 
 
 " Have I ? There are two girls in this ship who were gov- 
 ernesses ; they're going out with the intention of teaching in 
 families. That's one of them, the slender pale girl down 
 there with the light gold hair, standing alone. I've talked 
 with them and compared notes. Both are orphans as I am, 
 one the daughter of a major, the other of a painter an artist. 
 Their experiences are longer and wider than mine, and they 
 said had they remained in England they would have drowned 
 themselves." 
 
 " Who the deuce are the people," said I, " who make girls 
 wish to drown themselves ? Are they men ? Oh, to have them 
 with me but for one day in that forecastle yonder ! But aren't 
 they women always ? If the yarns the novelists spin are true, 
 the master of the family is usually disposed to treat the gover- 
 ness with rather too much kindness." 
 
 " The master of the last family I was with cut the bread and 
 butter for breakfast, and counted the pieces I ate, and when 
 the housemaid fell ill he asked me to bring up the coals and to 
 help in the bedrooms out of school hours." 
 
 She crooked her eyebrows into an arch expression, but the 
 dimness of tears not very deep down was in the light of her 
 eyes, and though she smiled, her under lip quivered. 
 
 I changed the subject by talking of Brigstock and his island 
 scheme, protesting that I saw no harm, but, on the contrary, a 
 very great deal of good in it. Why shouldn't the overflowings 
 of British poverty and wretchedness, such as our 'tween decks 
 held, find sunny, sweet-scented receptacles in the ocean 
 acreage of the Pacific and other seas ? I had no mind myself, 
 I told her, to abandon the civilization I was used to, but sup- 
 pose me a man soured by existence at home, overtaken by 
 troubles I could not crowd on sail enough to run out of 
 sight of, a wretch sunk in despondency by the death of his 
 sweetheart, a widower robbed of his sole surviving darling
 
 A CHAT WITH KATE. 159 
 
 child, should not I welcome such an asylum as Brigstock's 
 island might, I did not say would, provide ? 
 
 Our talk was ended by a bell ringing the women down to 
 supper. By this time the first dog-watch was well advanced. 
 Brigstock had long ago gone forward and was now lurking 
 in the galley door, pipe in mouth, yarning with the cook and a 
 few seamen. They'd often glance aft as though they talked 
 of me. The sour sailor, Harding, had charge of the deck. I 
 walked aft to mark how the ship headed, and coming back 
 accosted the man. 
 
 " How many of a crew signed for this vessel ? " 
 
 " Forward and aft, eighteen, all told, sir." 
 
 "Forward and aft there's now thirteen," said I, "and not 
 six of a watch at that, unless Brigstock goes aloft." 
 
 " I've bin sailing in bigger vessels than this with fewer men," 
 said Harding. 
 
 " Yes," thought I, "and you can make things comfortable for 
 yourselves now you're on your own hook, but if it were Hal- 
 crow's time instead of yours the twelve of you would be lay- 
 ing aft with cursing faces and growling throats, swearing the 
 ship was undermanned and refusing duty." 
 
 " Ever had charge of a quarter-deck before this voyage ? " 
 
 " Never had to do with the quarter-deck in all my life 'cept 
 a-washing of it down." 
 
 " You'll be missing the sea when you settle on your island, 
 won't you ? " 
 
 "Aye," he answered in his sulky voice," as the jackass misses 
 his shafts." 
 
 "Brigstock's to be president of your republic, isn't he?" 
 said I, talking with the notion of getting at the crew's mind 
 through his ; indeed it would have been ridiculous to assert 
 my state of captain by standing aloof in the common way and 
 holding my end of the ship in lonely dignity ridiculous under 
 such conditions. 
 
 'Aye, Tom's to be boss," he replied. 
 
 ' He's to marry you all ? " 
 
 'Aye." 
 
 ' And divorce you too ? " 
 
 ' Yes," he answered with a grin, which crept into his face 
 with the same sort of sulky reluctance his voice had. 
 
 "What '11 be accepted as law by your community may be 
 held as good, and certainly convenient, law by others. In that 
 case let Mr. Brigstock be chary and wary in granting divorces, 
 otherwise you'll be having your little settlement overloaded 
 with ships full of quarrelsome people waiting for their turn."
 
 160 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " What's this talk of divorce ! " he exclaimed, taking me 
 very literally. " If parties aint satisfied to live together, aint 
 the world big enough for 'em, "said he, looking halfway round 
 the horizon. 
 
 " The having a wife is a bit of a drawback when you want 
 to marry again ; so the lawyers hold. I'm not a married man 
 myself, and talk for information." 
 
 " It '11 be no drawback along of us. Brigstock's constitoo- 
 tion '11 provided for that hevil of civilization. When parties are 
 dissatisfied they can be sundered arter asking. No call for 
 the man to go to the devil to get rid of the woman, or vice 
 versey. Prove that your pardner's got a bad temper that 
 she neglects your 'ouse that she aint cleanly, and you're a 
 free man. That'll be one of Brigstock's laws. And do the 
 females relish it ? Ask 'em ! It's terrible Henglish law should 
 force a man or a woman to sin like blazes afore it '11 liberate 'em. 
 Many's gone wrong, a-cussing of his or her hard fate while 
 goin', and all to get rid of t'other. Our constitootion '11 alter 
 all that, and a tidy lot more." 
 
 " Who's your partner ? " 
 
 " A party named Sarah Salmon." 
 
 " Why has nobody chosen Alice Perry ? Isn't she the pick 
 of the bunch ? " 
 
 " She up with her fist when Johnny Snortledge offered. 
 A prinked up baggage ! I'd rather lodge with a shark." 
 
 "Many of the women are hearty and strong," said I, looking 
 at a number of them who had come up after eating their 
 supper. "They could pull and haul with the best of you, 
 stand a trick after a few lessons, and perhaps go aloft if they 
 were breeched. There's a long road before us and six of 
 a watch. I've a mind to train some of the women." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Women have shipped as sailors before now, and clone as 
 well as the smartest." 
 
 I walked away, having said this, with a singular idea in my 
 head : Why not teach the alertest and strongest of the women 
 just enough of practical seamanship to enable me to carry the 
 ship to Sydney without any help after Brigstock's lot had left 
 us ? I had been but a few hours in this vessel, yet during 
 that time I had thought closely and passionately, and chiefly 
 had I wondered how it would fare with us after Brigstock and 
 his party were gone ashore. Brigstock had talked of Kanakas. 
 I had no notion of trusting myself, helpless and alone as I was 
 as a man, with a forecastle full of South Sea Islanders, let 
 them hail from where they would. Then, as to a company of
 
 A CffAT WITH KATE. 161 
 
 jiuropean seamen, the Polynesian beach comber was, in the 
 bulk, a scoundrel, who had run from the whaler or small 
 trader, occasionally an escaped convict. In imagination 
 I shipped a crew of the beauties, and then thought of my 
 'tween decks full of women, and a fine ship and plenty of 
 cargo to sail away with ! 
 
 I walked the deck for some time alone, lost in the thoughts 
 which had come crowding on top of that offhand remark to 
 Harding about training the women, and was full of the sub- 
 ject when Gouger called me down to supper. I found Brig- 
 stock in the cuddy standing at the door. He had been talking 
 to Miss Cobbs on the quarter-deck, but she went away on 
 seeing me. When 1 was seated he took his place. 
 
 " If you've no objection," said he, " I'll go on using the 
 second mate's cabin for sleeping in." 
 
 " Objection ! You're mate. You must sleep aft." 
 
 " Perhaps Joe had better come aft too." 
 
 " Why not, if he's to be second mate ? " 
 
 " Will yer keep to the watches as they're now stood.? " 
 said he." 
 
 " The men are fairly divided ? " 
 
 " Well, yes ; I put the cook into the starboard watch. He 
 was willing to take turn and turn about with the rest. But 
 he's no hand aloft. The loss of the bo'sun and the other two 
 weakened us. But yer '11 find the hands willing alive an' 
 hequal to all calls. Hanxiety '11 keep 'em smart." 
 
 " Let things rest, then. But see, now. There are some 
 ninety women in the 'tween decks. Two-thirds are hearty and 
 active, used to hard work. Why not strengthen our number 
 by teaching the best of them a few tricks of seamanship, so 
 that if put to it we should have deck hands enough and to 
 spare ? " 
 
 He stared in his slow grave way, munching a piece of ship's 
 biscuit as leisurely as a cow chews the cud ; then, when he 
 had grasped my meaning, he said, " I don't see that the 
 women '11 be wanted." 
 
 I did not intend he should know what was in my mind. 
 
 " I like the notion," said I, " and will get some of the women 
 aft and talk to them. How long should an intelligent girl take 
 to learn the names of ropes and run to the pins they're belayed 
 to ? Some of them after a few lessons will steer the ship in 
 quiet weather as skillfully as the best of you." 
 
 A smile worked over his face. 
 
 " They'll only get in the road," he said. 
 
 1 changed the subject by relating my experiences as mate of
 
 1 62 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the Hebe. Down to that time I had found no opportunity to 
 give him that startling story. He listened with lifted eyebrows 
 and a long face, and fixed unwinking gaze. When I had ended 
 he exclaimed : 
 
 " Aint it time, doon't you think, sir, that civilization in 
 Hengland was improved ? A day may come not likely, of 
 course, that I, nor some generations arter me, are a-going to 
 see it when that constitootion of ours down in the Pacific '11 
 have a little fleet of ships of its own a-trading to all parts, and 
 one of my articles for the government of nautical trade '11 be 
 this : that any man caught insuring to the extent of twenty 
 shulluns above the vally of seven-eighths of what he sends 
 afloat forfeits all, the money to go to a benefit fund for the 
 widows and orphings of drownded sailors." 
 
 This set me talking about his island. I asked if none of 
 them had any notion of a spot proper for a settlement in those 
 vast western seas. 
 
 "We could himage the sort of thing we'd like easy enough," 
 he answered, "but is it to be found ? One of our men, Bob 
 Weatherwax, has got a vollum of travels in his chest. I was 
 reading in it some days ago and met with a description of John 
 Fernandez. If them Chilians hadn't got hold of that island 
 it 'ud be the place we'd make for : plenty of fine hills and 
 beautiful valleys, streams of sweet fresh water, a wonderful 
 rich soil, so the piece says, plenty of goats, and verdure for 
 the raising of all sorts of live stock, fishes abundant and up to 
 the knocker as eating, while the climate's about the perfectest 
 either side the equator." 
 
 " You want a big island ? " 
 
 " As much room as is to be got." 
 
 I stepped into my cabin, overhauled the chart bag, and 
 brought out charts of the two Pacifies. Though we were a 
 mighty long way to the nor'ard of the Horn, still I wished to 
 pin the men's views down on some, on any, I cared not what 
 part of the chart, so long as the place should rest a settled 
 point to head for, for that would make all the difference between 
 a definite voyage and a loose, tedious, perhaps aimless cruise. 
 I laid the charts upon the table, and our noses came together 
 over them. I showed him the line of the equator, and 
 advised him to think of nothing within ten degrees north or 
 south of it. 
 
 " My belief is," said I, " that whenever you come across any- 
 thing particularly alluring you'll find it full of savages." 
 
 " That warn't the experience of Mr. Fletcher Christian and 
 his people," said he. " I've bin shipmate along with men who've
 
 THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER. 163 
 
 spent three and four years at a stretch whaling in the Pacific, 
 and they'd talk of passing island after island without sighting 
 a living soul." 
 
 " Groups of coral stuff of no more good than the Flat 
 Holm." 
 
 " No, sir, islands with mountains in the middle, and covered 
 with trees, with large lagoons like harbors for bringing up in 
 so their yarns went." 
 
 " Can't you give a name to one of them ? " said I, poring upon 
 the chart. " Here are the Marquesas full up. Here's Tonga 
 and Fiji and New Caledonia." 
 
 " Try north," he interrupted. 
 
 " North yields poor choice," said I. " Look at the islands, 
 few as currants in a sailor's dumpling. There's nothing for 
 you in the Sandwich Islands, nothing in the Ladrones and 
 Carolines." 
 
 " Well, it'll have to be a hunt ! " he exclaimed, stiffening his 
 spine and rubbing the small of his back. " But what we want's 
 there" 
 
 I replaced the charts and went on deck. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER. 
 
 THERE was a wild hot flush in the west, and sea and sky 
 looked to pour into it, the clouds in flying feathers of scarlet, 
 and the sea ridging black as ink, though eastward it was a 
 hard dark green. To windward, far off on the weather bow, 
 a sail was dimly glowing ; I fetched the glass from the cap- 
 tain's cabin and found it, as it looked, a noble magnifier ; it 
 determined the orange dash of light far away into the propor- 
 tions of a brig, heading as we went. I wondered if she were 
 the Hebe, and worked away with the telescope for some time 
 in a fit of excitement, but before daylight went I got sight of 
 a stump fore topgallant mast, and that settled the matter. 
 
 I looked over the rail for Kate, but did not see her. A few 
 women walked about the decks ; a couple of seamen, each 
 with a female holding his arm, paced very gravely in the waist ; 
 the forecastle was deserted, and the red, wet gleam which 
 slipped off the planks as the vessel dipped with an occasional 
 flash of brine over the headrail explained why. 
 
 My head was full of the project of training a number of the 
 women to steer and to handle the ropes. Would they come
 
 164 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 into my scheme ? Very likely if I explained my reasons. But 
 then I did not intend that the crew should understand my 
 motives ; I had a feeling that if the men began to realize my 
 resolution to carry the ship to port they'd turn the matter, 
 reason that since / could see my way to a profitable job they 
 might as well stop and share in what was to come. I knew 
 the seaman's character to be as unstable as the water he sails 
 on. Before we were up with the Horn ten of the twelve might 
 be swearing that they wasn't going to settle no measly island ; 
 they'd stick to the ship, they would, claim their wages, and 
 pocket what might follow. I determined to talk with Kate on 
 the subject next day. It -is a pity, I thought, as I looked at 
 the black yawn of main hatch, a mere blotch in the evening 
 gloom scarce touched by the feeble lights swinging under 
 deck, that she should allow her notion of propriety to tyran- 
 nize to the degree of keeping her down there. Had she shown 
 any willingness to live aft I'd have brought her into the cabin, 
 Brigstock or no Brigstock, and taken my chance of the issue 
 of an argument with the crew. Yet she was right, though it 
 vexed me to think of her in her gloomy quarters, resting on a 
 shelf and eating the emigrants' fare when there were empty 
 cabins aft, and a table fit for a lady to sit at. 
 
 I kept the deck till eleven that night, watching the ship ; I 
 forget which of the two men had charge. The trade wind blew 
 hard, with a long high sea. When I went below to lie down I 
 was prepared for a call to result in reefed canvas. But on going 
 on deck again at half-past three I found the breeze had 
 slackened ; they had set the main royal and boarded the 
 main tack, and still the ship was sweeping along nobly, sheet- 
 ing out the white water into a radiance as of moonlight. 
 
 Next morning was splendid blowing weather, the seas run- 
 ning in hills of blue, a flying sky of steam-white trade cloud, 
 and four ships in sight at eight o'clock, though all of them 
 hull down. 
 
 Some time after breakfast I left my berth to look for Kate. 
 A girl was standing in the cabin door singing. She held out 
 her dress with both hands as she sang, keeping time in a 
 frolicsome, see-saw, sideways jump ; a troop of women stood 
 viewing her, and they laughed immoderately at her antics. I 
 caught but one verse of her song, which she howled out in the 
 peculiar raw voice of the courts and lanes : 
 
 "She shall 'ave all that's fine and fair, 
 And the best of silk and satin shall wear, 
 And ride in a coach to take the hair, 
 And 'ave a 'ouse in St. James' Square."
 
 THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER. 165 
 
 Looking over her shoulder, with her face flushed with caper- 
 cutting, she spied me, let fall her gown, and bolted. 
 
 I saw Miss Cobbs standing beside the main hatch, and asked 
 if Miss Darnley was below. She answered yes, and called 
 down. In a few minutes Kate arrived. She looked uncom- 
 monly well, fresh as though from a bath. Her cheeks wore a 
 rich color, her eyes shone with uncommon vivacity and bright- 
 ness ; her dress was of some plain black stuff, not very new. 
 She wore her hat with a little rakish set of it upon her fine 
 black hair, and this took my eye mightily. 
 
 I shook her hand and asked her to step on to the poop. 
 She seemed shy, and peeped about her, and said, " Can't we 
 converse here ? " 
 
 " No," I answered. " Come, come ! You're not a girl to 
 run delicacy into prudery ? You won't live aft, and you won't 
 sit with me at the cabin table, and you may be right, though 1 
 can't respect the sentiment that deprives me of your company. 
 But the fastidiousness that stops you from walking with me on 
 the poop must be humbug; so come along, Kate." 
 
 She followed me. 
 
 " You don't care much, do you, for the opinions of such a 
 cargo as this ship carries ? " said I, passing my hand through 
 her arm to steady her on the lifting and falling slant of 
 deck. 
 
 She turned the question by asking me to give her some 
 news. 
 
 " There is none," said I. 
 
 " The sailors' scheme is so ridiculous and extraordinary," 
 she exclaimed, " that I can't believe they'll persevere. They'll 
 hit on some new project, and that's the news I'm waiting for." 
 
 " I don't know how it may be with the majority," I answered, 
 " but Brigstock and that sour devil to leeward yonder are 
 most infernally in earnest." 
 
 As I said this we were approaching the wheel I caught a 
 look from the helmsman ; he was Isaac Coffin of the mustache 
 and humorous vulgar eyes. I held my face with difficulty, for 
 his mind lay as plain in his crumpled visage as though he 
 spoke. 
 
 " The fellows '11 find encouragement in you and me, Kate," 
 said I, wheeling round with her. "That man thinks we're 
 ' pardners' discussing the island scheme." 
 
 " I overheard one of the women tell some others that we'd 
 agreed to join the Brigstock set and settle down," said she. 
 
 " What did you say ? " 
 
 " I let her talk."
 
 1 66 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Isn't it known we were acquainted before we met here ? " 
 said I. 
 
 " The 'tween decks are like a little town," she answered : 
 " one street never hears of what's happening in another. 
 There are sets and cliques. The shop girls move in a higher 
 sphere than the cooks, and the cooks condescend to the gen- 
 eral servants and women whose walks are a little vague, such 
 as Emma Marks." 
 
 " Kate," said I, " I have a scheme, but the motive must be 
 our secret. Suppose the sailors stick to their resolution ; 
 where shall I find men to work the ship to Sydney when the 
 crew have left us ? But granted that I could find men, could 
 I trust the rowdies we're likely to ship, beach combers who 
 carry their consciences strapped in sheaths upon their hips ? 
 They'd cut my throat and be off with the ship, choose wives 
 as the Jacks of this vessel have, though not so tenderly, haunt 
 an island for a few months, and then vanish." 
 
 " Couldn't you get a few respectable English sailors from 
 some passing ship to help us to Sydney ? " 
 
 " If a ship passed with respectable English sailors on board 
 and the captain was willing yes. But I've got to provide 
 for conditions which are next door to certainties. I'm off an 
 island ; the crew are gone with their women ; I'm the only 
 man in the vessel ; what's to be done ? " 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 " I'll tell you : I'm for finding out if the pick of the women 
 in strength and coarse health, I mean will allow themselves 
 to be trained to pull and let go and steer." 
 
 She opened her eyes at me. 
 
 " I'm in earnest. There are women in the 'tween decks as 
 strong as strong men. They couldn't, I admit, go aloft in 
 petticoats, but I hope to see my way even out of that difficulty 
 by and by." 
 
 Still she opened her eyes at me. 
 
 " What do you think of my idea ? " 
 
 " It is odd it is it is why, if it can be done it will be a 
 good idea. Certainly many of the women are strong, as you 
 say, stronger than many men." 
 
 Some conceit tickled her, and she laughed loudly. 
 
 " Will you set an example ? " 
 
 " I'll do anything my strength is equal to, but I can't 
 climb those heights," she exclaimed, smiling, and upturning 
 her dark eyes at the swollen and moving fabric of spar and 
 canvas. 
 
 " I'll teach you to steer a ship in half a dozen lessons, and
 
 THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER. 167 
 
 in a few days you'll know exactly what ropes to let go when 
 the order's given. What do they call that tackle ? " said I, 
 pointing to the main-brace. 
 
 She did not know. 
 
 " And that and that and that ? " 
 
 She could not name a rope. But she knew the names of 
 most of the sails, and the difference betwixt the mainmast and 
 the bowsprit. 
 
 " Still," said I, " you'll let me use you as an example for the 
 others. You'll let me hang the bell upon you." 
 
 " But how much easier to pick up a crew as we go along ! " 
 
 ' I'll not do it," I replied with some warmth. " Give me a 
 couple or three mates to back me, a bo'sun, and a carpenter 
 I can put trust in then you shall advise me. Can't you under- 
 stand the perils I'd avoid by training a batch of women to do 
 men's work ? " 
 
 " Have you spoken to Miss Cobbs ? " 
 
 " No, but your question gives me an idea." 
 
 I saw the matron, as they called her, standing in the gang- 
 way talking with Brigstock, whom a little while earlier I had 
 heard shouting to some men ; indeed he could not have 
 looked after the necessary work of the ship more closely had 
 he been a signed chief mate with the whole round voyage be- 
 fore him. I stood with Kate watching them ; presently they 
 observed me, and Miss Cobbs, perceiving by my manner that 
 I wished to speak to her, came aft. I called her on to the 
 poop, and, after saluting her very civilly, said I'd be glad to 
 have a few words with her. She bobbed me one of her queer 
 courtesies, and answered that her time for the next hour was 
 quite at my service. 
 
 I determined to approach the point gradually, and began 
 by talking about Kate ; I told her who she was, and expressed 
 regret that she could not see her way to live aft. 
 
 " Miss Darnley's right," exclaimed Miss Cobbs, looking at 
 Kate. " It would not do, I assure you. Mr. Brigstock was 
 for bringing me into the cabin. I said certainly not. If / did 
 not set an example of strict propriety to the females, what 
 might not happen ? Mr. Brigstock's wonderful scheme 
 mustn't fail for the want of discipline and decorum here." 
 
 " Mr. Brigstock," said I, " is a very remarkable man." 
 
 " Indeed he is, then, sir," she answered with one of her wire- 
 drawn smirks. " He's one of them men who are born far 
 below their rightful sphere. But Lor' ! it's but too true that the 
 soul's often packed in the wrong case. I know a Jew with the 
 sperrit of a Christian ; he hates his face and believes in Christ.
 
 1 68 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 He do indeed. What right has his body to his soul? Mr. 
 Brigstock is born with the sperrit of a ruler ; it's with him as 
 though somebody had taken the works out of a gold watch 
 case and put 'em into a silver one." 
 
 " Have you any connections, Miss Cobbs ? " 
 
 "Two married sisters at 'ome, sir." 
 
 " Does it please you to think of separating yourself from the 
 world by settling in a little island in the Pacific ? " 
 
 " It do indeed. And you can't call it separating. We shall 
 be a people. I dare say if there was anything very particular 
 to look forward to at home I should think twice. But I don't 
 love the idea of plowing the seas in this way for a living, and 
 really after I step ashore at Blackwall I am no better off than 
 any of those young ladies there," said she, with a sweep of her 
 hand in the direction of the main deck. 
 
 " What will you do for clothes ? " said Kate. 
 
 "How do they manage at Pitcairn ? " she answered. " We 
 provide ourselves, as is understood, with a little assortment 
 from the cargo of this ship. And supposing it should come to 
 our depending on our own skill and taste ! It's so at 'ome, 
 isn't it ? You want a hat ; well, you buy the plain straw, let's 
 say, then feathers and ribbons for trimming. Now there's to 
 be no shops at present in our settlement, but it '11 be strange if 
 there's not plenty of material out of which we can make all 
 sorts of headdresses for ourselves, with plenty of beautiful 
 wild flowers and the gorgeous wings of birds for trimming." 
 
 She dropped a courtesy of self-approval, with a countenance 
 of exquisite complacency, as she thus spoke. 
 
 I saw Kate striving hard to smother a laugh. Indeed Miss 
 Cobbs' talk couldn't fail to submit certain queer images of her- 
 self to us. I figured her raven-hued sausage curls and thin 
 nose under a grass hat of her own weaving piled high with 
 Pacific vegetation and plumage ; and then another absurd 
 fancy occurred to me, and I looked away till I had shaken off 
 a sudden fit of silent laughter. 
 
 I now asked her to pace the deck, and we started, Kate on 
 one side and she on the other. Brigstock, who was directing 
 some work forward, frequently turned with grave, slow ges- 
 tures to survey us. The girl Alice Perry had climbed on top 
 of the bulwark rail, with her back against the main shrouds, 
 where she sat safe ; there she hung, swinging her legs, and 
 flashing looks at us under her wild, shaggy brow as we'd 
 approach the forward end of the poop. A number of girls 
 were singing in concert near the main hatch, and I thought I 
 heard the sound of a fiddle in the 'tween decks. On either side
 
 THE EMGRAXTS' DIXNER. 169 
 
 the galley were lines of bedding spread for airing. A farm- 
 yard noise came from the coop and longboat, and what with 
 the moving figures of the girls, the dance and flutter of their 
 colored raiment, the blown smoke from the galley chimney, 
 the picture of that ship's deck was as lively a sea piece as I 
 had ever seen, full of the hurry of the strong wind, of darting 
 colors, of swinging shadows, with a ceaseless roar of rushing 
 foam on either hand, and a blue horizon, sharp as the edge of 
 a lens, broken in three places by a sail, and dark as violet 
 against the morning azure past it. 
 
 As we walked I told Miss Cobbs carelessly of my scheme of 
 making the women useful and amusing them too. 
 
 "Aren't there men enough to do the ship's work ?" said she, 
 and I was struck by a quick suspicious lift of her eyes. 
 
 " That's my business," I answered coolly. I added after a 
 pause, " Twelve men are not a complement for a vessel of the 
 Earl of Leicester 's tonnage, freighted as she is." 
 
 " No doubt you're right, sir. But few as the men are they're 
 good 'ands." 
 
 " I've called you up here to talk the thing over. Go pres- 
 ently among the women and sound them, and let me hear what 
 they think." 
 
 "But they did not embark in this ship to do her work,'! said 
 Miss Cobbs with some amazement. 
 
 " You don't suppose I'd force ship's work upon them. 
 There's a long voyage before us. We're undermanned. I 
 choose to think so, and know it ! We need a supplemental 
 crew. The girls have nothing to do with themselves all day 
 long. Are they willing to take lessons in steering and learn 
 the names of the ropes, sails, and yards of the ship ? " 
 
 She looked as if she would like to tell me my scheme was 
 ridiculous, and exclaimed, "It's a very hentertaining idea, sir. 
 Some of the women, I'm sure, would gladly learn how to steer, 
 and it 'ud amuse a number of them to get the names of the 
 ropes by "eart. But I'm afraid you'd find 'em of no real use 
 if it should come to your needing their services. W T hat do 
 you say, Miss Darnley?" 
 
 " There are ninety women ; I dare say Mr. Morgan would 
 be able to educate a company of about twenty into being able 
 to help on deck. But he'll find none with pluck enough to 
 climb," said Kate, again looking aloft. 
 
 Mis?; Cobbs giggled. "Who's to teach the lasses, sir?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " I'll arrange for that and take classes myself." 
 
 " Will you learn ?" said the matron, smirking at Kate.
 
 170 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " It will be a proud moment for me when I can hold that 
 wheel and control this beautiful ship by it," answered Kate, 
 with such fine affectation of enthusiasm that her color seemed 
 to mount and her eyes to kindle with the mere effort of 
 acting. 
 
 After we had talked a little longer on this matter Miss 
 Cobbs left me, taking my request that she should sound the 
 women as a command from the master of the ship. Kate 
 walked by my side for another half hour. All our talk was 
 about her future. Where would she stay on her arrival at 
 Sydney ? What would she do if she did not quickly get a 
 situation as governess ? I'd look sideways and earnestly at 
 her while we conversed. At Blathford I had thought her 
 pretty ; I seemed now to find her as sweet and handsome 
 again as she was then. Was I going to loose my heart and 
 complicate my adventures by a love passage ? She'd some- 
 times grow grave while talking about what she was to do in 
 Australia should the Earl of Leicester ever reach Sydney, but 
 there was no lack of fire and spirit in her words and manner. 
 The heart that had brought her into this ship beat strong ; 
 there was courage of a steady, quiet, heroic sort in every look 
 and saying and smile of hers. 
 
 When we parted I went below and spent an hour in going 
 carefully through Captain Halcrow's effects, and stowing them 
 away for locking or sealing up. It was a duty I owed a 
 brother seaman, and I resolved that whatever I borrowed or 
 took I'd make a note of, that he might suffer no loss should it 
 be in my power to pay him. 
 
 While I was at this work I thought of the Hebe, and won- 
 dered if I should ever recover my own poor outfit and little 
 stock of money. I found twenty sovereigns in a small box in 
 a locker. I also met with a dozen boxes of very good cigars. 
 When I was tired with this work I wrote in the log book and 
 then made certain calculations, next overhung the South 
 Pacific chart, and searched the collection of books for informa- 
 tion about the navigation of those seas, but in vain. This 
 brought the hour to about half-past eleven, and I went on 
 deck with one of Halcrow's sextants. 
 
 Brigstock was on the poop to windward forward talking 
 with Harding. I looked about me for a minute or two, and 
 then sung out, " Mr. Harding, set the fore topmast stunsail." 
 
 The man promptly ordered the boom to be rigged out. 
 
 " We must sweat it out of this wind while we have it," said 
 I? going up to Brigstock. " Better two points off than two of 
 leeway. Make a fair wind of whatever comes along," said I.
 
 THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER. 171 
 
 I watched the men set the sail, and observed they were lively 
 and thorough. 
 
 " She feels it, sir," said Brigstock, coming up from the lee 
 rail with a face of grave satisfaction. 
 
 " At what hour do the women dine ? " 
 
 " At wan bell." 
 
 " I mean to see them eat. You'll accompany me ? " 
 
 " Aye, aye, sir." 
 
 I took up a position to command the sun, Brigstock attend- 
 ing me. He waited till I made eight bells, regarding me with 
 curiosity and- respect, and then when the chimes on the main 
 deck had ceased he exclaimed, " So you're in earnest, sir, in 
 your scheme of training the women ? Them as '11 be willing, 
 I mean." 
 
 " Yes," I answered impatiently. 
 
 " You'll excuse me," said he with his slow delivery, 
 " a-questioning of you as captain of this ship, but what good 
 might you think the females are going to be to us ? " 
 
 " Has Miss Cobbs been talking to you ? " 
 
 " She has, sir." 
 
 " She can give you my reason." 
 
 " There are twelve good men in this ship, capt'n, sailors all, 
 who don't want any help from women, sir." 
 
 " I intend to supplement the ship's company by a working 
 body of strong girls those who, as you say, may be willing. 
 Now, Mr. Brigstock, I'm either to be captain or not. Say the 
 word," said I, looking at him steadily. 
 
 " Oh ! " he exclaimed, with an odd bow of civil protest. 
 " This is no scheme to alter our views of yer, sir." 
 
 " I shall be ready to visit the 'tween decks at half-past 
 twelve," said I. 
 
 At that hour he was waiting for me on the quarter-deck. 
 All the women were below ; the last of the girls of the mess 
 had disappeared down the hatchway with the steaming kids 
 and cans ; the seamen were likewise at dinner, and the ship 
 rushed bowing onward under her wide, overhanging wing of 
 studding sail, watched by Harding, who paced a few planks' 
 width of the weather poop deck. 
 
 I descended the hatch ladder, followed by Brigstock, and 
 stood a minute or two viewing a singular scene. The women 
 were seated in a row on either side the table, at the after 
 extremity of which sat Miss Cobbs. The atmosphere was 
 clouded with the steam of pease soup, boiled pork, and plum 
 duff. The heel of the windsail poured in a good supply of 
 fresh air, but there would have been no virtue in a living gale
 
 1/2 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 to sober or extinguish the smell of the soup and the pork. 
 The kids and dishes steamed down the whole length of the 
 table, and in addition to their incense I tasted the disgusting 
 flavor of soup and bouilli and preserved " spuds." Lanterns 
 swung in the fore part, and the play of lights and shadows 
 there, the gradual dimming down of the lines of faces into 
 mere phantasms, the various change of posture in the eating 
 and drinking figures, produced an effect many touches above 
 my genius to describe. 
 
 Every tongue was going, knives and forks rattled on the 
 tin plates like a chain cable in a hawse pipe. A few of the 
 women moved up and down small divisions of the sitters, as 
 though waiting upon them. I kept for a bit under the hatch the 
 better to hear Brigstock's replies to my questions, and I now 
 learned that he had taken the second mate's place in serving 
 out the stores, since the ship had been left without anyone to 
 command her. He gave me certain facts which I'll not 
 trouble you with, though I was here to satisfy myself upon 
 them. 
 
 Some time passed before any notice was taken of us. When 
 we were perceived Miss Cobbs stood up, and the jangle of 
 tongues at our end softened, though a sharp talk, with frequent 
 shrill laughter, and piercing cries to hand this along and to 
 pass that across, was kept up at the forward part. I told Miss 
 Cobbs to keep her seat, and complimented her upon what 
 I chose to call her methods. Everything looked clean. The 
 dishes were so disposed as to illustrate a well-digested system. 
 In short that long dinner table was as comfortable to the sight 
 as the judgment could possibly contrive in dealing with such 
 coarse utensils and unsavory sea fare as loaded it. 
 
 I walked leisurely down the starboard row of diners, Brig- 
 stock in my wake. I had several motives in paying this visit, 
 but chiefly I wished the women and the sailors to understand 
 that I considered myself as fully the master of the vessel as 
 ever Halcrow had been, with every right of inquisition, and 
 strong with resolution that the government of the ship should 
 be justly and carefully administered. The females fell some- 
 what silent as I passed. I looked for Kate, and saw her sitting 
 on the port side. 
 
 When I got to the bottom of the table I came to a stand, 
 and glancing along the double row of faces, I exclaimed, 
 " Ladies, I'm glad to see you're well looked after. This 
 punctuality of meals, and the manner in which the food's 
 served, do great credit to Miss Cobbs and to Mr. Brigstock." 
 
 I had expected some applause would follow this. Instead
 
 THE EMIGRANTS' DINNER. 173 
 
 several women began to hiss, and a rasping voice yelled out, 
 " Don't mention Brigstock. Why aren't we to be sailed 
 straight to Australia ? " 
 
 " Have you come down here to talk about making sailors of 
 us, captain ?" called out Alice Perry, who was seated midway 
 on the starboard side. 
 
 " Oi'll be a tarpaulin soon as ever yer loike," cried a girl. 
 " Oi'm a Deal man's daughter. Oi've been off along with 
 farder scores of times. His lugger was the Water Witch, and 
 she was run down and all hands drownded off Folkestone 
 three years ago come next month, and that's why Oi'm here." 
 
 " I'll be talking to as many of you as '11 volunteer by and 
 by," said I. "Go on with your dinner, I beg. I'm not here 
 to interrupt you." 
 
 "Taste this," exclaimed a young woman close beside me, 
 holding up a lump of pale fat pork on a two-pronged fork. 
 
 " Ask the capt'n to try the pease soup fust," cried another 
 woman. 
 
 " Don't let him be persuaded to have anything to do with 
 the pudden," said a third 'in a mincing tone, and with the 
 provincial accent (this woman's face was like a piece of sum- 
 mer English country with her cherry lips and apple cheeks 
 and blackberry eyes and rich gloss of chestnut on her hair), 
 "or the ship '11 again be without a navigator." 
 
 "Is it the pork or the cooking that's wrong?" said I to the 
 first speaker. 
 
 " The pork," she answered. " It was never part of the 
 usual pig. Hi've boiled plenty of pork in my time but never 
 such flesh as this." 
 
 " It's a piece of old sailor, Miss Flanders ! " exclaimed the 
 woman next her. At this there was a great laugh, Brigstock 
 joining in with a solemn, hollow ha, ha ! 
 
 " I can deal with the cook, but not with the meat," said I. 
 " No good meat ever dreams of going to sea. What's shipped 
 is meant to keep sailors' teeth white and sharp, and to give 
 them a relish for beefsteak when they get ashore." 
 
 On my way to the hatch ladder I stopped to speak to Kate. 
 While I stooped, intending a low voice, Alice Perry, who sat 
 nearly opposite, cried out : " Capt'n, sit down beside Miss 
 Darnley and take your dinner along with us. There looks to 
 be plenty, but you'll find it isn't all jam for us girls." 
 
 I smiled at the coarsely handsome creature, with her strong 
 white teeth, and large black saucy eyes, and having addressed 
 Kate, passed on, taking no notice of the cries some of the 
 females followed me with, to stop and comfort them with
 
 174 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 talking about the voyage and how long it was to last to stop 
 and explain what sort of work would be expected of them if 
 they were willing to learn the names of ropes and how to 
 steer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 
 
 THE trade wind, without failing us, scanted considerably 
 that afternoon. The sea ran sloppily, as though thick with 
 grease, the weather darkened with wet, and for the next two 
 days the time was too uncomfortable to find me a chance of 
 talking to the women. It then cleared one morning watch in a 
 sweep of the heavens by a sudden freshening of the trade 
 gale that brightened the sky out into a clear face of trembling 
 stars ; at seven o'clock the ship, heeled to the line of her chan- 
 nels, was flashing her wet copper to the windward sun through 
 an ocean of dark blue foaming billows, the trade cloud sailing 
 over the reeling trucks, the flying fish sparkling from the shear- 
 ing fore foot, and a confused music, as of a dozen orchestras 
 blowing and fiddling in opposition, trembling out of the 
 shadowy concavities of canvas, and twanging off the taut 
 and vibratory standing rigging into the steady roar of the 
 breeze. 
 
 I breakfasted and went on deck. It was about nine o'clock. 
 I saw Miss Cobbs conversing with Brigstock at the foot of the 
 poop ladder, and asked her to request the emigrants to assem- 
 ble on the quarter-deck, as I desired to explain my scheme of 
 picking a supplemental crew from among them. There might 
 then have been from twenty to thirty females on deck. 
 
 I took a few turns while Miss Cobbs went about among the 
 women ; presently a great number, indeed all, I think, had 
 assembled. The sailors of the watch gave notice to their 
 mates below of what was going forward, and all hands came 
 into the waist, the watch knocking off their work to listen. I 
 did not think proper to notice the impudence of the men in 
 coolly dropping their jobs. I might talk big, but I understood 
 (and so did they) that discipline with us must be regulated by 
 the forecastle view of our situation. 
 
 Nor was I made very easy by the suggestions of the men's 
 postures. A sailor can express mutiny by an attitude, and 
 with tight and silent lips dart curses at you with his looks. 
 But my resolution was formed and as hard as nails on this 
 question of a female crew. I went to the poop rail and looked
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 175 
 
 a minute-at the women, who stared up at me with countenances 
 awork with curiosity. Kate was in the thick of them, Alice 
 Perry in the foreground, almost directly under me. Near her 
 stood the black hung-faced Jewess Emma Marks ; her purple 
 pupils on yellow ground made her seem to stare up at me with 
 a small pair of sunflowers for eyes. 
 
 In a few words I told the women I considered the ship 
 short-handed, and asked some of their number to form into a 
 little company to be instructed in the art of steering, and in 
 the names and uses of the rigging, yards, and sails. 
 
 Brigstock, standing abreast of me to leeward, listened atten- 
 tively ; while I spoke Joe Harding turned to some of the men 
 he stood beside on the skirts of the women and talked with 
 them. 
 
 " Of course, ladies," I continued, " the scheme is more for 
 your entertainment than for utility. Yet, seeing what a big 
 company we are, and that our crew of men numbers twelve 
 only, I say it will be for the good of the whole shipload of us 
 that we should be able to count upon the services of a trained 
 number of you at any moment." 
 
 " What '11 be expected of them that volunteers ? " said Emma 
 Marks. 
 
 " They'll take the wheel from time to time in fine weather, 
 and help on deck when the watch are aloft reefing or furling." 
 
 " Will they be paid for their work? " said Emma. 
 
 " The owners or agents are sure to recognize their services." 
 
 " No female could climb those heights ! " cried Miss Cobbs, 
 who stood on the quarter-deck just under the poop where 
 Brigstock was. 
 
 " Try me ! " shrieked Alice Perry, with a quick clasp of her 
 hands and a loud laugh as she looked at Miss Cobbs. 
 
 I now made a sort of speech in which I related one or two 
 anecdotes of women who had shipped on board vessels as 
 sailors. I said that no doubt the crew could tell of young 
 seamen who had proved women. 
 
 " That's right enough, sir," cried out the cook, a man named 
 Wambold. " I was in hospital at Calcutta three years ago 
 along with a young ordinary seaman who'd been took with 
 cholera ; he died, and they found him a gal." 
 
 I continued my address. I said that those ladies who were 
 willing to learn to be sailors would assemble at fixed times on 
 the poop, where they'd receive instruction from me. I had no 
 doubt, I said, that Mr. Brigstock and Mr. Harding, together 
 with others of the crew, would be glad to lend me hand. 
 There was a long voyage before us ; amusements were hard
 
 rjt THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 to invept. The work to be done would improve the graces of 
 the figure ; what was more elegant than the light, dancing, 
 easy step of the sailor? This charming gait and flowing car- 
 riage of figure the sailor girls of the Earl of Leicester would 
 speedily though insensibly acquire. The effect of such deep- 
 sea graces upon the Australians, who were to a man lovers of 
 the ocean, might prove exceedingly fortunate formany of the 
 ladies. 
 
 I talked on in this strain, then asked those who were willing 
 to volunteer as a supplemental crew to hold up their hands. 
 
 Now there was no sickness in the ship at that time, and I 
 believe that every living person on board was on deck ; you 
 will suppose, then, that the women and seamen made a great 
 crowd. When I asked them to lift their hands I had reckoned 
 upon about a dozen girls doing so. Judge how astonished I 
 was when at least seventy arms were flung up, and there the 
 women stood, pretty nearly the whole of them, as it seemed at 
 the first glance, with their hands in the air, one straining on 
 tiptoe behind another, most of them with eager smiling faces. 
 I took this as expressive of their resentment, and as a protest 
 against Brigstock and his lot. Indeed I felt tolerably sure 
 that had they supposed Brigstock and the crew favored my 
 scheme the show of hands would have been exceedingly 
 poor. 
 
 I called out " All right! " signing that they might put their 
 arms down. I then said in my politest tones, " Ladies, I 
 thank you for your ready acceptance of my wishes. We shall 
 not need all the volunteers by one-half at least. I therefore 
 propose, with your consent, to choose from among you while 
 you stand there. Those I select will be so good as to step on 
 to the poop. Those who are not chosen will please under- 
 stand that they are held in reserve, to be drawn upon as we 
 may need recruits." 
 
 The first I pointed to was Alice Perry, who instantly bounded 
 up the poop ladder, with shining eyes and a frolicsome shake 
 of the head, and a saucy, laughing look at Brigstock, who eyed 
 her in solemn silence as she danced up the steps. I then 
 pointed to a second girl named Emmy Reed, a stout, strong 
 young woman of about seven-and-twenty. One after another 
 the women I beckoned at came on to the poop. I picked out 
 thirty of the strongest and the likeliest. Some, with their broad 
 backs and stout arms, would have proved a match for any of 
 our men, whether at a steady drag upon a rope, nay, or at 
 wrestling, or at boxing for that matter, suppose you trained 
 $hem to keep their temper. Kate made thirty-one,
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 177 
 
 They seemed highly diverted. Those on the main deck 
 stared at us with moody, jealous looks. None of the seamen's 
 " pardners " volunteered. On the contrary, they had backed 
 away while I was picking and choosing, and were making a 
 crowd with the sailors in the gangway. I found an eye for 
 them, and noticed they talked earnestly. The massive Emma 
 Grubb, burly as a big smack boy, jabbered, hands on hip, with 
 the seaman of her choice, Isaac Coffin, who barely reached to 
 her nose. The two sisters Jess and Nan Honeyball were loud 
 and demonstrative ; Wambold was Nan's partner, and a man 
 named Luddy Jess'. There, too, was the moon-faced Kate 
 Davis of the huge red arms; Jupe Jackson was her pal, -and 
 she talked in that crowd with both hands upon his shoulders, 
 as though "standing by" to shake the life out of him at a 
 moment's notice. 
 
 And here let me say that the other ladies who were to 
 serve as mothers for a settlement of Britons in the Pacific 
 were I got their names, one by one, by degrees afterward 
 Martha Gibbs, dairymaid, the partner of Sampson, then at the 
 wheel ; Selah Bung, seamstress (Gouger); Maggie Dobree, 
 seamstress (Bob Weatherwax) ; Nan Nesbitt, nursemaid 
 (Jonathan Snortledge); Isabella Dobson, cook (Hull); Sail 
 Simmonds, housemaid (Prentice). The others you know. 
 
 Brigstock paced athwart the back of the poop. He viewed 
 me often askew. The girls I had picked out were in a crowd 
 abreast of the weather mizzen rigging. 
 
 " A finer body of women," said I, running my eye over 
 them, letting my gaze barely rest on Kate with an instant's 
 smile, " no man could desire to make sailors of. Ladies, 
 you're doing me honor, not only obliging me, but greatly 
 helping yourselves also, believe me," said I earnestly. " I'll 
 give a lesson this afternoon. There's too strong a breeze, too 
 high a sea for any helm work now. I shall want a bo'sun and 
 two mates." 
 
 At these words two mates three or four girls burst into a 
 laugh. 
 
 " I'll be bo'sun ! " cried Alice Perry, swaying with the bowl- 
 ing roll of the stage Jack as she stood, as though about to 
 break into a jig. 
 
 " That post will be filled by the smartest," said I, and then 
 asked them to accompany me to the wheel. 
 
 They all followed me, laughing and ejaculating and highly 
 pleased. Kate was as eager as any of them in her behavior, 
 and I admired her tact. The able seaman Sampson was at 
 the helm ; he was a tough-looking chap with a leather face,
 
 178 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 and eyes sunk in their sockets as though blown deep by years 
 of hard weather. He wore a wild expression, as of a grin 
 struggling with a scowl, when the women closed around him, 
 and chewed hard upon the knob inside his cheek, snapping 
 glances at the compass bowl, then aloft, and swinging off from 
 the wheel, whose machinery of tackle and kicking tiller gave 
 him plenty to think of, so abrupt was the sternward pUinge 
 at times into the thunderous rush of yeast under the 
 counter. 
 
 The women listened with close attention while I explained 
 the mechanism of the wheel, often exclaiming, " Lor', now ! 
 Fs'y, though Aint it croolly funny ! " and so forth. 
 
 The strapping girl who called herself the daughter of a 
 Deal boatman thrust close beside me to hearken, and when I 
 was done she asked leave to try her hand at the wheel. 1 
 looked her over, and seeing confidence strong in her face, 
 nodded, and told Sampson to get to leeward, ready to help, 
 but not to touch the spokes. 
 
 This Deal girl's name was Susannah Corbin. She grasped the 
 wheel as though to the manner born. The kicks of the tiller 
 made her breasts heave, but with large nostrils and set lips 
 she held the ship to her course, and though she stood at the 
 helm for five or six minutes, not once had Sampson occasion 
 to help her. 
 
 " What think you of this ? " said I to the women. 
 
 " You'll give me a chance, I 'ope, before you make her 
 bo'sun," exclaimed Alice Perry. 
 
 " Let me try my hand," said Kate. 
 
 She took the wheel from the Deal girl and made so hand- 
 some a figure at it that you must have fallen in love with her 
 even as a picture, but nothing could better show off a fine 
 shape than a ship's wheel, which stretches the arms and 
 compels the form into all sorts of yielding, swaying motions. 
 
 The ship was speedily three points off her course with Kate 
 at the helm, and Sampson came to windward again. We were 
 closely observed by the seamen and a number of women in the 
 fore parts of the ship, whence the sight commanded the length 
 of the poop. I told my company of girls that I would give 
 them a lesson in seamanship that afternoon, and away they 
 went to the main deck laughing, joking, and talking, all in high 
 spirits, some acting as though turning a wheel or pulling a 
 rope, others leaping and singing. They filed down the poop 
 ladder in a tumult of laughter and voices. 
 
 I detained Kate on the poop for a walk and a chat. 
 
 " I think you are puzzling Brigstock," said she.
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 179 
 
 " No matter. I'll make good sailors of those women long 
 before we're up with the Horn." 
 
 " Would it not be good policy to be candid with Brig- 
 stock and the crew ?" 
 
 " Why, yes, if I were as cocksure that all hands were as 
 much in earnest in this island scheme as Brigstock is. But 
 I don't want them to change their minds. My intention is 
 to preserve this ship with the help of the women. I mean to 
 be the hero of one of the most memorable adventures in 
 sea story." 
 
 " The men won't carry out their scheme." 
 
 " I'll find them an island anyway." 
 
 "The girls are absurdly delighted with the idea of becoming 
 sailors," said she, laughing. " But without men how will you 
 reef and furl ? " 
 
 " Breek Alice Perry and she'd be sending down a royal 
 yard in a week," said I. 
 
 This was Hebrew to her. 
 
 " I'll steer your ship and pull your ropes," she exclaimed, 
 " but you'll never drive me up there," and she halted, looking 
 straight up at the swollen and towering canvas. 
 
 I changed the subject by talking once more of her pros- 
 pects in Australia, and we had a long chat about home. She 
 told me one or two touching stories of her struggles. 
 
 " Well, you're out of it all here," said I. " There's nothing 
 white-lipped and black-hearted in the shape of mistresses 
 aboard us ; no small pudding-heads here to fill with geog- 
 raphy and arithmetic. When those hearts there are out of 
 the ship you shall be her chief mate." 
 
 After I had taken sights that day I asked Brigstock if 
 there was a bo'sun whistle in the forecastle. He said there 
 might be one in the chest left behind by the boatswain of the 
 vessel. I requested him to look. He answered, " The sacred- 
 ness of proputty's a thing I'm for impressing strongly upon 
 the minds of those who go along with me. How'd it stand 
 with my arguments if the crew was to see me overhaul the 
 bo'sun's chest ?" 
 
 I glanced at the clothes he had borrowed from one of the 
 cabins and said gravely, " Mr. Brigstock, I admire your prin- 
 ciples, and should be sorry to ask you to do anything likely to 
 weaken the valuable influence you exercise over the crew. 
 Still, if you could contrive without prejudice to your moral 
 control to find me a bo'sun's whistle you'll much oblige me." 
 
 When he came into the cabin at the dinner hour he brought 
 a whistle with him. I thanked him, but asked no questions.
 
 i8o THE EMIGRANT SfffP. 
 
 It had no doubt belonged to the late bo'sun, and it was an old 
 silver pipe, which blew a shrill sweet whistle when I put it to 
 my lips. 
 
 While I dined most of the women came on deck and hung 
 about as though waiting for me, some peeping in at the cabin 
 door and windows. Brigstock talked a good deal about his 
 constitootion, and said one of the main principles of it would 
 be religious equality. 
 
 " It's terrible to consider," said he, " that a man may be 
 wrong, though he thinks he's right, so that by a-forcing of his 
 own opinions he stands at Judgment Day to be charged with 
 the loss of souls. One sperrit's enough for a man to look 
 arter, and that's his own. The hessence of the religion of my 
 constitootion '11 be : Let every man see to his own soul ; he'll 
 have no time then to trouble himself about others, and so we 
 may scrape along without much preachin'." 
 
 He continued for some time in this strain. I listened with 
 attention. A rude enthusiasm glowed in his words, and 
 lighted up his dark steady eyes, and slightly reddened his 
 long, formal, melancholy face. If ever I had questioned the 
 fellow's sincerity and zeal as a settler and primitive father, 
 all doubt must have ended while I now followed him. Just 
 before he left the table to relieve Joe Harding he said, " May 
 I ask, capt'n, if you're in airnest in your scheme about them 
 women ? Or is it your notion jest to amuse 'em ?" 
 
 " They'll prove serviceable," I answered shortly ; then ob- 
 serving that he stood and looked at me, I said, " I shall 
 expect you and Mr. Harding to help in training the girls." 
 
 With the instinctive obedience of the old hand, he muttered, 
 " Aye, aye, sir," and slowly made his way on deck. 
 
 There was in me at this time a spirit of indifference that 
 was a sort of insolence, due, perhaps, to my feeling strong as 
 the only navigator in the ship. I was young and wanting in 
 wariness. Again, for some years I had held situations of com- 
 mand. I failed to steadily keep in mind the conditions under 
 which this Earl of Leicester was sailed ; the quarter-deck habit 
 was dominant, and I never could talk to Brigstock and the 
 others but as forecastle hands, designed by nature to hop and 
 fly when a skipper or a mate sung out. 
 
 But let this be as it will. When Brigstock was out of the 
 cabin I went to the cuddy door and asked the women who 
 were hanging about in clusters under the break of the poop 
 to send Miss Darnley aft if she was disengaged. Some of the 
 girls ran with wonderful willingness and alacrity, crying for 
 Miss Darnley along the deck and down the hatch. Party
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 181 
 
 feeling was expressed even in this little thing ; it was already 
 Brigstock and his small Utopian clan on the one hand, and 
 myself and the great mass of the emigrant women on the 
 other. 
 
 Kate came through the crowd to the door where I stood ; 
 she looked startled ; she was pale and nervous. 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked. 
 
 " Step in," said I. 
 
 She entered, and I drew her to the after end of the cuddy. 
 
 " What's frightened you ? " 
 
 " A dozen women have been screeching out my name." 
 
 " What of that ? " 
 
 " You can't imagine the effect of hearing your name ringing 
 through a ship in a dozen sorts of screams. What do you 
 want ? Look how they are staring ! " 
 
 I pulled out the boatswain's whistle, and, putting it to my 
 lips, piped a call. I had learned to pipe when I first went to 
 sea, and warbled like a canary now, though years had passed 
 since I had put a sea whistle to my mouth. The women, hear- 
 ing that shrill music, gathered in a thickening crowd at the 
 cuddy front, but none offered to enter. 
 
 " Did you hear that? " said I. 
 
 " I did," she answered, bringing her hands from her ears. 
 
 " I want you to learn certain calls that you may pipe the 
 women to school and afterward to their work. Blow now." 
 
 I gave her the whistle and she blew ; I took it from her and 
 piped and trilled, and bade her imitate the noise. She did so 
 in a manner that satisfied me she would soon be mistress of 
 that whistle. We blew together in this fashion for about half 
 an hour. The women outside at first looked amused and 
 excited, but as the time wore on they grew impatient. One 
 of them, a red-faced, thin-featured person named Catharine 
 Hale, standing in the doorway, bawled out at last : 
 
 " I thought we was to have a lesson. Is Miss Darnley to be 
 the only one taught ? " 
 
 I asked for the time. One behind her looked up at the 
 clock and said it was after half-past two. 
 
 " Then," said I, " up with you ladies on to the poop," and 
 Kate and I went on deck by the companion steps. 
 
 When the girls were assembled I told them I meant to 
 teach Miss Darnley certain tunes on the boatswain's pipe, with 
 which airs she would when perfect summon them on to the 
 poop twice a day, weather permitting. I drew them up in 
 double ranks just before the wheel, and pointed to such gear 
 as I intended they should get the names of, often stepping to
 
 1 82 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the ropes where they were belayed to pins, so that by seeing 
 how they led they could better understand their uses, and then 
 I made them repeat the names and my explanations. They 
 took it all as good fun, and yet were fairly in earnest too. I 
 guessed their education in this way would occupy some time, 
 for many were dull, thick, and slow ; those were unfortunately 
 the coarsest and strongest, the best of all to answer my pur- 
 pose. But then I did not want much knowledge in them ; the 
 ability to run to such ropes, to brace about such yards, to let 
 
 fo and hoist away upon such halyards as I named, would suf- 
 ce, and there was plenty of time before us. 
 
 We were watched with curiosity by the seamen and their 
 " pardners," and many of the ladies crowded up the poop 
 ladders and got upon the bulwark rails to observe our pro- 
 ceedings. I kept the girls on deck till four o'clock, teaching 
 and talking to them. Some were quick in picking up the 
 terms and correctly applying them, and among these were Alice 
 Perry, a girl named Clark who wore spectacles, and the Deal 
 girl Corbin. 
 
 When the lesson was ended I lifted my hat and thanked 
 them for their attention, and added significantly and very 
 earnestly, " All this is intended for your safety." They then 
 left the poop in a troop, and presently the main deck was noisy 
 with their own and the laughter of others as they went over 
 their lessons again, one crying, " Emmy, which is the main 
 topgallant brace ?" and another, "Miss Marsdale, what's the 
 mizzen topsail halyards ? " and a third, " Susie, where's the end 
 of the starboard main brace ? " 
 
 Now and again one of the Jacks barked out a laugh at 
 these calls. 
 
 Eight bells had gone ; the first dog-watch had begun. It 
 was a glorious afternoon ; the light of the sun was yellow as 
 pale gold, untinged as yet by the hectic of the west ; the 
 trade wind was a steady pouring breeze, and the ship, to the 
 faithful spiriting of it, swept onward at a steamer's constant 
 rate. The two last heaves of the log had shown nine, neither 
 more nor less. While I paced the deck after the lesson I 
 thought to myself, The Horn's not distant at this going ; I've 
 not begun too soon ! 
 
 At supper Brigstock asked me respectfully how I got on. 
 I answered that I was very well satisfied. 
 
 " The men fancy," said he, " that some of the females asked 
 jer to teach 'em, meanin' to turn sailors if they aren't able to 
 get work out in Australia." 
 
 " Strange that a simple idea should be so hard to under-
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 183 
 
 stand," said I, guessing that his sentence was a " feeler." " It 
 may come to our wanting hands, and what you can't find you 
 must make." 
 
 His mind struggled with this; he then said, "What d'jer 
 think's goin' to happen to the crew afore we falls in with our 
 island? " 
 
 I was on the point of bluntly confessing my intention, with a 
 swift fancy in me that Kate was right, but was checked by my 
 first motive of secrecy. So I curtly replied that I considered 
 the Earl of Leicester undermanned ; we had the Horn to pass, 
 where we might be thankful for a supplementary crew, even 
 though they should be petticoated ; I added that I looked to 
 him and Harding to assist me. 
 
 He munched his biscuit and drank his black tea in silence. 
 
 "There'll be no objection to a bit of dancing afore sun- 
 down ? " says he presently. 
 
 "A bit of dancing?" 
 
 " The men and their pardners." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 He shook his head, while one of his grave smiles traveled 
 cat's-paw fashion over his long face, and answered, " No, sir. 
 I'm too old for the likes of that sorter vanity. But I'm for 
 encouraging 'armless enjoyment. There's to be nothen mel- 
 ancholic in the constitootion. No groanin' nothen liverish. 
 I've read of Crumrnell. The theayters was locked up in them 
 times, plum duff was a sin 'cos it was reckoned a papish super- 
 stition. When a man talked pious he drawed his sperrit into 
 his nose to jaw through. What followed ? Horgies. I'm for 
 natur, only she's got to be measured for a long skirt afore she 
 can please me." 
 
 I burst out a-laughing and left the table. 
 
 I was curious and anxious too to see what sort of figure the 
 men and their partners would make in dancing, also if others 
 besides the " pardners " meant to dance. I had at some earlier 
 time heard the strains of a fiddle in the 'tween decks, and now 
 at this hour, drawing on to six o'clock, a good-looking young 
 woman of the shop-girl order, neat and slender, came on deck 
 accompanied by Kate Davis, and walked toward the forecastle, 
 where the ship's company, saving the man at the wheel, and 
 Harding, who had the lookout, stood waiting, all grins and 
 restless shuffling, all in their best togs too, and as clean as 
 a bucket of salt water, and maybe one half comb and a single 
 brush of scattered bristles for the whole forecastle could make 
 them. 
 
 The neat and slender girl held a fiddle in one hand and
 
 t$4 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 a bow in the other. Jupe Jackson at the head of the fore- 
 castle ladder convulsed his figure at her in an extraordinary 
 bow, and not without a kind of wild rough grace, handed and 
 securely seated her on top of the booms stowed over the long- 
 boat, where she at once fell to tuning up. All the women who 
 had agreed to be married to the sailors by Brigstock and live 
 upon an island now mounted on to the forecastle, Miss Cobbs 
 leading the way. Brigstock received this lady and took her 
 into the head, where they seated themselves out of the road, 
 but in a position that enabled them to see all that passed. 
 A large number of the women went below as though to mark 
 their scorn and disgust, but I'll not say those passions were 
 unmixed ; I dare suppose there was a good deal of jealousy 
 among them. Many, however, stayed and watched the scene 
 from the main and quarter-decks. 
 
 The forecastle was a bad dancing floor with its litter of 
 stowed anchors and fore-scuttle and windlass gear. Probably 
 the sailors would have used the quarter-deck but for their fear 
 of being crowded by the women, and jostled and hindered. 
 I took notice there were no refreshments. This pleased me. 
 It proved, at all events, that Brigstock and his fellows were con- 
 sistent in their views of equality ; they would not themselves 
 eat and drink, nor give to their " pardners," what the rest of 
 the emigrants did not get. It also exhibited a resolution of 
 sobriety that was as good as a warranty of decorum. 
 
 I looked for Kate, wanting her at my side to view the queer 
 ocean pastime, but she was of those who were below. The 
 sunshine was red ; it painted the hard breasts of sails that 
 color. The water rushed aft in a cataractal race of foam 
 from the driving bows, but the run of the sea was steady, nor 
 had its volume the weight of the morning surge, and the clip 
 of the head was as regular as the swing of a pendulum, a light, 
 gentle, airy courtesy and toss, proper to put a livelier nimble- 
 ness into flying feet, and a spirit beyond the magic of the bow 
 into the melodies of the catgut. 
 
 The girl on the booms screwed up her fiddle and fell to 
 playing. Every man then seized his partner, and all danced. 
 It was the sailor's favorite dance the polka, the only shuffle, 
 besides the hornpipe, he seems to care about. 
 
 The girls on the main deck came together in groups, and 
 nudged each other with frequent titters, and some would step 
 away over to leeward as though they could no longer con- 
 descend to look on, but they always came back again. It was 
 a pretty picture, humorous with Brigstock's long face and 
 Miss Cobbs' bonnet alongside him nodding with the music.
 
 A FORECASTLE DANCE. 185 
 
 The sailors and the girls danced decorously and well. The 
 shadows of the canvas and the red moist light of the sun 
 touched the revolving forms, .fled and touched them again, 
 and it happened that the red light was always upon them 
 when the bows sank, and threw up the blue mass of ocean 
 ahead, foam streaked to the horizon, as high as the flying jib 
 boom end, as a background for the twisting and sliding 
 figures. I liked too the sight of the pretty, slender girl on 
 the booms with her smiling face her eyes on the dancers 
 aslant on the fiddle, and her slender arm sawing gracefully as 
 the bough of a tree bends and lifts with a breeze. 
 
 The man at the wheel was Weatherwax, and his partner, 
 Maggie Dobree, stood with Sarah Salmon, Harding's choice, 
 near Brigstock and Miss Cobbs, looking on. There were 
 nine couples, and they covered the forecastle with dancing 
 shapes. I watched them for a quarter of an hour and then 
 went below. 
 
 In about an hour I returned to see how the dancing 
 progressed. The sun was gone, but a wide flush of dying 
 sunlight filled the fresh wind with a solemn beautiful color, 
 like that which irradiates a cathedral through painted windows. 
 I'd scarcely got my head out of the companionway when 
 I heard a noise of screeching voices, and running to the break 
 of the poop, I saw two women fighting abreast of the galley 
 door. The scene with its crowds of women and sailors, the 
 two hair-pulling and shrieking females, the shouts of men and 
 the yelping and laughter of girls, made that fore end of the 
 ship loojc like a street in a low neighborhood when an alley 
 row is in full flower. Brigstock from the head of the fore- 
 castle steps was roaring to the people to separate the women. 
 Jupe Jackson was yelling, " Give over, Kate ; there's no harm 
 done ! You're too much for her with them fists o' yourn ! " 
 
 Though the women were separated after a few minutes, 
 they fought in that time with bloody desperation and tigerish 
 rage. They pulled each other's hair down, they pulled each 
 other's hats off, they scratched and bit and kicked, their 
 dresses flew as they tugged and clawed and sprang, and 
 a light shawl streamed in rags from the shoulders of one of 
 them like bunting wrecked with shot. The most dreadful 
 part was the noise they made : they screeched like railway 
 whistles, they howled like the jackals of the Hooghly, they 
 moaned like midnight cats. 
 
 " What's the matter there ? " I called down the slant of the 
 
 poop to Harding, who at once came up to me. 
 " Bit of a flare up 'twixt Kate Davis and o 
 
 one of the gals/
 
 1 86 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 he answered in his sour voice and sulky manner. " Along 
 o' jealousy, I allow. Can't tell 'ee the cause, sir." 
 
 By this time the fight was over, the women had been 
 separated. Kate Davis of the huge arms was being lovingly 
 led on to the forecastle by the man Jupe Jackson. The 
 woman she had fought was coming aft in the heart of a crowd, 
 every tongue in which was going. She was crying violently. 
 The light was bad, but I thought I could see a very gridiron 
 of red scars upon her face. Her hat was gone, her hair tum- 
 bling and blowing about her. Every now and again she'd 
 oblige the crowd to stop while she checked her passion of 
 weeping to shake her fist at the forecastle. 
 
 Shortly after she had disappeared Brigstock came aft. 
 
 "What's been wrong with you forward ?" said I. 
 
 " That there Jupe," he answered, " has got hold of a pardner 
 as is simply ate up with jealousy. While dancing she tripped, 
 hurt her foot, and had to rest. Jupe, not being able to stand 
 still the fiddling lady keeping all on, jer see calls to the 
 females on the main deck and asks one of them to dance with 
 him. There was two of my mates' pardners lying idle, but the 
 feeling's strong against a man meddling with another's choice, 
 and I'm for encouraging of it. Unfortunately the party as 
 steps up to Jupe was a girl he had a sorter mind to afore he 
 settled on Kate Davis. There jer have it. The sight of Jupe 
 sliding round with his arm round another female's waist was 
 more'n that there Kate could stand. She hups and sauces 
 the gal as she passes. The gal sneers. Kate follows her off 
 the fo'c's'le, and then comes the hollering and scratchin'." 
 
 " You'll want a law against jealousy in your constitootion," 
 said I. " If this sort of thing's going to happen stand by for 
 a general capsizal long before you've roofed yourself down 
 and become a village." 
 
 "There'll be no more dancing forrard," said he grimly. 
 
 As he spoke, the darkness of the night seemed to come with 
 the noise of a gun out of the east in a sudden shrilling and 
 piping gust of the trade breeze. 
 
 " Down fore topmast stuns'l ! " cried I, and in a few 
 minutes the male dancers were cutting capers afresh as they 
 shortened sail.
 
 THE WOMEN'S PLOT. 187 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 THE WOMEN'S PLOT. 
 
 FOR ten days all went quietly. We ran through the trade 
 wind into light head breezes, sighting nothing. Every morn- 
 ing and every afternoon my company of women assembled on 
 the poop, and by this time they knew the names of the run- 
 ning gear and of the sails and yards, and many of them could 
 spring to the right rope and let it go as promptly as a seaman. 
 I taught them to pull with a will and all together. I found, 
 however, that not more than seven were likely to prove of use 
 at the helm. Three gave up after a few days, but their places 
 were at once filled. 
 
 Kate was now playing the boatswain's pipe with some skill. 
 She wore it round her neck, and regularly called the female 
 mariners to school with its music. But neither Brigstock nor 
 Harding, nor indeed any of the men, helped me. Not that 
 Brigstock was to blame. He was willing to teach, but the 
 girls refused to learn from him. Alice Perry declared she 
 would " knock off " if he taught, and her face was on fire with 
 mutiny and hate as she said so. Fearing that if Brigstock 
 obeyed my orders, the scheme would fall through, I told him 
 not to trouble himself. It was not work I could impose 
 as a duty, and as I did not choose to court the insolence 
 of a refusal, I took no notice of Harding's neglect of my 
 wishes. 
 
 Thus was it with us on the tenth day following that incident 
 of the fight between the two girls. 
 
 It was a quiet morning, the sea swelling gently out of the 
 south, but the wind north, a light breeze, and the ship was 
 wrinkling along with almost square yards. 
 
 I had been having a long talk with Kate down in a corner 
 of the quarter-deck. She still persisted in refusing to use the 
 after part of the ship. Her delicacy I considered extravagant, 
 but I admired her spirit, and indeed was already fond of her, 
 and in whatever she liked and chose to do she was to be 
 allowed her own way. Had it not been for her sensitiveness 
 I'd have sent her twenty trifles out of the lazarette, where the 
 cabin stores were. She said she could not take things to eat 
 and drink into a hole and enjoy them secretly and meanly ; 
 nor could she eat and drink them openly at table, where the 
 sight of them would excite jealousy and ill feeling, and lead to 
 difficulties through the "pardners " going to the sailors and
 
 1 88 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 telling them that the captain was favoring Miss Darnley and 
 nobody else. 
 
 To return. After my long chat with the girl I stepped on 
 to the poop, and going a little way aft, leaned over the rail to 
 get a view of the quarter boat as she hung at the davits, think- 
 ing all the while what a noble ship this was, and how memora- 
 ble above most sea feats would prove my preserving her and 
 navigating her with women, should the gods suffer me to 
 achieve it. 
 
 While musing I heard my name called, and saw Alice 
 Perry, who was on top of the poop ladder, looking toward me. 
 
 Brigstock, on the other side of the deck, called out, " Now, 
 young woman, I must beg and pray of you not to come up 
 here unless you're sent for." 
 
 She did not answer him, and I approached her. 
 
 "What do you want?" I said. 
 
 " Captain," she answered, " there's several of us 'ud like a 
 few words with you in the cabin." 
 
 " Nothing wrong, I hope," said I, struck by her face of 
 angry determination, and 1 sent a glance forward, wondering 
 if this coarsely handsome girl, with her fine, saucy eyes, and 
 strong, glaring teeth, had been affronted by any of the crew. 
 
 " We have something to say," she answered in a low voice, 
 sinking her glance after darting a look at Brigstock, "which 
 you may think of the greatest consequence." 
 ' I peered over the rail, and observed a lot of women stand- 
 ing near the main hatch watching us. They all belonged to 
 my company, as I called the girls I was training. I knew 
 their names by this time. The group consisted of five : Emmy 
 Reed, Charlotte Brown, Flo Lewis, Fanny Pike, and Mabel 
 Marshall. Wondering what their business with me could 
 signify, I told Alice Perry to enter the cuddy with the others 
 by the quarter-deck door, and I went to meet them by way of 
 the companion hatch. 
 
 They came to the table. I asked them to sit, and they were 
 about to do so when Alice Perry, looking up at the open sky- 
 light, exclaimed, " Not 'ere; Brigstock '11 be listening." They 
 passed to the after end of the table and sat down beside the 
 shaft of mizzenmast. 
 
 " Who'll speak it ? " said Alice Perry, looking at her com- 
 panions. 
 
 " Yourself ; there's none better," answered one of them. 
 
 "Captain," said Alice Perry, standing up, "d'yer mind 
 drawing closer? Us girls have been talking things over, and 
 we've come to tell you of our plot," said she. eying me with
 
 THE WOMEN'S PLOT. 189 
 
 her bold, extraordinary spirited stare, her face full of charac- 
 ter and resolution. " Since you've took us in 'and and taught 
 UG all about the riggin's and sails of the ship, we feel hable to 
 do without the sailors." 
 
 She paused. I smiled and said," Not yet a while. There's 
 none good enough yet for the wheel in bad weather, and how 
 should we manage aloft?" 
 
 " Give me a man's clothes ; I'm not afraid of climbing," 
 she cried. 
 
 "Lower, Miss Perry; lower," exclaimed the woman Emmy 
 Reed. 
 
 " What's your plot, young ladies?" said I. 
 
 " Why are we to be carried into a part of the world that 
 aint in our road, and kept in this ship against our wills, hunt- 
 ing about for an island to suit the convenience of the beast 
 Brigstock and the beastess Cobbs, and the degraded lot that's 
 goin' along with 'em?" said Alice Perry, with a sudden pale- 
 ness of wild anger in her face. 
 
 " Lower, Miss Perry ; lower," exclaimed Emmy Reed. 
 
 " Tell the capt'n it, do," said a girl, whose shrewd feminine 
 sight was beginning to see impatience in me. 
 
 " Look here, sir," said Alice sinking her voice, " our plot's 
 this : we want you to tell us how to put the hatch on in the 
 place where the crew sleeps so as to imprison 'em. They must 
 all be there. It could be done when you've ordered 'em all 
 below, only we should want to be taught how to secure the 
 cover of the square hole they passes through. As to Brig- 
 stock," she went on, growing a little shrill with the energy of 
 her temper and the rapidity of her utterance, " if there's no 
 excuse to send him into the men's place, andycu're not willing 
 to lay hands upon him, I'll engage with others to tie an' lock 
 him up in any part you please to name." 
 
 They looked at me to observe the impression produced by 
 these words. I was more interested and perhaps amused than 
 astonished, and stepped under the skylight to make sure that 
 Brigstock was not listening. Plenty of women were on the 
 quarter-deck, but none at the door and windows as before 
 when I had talked in this cuddy. 
 
 " Your scheme," said I, "is original and bold, but not prac- 
 ticable. That being so, I am placing myself in a desperately 
 perilous position by listening to you." 
 
 " Why ? It's our secret," exclaimed one of the girls 
 named Fanny Pike, a strong and hearty freckled lass of about 
 eighteen. 
 
 " Have others besides you six spoken of this plot ? "
 
 190 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " All us girls as you're teaching of are in it," answered 
 Alice Perry. 
 
 " Suppose the men imprisoned, what's the next thing to 
 do ? " 
 
 " Why, you'd navigate us to a place that's near, if there is 
 such a place, where we'd get help, and then you'd steer us 
 straight to Australia," said Alice. 
 
 " I should be for sailing straight 'ome, and 'anding Brig- 
 stock and the men and that ogious 'orror Cobbs hover to the 
 horficers of the law," exclaimed a woman. 
 
 " Nothing in the shape of your scheme is to be thought of," 
 said I. " How could I handle a ship full of women and not a 
 soul in her able to go aloft in these seas anyway ? It'll be 
 different in the Pacific, after the weeks of training you'll have 
 had by then that's to say, if you're willing to go on learning 
 under me." 
 
 Alice Perry, with her knitted black eyebrows, daring, staring 
 eyes, and heap of thick finger-swept black hair over her brow, 
 looked savage as a murderess with disappointment. 
 
 " Why aint we to be let do it ? " she cried. " Are we to be 
 kept messing about in this ship to suit Cobbs and the others ? 
 /Vgive 'em 'usbands if I had my way ! If it aint to be done 
 at once, why not later when we're more perfick ? As to climb- 
 ing try me ! I'll find you others no more frightened of them 
 ladders than if they was staircases." 
 
 " It's not to be thought of," I repeated firmly but sooth- 
 ingly. " And now we must invent some excuse for your wait- 
 ing upon me. I must be ready with an answer to Brigstock." 
 
 Alice Perry, with a snap of her fingers and a fiery toss of her 
 head, flounced out of the cuddy, hissing a tune through her 
 teeth in her rage as she went. Two of the others followed 
 her. The remainder got up, but listened to me. 
 
 " You've sought information about the situation of the 
 ship," said I coolly. " It's quite reasonable you should wish 
 to know where we are and how far distant Sydney may be 
 from the island that suits the Brigstock lot. Tell that to 
 Alice Perry and the others ; we must stick to one story. And 
 be advised by me ; if I say no to your scheme it's because I'm 
 a sailor and intend under God that you shall keep your lives 
 and go ashore in Sydney in safety," and making them a bow, 
 I entered my cabin. 
 
 I was wise to be ready with an answer. No sooner did 
 Brigstock catch sight of me when I went on deck than he 
 stepped up and asked what the females wanted. My reply 
 satisfied him, then without seeming abruptness I led him from
 
 THE WOMEN'S PLOT. 191 
 
 the subject and got him to talk of his scheme. This put him 
 into a good temper. He asked me if I had looked through 
 the ship's papers carefully. I answered I had. 
 
 " Are jer a judge of the value of goods, sir ? " said he. 
 
 " What sort of goods ? " 
 
 " The cargo of this ship, for instance ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " We don't want to take in value more than what our wages 
 comes'to, with a margin for a claim for having saved the ship, 
 which we reckon we're entitled to, seeing we found a navigator 
 for her when she was without wan." 
 
 " You can't claim for the safety for the ship till you hear of 
 her arrival." 
 
 " That's true. But if she's to go down arter we leave her 
 the cargo we take's better ashore than under water, aint it ? " 
 he exclaimed, with a grave, knowing grin. 
 
 I broke off to measure the sun's height, and no more was 
 said. 
 
 After dinner I went to the quarter-deck to find Kate, and 
 brought her on to the poop, where I related the proposal the 
 six women had made to me that morning. 
 
 " Will it be done ? " she cried with an eagerness almost 
 passionate. 
 
 " Why, no," I answered, and I repeated the reasons I had 
 given the girls. 
 
 She looked up at the masts and said, "Why couldn't you 
 provide for the sailors to take off most of the sails before the 
 women imprison them ? There'd be no need to climb then. 
 You'd leave sails enough to blow the ship forward, but not 
 enough to need removing if a heavy wind arose." 
 
 " You'll never command at sea." 
 
 "My heart knows I would not for a million pounds." 
 
 "What would the men think if I reduced canvas down to 
 the topsails, say, in fine weather ? And don't you know that 
 at any hour we might encounter a gale which would make that 
 main topsail up there too much for the ship by the whole of its 
 reef-bands ? " 
 
 " I don't understand you. But I think the girls' scheme 
 audaciously clever and practicable." 
 
 " Always sink your voice when we near that fellow Harding. 
 Look at his ears : big as mantelpiece oyster shells. We are 
 going along very comfortably. Why do you want to lock up 
 the men and so jeopardize the lives of the whole blessed lump 
 of us? The fellows are behaving quite well. No rows, no 
 affronts, no drink, no noise ; this is the part of my yarn that
 
 I9 2 THE EMIGRANT SNIP. 
 
 won't be believed. The men are under the influence of 
 Brigstock ; let me help them to realize their island dream. 
 I've no right to imprison them. They're not offering to run 
 away with the ship or planning anything scoundrelly. It suits 
 my prospects to leave things as they are, Kate. I want to get 
 money and command out of this hull, and who knows for all 
 your precious delicacy and fastidiousness you'll not end in 
 using the cuddy below on your voyage home ? " 
 
 She started and stared and turned red. 
 
 " Passage home ! " she echoed in a low voice full of astonish- 
 ment. " What do'you mean ? " 
 
 " If the command of this ship is given to me at Sydney, and 
 I offer you a passage home, will you accept ? " , 
 
 "Certainly not!" she exclaimed with some fire. "Why 
 should I go home ? For the sake of another passage out, after 
 starving in a garret till the ship sailed ? " 
 
 I eyed her with a smile, and then asked her to step on the 
 quarter-deck and pipe my girls to school. She went at once, 
 looking very puzzled, with much color in her face. A sailor in 
 the waist laughed uncontrollably when her pipe sounded. It 
 was still very quiet weather, the right kind of day for helm 
 practice. About fifteen girls assembled ; after waiting a minute 
 or two I inquired for the others. Susannah Corbin answered, 
 " Alice Perry says she aint a-going to learn any more." 
 
 " Alice Perry's but one," said I. " Why don't the rest 
 come ? " 
 
 " Miss Perry's been going about asking us not to," answered 
 the girl. 
 
 I made no remark, though I was extremely vexed. It looked 
 as if my scheme of a company of female mariners must fall to 
 pieces. If it failed me I foresaw insuperable difficulties, along 
 with the blankest disappointment of my secret earnest hopes. 
 However, I kept my temper, and held my tongue, and carrying 
 the women aft, bade the helmsman stand aside, and gave three 
 of the girls a lesson at the wheel. I say three ; only that 
 number out of the fifteen were good for anything at the helm. 
 The other four who were better than these were among those 
 who had absented themselves. 
 
 This training job, first at the wheel, then at going the rounds, 
 making the girls pull together to a song, and the like, occupied 
 two hours. During much of this time Alice Perry and the 
 rest of my women watched us from various parts of the deck, 
 Alice commonly is a posture of defiance, her head thrown back, 
 her arms crossed upon her breast, a sneering expression upon 
 her face.
 
 THE WOMEN'S PLOT. 193 
 
 I went up to her when my work with the others was over, 
 and asked her to step with me into the cuddy. 
 
 " Alone ? " she exclaimed in a sulky voice. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What do you want ? " 
 
 " A short chat." 
 
 She followed me into the cuddy, stepping with a sullen swing 
 of her body ; I stopped her at the foremost end of the cabin 
 table so that all on the quarter-deck should have us in sight. 
 I could see now that she had the spirit of a devil. Yet it was 
 because of her fierce temper and lawless looks that I wanted 
 her ; indeed she was the best of my " hands," and I meant 
 that in some time to come she should be breeked and show 
 the way aloft. 
 
 So I talked to her in the kindest tones I could assume. 
 There was here now a necessity to be candid ; I must take my 
 chance of my plans reaching the forecastle. I said bluntly I 
 intended to work the ship to Sydney with the aid of the women 
 after the crew had left her. I told her what might happen if 
 we shipped strangers out of those South Seas spun yarns of 
 crimes committed by seamen in the islands, in the Caroline 
 and Fiji groups particularly, and presently had the satis- 
 faction of finding her listening with her mouth open, and 
 her breathing quick as though she was reading an exciting 
 story. 
 
 Brigstock came into the cuddy and passed us to enter his 
 cabin. He looked at us with an air of gloomy surprise. I 
 brought the girl to the other side of the table and proceeded 
 to reason with her in a sunk voice. The women on the quarter- 
 deck glanced in as they passed the door. Once a group came 
 to a stand on the threshold ; they were of that lot of my party 
 of girls whom Alice Perry had talked into keeping away ; I 
 motioned them off, and they went away arm in arm, one strik- 
 ing up " Hever of Thee ! " and the rest joining in. 
 
 " Miss Alice," said I softly and coaxingly to this hand- 
 some young devil of a housemaid, for that was her walk, I 
 recollect, " I cannot do without you. You are the daisy of my 
 company. I'll put you into a man's clothes when the men are 
 gone a sweet sailor you'll make ; when we get to Sydney 
 they'll print your likeness in the papers. You know you're 
 handsome." 
 
 At this she laughed. What white teeth it has ! thought I. 
 
 " You're handsome now, and when we cast anchor in 
 Sydney Bay you'll have been brave. Beauty and courage in 
 a woman out in the colonies are thought more off than a for-
 
 194 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 tune in England. I shall be dancing at your wedding, my 
 dear, though I may not be two months in Australia." 
 
 " Garn ! " she exclaimed, trying to hold her face, but her 
 eyes were filled with delight. Gratification was too strong, 
 and she burst into another laugh. 
 
 "Aint he amusing her just !" said a woman looking in at 
 one of the windows. 
 
 I continued to flatter her a while longer, finding she liked 
 it ; then guessing I had talked enough, I took her on to the 
 quarter-deck and left her. 
 
 The weather that night was wonderfully quiet. The wind 
 had shifted, and blew abeam. When I was on deck at two 
 bells, nine o'clock, the gloom was deepened by a sort of 
 vaporish thickness, and the stars were so few you could have 
 counted them. I found Brigstock conversing with three of 
 the seamen at the head of the poop ladder. They did not 
 suspect my presence, but their voices were pitched in a low, 
 growling key, as though they were anxious not to be over- 
 heard. On perceiving me the men slunk down the ladder, 
 and Brigstock went to leeward and walked aft, mute as a 
 figurehead. 
 
 I made nothing of this, merely supposing that they had been 
 talking over their island scheme. 
 
 All the women were under hatches. The decks were silent 
 and deserted to the sight. No sheen of light was visible 
 anywhere except in the skylight, under which the cabin lamp 
 was burning. The ship floated through the stillness and the 
 darkness of the sea in a bulk of defined hard shadow, like the 
 base of a hill upon whose sides and shoulders at midnight a 
 white mist sleeps. Brigstock remained standing beside the 
 man at the helm. They both talked, but in very low voices. 
 I considered this conversation with the helmsman a piece of 
 insolent behavior in Brigstock, seeing that I was on deck, but 
 always when it came to any passion like resentment in me 
 I felt the underlying mockery of my situation, and was 
 silent. 
 
 The helmsman was Isaac Coffin ; I knew him by his voice. 
 I paced quietly, with one of Captain Halcrow's cigars in my 
 mouth, and abandoned myself to twenty pleasing dreams of 
 the future. My thoughts ran swiftly ; they went to the Hebe 
 and to the Caroline, and back again to Blathford, and my 
 summer rambles with Kate, then, with greater velocity than 
 light, ahead to Sydney, where I realized this ship's arrival, and 
 smiled at the vision of a crew of women in the male duds of 
 the vessel's slop chests.
 
 THE WOMEN'S PLOT. 195 
 
 While I was thus thinking, nothing disturbing the stillness 
 but the subdued growling of the voices at the wheel, and a 
 dim noise of passing waters, like to the sound of autumn 
 leaves gently rustling over a gravel path, I heard a most 
 extraordinary moaning high up in the air. I stopped thunder- 
 struck and looked straight up, where a pallid star was trem- 
 bling, as though I expected to behold a flight of shadowy 
 spirits over our masthead. To this moment I don't know 
 what that noise was, unless, indeed, it was some mighty pro- 
 cession of sea fowl very high in air, and raising cries that 
 they might keep together. 
 
 A more melancholy sighing note never sounded through the 
 hush of ocean. It was faint and female in tone, a strange, 
 long-drawn wailing. It died out slowly, as the sound of a 
 railway train dies along a valley on a quiet night. 
 
 " Good God ! Isaac, what was it ? " exclaimed Brigstock. 
 
 I went aft and exclaimed, " Did you ever hear the like of 
 that noise before ? " 
 
 " Sort o' prophecy, I allow," said Coffin. 
 
 " Of what ? " 
 
 " Of trouble of trouble," grumbled Brigstock in a gruff, 
 quarrelsome voice ; and clearly wishing not to converse with 
 me, he rolled away forward and vanished off the poop. 
 
 I ascribed the man's manner to some irrational fit of ill 
 temper, such as frequently visits seamen. Sailors are fed on 
 food in the last degree indigestible ; the influence of the liver 
 upon the brain is among those things which make us know 
 how fearfully and wonderfully we are made ; a sailor's curses, 
 maledictions, and blasphemies are scarcely more than a fore- 
 castle reproduction or expression of beef and pork salted into 
 an innutritions hardness maddening to soul and body. I 
 considered Brigstock's digestion as upset, and resumed my 
 walk after a glance at the compass card. 
 
 Presently I heard voices forward. I could not distinguish 
 accents nor shapes, but judged by the grumbling that more 
 than the watch were talking together ; certainly Brigstock 
 was one of the speakers. I would not seem to listen by paus- 
 ing, but now a sudden anxiety fell upon me ; I did not under- 
 stand the meaning of that black, secret council, and every 
 time I approached the break of the poop I suspended my 
 breathing and bent my ear most strenuously, but never once 
 caught a syllable. 
 
 On a sudden a light glimmered in the black oblong of the 
 main hatch, down which the leg of the windsail was working 
 as though some gigantic white serpent were making its way
 
 196 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 out of the 'tween decks toward the mainmast head. The figure 
 of a woman holding a lantern came up ; she approached the 
 post of the poop ladder, at the head of which I was now 
 standing. The light she held revealed her ; it was Miss 
 Cobbs. I instantly called to know what she wanted. She 
 answered in tones of horror and agitation : 
 
 " One of the women, Mary Lonney, has cut her throat." 
 
 I flung my cigar away, and ran down the ladder exclaiming, 
 " Is she dead?" 
 
 As I said this the men who had been talking forward came 
 aft in a hurried tread, full of alarm ; it was that sort of rush 
 of feet you'll hear at sea when an order whose instant execu- 
 tion means life or death is shouted out. 
 
 " What is it ? " shouted Brigstock ; and in a trice seven or 
 eight seamen were all about Miss Cobbs, their forms thrown 
 up by the light she held. 
 
 " O Thomas ! " cried the matron, " one of the women's cut 
 her throat." 
 
 " That'll be the meaning of the noise in the air just now," 
 said a voice. 
 
 I saw a huddle of figures, seemingly in their bedclothes, 
 like a pale cloud on the white steps of the main hatch. 
 
 " Lead me to the woman, Miss Cobbs," said I. 
 
 "Mr. Morgan," exclaimed Brigstock, thrusting up close and 
 defiantly, and speaking fiercely with passion, though slowly, 
 "you're unfaithful to your trust, and a villain, and we dorn't 
 mean to have anything more to do with you." 
 
 I sprang back a step with my blood on fire, and clenching 
 my fists, and throwing myself into a posture of defense, I 
 cried : " Villain, is it ? You dog ! " 
 
 Even as I spoke I was seized by four men they and the 
 others of them letting fly, all together, fifty yells and shouts 
 of abuse, reproach, insult, curses and as helpless as though 
 heavily ironed, I was rushed into the cuddy, and tumbled 
 headlong into my cabin. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 IMPRISONED. 
 
 THEY flung me into the cabin with so much violence that I 
 was, in a manner, stunned. I fell upon my knees, but got up in 
 a moment, and stood with my hand upon the edge of the bunk 
 while I fetched my breath and collected myself.
 
 IMPRISONED. 197 
 
 The cabin was pitch dark. After my panting had sobered 
 into measured breathing, I groped for a match and lighted the 
 cabin lamp and observing blood on my hand, looked in the 
 glass and beheld the skin over my left eyebrow broken and 
 the wound bleeding. The injury was trifling. I bathed it, 
 and the cold water was as helpful as a tonic draught. 
 
 Twice now had I been locked up in this cabin. What did 
 Brigstock intend ? What did he imagine he had discovered 
 against me ? My heart raged when I thought of how I had 
 been used and addressed ; how I had been called villain, 
 sworn, at, dragged with curses to this cabin, like a savage, 
 dangerous dog to its chain and kennel. What had I done ? 
 Not being able to answer that, I thought : What's the fresh 
 scheme the men have in their heads ? I tried to recall any 
 piece of behavior, any sentence or look in Brigstock or the 
 others, to give me a hint. Had they abandoned their resolu- 
 tion to settle an island ? If so, they had forced their new 
 humor with amazing swiftness upon Brigstock, who certainly, 
 down to a recent hour, was as much in earnest in his South 
 Sea project as ever I had found him. 
 
 They were without a navigator. What would they do ? 
 
 As realization of the significancy of the men's treatment of 
 me grew my wits seemed to leave me. I paced the cabin 
 with my soul racked with rage. My splendid dream of pre- 
 serving and carrying this ship into safety was ended ! The 
 trouble I had taken in training the women was wasted toil, 
 made useless in a few minutes, as one might say. I felt ill, as 
 though fever stricken. It was not only the insult, the alley- 
 bully usage of me, the disappointment ; mingled with the 
 violent sensations of that time was the shock of the news 
 Miss Cobbs had given. Even at the very moment of hearing 
 that a woman had cut her throat I was called villain, brutally 
 laid hold of, flung like a slaughtered beast into this cabin, 
 and locked up. 
 
 Some brandy was in the locker, and cold water in a brack- 
 eted decanter. I mixed a drink, and sat down to think and 
 listen. All was silent in the cuddy ; overhead sounded occa- 
 sionally the creaking of a pair of boots. Sometimes I seemed 
 to hear faintly a sound of men's and women's voices. I 
 sought to hearten myself by thinking that the crew could not 
 do without me, but I found no hope in that reflection when I 
 recollected Brigstock's insult and the men's behavior. 
 
 The hours rolled by. If anyone entered the cuddy I did 
 not hear him. All my speculations now ran in the direction 
 of the crew's intentions. I heard no bells, and was without a
 
 198 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 watch. Though sleepless with feverish excitement, I stretched 
 myself along in my bunk, where I lay with my head full of 
 burning thoughts. 
 
 I slept at last for an hour or two, and when I awoke the 
 day had broken. I glanced through the porthole and found 
 the weather gloomy and thick, a look of fine drizzling rain in 
 the atmosphere, the wind a light breeze abeam, and a slug- 
 gish lift of gray swell out of the south. We were in motion ; 
 I marked the passage o a patch of froth, and the speed was 
 about four. 
 
 Where were the crew heading the vessel, and what did they 
 mean to do with her ? My short spell of rest had done me 
 good ; I could think without passion, but heavy anxiety 
 weighed upon my spirits. 
 
 It might have been about eight o'clock when the key was 
 turned, and Gouger stepped in with some breakfast. He put 
 the tray rudely down on the deck with a scowl on his face, and 
 went out, heeding me no more than had the cabin been empty, 
 though he took care to lock the door. The tray was heaped 
 with the usual stuff a cup of black tea, biscuit, preserved 
 meat, a piece of cold pork ; they did not mean to starve me. 
 I was somewhat cheered by the sight of this food, and ate 
 with tolerable appetite. 
 
 While breakfasting I heard voices in the cuddy ; I arrested 
 the movements of my jaws to listen ; Brigstock's and Hard- 
 ing's voices were easily distinguishable ; I also thought I could 
 distinguish Miss Cobbs' high notes, and there was a fourth, 
 one of the seaman, probably Jackson. The bulkheads were 
 thick and the conversation hard to catch. I heard Brigstock 
 say, " The course is right. She can't hurt as she goes. Some- 
 thing's bound to be coming along soon." 
 
 " It's a pity," said Miss Cobbs, " that he should have proved 
 such a treacherous wretch. All was going on so well." 
 
 Harding said something in his deep, sour voice. Brigstock 
 exclaimed, " Aye, aye, I should have thought he'd got more 
 sense." The voices then sank and presently ceased. 
 
 What was the treachery I was suspected of ? Brigstock's 
 remark that something was bound to come along soon was the 
 same as saying that they were on the lookout for a new navi- 
 gator. How would they dispose of me ? I asked of God that 
 I might not be inhumanly used. I had already since sailing 
 from Bristol suffered so much, experienced such quick and 
 rapid changes, that a few weeks had compassed more for me 
 than is endured by men in half a century of seafaring. The 
 idea of having to forfeit this ship, whose preservation had
 
 IMPRISONED. 199 
 
 been the glowing star of my future, was an anguish of disap- 
 pointment. What would Kate and the rest of the women who 
 were not partners think ? Lord, thought I, if that devil- 
 possessed girl Alice Perry would but work out her plot now ! 
 Will it enter Kate's head to advise her and the others to clap 
 the hatches on such men as might be below at the time, and 
 secure the rest by the strength and passion of numbers ? 
 Suppose six of them trapped ; it might not be hard to im- 
 prison the other six by stratagems, by calling one here and 
 another there, thus separating them, then by the women fling- 
 ing .themselves upon the fellows. 
 
 The morning slipped away ; nobody came to my cabin. 
 I was sensible of a silence hanging upon the ship ; the quiet 
 was not due to my being in a part of her where all noises from 
 the deck reached me dimly, whence I suspected that the men 
 were keeping a large portion of the women at a time below, 
 fearing trouble. Or was it the influence and awe of death 
 upon the ship that held her hushed ? The shock of suicide 
 would be violent throughout those 'tween decks of women. 
 By this time, too, they had doubtless buried the body, and the 
 gloom of that business would be upon the spirits of the peo- 
 ple, who'd also be restless and frightened, wild in their 
 whispers and looks to the degree of making the sailors afraid 
 of them, and of keeping half of them under, on learning 
 that I was a prisoner, and the ship without a navigator. 
 
 At about one the young seaman Gouger brought me my 
 dinner. I addressed him, but he neither answered nor looked 
 at me. He had clearly received his instructions, and went 
 out with rude defiant motions of his body, locking the door 
 noisily after him. 
 
 The afternoon passed ; a second night came. There was 
 oil in my berth. I trimmed and lighted the lamp, and tried to 
 divert my mind by reading a volume of tales I took from the 
 shelf, but could not fix my attention. I lighted a cigar and 
 smoked in my bunk with my legs over the edge, lost in gloomy, 
 anxious thoughts. I had expected a visit from Brigstock, and 
 found something sinister in his absence. Of what was I 
 guilty ? Why did not the fellow come down into my cabin and 
 charge me, and hear me, and give me a chance to prove I had 
 been and still was loyal to the office the crew had tricked me 
 into accepting ? 
 
 I was a bit unmanned by my confinement, by the suspense 
 I was kept in, by a passion of disappointment fiery and wast- 
 ing. I had slept but little. This night I did not close my 
 eyes. I started at every sound, and once, hearing a footstep
 
 200 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 in the cuddy just outside my door, I sprang from my bunk 
 and seized a dinner knife from the supper tray, intending if 
 I was to be dealt with like a rat in a hole the business should 
 be hot and bloody for more than one. 
 
 All these fears my secret instincts pronounced irrational. 
 But frightened I was, nevertheless, and I lay sleepless, every 
 sound making my heart loud in my ears. 
 
 Throughout the night the weather was quiet, but thick. 
 The breeze blew damp and chill through my open porthole, 
 the bleaker, perhaps, for the melancholy noises of the sea as it 
 washed to the bends, falling away in a low moaning charged 
 with a snakish, stealthy hissing. I kept the lamp alight, and 
 frequently glanced at the compass, and observed that they 
 kept the ship sailing along the course I had left her heading. 
 
 Daybreak found me with my face at the porthole, gazing at 
 the disk of ocean the sea window framed. I watched the 
 green of the east sifting westward. The shape of the near 
 surge grew defined, and the horizon ran hard and black as 
 the rim of an ebony table against the pale heavens. The 
 weather had cleared, but in as much of the heavens as I could 
 command I saw the shadows of squall clouds, and a promise 
 of wet in long streaks of liquid gray vapor hanging low over 
 the western sea line. 
 
 The sun had scarcely risen when there was a commotion 
 overhead. They were trimming sail, I thought. Coils of 
 rope were flung down. The hoarse notes of seamen singing 
 out reached me, and I guessed by the confused shuffling of 
 feet that the main brace was stretched along. The wind had 
 been somewhat abaft the beam. Presently the compass showed 
 that the helm had been shifted so as to bring the breeze a 
 couple of points more forward. The rolling of the ship 
 wanted the bouyancy of the propelled hull, and on taking 
 another glance through the porthole I saw that the vessel had 
 been brought to a stand. 
 
 An hour passed, during which all was quiet. Not a sound of 
 any sort was there save the slopping of water under the port- 
 hole. The sea was of a sallow blue. A small squall of rain 
 veiled the horizon with a slanting gray mist right abreast of 
 me. A rainbow was flickering upon the delicate crystal dust. 
 While I watched this squall its skirts thinned to the south- 
 ward and exposed the canvas of a vessel, bright as polished 
 resplendent steel in the moist flash of sun it caught as the 
 weeping shadow left it. 
 
 While I looked, easily conceiving the trick Brigstock was 
 going to play, Gouger unlocked the door and entered with my
 
 IMPRISONED. 20 1 
 
 breakfast. I glanced over my shoulder, then went on watch- 
 ing the distant vessel. He put the tray down as before, and 
 went out without speaking a word. I often recall, but not with 
 wonder, the effect of that young brute's silence upon me. The 
 part of the new tragic passage hardest to bear was the dumb 
 entrance of that dog with my meals. His behavior deepened 
 suspense ; it was a sort of mute black hint of what I was to 
 expect ; and then, again, there was the irritation of its in- 
 solence. 
 
 The sail speedily slided out of the sphere of the porthole. 
 Not being able to see, I strained my hearing, wondering 
 whether she would pass within hail, if she would stop to speak 
 us, if she would send a boat, and be tricked as the Caroline 
 had been. 
 
 Another long hour passed ; the breeze was steady, with an 
 occasional rush of rain squall through it ; westward the 
 liquid gray streaks had risen, and the horizon was vague. On 
 a sudden, whether owing to a shift of our helm, the sail came 
 sliding fair into the round frame of the port. She was a large 
 three-masted schooner, scarcely less than three hundred tons 
 in burden, with immensely lofty, whip-like masts. The red 
 flag of the English merchant service was flying at her mizzen- 
 mast head. She lay all shaking within hailing distance, bow- 
 ing the sea with wet flashes of streaming sheathing ; her 
 shivering sails stood out in a dead sickly white against the 
 pouring gray background afar. Several men were looking at 
 our ship over her forecastle rail ; as she leaned her white decks 
 toward us on the heave of the swell her little brass-bound 
 wheel glowed like a circle of golden light in the grasp of the 
 man at it ; close beside the helm stood a tall figure in the hat 
 of a bandit and a short monkey jacket. I saw him step to the 
 rail, and his cry came faintly along to my ears, but in the open 
 above it doubtless sounded clear as a bell, for a voice I in- 
 stantly recognized as Brigstock's bawled out : 
 
 "The Earl of Leicester, from Madras for the River 
 Thames." 
 
 Another question in a dim hallooing note came along on the 
 light breeze from the schooner. Brigstock answered : 
 
 "We're in great distress. All 'ands have perished but us 
 two. We can't board jer. My mate here's too ill to take a 
 hoar." 
 
 This man's ambition, thought I, is to be the father of a 
 South Sea settlement whose government is to be based on 
 Truth first of all. 
 
 I did not need to go on deck to see the picture. I figured
 
 202 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 one of the men at the wheel in a drooping posture, as though 
 faint ; Brigstock with long forlorn countenance in an attitude 
 of entreaty ; the decks empty as when Blades and I were the 
 victims of the dodge. The emigrants, of course, were under 
 hatches. Doubtless the main hatch had been closed while they 
 were at breakfast ; otherwise the women, guessing why they 
 were to be sent below, through knowing I was locked up and 
 through seeing the approaching vessel recollecting also the 
 spell of suffocation they had undergone while I was being 
 maneuvered into the ship might have given the men so much 
 trouble as to kill this opportunity of tricking a navigator into 
 the vessel. 
 
 One or two more cries came from the schooner. By this 
 time she had drifted out of the porthole, nor did Brigstock's 
 answers distinctly reach me, owing to his having shifted his 
 station, which had been exactly over my head. Now by the 
 silence that fell I guessed the stranger was sending a boat. 
 My heart beat hard. What did the fellows intend to do with 
 me ? Presently I heard the muffled chafing of oars in row- 
 locks and the noise of the shearing of a boat's sharp stem 
 driving close on our quarter to pass under the counter. The 
 suspense was horrible, my impatience maddening. After a 
 little voices rumbled in the cuddy, whence I gathered that 
 some of the men had softly stolen into that interior unheard 
 by me to give the newcomer from the schooner the sort of 
 greeting I had received ; in other words, to overawe him with 
 the sight of their numbers. A minute after a hoarse voice 
 bawled out : 
 
 " I'll be damned if you do ! Fire me if this han't worse 
 than being shanghaied ! " 
 
 This was followed by a roaring out of curses all in the same 
 voice ; the seamen present joined in, and such a hellish hul- 
 labaloo followed that I held my breath, expecting to hear cries 
 of murder and groans. It seemed as if more than one of the 
 schooner's men had come below, but I was mistaken. A pro- 
 digious noise of scuffling arose. The seamen appeared to 
 have found their match. Blasphemies flew thick as hail in an 
 electric squall ; surging figures bumped with volcanic shocks 
 against the bulkheads. 
 
 " Why don't yer take it quietly ? " Brigstock bellowed. 
 
 But though the heroic victim had been a giant he must have 
 been still too few as one man for the number who had fallen 
 upon him. Yet I reckoned it took them a full five minutes of 
 heaving, wrestling, struggling, cursing, to get the fellow stowed 
 in a cabin, where he pounded so furiously with boots and fists,
 
 IMPRISONED. 203 
 
 shouting all the while with hurricane lungs to be let out, that 
 I expected to hear him burst clean through the massive bulk- 
 head. 
 
 Hope had freshened in me while the uproar outside was 
 going on. I thought to myself, the crew are not likely to 
 depend upon such services as they must expect from the man 
 they have brutally maltreated and locked up. They'll look to 
 me again, and give me a chance of hearing what I am suspected 
 of. But even while I thus thought, the key in my door was 
 turned, the door itself rudely flung open, and Brigstock and 
 two others, Hull and Luddy, appeared. 
 
 " Put on your cap and follow us," said Brigstock, breathing 
 short after the recent struggle, and discovering marks upon 
 his face, and in his collar and cravat, of having been roughly 
 handled ; " we don't want to lose no time." 
 
 Here the prisoner in the berth opposite fell to kicking and 
 pounding afresh with extraordinary violence, bawling that 
 he'd cut the livers out of the whole ship's company when he 
 got at them, and swearing diabolically as he vociferated the 
 threat. 
 
 "What have I done to merit this treatment?" I asked. 
 
 " You know," answered Brigstock with an ugly scowl. 
 " Come on." 
 
 The fellows beside him eyed me with the utmost malevo- 
 lence, and there was a black threat in every posture and ges- 
 ture of theirs, even in those few moments of pause. Luddy's 
 lip was cut ; his chin was covered with blood. All three were 
 in a dangerous temper. I knew myself to be white in the 
 face, and was sick with the swift pulsing of my heart. Con- 
 sider ! I had been locked up for many hours, in a continual 
 state of wearing, desperate suspense, and now here were these 
 fellows commanding me to follow them to be how dealt with ? 
 Yet though I could not control my color, I had my agitation 
 well in grasp. I put my hat on, buttoned my jacket, and fol- 
 lowed Brigstock up the companion steps, Luddy following at 
 my heels, the other remaining below, possibly to watch beside 
 the entrapped man's door. 
 
 All to windward was gray with wet, and a thin drizzle, but 
 not of a concealing sort, was driving along with the wind, 
 which had freshened a trifle. None of the women were to be 
 seen ; but though the gratings were on the main hatch, no 
 tarpaulins hid them. The fore and after yards had been 
 braced to give the vessel a distressed, ill-conditioned look. 
 All topgallant hallyards had been let go, the mainsail clumsily 
 hauled up, and the main topsail laid to the mast. Still the
 
 204 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 cunning rogues had not contrived the same perfect picture of 
 distress which had greeted Blades' and my eyes. 
 
 The two vessels had drifted apart, and the schooner lay 
 about a mile distant, on the Earl of Leicester's quarter. I 
 took in all that I am telling you in a single sweep of the eye. 
 No time for a longer look was allowed ; Brigstock ran to the 
 lee rail and sang down, " Bring your boat to the main chains, 
 and put this gentleman aboard your schooner." 
 
 He then turned quickly upon me, and with a fierceness I 
 should never have suspected in so formal, solemn, austere 
 a devil, bawled, " Come, jump in, and thank yer God that 
 yer've fallen into humane hands ! " by which I understood he 
 meant himself and the crew. 
 
 I went to the rail without a word, meaning to drop into the 
 main chains and so gain the boat, but when I looked over I 
 saw that she was holding off, with the three men in her star- 
 ing like madmen, evidently scenting a stratagem from the 
 sight of the several seamen whose figures were clear in their 
 view. 
 
 " Haul in and take this man," said Brigstock. 
 
 " Where's our second mate ? " sung out the fellow in the 
 boat's bows. I see him now, a dingy blotch of face, scarcely 
 visible for hair, surmounted by an old glazed hat without a 
 brim. 
 
 " He's a-going to stop along with us. Haul in, I tell jer. 
 This gen'man '11 explain to your captain when jer put him 
 aboard." 
 
 " Splain what ? " roared the man in the bow of the boat. 
 
 " Haul in, I tell jer." 
 
 , " We thought you was only two men ? " cried another of the 
 fellows in the boat in loud, bellowing tones, full of astonish- 
 ment and fear. 
 
 As though operated on by one impulse, hardly had this man 
 shouted when the three flopped down on the thwarts, chucked 
 their oars over, and pulled away for the schooner with all 
 their might. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ADRIFT. 
 
 BRIGSTOCK stood idly looking for a moment or two at the 
 receding boat. He then shouted out, " He must put himself 
 aboard. Bill Jupe jump aft and lower away the gig. 
 She'll be light enough for him to handle."
 
 ADRIFT. 205 
 
 Three or four men rushed to do his bidding. The gig was 
 the long, light, slender boat that hung by the davits outside, 
 on a line with the taffrail. The sea ran without weight, the 
 ship was without way and pitched softly, and the boat, with 
 two men in her, sank securely to the water's surface, where the 
 blocks were unhooked, and in a few minutes they had got 
 her alongside, close against the lee main chains. 
 
 Brigstock standing near me had watched these proceedings 
 in silence. At the moment that the boat was lowered I cried 
 in a sudden passion : 
 
 "Mr. Brigstock, what have I done to deserve this treat- 
 ment ? " 
 
 He slowly turned his face, dark with temper, and said, " I 
 called you villain, and a villain you are. Jer'd have be- 
 trayed us for all jer fine promises, though we used jer as 
 a gen'man, and obeyed jer bidding, and gave jer the cabin 
 to live in." 
 
 He clenched both fists and literally shook with temper. 
 
 At the sound of our voices the rest of the crew, who were 
 scattered about the poop, evidently waiting for the signal to 
 trim sail, gathered about us with looks so full of menace, 
 mutiny, murder, that I instinctively felt if I did not quit this 
 ship with a dumb tongue, a few minutes might find me a slain 
 man, cut to the heart by a sheath knife, overboard, to plumb 
 depths whose soundings I should never be able to report. 
 And yet a madness of temper urged me to exclaim : 
 
 " I'm no villain. I swear by my God I was serving you 
 faithfully ! " 
 
 " What's your notion of faithfulness ? " roared Harding, 
 thrusting his bearded, sour face in a butting way close into 
 mine. " Is it to batten men down men you're a-professing 
 to sarve, for to carry them to a port, and then give 'em up, yap 
 to pocket all the swag, and all the good as is to come along 
 out of the job ! " He wagged his head at me in his wrath. 
 
 " Leave him be ! " thundered Brigstock, putting his shoulder 
 into the chest of the man Sampson, and heaving him halfway 
 across the deck. " We've done so far without that, and we 
 want none." 
 
 " On deck there," hailed a voice from the boat alongside. 
 
 " Over with jer ! " cried Brigstock, laying a heavy hand 
 upon my shoulder. " The schooner '11 pick jer up." 
 
 I shook the fellow's paw off, giving him a look of bitter 
 reproach and hate, and half crazy with disappointment, humil- 
 iation, the sense of atrocious injustice, I dropped into the 
 main chains and jumped into the gig. The two men got out
 
 206 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 of the boat as I entered her. One had held to a channel plate 
 by a boathook ; when he dropped the thing and jumped out 
 the boat was adrift. 
 
 There seemed an angry wobble of waters ; that was the 
 sensation of her short, abrupt jumps to me, fresh from the 
 comparative terra firma of the ship's deck. I stood, thick in 
 head and blind in vision, with a sort of stupefaction of brain, 
 till a leap of the boat flung me on to a thwart. The ^hock 
 gave me my mind. Heavenly God ! thought I, if I don't 
 make for the schooner I shall be adrift and alone ! Will she 
 receive me ? And now I was possessed by a wild fear for my 
 life, an unmanly horror, a panic terror. Never before in my 
 life had my nerves so betrayed me. 
 
 There were four oars in the boat, and a small mast and lug. 
 sail. She was the captain's gig, and a smart boat, with bright 
 gratings, and brass rowlocks, dangling by sennit lanyards. I 
 threw her oars out, and got her head round on a line with the 
 schooner. The swell ran with a lift and fall of fold that sunk 
 the boat in a valley and poised her as on a hill, and the sur- 
 face of those volumes of brine snapped and hissed with little 
 seas. The gig went clear of the ship's quarter, and when out 
 of the shadow and height of her for her rolling hull and tow- 
 ering spaces of sail blocked the sight as a terrace of cliff 
 might I found it was raining, no longer a thin drizzle, but 
 driving lines of wet, gray everywhere, and in places thick as 
 smoke. 
 
 The schooner hung about a mile to windward, swollen and 
 dim in the smother. She came and went, and went and came, 
 regularly as a clock ticks, as the swell swallowed or hoisted 
 me. 
 
 On board the ship they trimmed sail the moment I had gone 
 clear. The breeze was a beam wind for her course, and they 
 braced to it, boarding the main tack and manning the main 
 topgallant halyards as smartly as twenty men might ordinarily 
 work that machinery of tackles. The fine ship felt the pres- 
 sure promptly ; she heeled away from the breeze, and as her 
 stern came dead on end, with a moist glitter of cabin windows, 
 and a hand on the taffrail getting the gig's falls inboard, the 
 white water leapt from her bends, and the foam of her forming 
 wake boiled about her rudder. 
 
 When I saw how thick the weather was. and how the shadow 
 of the rain was still blackening into the atmosphere, I dropped 
 the oars and stood up in the boat, and sent a long scream of 
 despair at the figure of the fellow on the taffrail of the depart- 
 ing vessel, but I question if he heard me, I doubt if he saw
 
 ADRIFT. 207 
 
 me. A few ship's lengths would carry one's eyes into blind- 
 ness on such a day as that. Nay, even while I watched, with" 
 a breaking heart and the chill and darkness of death upon 
 my spirits, the ship died into shadow in the rain. 
 
 The gig was light for a ship's boat, but heavy for one man 
 to pull. The schooner was dead to windward, vague as a 
 reflection in a mirror on which you have breathed, and all 
 between was the ridging and feathering of the gray seas, more 
 spiteful than the wind made them for the stubborn heave of 
 the swell athwart their course. I soon saw I should be able 
 to do nothing by rowing ; indeed the state of my mind had 
 impaired me physically. I had lost my strength. I threw the 
 oars in, and stepped the mast, but the boat was narrow ; it 
 was to be a sheer beat to windward, and the lug was all too 
 big for that dead-on-end breeze and jump of waters. So I 
 stretched the sail along and tied a couple of reefs in it, drift- 
 ing away to leeward meanwhile like the shadow of a bird 
 floating down the wind, and when I had mastheaded the frag- 
 ment of canvas, hauled the sheet aft, and got me to the yoke- 
 lines, the ship was gone in the thickness, and away on the 
 starboard bow heading off, perforce, as my boat was I beheld 
 the schooner gathering way, and slowly forging northward, 
 with her white sails breaking like the light of dawn through a 
 sand-colored squall of wet she was in the heart of. 
 
 I held on ; my seamanship was at a loss. The schooner, 
 having got her boat, was proceeding on her voyage, making 
 the best of a business her people could only wonder at and 
 curse as a stratagem that might betray them into bloody 
 results if they chased with the idea of looking further into it. 
 That I was seen I will not say ; the gleam of my little white 
 sail would blend with the sheeting of froth, and dance unno- 
 ticed in the thickness. 
 
 What was to be done ? Here was I adrift in an open boat 
 without a drop of water to drink, without a crumb of biscuit to 
 eat. The mere look of the schooner, dim as she was, with her 
 leaning spars and forging fore foot and lofty spread of canvas, 
 was such a hint of speed when the full power of the breeze 
 should urge her that my immediate intention to shift the helm 
 and follow her on a parallel line, with a prayer for the weather 
 to clear, that I might be seen, fell dead. A second resolution 
 seized me. I slackened away the sheet, and put the boat's 
 head for the ship, which was out of sight, but whose bearings 
 I judged of by the blowing of the wind. My poor miserable 
 hope was that if the weather brightened they'd see me now 
 my sail was hoisted, have mercy, and receive me to transship
 
 208 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 me afterward if occasion for t/iat\vas not ended by my coming 
 to a good understanding with them. 
 
 I tried to pierce the vaporous thickness of rain. The swell 
 ran at me ; each time I rose to the height of a brow that was 
 all a-snarl and hissing white salt under the shrill thongs of 
 the breeze I'd send a devouring look ahead, and sometimes 
 fancy I saw a leaning square blotch far off. But the smother 
 would close down again upon the sea, and leave me a view of 
 scarce two miles of cold, dark gray waters, running jagged 
 and brokenly over the folds swelling northward. Yet my boat 
 made good weather. She leapt dryly, and ran like a streak of 
 foam up the liquid acclivities, and fled buoyant as a running 
 Mother Carey's fowl down into the hollows. 
 
 I was sure they had dispatched me to board the schooner, 
 if I could, without the least concern as to whether I reached 
 her or not. The sea had been shrouded when I left the ship. 
 Brigstock knew it, and he also knew as a seaman that it was 
 next to certain I should miss the schooner and perish. It was 
 like murdering me. What, then, on a sudden had made fiends 
 of men whom I had found or fancied respectable, steady 
 sailors, able to practice, not moderation, but abstinence, the 
 hardest of all virtues, whether on sea or land ? 
 
 I understood the reason, and cursed my folly. They had 
 got scent of the plot my company of women had hatched and 
 talked to me about. Had not Brigstock savagely said as 
 much before 1 went over the side ? There had been misrepre- 
 sentation ; the fellows were illiterate sailors, incapable of 
 distinguishing, full of rough passions not hard to influence 
 into criminal impulses. I guessed their women had had a 
 hand in it ; they had gone from the 'tween decks, where my 
 own party of females had been talking, and told the men, 
 exaggerating their report into lies that I and the women I 
 was making sailors of were concerting a plot to imprison 
 Brigstock and the crew under hatches. That would be 
 enough. There was no one to say them nay. They'd not 
 have taken a denial from me, and therefore never charged me. 
 The wonder is they did not cut my throat or hang me. 
 
 From the very bottom of my soul rose my curses on my 
 own stupidity. The whole thing was clear now made clear 
 by Brigstocic's parting words. Had I confessed my sole 
 object in disciplining the women they never would have sup- 
 posed me guilty to such a degree as not to challenge and 
 provide me with a chance to disprove the 'tween decks lies. 
 
 Thus went my thoughts as the boat slipped along. My 
 spirits were at their lowest with despair ; the afternoon was
 
 ADRIFT. a<>9 
 
 fast going ; the thickness had a settled look ; there was no 
 appearance of the sky clearing before the night fell. The 
 chase was a hopeless one while the breeze held, for the object 
 I pursued was a full-rigged sailing ship, whose speed com- 
 pared to the gig's was as five to one, and there would be no 
 possibility of any deliverance by her unless it fell calm, and 
 she lay in sight, and I could use my oars. I was wet to the 
 skin, but too seasoned as a seaman to heed that. The dread- 
 fullest part was my being without food or drink ; nay, not so 
 much as a sup of spirits to give me an instant's heart. And 
 oh ! the devouring rage of disappointment when I thought of 
 Kate, of the fine ship, of what I had lost, of the base, obscure 
 death that seemed at hand a rat's end ! a rat's end ! to perish 
 thus under the weeping blank up there and out of the very 
 sight of God himself ! 
 
 It was not blowing harder, but it was as thick as ever wifh 
 wet when the shadow of the night came along. I lowered the 
 sail to make a house of, unstepped the mast, and frapped it 
 and the oars into a.sheaf which I flung overboard for a sea 
 anchor to ride to with a curse as I did so, so vile a savage 
 was I then with despair and suffering. I was parched with 
 thirst, hating life, yet felt an inward shrinking from death. 
 Pulling the sail about me, I lay down in the stern sheets. I'll 
 not recite the miseries of that night ; sufferings as great have 
 been endured by men adrift and in open boats and on rafts, 
 but none greater no, not after days ; no, not even when it had 
 come to the eating of human flesh. 
 
 It was still thick at daybreak, with a heavy swell, always 
 from the southward, little wind, and rain in places. So much 
 had fallen in the night that I got a draught out of the bottom 
 of the boat. I knelt down and sucked it up like a horse. It 
 was slightly brackish with the impregnation of the timber by 
 brine, but sweet as a draught of foaming soda water to my 
 throat. There was plenty, but no vessel to hold it, and it 
 washed about under the thwarts as the boat tumbled. 
 
 I hauled in the sea anchor, stepped the mast, and hoisted 
 the sail with both reefs out, shaping my course by the sulky 
 redness in the east. My course ! By which I mean the ship, 
 for she was probably the nearest to me of any craft in those 
 seas then, not, perhaps, thirty miles off, to be sneaked into 
 sight amid light baffling airs should the horizon clear and 
 give me three leagues of view before sundown. 
 
 All that day it blew a light northwesterly wind. The sun 
 showed at intervals, but the most part of the sky was a stretch 
 of heaped-up vapor, swelled and soft and moist, like wet
 
 210 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 smoke, if you can imagine the thing. It never ceased to rain 
 in one place or another, and sometimes it fell in a living sheet 
 off the edge of a cloud right overhead. Thus I got plenty of 
 water to drink. The swell was small, and sluggish as liquid 
 lead ; the boat floated languidly forward ; I kept my sail 
 aloft for the sake of the gleam of it against the confused sooty 
 background, which must throw it out sharp as a light to any 
 eye on the sea line ; but nothing showed all day long. In- 
 deed there was scarce wind enough to heave anything into 
 view. 
 
 I did not suffer much from hunger, thanks perhaps to the 
 quantity of rain water I drank. But I was very weak, and felt 
 sick and ill, and at sundown found myself scarcely strong 
 enough to bind the oars and mast into an anchor to ride to 
 during the hours of darkness. I stowed myself away under 
 the sail with a short prayer to God to have mercy upon my 
 soul if I died during the night, but I don't think I cared a 
 finger snap how it should go with me, so poorly, so low, so 
 heart-crushed was I. I slept in snatches and beheld horrible 
 visions, and toward morning grew a bit light-headed, for I 
 recollect talking aloud and laughing at what I said. Once I 
 seemed to smell the sweetness of wet, new-cut grass, and 
 crawled out of my sail to put my hand over the boat to grasp 
 a handful. 
 
 However, at sunrise I felt equal to getting in my sea anchor 
 and hoisting the sail, and once more I started, heading south 
 as on the previous day, for I had got this superstition upon 
 me : that if I steered in any other direction than south I 
 should sight nothing, and be found a corpse, if found at all. 
 
 This was a fine day, the sun bright and hot, the sky full of large 
 white clouds, mountainous, majestic, glorious in their sunward 
 brows with prismatic light, and their violet shadows slept like 
 islands upon the ocean. Toward noon I was tormented with 
 hunger ; perhaps the pangs kept my head straight ; I doubt if 
 I could have lost my mind while that physical distress was on 
 me, as they say you can't die while you are in pain. 
 
 But when this third night came I was too weak to make a 
 sheaf of the oars ; I kept the sail mastheaded, and sat fair 
 betwixt the yoke-lines, one on either thigh, and a nerveless 
 hand upon each of them. And thus the boat drove stealthily 
 along, straight before the wind, heading I don't know how, 
 with a gentle simmering noise rising on either hand her, and 
 many large stars trembling on high amid white puffs of vapor. 
 
 As I afterward guessed, it was about midnight that I lifted 
 my chin in a lifeless way off my breast, and looked with the
 
 ADRIFT. 211 
 
 languor of dying eyes ahead of me. There was a piece of moon 
 over the sea, with an ice-like streak of light shivering under 
 it. The circle came black as ebony to that streak, and the 
 gleam clasped it in silver. The draught the breeze was no 
 more was fanning faintly in the lugsail, which emptied and 
 filled as the boat softly rose and sank. My hands upon the 
 yoke-lines had kept the helm right amidships, and the gig had 
 doubtless pursued the path of an arrow during my hours of 
 insensibility. 
 
 My eye was resting dully and stupidly upon the ice-like 
 shivering path of light upon the lee bow when it was taken 
 by a deep shadow there. The moon's wake streamed hard by 
 it. I started, and all that was left of vitality rushing into my 
 vision then. I looked again and beheld a large ship, not two 
 miles distant, whitening into the moonlight out of the deep 
 dye of her hull, like a cliff soaring snow-clad from a base of 
 dark rock. 
 
 Presently the moon came over the ship where she was about 
 a mile off. She stood black and clean-edged in outline, 
 which enabled me to see she was hove to, with some sugges- 
 tion of disorder in the manner her yards were braced, though 
 of this I could not be sure. 
 
 It was between one and two o'clock in the morning. Not a 
 light gleamed on the fabric, no sound came from her save the 
 occasional flap of canvas as she rolled. My eyes were dim 
 with famine, suffering, the companionship of death in one of 
 its most shocking aspects, and before I was up with the ship 
 the moon was off her ; her hull was deep shadow again, and 
 her canvas a pale cloud, yet I could see her well enough to 
 steer straight. 
 
 When I thought her within hail of my weak throat I tried 
 to stand up while I sung out, but could not use my legs. I 
 then endeavored to shout ; my voice was a husky whisper 
 the hideous articulation of the gaping and grinning mouth of 
 thirst ! Without strength to rise, without voice to exert, O 
 God, thought I, unless I am seen I shall strike stem on, slide 
 past, float clear on the other side, and blow away into eternity ! 
 
 In the instant of the above ejaculation of my soul the note 
 of a powerful, familiar voice came along from the ship. 
 
 " Boat ahoy ! " 
 
 I was fainting, but consciousness pricked its ears afresh on 
 hearing those tones. I recognized them, yet was too weak- 
 headed to recollect the man's name. 
 
 " Boat ahoy ! " 
 
 I was now within a few ship's lengths of the vessel, heading
 
 212 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 to hit her a little forward of the main chains, with just enough 
 of sense in me to hope that the channels would hook the boat 
 before she slided clear, or the main brace foul her mast and 
 arrest her way should she slip astern. This had been in my 
 head before I heard the voice, but now, being hailed, I knew I 
 was seen, .and, being seen, that I should be rescued. 
 
 I dimly distinguished a group of shadows near the mizzen 
 rigging, and heard a fluttering growl of eager talk. I seemed 
 to recognize the ship, swollen and disproportioned as she 
 looked to my disordered brain, shaping and reforming as if 
 fashioned of a thundercloud, bulbous aloft as though a breeze 
 blew, but ghastly pale and writhing from yardarm to yardarm, 
 every perceptible shroud wriggling off into the darkness in a 
 horrible likeness of huge eels of endless length. The gig 
 entered the dark shadow of her, and the fabric of spars and 
 canvas towered over me to the stars. 
 
 " It's the ship's gig, and there's Mr. Morgan in her," some- 
 one over my head said. 
 
 The boat's bows hit the side ; the shock was slight as 
 trifling as the thrust of a boathook, yet it struck through my 
 brain like the blow of a stone ; as the boat swung I struggled 
 to stand, and fell forward insensible. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 BRIGSTOCK'S VISIT. 
 
 ON regaining consciousness I found myself in a bunk in a 
 ship's cabin. I stared vacantly, understanding nothing. Then 
 I took notice of things one by one ; it -was night time ; the 
 bracket lamp was alight, and swung sharply ; a woman sat 
 near it with her back upon me holding up a book to her face. 
 She had black hair in great plenty, was without a hat, and was 
 dressed in black with a white apron. 
 
 I lay with hopeless brains. Nothing was to be grasped for 
 a long while. As a stone is to a sitting hen in a passion of 
 incubation, so to my intelligence was this cabin with its figure 
 of a woman reading by lamplight. 
 
 On a sudden, but not for many minutes after I had opened 
 my eyes, the woman turned and looked at me. It was Kate 
 Darnley. The instant I saw her I smiled, knowing her, and 
 then it was all mine in a flash of perception. 
 
 I was in the captain's cabin in the Earl of Leicester, and 
 yonder was Kate Darnley nursing me. She got up and came
 
 BRIG STOCK'S VISIT. 213 
 
 close, holding by the side of the bunk. The ship was pitch- 
 ing and rolling heavily. There was a frequent thunder 
 of rushing surge and lightning-like glance of white waters 
 upon the cabin window, and the air was full of grinding noises, 
 and of the long-drawn vibrant humming you hear under deck 
 when a gale is sweeping betwixt reeling masts. 
 
 I looked up into Kate's dark eyes, and tried to speak, but 
 could only make mouths at her. She put her hand upon my 
 forehead, and still holding the side of the bunk she sank to 
 the full length of her arm, and put her face close to mine. I 
 contrived, perhaps by speech, perhaps by gesture a deuce of 
 a dreamy time was that ! to make her understand I was 
 hungry and thirsty. She left me, but soon returned with a 
 pannikin of spirits and water, and a sandwich of biscuits and 
 tinned meat. She managed her footing finely, swaying with- 
 out stagger or run upon the hard, quick heave of the deck, as 
 a bubble poises to the perpendicular, make you what angles 
 you will with the pipe that blows it. 
 
 I tried to sit up, but could not ; she got behind me and pil- 
 lowed my back with her figure, contriving her hands as a table 
 for me, and so I ate and drank, and in a very little while was 
 marvelously better for the meal. She knelt by my side a 
 safe posture in such a sea as I now felt was running and our 
 talk ran thus : 
 
 " What has happened ? " 
 
 " Oh, much. You have been insensible ever since you were 
 taken out of the boat." 
 
 " The boat. The boat. I remember ! How long ago is it ? " 
 
 " This is Friday night. You were rescued on Wednesday 
 night about this hour." 
 
 " What's the time?" 
 
 " Nearly three o'clock. It's blowing fearfully, and the ship 
 is hove to. While I kneel I should give God thanks you are 
 here. It's been stormy ever since that night, but not as now." 
 
 " Brigstock Brigstock," I muttered. " That's the name. 
 He's my murderer, though I live. For the second time, too, 
 since I left England. Will the third time fail ? The devils ! 
 To send me adrift in that thickness, and the schooner to 
 windward, d'ye remember, and the villains trimming sail the 
 moment I was adrift. For what? For what? " 
 
 " Now be calm. You are safe, and they are sorry." 
 
 I sobbed once or twice, like a fool, in my weakness, where- 
 upon she stroked my hand. 
 
 " Holy God ! " I exclaimed. " What a time they've made 
 me go through."
 
 214 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " It was your friend Alice Perry's doings," said she. " Not 
 that there was malice in it ; it was ignorant, unreckoning 
 hate." 
 
 "Of me?" 
 
 " No, no ; of the Brigstock lot." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said I, smiling and speaking faintly; "I remem- 
 ber." 
 
 But what I meant I don't know, for at this point my head 
 got confused, my eyes turned up, Kate's face faded out, I 
 struggled to speak, to see her, to collect my mind, then sunk, 
 as she afterward told me, with a long sigh, into a sleep deep 
 and dreamless as the slumber of the grave. 
 
 There was a brave dance of sunshine in the cabin when I 
 awoke. The light off the rolling ocean outside streamed with 
 piercing whiteness through the cabin porthole, with an occa- 
 sional eclipse of the wet circle of glass by a roaring green sea. 
 I seemed to find myself as well as ever I had been in my life 
 until I endeavored to sit up, and was then sensible of a good 
 deal of weakness and prostration. 
 
 A mattress lay upon the cabin deck. Kate stood before the 
 looking-glass winding her hair up on her head, and the molded 
 ripenesses of her figure found twenty graceful expressions 
 while she leaned from the slant of the plank, her hands above 
 her. I called her name, and she looked round with a blush 
 and a smile. After some commonplaces of greeting she told 
 me it was nine o'clock, and that Brigstock had tapped twice 
 on the door within the past hour to know if I was awake, 
 and how I did. 
 
 " But they have another navigator ? " 
 
 " No. The man they stole knows nothing about it." 
 
 " Nothing about it ! " 
 
 " He called himself second mate when he came on board, 
 and they took it for granted he knew navigation, so they 
 locked him up, after nearly killing the poor wretch, just as they 
 imprisoned you. But when they asked him to navigate the 
 ship, he told them he was a sailmaker and had never learned 
 to read or write." 
 
 Seeing me laughing, she broke into a hearty laugh herself. 
 
 " As sailmaker he was, of course, acting as second mate of 
 the schooner," said I, breaking up my words with laughter. 
 " What's become of him ? " 
 
 " He's in the forecastle, and is one of the crew. I have 
 been nursing you since Wednesday night, and know little of 
 what's going on in the ship." 
 
 " Have they been sailing her ? "
 
 BR1GSTOCK*S VISIT. 215 
 
 " Not since Wednesday morning." 
 
 But I could see by the hurrying of light in the cabin that 
 she was going through it now, and the telltale, which hung 
 within easy eyeshot, gave her course as S. S. W. 
 
 " I'll get you some breakfast," said Kate, taking up her hat 
 from the writing table. 
 
 " Who was that woman that committed suicide ? " 
 
 " A girl named Mary Lonney. Oh ! what a terrible night 
 that was. She slept in one of the closed places, next to Miss 
 Cobbs. Three lay on one shelf. Miss Lonney was the 
 middle one. The other two were covered with her blood, and 
 their cries were dreadful, and so were their looks when the 
 lantern was lighted and we saw them in their nightdresses." 
 
 " What did the girl kill herself for? " 
 
 " They say she was mad. There are several stories. One 
 is that she was engaged to be married. The man not only 
 left her, but robbed her, and she determined to emigrate. 
 She was a pensive, sad-faced girl, with the most wistful eyes 
 I ever saw." 
 
 She shuddered, took a shawl from the mattress, and left the 
 cabin. There was a promptness of manner, a decision of 
 speech in her, that wonderfully pleased me. It gave a fine, 
 spirited coloring to one's thoughts of her. She was a sort of 
 girl, I thought, to encounter life with a firm brow and a con- 
 quering patience of resolution, and I was grateful to her for 
 nursing me, and for the light of the thankful heart in her face 
 when she found me conscious. 
 
 I lay quiet, watching the play of the foam-white dazzle in 
 the cabin, thinking over the horrible days and nights I had 
 passed in the ship's gig, and reflecting very earnestly in the 
 direction of the future how I was to bear myself with Brig- 
 stock and the crew, what manner I should put on if they 
 offered me command again, and so on. When Kate returned 
 she was followed by Gouger with some breakfast for her and 
 me. I looked the young brute sternly in the face, but other- 
 wise made no sign. The fellow viewed me askew, shyly and 
 uneasily, and went out in a skulking manner after putting 
 down the breakfast tray. I told Kate that that dog had never 
 once spoken to me all the time I was locked up, in a torment 
 of suspense, not being able to imagine the charge against me 
 nor what the crew designed. 
 
 " I it was," said she, " more than Alice Perry, who cleared 
 you, though at a cost which I'm afraid won't please you." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 "Why," she answered, "though I heard that the men had
 
 216 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 imprisoned you, I could not get to learn why. Miss Cobbs 
 refused to explain. The rumor went that they had confined 
 you because of your insisting upon training a crew of women 
 to work the ship. I wondered at that, and told Brigstock 
 I thought it hard you should be locked up merely for amusing 
 a section of the girls. He answered me so short I determined 
 to say no more to him, never guessing, however, what was to 
 happen to you. We were at breakfast when the hatch was 
 covered up. Miss Cobbs had previously lighted the lanterns. 
 We were again imprisoned, and some of the women were 
 horribly frightened. It was shocking to be locked up in 
 a ship that was without a navigator, in the power of a set of 
 men who might at any moment throw off the mask and prove 
 themselves villains." 
 
 She paused to hand me some tea, then resumed : 
 
 " We were kept below till we were nearly suffocated. It 
 was pouring with rain when the hatch was opened. I was the 
 first to run up, feeling secretly convinced that while we had 
 been locked up in the 'tween decks the men had been doing 
 something to you. I saw Brigstock standing in the cuddy 
 door. He looked as if he had been fighting. I asked him 
 what he had done with you. He pointed with his thumb over 
 his shoulder, and said, ' He's been sent away.' ' AVhat for?' 
 I said, terribly frightened. I imagined they had killed you. 
 He looked at me moodily, as if debating whether he should 
 answer, then broke into speech with a roaring voice of rage, 
 and told me the crew had sent you away because you'd plotted 
 to confine them in the fo'c's'le and sail the ship to a near port, 
 where you'd hand them over to the police as pirates." 
 
 " As I thought," said I. 
 
 " He told me I might save my tears, as you weren't dead 
 yet, though had it been any other crew than this ship's your 
 body would be swinging at the yardarm. I went into the 
 'tween decks to think. I then called to Alice Perry, and 
 brought her and others of the girls you taught around me, and 
 told them how Brigstock had sent you away, though in what 
 manner I did not know, and for what. Then Alice Perry, 
 with her eyes on fire, said it was her doing, though she had 
 never meant it should hurt you. Some of the girls had talked 
 about the plot they'd hatched and gone to you in the cuddy to 
 talk over; they had been overheard, or perhaps couldn't keep 
 the secret. Certain of the women who have taken _up with 
 the seaman carried what they'd picked up to the crew. When 
 Alice Perry heard this she went forward and made matters 
 worse by taunting the crew, declaring that they were in your
 
 BRIGSTOCK'S VISIT. 217 
 
 power, and would be in the hands of the police before long, 
 and, vile-tempered fool as she is, persuaded them the plot 
 that had come to their ears vrasyeurs. This she owned while 
 we sat talking about it in the 'tween decks. After hearing 
 her I made her go with me to Brigstock, to whom I explained 
 your motive for training a company of girls to maneuver the 
 ship. He listened like a man who is willing that justice should 
 be done. I told him that the plot had been the girls', not 
 yours. Alice Perry declared that that was so, named a num- 
 ber of the women who had talked it over, and said in her fiery, 
 affronting way that she and the others had come to you, and 
 you had refused to hear them on the subject. So you see," 
 said she, smiling, "I had to give them the truth to prove your 
 innocence." 
 
 " It was then too late. What had he to say upon my motive 
 for training the girls ? " 
 
 " Nothing. He asked a few questions, but for the most 
 part listened in silence. Upset as I was, I could not help being 
 amused at his airs of importance and efforts to look like a 
 judge. I believe he talked to the crew afterward, for they 
 came about us and asked many questions, collecting evidence, 
 as it were, all which went to establish your innocence ; the 
 women who called upon you in the cabin all agreed in their 
 story. But I think what helped them best to see the truth was 
 the discovery that the man they'd stolen was perfectly illiterate 
 and no navigator." 
 
 " Did you hear what had become of me ? " 
 
 "Yes; the men told their 'pardners,' as Miss Cobbs calls 
 them, you'd been sent in a boat to the schooner they'd stolen 
 the man from. I believed you were safe, little imagining the 
 reality." 
 
 Just at this minute the door was rapped, and Brigstock 
 called to know if he could come in. On entering he shut the 
 door, then backed against it, pulling off his cap and twisting it 
 with gestures of agitation, while he eyed me with the stupid 
 steadfast stare of a sheep at a dog, slowly moving his jaw as 
 though he ground tobacco. 
 
 I should have been deeply stirred by the sight of the fellow 
 had I not had plenty of time to consider how I should bear 
 myself when we met. I was now sitting up in my bunk ; they 
 had removed my soaked clothes on taking me out of the boat, 
 and dressed my lifeless figure in a flannel shirt and warm slop 
 sea drawers and stockings used for sea boots, and over all was 
 a blanket. I looked wild and grim, with disordered hair and 
 beard of four days' growth. The sailor wore his hair as flow-
 
 218 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 ing as his trousers in those days ; mine hid my ears and curled 
 upon my coat collar. 
 
 " Captain Morgan," said Brigstock in a slow, deep, trem- 
 bling voice, " I hope as jer now a-feeling of jer old self again, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Mr. Brigstock, you and your people have used me most 
 damnably ill." 
 
 " It never would have been done had we knowed the truth." 
 
 " The truth ! Why, man, you wouldn't take the trouble to 
 find it out. Is the sentencing of a man before he's heard to 
 be a part of your constitution the sentencing of him to death, 
 mark you ! for you know you sent me away to perish ! " 
 
 His mouth worked as though he were overwhelmed with 
 thought too big for utterance. He flung his cap down, and 
 approaching my bunk with a stride, first looking slowly with 
 something of a bewildered expression at Kate, and then fasten- 
 ing his dark eyes upon me, he exclaimed, " We thought jer 
 meant to clap the hatches on us men and navigate the vessel 
 to where jer could give us into custody. They said it were 
 your scheme. Why didn't jer tell us why you was a-putting 
 them females through their facings for as sailors ? If for to 
 navigate this ship after we'd left her, why didn't jer say so ? 
 You so hacted, and we so misunderstood, that there was nothen 
 but to make the two and two a plain four, and thankful I am 
 and truly grateful likewise that jer death warn't the conse- 
 quence of the conclusion we arrived at." 
 
 "You called me villain ; you would not hear me ! " I cried, 
 trembling and flushed with the temper his words excited. 
 
 " The captain is still very weak and oughtn't to be worried," 
 said Kate. 
 
 " I've come to hask his forgiveness, miss. Capt'n, it was a 
 mistake. We was goaded to it. That there Alice Perry made 
 out we was in your power, and that you meant to bring us to 
 punishment. We had trusted jer and done what was right, 
 and I tell jer the news of that there scheme, which we took to 
 be yourn, turned the blood in our veins into blazing oil, and I 
 thank the Lord, I do, that it's as it be, so mad we all was. 
 Three was for " 
 
 He checked himself, and sunk his eyes, pulled a red hand- 
 kerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow. 
 
 The man's voice assured me his agitation was unaffected ; 
 so did the movements of his face. He advanced another stride 
 and extended his hand. 
 
 " Capt'n, I'm here on the part of the crew for to ask jer 
 pardon. May I tell 'em it's granted ? "
 
 BRIGSTOCK' S VISIT. 219 
 
 " Hang your fool's play !" cried I passionately. "What good 
 would my forgiveness be to men who, on the evidence of any 
 lying woman in the 'tween decks, would yardarm me to-morrow, 
 would swing me now, without giving me a chance to prove my 
 innocence ? " 
 
 " It never could happen again, sir," said he in a heavy, level, 
 solemn voice. 
 
 "Chaw!" 
 
 " You'll be in a fever if this goes on," said Kate. 
 
 He began to address me ; I cut him short with the insolence 
 and contempt of the quarter-deck in its references to the fore- 
 castle. 
 
 " What is it you want ? You have a navigator. Now you 
 know I'm an innocent man you don't ask for my blood, do 
 you ? Therefore put me honestly aboard the first ship that 
 comes along." 
 
 " Then I must tell jer," said he, " that we aint got no 
 navigator." 
 
 " You plundered the schooner of one ; what have you done 
 with him ? " 
 
 " He called himself second mate, but he's no navigator. 
 He's scarce got laming enough to write a cross for his mark. 
 I thought he was a-lying, and put that there sextant into his 
 hand, but I soon see he didn't know what it was." 
 
 " What do you want ? " 
 
 " Your services, sir." 
 
 I lay back and shut my eyes. 
 
 " Leave him," said Kate, " or he'll be too ill to serve 
 you." 
 
 He was scared by this hint, and softly went out. 
 
 As the morning advanced I felt strong enough to rise. 
 The clothes I wore when sent adrift were in the cabin ; I 
 shaved and dressed myself, and felt perfectly well, only that I 
 was a little weak in the knees. I opened the log book, and 
 smiled to observe that no entries had been made since the date 
 when my own hand had last written in it. 
 
 Brigstock may have heard from Kate that I was getting 
 up. He knocked on the cabin door just before I had finished 
 dressing. He was accompanied by Isaac Coffin and Joe 
 Harding. I folded my arms and leaned against the bunk. 
 Harding knuckled his forehead and said in a low voice : 
 
 " Capt'n, I can only say as man to man, I'm glad it is as 
 it is." 
 
 " You'd have hanged me ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Not Joe," said Brigstock gravely.
 
 220 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " You told me just now that three of you would have then 
 checked yourself. Which of you would have done it ? " said 
 I, turning my eye upon Coffin. 
 
 Brigstock answered, " Only consider what we was afeared 
 jer meant to do." 
 
 " Was that man one of the three ? " said I, pointing to Coffin. 
 
 They were silent, but I found my answer in the hung face 
 of the fellow, crumpled as it was, and almost expressionless 
 with mustache. 
 
 " Go forward," said I sternly. 
 
 The man hung in the wind for an instant with a glance from 
 Brigstock to the other, then left the cabin. 
 
 " Capt'n," said Brigstock, " d'jer feel well enough now to 
 talk things over? " 
 
 " Before you'll get a syllable from me in the way of busi- 
 ness you'll beg my pardon for calling me villain." 
 
 " I do, sir ! I do, sir ! " he cried. 
 
 " You too were infernally uncivil, Mr. Harding." 
 
 " Only consider what was a-running in our heads," he 
 answered, with a sour look, and his thumb and fingers upon his 
 chin, as though he were holding his beard to it. 
 
 I began to bully them on this ; stormed at and even cursed 
 them, strong with the sense of their renewed confidence in 
 me, and defiant with the perception of their utter dependence. 
 No Nova Scotia skipper, bulged and knobby with revolvers, 
 and backed by a grenadier of a chief mate and an armory 
 of belaying pins, ever hazed a loafing crew in stronger fore- 
 castle rhetoric than I those two men for sending me adrift in 
 thick weather, heedless as to whether I reached the schooner 
 or not. When I thought enough had been said on this head 
 I rounded upon Brigstock and asked him what he had come 
 to tell me ? 
 
 "We want jer to take charge of this ship, sir. It's draw- 
 ing on for noon, and we should like jer to take an obser- 
 vation, as we're anxious to know where we are." 
 
 " You're for beginning things over and over again. All was 
 well with us, but you're like a bad-tempered woman : you can't 
 leave well alone. Are you still resolved to settle an island ? " 
 
 " W T hy, yes ; of course we are, sir." 
 
 " If I take charge who's to warrant me from being hindered 
 in carrying you to the South Seas ? " 
 
 " Name your tarms," said Brigstock. 
 
 " Do you believe in the Bible ? " 
 
 " Certainly I do," he answered, with a solemn drop of his 
 head.
 
 THE OATH. 221 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 " As much as I know of it," answered Harding. 
 
 " Would an oath taken on that book be held binding by you 
 and the crew?" 
 
 " Why, then," exclaimed Brigstock after a pause, speaking 
 deep with fervor, " I say it would." 
 
 " Very well," said I. " I'll draw up the oath, and the crew 
 shall lay aft and take it on your Bible, Mr. Brigstock. I 
 suppose you have one?" 
 
 "I have, sir." 
 
 "When they've sworn the oath I'll prepare, in the form I 
 prescribe, I'll take charge of the ship." 
 
 Brigstock contorted his figure into a singular sea-bow. 
 Harding was about to speak. " No, let's hear the hoath first, 
 Joe," said Brigstock, interrupting him, as though the surly 
 fellow's thought had been written upon his face. 
 
 " You tell me the man you kidnapped is of no use ? " said I. 
 
 " Of no more use than a figurehead," answered Brigstock. 
 
 "What's his name?" 
 
 " Thomas Bull, sir." 
 
 " What are you going to do with him ? " 
 
 " He's a-going along with us." 
 
 "To settle?" 
 
 " Aye," exclaimed Harding. 
 
 " Has he found a pardner ? " 
 
 " He has, sir," answered Brigstock gravely. 
 
 " Now leave me," said I, and turned to hide my face. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE OATH. 
 
 BY the height of the sun, as nearly as I could tell, it was 
 about eleven o'clock. The wind blew fresh, the sea ran strong 
 and in wide hollows, and the lift and fall of the ship was as 
 regular as the sweep of a swing. The snow-white foam, 
 choking the window in dazzling leaps, with alternations of the 
 green eclipse of the clear brine, told me we were sailing 
 through it, and fast. It was hard to make out the sky in the 
 wet blindness of the glass. 
 
 I determined to get an observation, but to keep the reckon- 
 ing to myself unless the men did what I required. While 
 looking for a sheet of paper I cast my eye over the cabin, but 
 could not observe that it had been occupied, or in any way
 
 222 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 meddled with, since the day I was sent adrift. I took a seat 
 at the table, and after several experiments framed an oath 
 that satisfied me. I smiled while I put the paper in my 
 pocket. Not for a moment did I suppose that the fellows 
 would regard any oath they kissed the book on as binding. 
 But I was resolved to have the satisfaction of their humiliation, 
 which I intended to render as complete as an audience can 
 make such things ; nor was it quite impossible that the oath 
 lying in their minds might spin for itself a sort of cocoon of 
 conscience, but I had little hope in that way. 
 
 When it was about half-past eleven I buttoned my coat, put 
 on my cap, and took a sextant out of its case. I was pale and 
 somewhat hollow about the eye, and may have betrayed other 
 signs of having suffered. I found Gouger in the cuddy ; he 
 made way for me with abject respect. 
 
 " Go forward and stop there," said I, " until you're called 
 aft along with the others." 
 
 He hurried out with eager obedience, and I liked that 
 response to my orders better than any oath he could have 
 sworn. 
 
 When I gained the deck I found a spacious, wonderful 
 scene of brilliant morning, splendid everywhere with the hurl 
 of roiling masses of foam into the sunlight that poured in 
 flashing broadsides of light through clouds of enormous bulk 
 and inconceivable majesty and beauty of tint and figure. In 
 a glance I had the whole scene : half a gale of wind on the 
 quarter, curling and roaring ridges, the horizon working rug- 
 gedly against piles of vapor sinking over the bow, and terraces 
 of vapor soaring over the stern ; the ship pitching, lurching, 
 thundering onward, with dives which brought the foam wash- 
 ing to the spritsail yard, under whole topsails and a main 
 topgallant sail, and the mainsail with the weather clew up; 
 two hands at the wheel, and Brigstock at the break of the 
 poop to windward, talking to a man who was strange to me, 
 whom I at once set down as Thomas Bull. 
 
 I walked slowly forward on somewhat shaky legs, for up 
 on deck here in the headlong pouring of air I did not feel so 
 strong as I had thought myself, and was at the rail overlook- 
 ing the main deck before Brigstock and his companion observed 
 me. 
 
 A large number of women were on deck, about two-thirds 
 of the whole ; they herded chiefly upon the quarter-deck 
 abaft the mainmast, as though for the shelter of the cuddy- 
 front. I had scarcely shown myself when a voice shrieked 
 out : " There's the captain ! "
 
 THE OATH. 223 
 
 Almost in a breath, as though moved by a single controlling 
 power, every head rounded toward me in a movement of 
 white faces ; the effect of that simultaneous action was ex- 
 traordinary ; those who were walking came to a stand with 
 startling abruptness, as though rooted ; and then, and all 
 while you might count ten, there arose an amazing, universal, 
 wild cry of greeting, shrieks and screams of welcome, and 
 hand-clapping that was like the emptying of a sack of shingle 
 or a lusty fire of crackers and squibs, together with a confused 
 sawing of arms and fluttering of handkerchiefs. 
 
 " Yer'll stop this time ! " squealed a girl. 
 
 " We aint going to let you go again," yelled another. 
 
 " There stands the man as would have murdered him," 
 screamed Alice Perry, pointing at Brigstock, and coming in an 
 elbowing run to the foot of the poop ladder, " and the beast 
 wants to lay it all on me ! " 
 
 "You lie, you drab ! " bawled Brigstock. 
 
 " How ill he looks ! " cried a woman just beneath me. 
 " Why warn't I arsted to nurse him ? " 
 
 " Captain, may I speak to you ? " cried Alice Perry, looking 
 up with a passionate face, wild with blown hair and angry eyes. 
 
 There was such a hubbub then that I declined to exert my 
 voice, and answering the girl by significantly lifting, my sex- 
 tant, I raised my cap as a general salute, and walked slowly 
 aft, hearing Alice Perry shriek, " Captain, don't let him tell 
 lies of me ! " while Brigstock shouted, " Keep down keep 
 down. Yer can't come up here. Keep down, I say ! " 
 
 As before when I first took sights in this ship, so now was 
 I watched with pathetic eagerness by the crowds of females 
 who climbed on to the bulwarks, and, defying Brigstock, 
 heaped themselves upon the poop ladder to observe me while 
 I screwed the sun down to the jagged sea line. I was left in 
 full possession of the weather quarter-deck. The man Bull 
 had gone forward, and in company with other seamen stared 
 aft from abreast of the galley, where some of the mess- 
 women o the 'tween decks were talking together. I made 
 noon, and eight bells were instantly struck by someone on the 
 quarter-deck. 
 
 Brigstock came along to me while I was stepping to the 
 companion, and respectfully touching his cap, said, "Capt'n, 
 we take this here shooting of the sun all the same as saying 
 that there's no longer any feeling 'twixtyou and us men touch- 
 ing the past." 
 
 " You may take it as you like," I answered, and without 
 another word went below.
 
 224 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 I worked out the latitude with some curiosity, and found 
 that I was wrong in my expectations by above a degree. 
 Indeed the ship had made seventy miles of something in ex- 
 cess of what I had supposed. When I was done with my 
 figures I went into the cuddy, and then remembered that I 
 had sent Gouger forward. I had forgotten I was to dine, and 
 going to the cuddy door I shouted along the deck for Gouger. 
 In a moment the fellow came running aft, and I ordered him 
 to get me some dinner and put a bottle of beer upon the table. 
 All the girls were not yet below, but many of them had left 
 the deck ; some of the messwomen were at that moment com- 
 ing along with kids of beef and pudding. 
 
 I had scarcely given my orders to Gouger, whom I addressed 
 in a strong brutal voice, scowling to advise him I was master 
 again, and to have a care, when Alice Perry broke out of a 
 group of women and was upon me before I could withdraw. 
 
 " Capt'n," she cried, " let me have a word with yer. I'm 
 your girl to the heels, and on my sacred word of honor if yer '11 
 take me as one of your sailors again yer '11 never have cause 
 to complain of me. Now keep off, do ! " she exclaimed, turn- 
 ing upon some women who were gathering about us. " Here 
 have I been charged by that Cobbs and her pal Thomas with 
 causing the crew to send the capt'n away in a boat and die. 
 S'elp me, Judas, it's as blistered a lie as never was ! " she 
 shrieked. " But keep off, will yer, that I may 'ave a word 
 along with 'im." 
 
 " What do you want to say ? " I asked, taking her by the 
 hand and bringing her a little way into the cuddy, though 
 keeping her well in view of the quarter-deck. 
 
 The truth is I looked upon this Alice Perry as the smartest 
 girl sailor I was likely to find or make in that shipload of 
 females, and I had a sneaking liking for her too, spite of her 
 wild, bitter, saucy tongue, because I believed her warm at 
 heart, and an honest girl, and I don't say I wasn't a little prej- 
 udiced by her looks ; she was indeed coarse, but then she was 
 handsome, of that sort of low vulgar beauty which makes a 
 good figure on the stage when it's viewed afar, and lighted up 
 and softened. 
 
 " Don't let that there Brigstock persuade you it was me as 
 made him send yer away in a boat." 
 
 " I don't want to go into the matter." 
 
 " I'd have locked 'em all up as I told yer," she exclaimed, 
 her eyes flashing with temper, and her cheeks red with it too, 
 " for they're a measly lot, and a curse to us girls, who don't 
 want nothen to do with 'em. I own I bounced 'em by saying
 
 THE OATH. 225 
 
 you'd be glad if some of the women 'ud report we'd locked 
 'em up down in the hold. That there rag who's Emma Grubb's 
 choosing God deliver me from the likes of such a face ! with 
 that mustache of his he looks like the remains of a man sit- 
 ting be'ind a broom to hide his ugliness, and a-crumpling up 
 his flesh to smother the parts he can't conceal he cheeks me 
 one morning though in the doctor's time they was forbid to 
 speak to us, and," said she, clenching her fist and breathing 
 quickly, " I just looked at him as I'm looking at you, and I 
 says, says I," and here she pitched her voice into an insulting, 
 provoking drawl, " ' I'm sorry for you,' I says, ' when the 
 capt'n's handed you over to them as have the handling of such 
 vermin.' That was all. So don't let Brigstock tell no more 
 lies of me to you," and she rolled up her fiery eyes as though 
 she would pierce through the plank to the man who was stump- 
 ing the deck above on the lookout. 
 
 " We'll drop this matter," said I, " and talk of what's to the 
 point. Before I was sent away you refused to be a sailor. 
 Now will you sail under my flag again ? " 
 
 " What d'yer mean ? " said she, staring with passionate 
 earnestness. 
 
 " Will you be one of my sailors, and top the list of all hands ? 
 as you're bound to, for you're as smart as you're handsome, 
 and as nimble as you're clever, and I can't do without you." 
 
 " I'll do anything you ask," she repeated with her face on 
 fire with pleasure. " Only don't think me a liar." 
 
 " We'll start the class again when I'm done with the crew. 
 I shall want to have you well in hand before we're up to the 
 Horn." 
 
 " Dress me up as a man. I can climb. I lay I'd lick that 
 little fat Jupe in trotting up them ladders," said she, pointing 
 through the window at the rigging. " He crawls like a 
 November bluebottle up a winder. You dress me as a man, 
 and see me take the shine out of him." 
 
 I smiled, on which she made the cabin ring again with peals 
 of shrill laughter. Brigstock, hearing the noise, leaned half 
 his body into the skylight to look at us, but seeing me he 
 immediately drew back. 
 
 " Your dinner waits and so does mine. There '11 be plenty 
 of time for talks like this if the crew don't send me adrift 
 again." 
 
 " Let them lay a finger on yer ! " she exclaimed, with a 
 mirthless smile, or rather grin, which laid bare her strong, 
 coarse white teeth ; it was a snarling hellish look, and she 
 wanted nothing but a naked knife to complete her.
 
 226 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 I was about to go. 
 
 "Can yer let me learn that whistle Miss Darnley wears?" 
 said she. 
 
 " Get you to your dinner," I answered. 
 
 When I had eaten some salt beef and drunk a bottle of beer 
 and smoked a cigar I felt about equal to the business I had 
 in hand. By this time most of the women were on deck 
 again. While I sat at the table smoking Brigstock caoie to 
 the cuddy door, but went away after looking at me a moment. 
 I had nearly called to him to come and sit down, but the 
 resolution I had formed that morning prevailed : to consider 
 the" crew as men who would have murdered me, to hold no 
 intercourse whatever with them beyond giving orders, to keep 
 strictly to my end of the ship and take no notice of their 
 behavior, but always when the obligation to address them 
 arose to let them understand I had not forgotten that they 
 would have destroyed me. 
 
 It was shortly after one when I left the table. As I ap- 
 proached the cuddy door Brigstock came along the quarter- 
 deck. 
 
 " Capt'n," said he, " will you give us the ship's position ? " 
 
 " Not till the crew have taken the oath I've drawn up," I 
 answered. 
 
 " They're willing and waiting," said he. 
 
 " Then send them aft, and tell Miss Cobbs I want her." 
 
 I stood well within the cuddy, not wishing to be accosted 
 by the women, numbers of whom, in pairs and threes, mostly 
 arm in arm, were walking about the main and quarter-decks, 
 with rippling skirts and flying ribbons and fluttering fal-lals 
 of dress, squeaking inane laughter when a sudden swift slant 
 dispatched them interlaced in a run to leeward. The wind 
 was merry with their voices, and the decks looked like the 
 main street of a town on a market day. 
 
 Miss Cobbs rose through the main hatch, and made an 
 uncommonly respectable figure in her large bonnet and 
 sausage curls and dark green up and down dress, too lean, 
 too scraggy of fold for the wind to play with. She came with 
 her customary wire-fine simper, and demure lift and fall of 
 eyes, and when she entered the cuddy door she dropped me a 
 courtesy. 
 
 " I'm truly 'appy to see you back again and well, sir," she 
 exclaimed, " after your terrible experiences, all brought about 
 by the lies of certain base-tongued parties." 
 
 " Will you be so good," said I, as coldly and steadily as the 
 mixed emotions she filled me with permitted, " as to ask those
 
 THE OATH. 227 
 
 ladies to draw themselves up on either hand of the deck to 
 witness a ceremony of oath-taking that's about to happen ? " 
 
 " At once, sir ? " 
 
 " Instantly." 
 
 She went among the women, and I stepped on to the poop. 
 I saw Kate Darnley in the lee gangway, and nodded and kissed 
 my hand. How long, I wondered, was she going to worry 
 me with her 'tween deck prejudices ? Why on earth wouldn't 
 she live aft ? What would there be in such a thing to miscon- 
 strue ? Wasn't and isn't it customary for young ladies to be 
 consigned to the care of captains, and to cross the seas to the 
 very ends of the earth with no other eye to look after them 
 than the skipper's. She had nursed me devotedly while I lay 
 unconscious. Her care had saved my life, for all I knew, and 
 there she was, modestly withdrawn from my side now I was 
 well, herding with the Alice Perrys and Kate Davises and the 
 Selah Bungs and the rest of them, partners or no partners, 
 cooks, housemaids, and the chocolate girl Emma Marks. 
 
 But now Brigstock had sung out to the crew, and all hands 
 of them the dog Luddy being at the wheel were laying aft, 
 among them Thomas Bull, who, Luddy not counting, made 
 with the others twelve stout seamen. 
 
 This Bull was a big man, of a figure and head that answered 
 to his name. He was thick-necked, and three or four chins 
 rolled into his throat, like a ground swell into a cove. He 
 was close shaved, or perhaps was without hair on his face, but 
 plenty flowed in long ringlets from under his Scotch cap. He 
 wore a sleeve waistcoat and heavy pilot-cloth breeches, very 
 roomy in what Captain Marryatt calls the " west end." He 
 was a bit of a dandy too, with a silver watch chain and a green 
 cravat, over which drooped the unstarched collar of a sailor's 
 shirt. No doubt he was thus dressed when stolen. I did not 
 wonder that so much bulk should give its kidnappers trouble. 
 If he had been half murdered, he had picked up again pretty 
 well since that time. He looked fresh and hearty, and came 
 along with a smile as he glanced at the girls. 
 
 They, all agog with excitement, had gladly and eagerly 
 " fallen in," according to Miss Cobbs* instructions, and now 
 stood on either hand the deck, so massed they seemed twice 
 as many. The sight of that heap of human life, with the 
 twelve men coming along, and the wide surface of foaming 
 ocean outside dwindling the fabric of the ship into a tiny 
 floating toy, put something of tragic significance on the instant 
 into the thought of taking command. 
 
 Brigstock carried a big Bible under his arm. I went down
 
 228 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 on the quarter-deck when the fellows were assembled, and 
 going to the little capstan there, bade Brigstock hand me the 
 book. It was bound in old leather, and showed many marks 
 of hard wear, and had evidently gone plenty of long voyages. 
 I took it in my hand to see that it was our Protestant Bible, 
 and finding it all right, but incredibly worn and thumb-marked 
 inside, I put it down upon the capstan, and pulled the paper 
 upon which I had written the oath out of my pocket. 
 
 Before reading aloud I looked the men over one by one as 
 they stood in a huddle of twelve mariners right abreast to 
 windward, that is, to starboard of the capstan, backed on that 
 side by a mass of about forty women, all straining their eyes, 
 all silent, all wondering what was going to happen, looking as 
 though they were to see a man hanged. 
 
 Though young, I was not wanting in self-control ; I could 
 put on any face that might suit my mood or design, and having 
 been thrown with seamen all my life, I was very easy in their 
 presence, easier than in any other company. I gazed sternly 
 at the men one after another, and they returned my stare, with 
 here and there perhaps a little gleam of insolence in some 
 deep-set eye, but on the whole their bearing was reluctant, 
 significant of misgiving and uncertainty, as if they were called 
 up to be rated and then punished. 
 
 Incredible this may seem, but here let me say that it is impos- 
 sible for any landsman to understand what 1 may call the magic 
 of the quarter-deck influence upon the forecastle. It is pro- 
 fessional habit ; it is an instinct of the blood ; it is the effect 
 of a recognition for centuries of a despotism necessary and 
 absolute. However these men might have used me before, 
 now that I was again on board their ship, on the quarter-deck, 
 viewing them as captain by their own election, the influence 
 of my position was upon them ; I beheld it in every face, in 
 every posture, and felt it also by that interpretation of sym- 
 pathy which is often your only satisfying revelation. 
 
 " You want me," said I after a considerable silence, which 
 had not been broken by so much as a whisper, though there 
 must have stood a full hundred souls of us upon the main 
 and quarter-decks of the ship, " to resume command here ? Is 
 that so ? " 
 
 A general murmur arose among the men ; it was to the effect 
 that it was so. 
 
 " Do you believe I'm to be trusted ?" 
 
 " We're all agreed on that point," broke in Brigstock ; 
 "what I said to you in private I repeat to you in public : 
 we're all sorry we misonderstood yer, and we beg yer pardon."
 
 THE OATH. 229 
 
 He made a movement with his hands as though he would 
 collect the attention of the mob of women on both sides the 
 deck to his words. 
 
 " So you ought to it ! " cried a woman shrilly. 
 
 " Silence, ladies, if you please," sung out Miss Cobbs from 
 somewhere. 
 
 " That's all right," I said, addressing Brigstock. " You're 
 willing to trust me now, but I'm by no means willing to trust 
 you and your mates." 
 
 " Give it 'em ! " called out a woman, and some hand-claps 
 followed. 
 
 Then turning upon the men, I let fly at them, abandoning 
 myself to my temper, and heedless of what I said, convinced 
 that since justice was on my side the livelier my speech the 
 more convincing the impression. I was frequently interrupted 
 by the applause of the women. So intemperate, so headlong 
 was my address that I have no clear recollection of what I 
 said. Once or twice I caught a growl of protest, but I looked 
 the man down, and stormed him into half a score of uneasy 
 attitudes in as many moments. I called them murderers. 
 
 "No true seamen," I shouted, "would have treated their 
 captain as you treated me. No mangy mongrel, found starv- 
 ing in a fore peak, would have been served by sailors as you 
 served me. You sent me adrift a single man in a heavy 
 boat, without food or water, in thick blowing weather" and 
 I went over the ground, raving the whole story at them, with 
 frequent shakes of my fist, and again and again did the women 
 encourage me, and urge me on by all sorts of cries and 
 clapping of their hands. 
 
 By the time I was done they were as sullen and scowling as 
 condemned men, all save the burly fellow Thomas Bull, who 
 viewed me steadfastly with a countenance of cheerful admira- 
 tion. However, I cared nothing for their looks ; though I 
 had cooled down by this time, I cried out savagely : " I'll not 
 take command of a ship's company I can't trust. Oh, yes, 
 you're willing, I dare say, I should take command now, and in 
 the middle watch you'll be routing me up to send me adrift 
 again on some brutal excuse you'll manufacture out of the 
 first ' 'tween decks ' lie that's carried forward." 
 
 " No, sir," groaned Brigstock; " I told jer not! " 
 
 " You must take this oath," cried I, flourishing the paper. 
 " Are you willing to swear? " 
 
 " What d'yer want us to swear about ?" said Prentice. 
 
 "You, you ! Why, man, you'll have to take the oath pecul- 
 iarly," I yelled. " Damn you, you're the worst of the lot ! "
 
 ?3 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " Give it 'em, give it 'em ! " cried a woman, in a voice edged 
 to a shriek with enjoyment and delight. 
 
 " Read out what you want us to swear," said Coffin sul- 
 lenly. 
 
 " Listen now," I exclaimed, and opening the paper I read as 
 follows : 
 
 " I [and here comes in the name of the man], in considera- 
 tion of Captain Morgan faithfully navigating this ship to an 
 island in the South Seas, swear that I will dutifully obey all 
 his orders, never judge of his meaning by any stories which 
 may be carried into the forecastle, never hinder him in disci- 
 plining the ladies, or carrying out all other such schemes as he 
 may consider good for the common safety ; and I further 
 swear to peacefully hand over the ship and all such emigrants 
 as desire to remain in her to him, the said Captain Morgan, 
 on our arrival at the island we decide to settle. So help me 
 God." 
 
 In profoundest silence by all, men and women, was I lis- 
 tened to, not a whisper breaking in. I read loudly, clearly, 
 and slowly, that my voice might be heard above the roar of 
 the white brine on either hand, and the low thunder in the 
 hollows above, and the wild whistling and hooting of the 
 wind, splitting on shroud and brace. 
 
 I looked at Brigstock. All the sailors' eyes were upon him, 
 most of the women's eyes upon me. He chewed while he felt 
 the shape of his chin, then said, " It's a reasonable hoath and 
 well wrote." 
 
 " All must take it," said I ; " no use administering it to a 
 few." 
 
 Brigstock turned upon the men and asked them, one after 
 another, if they would take the oath they had heard me read, 
 and every man, one after another, said he would. Then Brig- 
 stock came to the capstan and took up the Bible, with his eyes 
 fastened upon my face. His manner was exceedingly solemn, 
 perfectly calculated to give all that weight to the ceremony I 
 wanted for it, and to impress the men with a sense of what 
 they were about. I read aloud and he followed, intoning the 
 words nasally in a deep relishing voice, and when I made him 
 say, " So help me God," he pronounced the ejaculation with 
 tremulous fervor, kissing the book slowly and devoutly, bowed 
 and bare-headed, so that I could never imagine an oath sworn 
 with more decency and gravity. 
 
 How, thought I, as he stepped aside, could such a man as 
 this have had the heart to treat me as he did ? 
 
 One by one the men stepped up ; Brigstock's example
 
 THE OATH. 231 
 
 worked wholesomely. The oath was recited with reverence, 
 and the Bible kissed with proper devotion in every case. It 
 was a long business, yet the women stood watching through- 
 out with deep, patient excitement, perfectly silent, as if 
 enthralled by some miracle of stage performance; and though 
 there was no dearth of humor in this affair, neither did it lack 
 pathos, as I felt when I glanced at the girls, and thought how 
 the safety of the ship and their very lives were concerned in 
 this strange uncommon proceeding. When the eleventh man 
 had sworn I said to Brigstock, " Is Mr. Bull of you ? " 
 
 " He is," said Brigstock, at which someone among the 
 women on the right laughed, the only interruption that had 
 happened for a long time. 
 
 " Then you've joined this ship's "company ? " said I to 
 Bull. 
 
 " It's true, sir," he replied in a strong voice, with a vigorous, 
 cheerful smile. 
 
 " Am I to understand that you've arranged to settle an 
 island with the rest of the hands ? " 
 
 " That's it," he answered. 
 
 " He's got a pardner," said Brigstock. 
 
 "Soosie Murch," exclaimed Bull, looking across to the 
 women on the port side. 
 
 "This is her," cried a girl in a voice of disgust, and 
 several women forced a tall, stout, strapping young woman 
 with red hair and red cheeks out of the ranks. This was 
 attended by much hissing and some laughter. The girl, 
 purple with temper and confusion, fell back heavily into the 
 crowd and got against the bulwarks out of sight. 
 
 I ordered Bull to approach, and recited the oath, which he 
 took. He mouthed the words with a careless air, and smiled 
 incessantly, but I believe his grin was born with him. I then 
 sent one of the men to relieve Luddy at the wheel. Much 
 talk prefaced this man's taking the oath. He wanted to know 
 what was the good of swearing. He was a respectable man. 
 If he said yes he meant yes. If he said no he meant no. 
 He'd never taken a hoath afore, and blowed if he saw his 
 way to begin now. 
 
 A difficulty was threatened by his partner, Jess Honeyball, 
 singing out from the tail of the crowd near the cuddy front : 
 " Don't you take no hoaths, Tommy, unless you're sure what's 
 intended." 
 
 On this the other Honeyball, Nan, her sister, the cook's 
 partner, cried out, " Look's swore. Why shouldn't Tommy ?" 
 
 Luke Wambold was the name of the cook.
 
 232 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Several women began to talk. Brigstock's voice was loud 
 while he explained to Luddy that I refused to navigate 
 the ship until the oath was taken by the crew. I thrust one 
 hand in my pocket, holding the paper with the other, and 
 stood in such a posture as might best suggest contemptuous 
 indifference to the issue, exchanging looks with Kate, who 
 stood apart in the gangway, her face pale with interest, sur- 
 prise, and anxiety. 
 
 At last after much talk, during which I uttered not a sylla- 
 ble, Luddy came gloomily to the capstan and took the oath, 
 pronouncing the words of it after me in a " what's-the-good- 
 of-it" sort of tone. However, he " so helped him," and kissed 
 the book as the others had, which done, I handed Brigstock 
 the Bible, and said to the crew, " You have proved murderously 
 faithless to me once, but I'll give you another chance. While 
 I'm able to trust you you'll be able to trust me. Keep the 
 oath and do your duty." 
 
 I then thanked the women for attending, and, pulling off 
 my cap and making a low bow, first to port and then to 
 starboard, I walked straight into the cuddy, a confused 
 noise of feet and tongues closing upon me behind as the crowd 
 broke up. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE. 
 
 FEELING exhausted, I entered the pantry for a dram of 
 brandy, then sat at the table to rest. But I was not allowed 
 to be long alone. After ten minutes Brigstock and Harding 
 arrived, and the former asked me to give them the place of 
 the ship at noon. This I did, and wanting to hear more of 
 the man Bull, feeling equal to a short chat, though not to the 
 like of such exertion as I was fresh from, I said : 
 
 " Is Harding there " and here I nodded at him contemptu- 
 ously" acting as second mate still ? " 
 
 " Why, yes," answered Brigstock, turning to look at 
 Harding. 
 
 " I had thought you'd give Bull the post. He was used 
 to the duties of it in that schooner you took from him." 
 
 " He's welcome to the bruised job for me," said Harding. 
 
 "Now, matey ! " said Brigstock in a tone of reproof. 
 
 " Oh, for my part," said I significantly, " I'm for leaving 
 well alone. You can look after the ship as well as another,
 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE. 233 
 
 Mr. Harding, and the men of your watch know and are 
 used to you. Is Bull going to make a settler to please you ? " 
 
 " He took to the scheme like a babe to a pap-spoon when I 
 talked to him," answered Brigstock. "We 11 want tradesmen, 
 and he's handy at his needle ; knows how to build a house 
 too, so he says ; his father was a mason. He haint exactly 
 what you might call heducated, but he can read, and his 
 mind's stored with useful knowledge. He's knocked about 
 among the South Sea hislands, and's told us of a place we're 
 willing you shall try for, sir. He was aboard a colonial 
 schooner a-cruising on some surveying job, and they brought 
 up in a bay where he was one of a party of armed men as went 
 ashore along with the lieutenant or mate. There was ne'er a 
 sail to be seen, but the hisland was a perfect Heden, one of 
 them spots," he continued, with a grave, slow smile, " where 
 yer'd hexpect to find a Heve, all gold with hair down to her 
 ankles, a picking Happies, with Hadam a-taking his ease look- 
 ing on, and nothen in the shape of a serpent anywhere about 
 if it warn't the sea snake." 
 
 " Can he fix the situation ? " said I. 
 
 " He can name some islands a-lying on the same line of 
 latitood," he answered. 
 
 " Why, then," I exclaimed, feeling my face brisk with a 
 sudden freshening of my spirits, " you've stolen your man 
 for some purpose, and he may thank you yet for the 
 robbery." 
 
 "I believe he's a good man," said Brigstock, " and that, 
 taking him all round, he'll answer as a father. He's already 
 given me one or two first-class ideas as a contribution to my 
 scheme of a constitootion. All I complain of is his choice of 
 a pardner. I don't say Soosie March aint honest and the 
 likes of that ; I've talked with her, and don't find no ballast 
 of mind, no kentledge of principles, nothen to keep her from 
 capsizing in some sudden gust of passion. You know what 
 I mean ? She's wan of them feathery characters as tosses like 
 a bubble on the froth of the passing hour," said he, bringing 
 out his hour with a sounding //. " But they may find each 
 other out afore it's too late. There's more besides our pard- 
 ners willing to settle." 
 
 " I'm too tired to talk now," said I. " Send Bull to me 
 soon." 
 
 Presently I felt too poorly, however, to see Bull, and bid- 
 ding Gouger tell him I'd talk to him another time, I entered 
 my cabin and lay down. The ship was in good hands so far 
 as practical seamanship went ; I had no fears for her with
 
 234 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Brigstock or Harding on the lookout. The long exposure in 
 the open boat, all the physical and mental torments I had 
 suffered while adrift, were still telling upon me. Then, again, 
 there was the strain of having to talk to the men ; the obliga- 
 tion of conversing collectedly on such matters as Bull and the 
 island scheme with Brigstock and Harding after their treat- 
 ment of me, was a torment in itself, violent enough to strain 
 the spirits even though health had been at its highest. 
 
 I fell asleep, and when I awoke found Kate at my side. 
 The sun was setting ; I had slept heavily as a drugged man 
 right through the afternoon. 
 
 " Have I been ill ? " said I, wondering to see Kate. 
 " What's the matter ? " 
 
 " Brigstock heard you were lying down," said she, " and 
 fancying you were unwell he asked me to sit with you." 
 
 " I'm quite well," I answered, sitting up. And now I felt so, 
 and indeed was, for that afternoon's sleep had kedged me to 
 my old mooring buoys once more. " But why must I fall ill 
 to get you aft? Why won't you come and live in the cabin, 
 and eat at the table with me ? " 
 
 " No," she said decisively, with some color. 
 
 " You promised to call me Charlie ? " 
 
 " I may learn to do so before we part. I take after my 
 father, who was slow in being familiar with people." 
 
 " W T here is it we're to part at, Kate ? " 
 
 " Sydney," she answered, looking at me. 
 
 " How do you know I may not apply for a footman's situa- 
 tion in the family that takes you as governess ? " 
 
 " You lurch too much in your walk to make a foot- 
 man. You'd spill the soup and break things," said she, be- 
 ginning to laugh, and, getting up, she handed me a hair 
 brush. 
 
 I took the hint and brushed my hair in the glass, while she 
 stood at the door as though going. 
 
 " Do you think we shall ever get to Sydney, Kate ? " 
 
 " I do, Charlie," she answered, laughing at my face in the 
 looking-glass. 
 
 " And so do I. This ship is meant for me. Brigstock here 
 knew that when he stole me. Fletcher of Bristol knew that 
 when he tried to kill me. And the gig knew it when she. 
 scented her mother in the dark where she lay near the moon, 
 and brought me back to be nursed by you. They don't yet 
 imagine at Blathford we're together." 
 
 " How should they ? They don't even know I've left 
 England."
 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE. 23$ 
 
 Spying a lanyard round her neck, I put my hand upon it, 
 and pulled the boatswain's whistle out of her breast. 
 
 " Have you forgotten the tunes I taught you ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Will you teach them to Alice Perry ? " 
 
 " Why to her? " she asked. " I don't like that girl much." 
 
 "Because she's my hope in the direction of making sailors 
 of the women. You'll be seeing her in man's clothes some 
 day, springing aloft like a monkey. Others must do that if 
 I'm to carry this ship to safety without men, and it's my policy 
 to kindle a flaming ambition in her. She wants to learn that 
 whistle, Kate, and wear it, and let her," said I, laughing. 
 " You'll teach her." 
 
 " I don't think I will. I'd rather not," and as she said this 
 she pulled off her hat, whipped the lanyard over her head, and 
 held it out to me. 
 
 " Do you want to break my heart ? " said I. " You must 
 wear this " and I took the lanyard and passed the bight of it 
 over her hair " and teach Alice Perry the music you remem- 
 ber ; then let her wear the pipe, and be called bo'sun. What's 
 it to you ? Aren't you my chief mate, or, as the rating's 
 termed, only mate ?" 
 
 This brought a great deal of red into her face, and her eyes 
 showed her heart, though her mouth was a little hard. The 
 porthole was scarlet with sunset, but the light was fast dim- 
 ming with evening shadow. 
 
 " Kate, you'll help me ? " 
 
 " I'll do anything you want," she replied. 
 
 " I may find you twenty different berths between this and 
 Sydney ; don't growl like a vicious sailor when you're shifted." 
 
 " Alice Perry's not an agreeable person to have anything to 
 do with." 
 
 " But she'll make a good seaman and a splendid example 
 for the others. So you'll teach her to pipe, Kate ? " 
 
 " I'll try." 
 
 "And when she can pipe you'll give her the whistle." 
 
 "Very well. But where shall I teach her ? " 
 
 " Bring her aft on the poop whenever you choose." 
 
 She put on her hat, and I followed her to the cuddy door, 
 vexed by what I considered the ridiculous fastidiousness that 
 sundered us. 
 
 This evening, going on deck in the second dog-watch, feel- 
 ing very much refreshed, and, as I have said, well again, on 
 passing through the companion into the starry gloom it was 
 some time after seven I heard the sound of men and women
 
 236 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 singing on the forecastle. Their blended voices swelled 
 strong and sweet in the wind. I don't know what they sang, 
 but the melody was wild and fine, after that hymnal kind 
 which some few years since was the rage in this country. I 
 stood listening, very well pleased with the singing. There 
 might have been twenty-five or thirty females, besides eight or 
 ten of the men ; so they were not all partners who sang. Had 
 they been drilled for a month they could not have kept better 
 time. The gloom of the night was on the face of the sea, and 
 the stars were plentiful over our mastheads, with a few visible 
 clouds, though now and again a wink of dumb lightning down 
 to leeward threw up a terraced coast of vapor, low and sink- 
 ing. The strong breeze of the morning was gone. It was 
 now a royal wind, the ship under all plain sail, the yards 
 braced a little forward on the starboard tack, but the darkling 
 hollows of the clothes, whose yearning faces were pallid with 
 starshine, stood hard and still like shells, and the swelling fore- 
 castle chorus found an echo in them, to the height, indeed, of 
 the dim main royal, as I fancied ; so that what with the singing 
 and the delicate duplication of it aloft and the quick whis- 
 tlings in the rigging when the ship came to windward, with a 
 noise of dull thunder in the underrun of the sea, and what 
 with the gloom and the arrow-straight wake of light astern 
 and the dark immensity beyond where the flickering shimmer of 
 the furrow vanished, the concert was more impressive than 
 anything of the sort I can recollect. 
 
 Stepping aft, I observed a large figure at the wheel, and 
 on drawing close to look at the compass I saw it was Bull. 
 
 " So," said I, anxious to have a talk with this man, " you are 
 regularly on the ship's articles, I see." 
 
 " It's all the same to a sailor where he is, sir," he answered, 
 handling the wheel with that grace of certainty, that ease of 
 precision, which is the delight of every skipper's eye, though 
 not one sailor in the hundred has it. "But I wish when Mr. 
 Brigstock stole me he'd stolen my clothes too." 
 
 " There are plenty of slops aboard." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 I then asked him the name of his schooner, where she was 
 bound, and so on, and presently proceeded thus : 
 
 "I suppose you've heard I was kidnapped as you were." 
 
 "Oh, yes; they gave me the yarn straight enough. It's a 
 plan as 'ud make Mr. Brigstock's fortune if he could get in 
 with the right parties." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Over-insure a ship and start Mr. Brigstock after her in a
 
 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE. 237 
 
 smart, weatherly schooner to steal her navigators out of her, 
 as you and me was stole, sir. It 'd be safer than the casting 
 away lay." 
 
 I guessed by this that Brigstock had told him of the Hebe. 
 
 " How old are you ? " 
 
 " I don't know for sure ; not fur off five-and-twenty, I dare 
 say." 
 
 I could have sworn he'd never see five-and-thirty again. 
 
 " You fancy Brigstock's scheme of a settlement ? " 
 
 "Why, yes, when there's such a lot of nice gals to choose a 
 wife from." 
 
 " Have you a wife ashore ? " 
 
 " Every sailor's bound to have a wife somewhere, sir," he 
 replied, and I saw him by the lifting sheen of the binnacle 
 lamp grinning with all his might. 
 
 " You should prove useful to the young colony. Brigstock 
 tells me you can build and stitch, and the deuce knows what 
 else. Where's that island you've talked to them about ? " 
 
 " D'yer know Hercules Island ? " 
 
 " No ; but if it's on the chart I'll soon hear of it." 
 
 " Well, the island I mean is about eighty mile to the east'ard 
 of Hercules Island." 
 . " North or South Pacific ? " 
 
 " South." 
 
 " A fine island ? " 
 
 " Up to the hammer. One of them islands which, if rightly 
 wrote about, would fill every South Seaman with stowaway 
 boys : a beautiful mountain amidships, lovely shady forests, 
 plenty of fruit trees, and fish big as salmon and sweet as 
 trout." He smacked his powerful lips. " A lovely stream 
 of water hissin' from the mountain, with a fresh water lake 
 and lagoon big enough to berth more than the Thames docks 
 'ud hold." 
 
 " It's a fine island ? " 
 
 " Aye. The men's got to find out what life's like in such a 
 place. Talk o' sailoring ! Yer don't want no clothes, and 
 that's all the roof a man needs," said he, pointing up. " Yer've 
 got nothen to do but drink cava and feast on yaller poi and 
 cocoa sponge, you and your wife wropped up in tappa, and 
 the little ones dandies in the green kilt o' the ti leaf." 
 
 "You seem to know all about it," said I, laughing, while I 
 thought to myself, What better man than this to harden the 
 fellows forward there in their resolution ? " How long is it 
 since you were off the island ?" 
 
 " Five years, sir."
 
 238 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " It may be peopled taken possession of by this time." 
 
 " That's to be seen, but I doubt it," he answered. " There's 
 too many of the likes of that island a-calling for settlers down 
 in them parts to suppose that it's been took and built upon 
 since I was there." 
 
 I left him and walked slowly toward the break of the poop. 
 It was now quite dark, but the radiance of the lunar dawn was 
 in the eastern sky. All this while they had been singing upon 
 the forecastle, but just then a solitary female voice arose ; a 
 harsher, coarser, more screaming voice I never heard. The 
 'tween decks riddle accompanied it. The ship grew as vile as 
 a slum with that noise, particularly at moments when the 
 horrible voice screeched through sounds of laughter and 
 clapping. It was some comic song the woman sang, and I 
 wondered if the fiddler who accompanied the vulgar, cat- 
 yowled wash was the modest-looking slender young lady who 
 had sat on the beams when they danced. 
 
 Harding, at the head of the poop ladder, was talking to his 
 partner, Sarah Salmon, who was halfway up the steps. 
 Neither perceived me. The moon rose, and I stood near 
 them watching her. She floated, perpendicularly barred v;ith 
 black lines of cloud, which put a wild fancy of William Blake's 
 into my head : that she was like a monstrous tiger burning 
 among the trees of a giant forest. 
 
 Harding and his " pardner " stopped in their talk to view 
 her, or to listen to another song that some clear, low, and 
 rather sweet contralto was singing. Presently the partner 
 spoke. 
 
 " Why, yes, my dear," said he ; " of course it has. My 
 opinion's the moon's got more influence than the sun, and 
 is certainly more useful, as I recollect an Irish sailor once 
 arguing, for it gives light at night when it's dark, whereas 
 the sun shines in the day when there's plenty of light." 
 
 The partner laughed' and then spoke, and Joe Harding 
 said : 
 
 " Why, sartinly. I'll larn yer what the moon's influence is : 
 it tarns fish and meat ; it blinds yer if yer sleep in its light, 
 and so warps yer that you look like a flat-fish ; mad folks are 
 always took worse at the full, which in Hafrica '11 kill newly 
 littered young a-lying at the mother's side ; cut bamboos at 
 dark o' moon and they last a dozen years ; cut 'em at full and 
 they'll not sarve a twelvemonth. Why, it works in your very 
 'air and nails, Sarah. Cut your 'air and nails 'twixt new and 
 old moon and they'll grow as fast agin as when they're cut at 
 other times."
 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTOXE. 239 
 
 Here he looked round and saw me, on which I walked 
 away, laughing in my sleeve to think of the sour earnestness 
 with which the old dog was entering upon his partner's edu- 
 cation, and of the subjects he chose ; and I also wondered 
 how Mrs. Harding, whom he had left at home, did. 
 
 I went into the cuddy, where the lamp was shining brightly, 
 and fetching a chart of the South Pacific, opened and pored 
 upon it. Hercules Island was indicated distinctly enough, 
 but eastward no land was charted within or at the distance 
 named by Bull. I was not surprised. If the island had no 
 name it would not be shown. Commodore Wilkes had done 
 grand work in those waters, but the results achieved by his 
 expedition were not to be found in any degree of fullness in 
 the British charts of that age. 
 
 However, I was glad to assume that such an island as Bull 
 described was to be met with in 23 S. latitude and 125 
 W. longitude. It put a place upon the chart for me to steer 
 for; it furnished a sharp and satisfying definition to the 
 motive of this queer voyage ; above all, it was in the South 
 Pacific, so that if found and approved, then, when the crew 
 had gone ashore, the ship would be left within an easy month's 
 sail of Sydney, New South Wales, in the bland and mild 
 Pacific, in the finest climate in the world, under conditions of 
 weather which might not require me to slacken a brace or 
 start a sheet from one week's end to another. 
 
 I was on deck at seven next morning, and walked the poop 
 while the men washed down. All had been quiet during the 
 night. I had slept soundly, had visited the deck twice only, 
 and my spirits were a very dance of the heart as I looked 
 about me this morning, admiring afresh the handsome little 
 vessel I was in command of blowing over the blue sea under 
 sails of milky softness. There was a ship on the quarter a 
 streak of bulwark rail on the horizon, and three spires stand- 
 ing north. 
 
 The breeze was a quiet wind, but the chill of the night was 
 still in it, spite of the warm splendor in the east. Everything 
 looked on fire with that light. The sea blazed under it ; a 
 lovely glory it was with its delicate pink and the azure of the 
 sea sifting into the brightness ; our wet decks flashed in flames 
 as the vessel lazily lifted with the long swell ; every shroud 
 and spar was silver veined. 
 
 The men worked quietly, with a will ; they hove the water 
 along, scrubbed hard, and seldom spoke. Their behavior was 
 the queerest part of all this experience to me, the most sur- 
 prising, incredible passage of it. I heartily hoped Bull would
 
 240 THE EMIGRANT* SHIP. 
 
 not corrupt the fellows. He had been put, I think I am not 
 clear in Harding's watch, and these men washing down were 
 in Brigstock's. A very few women were on deck ; most of 
 the girls usually kept below till the planks had been scrubbed. 
 
 Brigstock, who was on the main deck, seeing me on the 
 poop came up and said he'd like to know if they might kill a 
 pig that day. He added the people hadn't had a fresh mess 
 since Dr. Rolt's time. 
 
 I answered that for my part they might kill all there was 
 and gorge themselves from out the hen coop and from under 
 the longboat. 
 
 " I'm not here to interfere," said I, " short of stopping what 
 I may consider bad for the general safety. I prefer to leave 
 the crew to you, Mr. Brigstock, merely requiring obedience 
 when the ship's work is to be done. A more orderly set of 
 men I never sailed with ; I recognize your influence, and 
 wonder at, and admire it." 
 
 This I spoke with a sincerity he could not fail to observe. 
 One of his slow smiles traveled up his long face, but he made 
 no remark. 
 
 " What sort of a man is Bull ? " I asked. 
 
 " He seems all right." 
 
 " How runs his talk, taking it all round ? " 
 
 " Why, he's plenty to say for himself. Seen more'nmost of 
 us, more'n even me. His mind's got a bit of a list with strong 
 language, but," said he, looking at me very gravely, " I never 
 lose a chance to give him a 'and in restoring of his intellec- 
 tuals, and he'll sit trim enough by and by trim enough by 
 and by," he repeated, sinking his voice to a murmur. 
 
 " You allow no loose talk in your fo'c's'le ? " 
 
 " No. We're all for putting a stop to it. My mates under- 
 stand they're to be founders, fathers, and examples. There's 
 no keeping of a young settlement together unless you take 
 turn upon turn with morals, binding it tight with the lashing 
 of principles." 
 
 " Sort of human fagot in a glorified state," said I. 
 
 " Ha ! " he answered, " that's about the himage. Glorified 
 fagot. I'll stow that," and he smiled gravely while he mut- 
 tered, " Sort of human fagot glorified state." 
 
 " It's fortunate that that Bull isn't loose," said I. " Sailors 
 are not renowned for constancy, and here's a shipload of 
 women, Mr. Brigstock." 
 
 He stroked the air slowly and solemnly with his hand, as 
 though he was putting a man to sleep, while he said, " You 
 needn't fear for that there Bull, It was two days afore he
 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE. 241 
 
 could make up his mind to choose a pardner. He says he 
 never had no fancy for women himself. He don't seem to 
 believe they're the same sort of people as men. I've argued 
 seriously with him on that point, for to deny that women 
 aren't got no souls is to be a Turk, which Bull aren't by all 
 the way from Constantinople to Limehouse." 
 
 At this moment the fellow at the wheel called to us. I 
 looked, and he pointed to the lee bow. Brigstock crossed 
 with me to the lee rail, and in a moment we saw a small black 
 object in the dazzle of the waters about a mile ahead. Seeing 
 Gouger on the quarter-deck, I told him to fetch me the tele- 
 scope, and now, when I looked through the tubes, the black 
 speck was resolved into a cross upon a platform, fitted to what 
 resembled a couple of small casks. 
 
 I was much struck by the appearance of the thing, and sup- 
 posed it a beacon or rude ocean signal that had gone adrift 
 or been lost by wreck. I called to the fellow at the wheel to 
 shift his helm for it by a point or two, and we bore slowly 
 down, the women beginning to come up and cluster on the 
 bulwark rails at the news that there was something unusual in 
 sight, and half a dozen seamen looking at it on the forecastle 
 head. 
 
 I soon made out that it was some kind of roughly put to- 
 gether memorial ; the telescope was powerful, and I distin- 
 guished, without deciphering, an inscription upon the horizontal 
 arms or beam of the cross. I told Brigstock there was writing 
 upon the thing, and ordered him to call hands aft to the 
 main topsail brace, as I intended to heave to. Within a quar- 
 ter of an hour the yard was backed, and we had come to a 
 halt, lightly rolling, with the cross within a pistol shot of the 
 lee bow, but though I kept the telescope bearing upon it, the 
 thing so wobbled and waved, twisted and danced in the hurry 
 of ripples which wrinkled the rounds of the swell, that I could 
 make nothing of the chiseled inscription. 
 
 The cross was formed of two white planks ; it was secured 
 to a platform of two similar planks, lashed, nailed, or other- 
 wise fastened to a brace of casks, which were probably 
 weighted under water, or such rolling bottoms must speedily 
 have capsized that whole little show of topweight. 
 
 " Can jer make out what's wrote upon it ? " asked Brigstock 
 in a solemn voice, and looking at the thing with a long earnest 
 face. 
 
 "No. There's but oneway of finding out. Who of the 
 crew can read and write ? " 
 
 " Lucky's wan as can."
 
 242 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 By " Lucky " he meant Luke Wambold, the ship's cook. 
 
 " He'll do, then. Get that port quarter boat cleared, and 
 send Wambold along with a couple of hands to read the in- 
 scription." 
 
 While the boat was being got ready I fetched a pencil and 
 a sheet of paper, and gave them to Wambold, who was busy 
 at the boat, desiring him to copy exactly the inscription upon 
 the cross. Two seamen got into the boat ; as Wambold 
 entered, all being ready to lower away, a woman on the main 
 deck shrieked out, and an instant after Nan Honeyball, 
 without any cover on her head, her hair blowing loose as she 
 ran, and her face as red as blood, came rushing up the poop 
 ladder and along the deck, shrieking out : 
 
 " What are you going to do to him ? You let 'im be ! He's 
 my man. What's he done that you're sending him away ? " 
 And then she yelled, " Lucky, jump out, or else take me 
 along too." 
 
 At this there was a great burst of laughter. Brigstock in 
 his deep voice exclaimed, " It's all right, Miss Nan. It's all 
 right, I tell jer. There aint going to be no separation." 
 
 "Lucky, come out ! Don't trust 'em," screamed Nan. 
 
 " There's nothen to be afraid of, my heart," bawled Wam- 
 bold. "Just a-going to that heffigy over there to tell the 
 capt'n what's wrote upon it." 
 
 " Lower away ! " I cried. 
 
 The boat sank, and Wambold vanished ; Nan fled to the 
 rail to watch the descent of her sweetheart to the water. 
 
 " Here I stop till yer come back," she shrieked. 
 
 " If that aint devotion my eyes aint mates," murmured 
 Brigstock, standing close beside me. " That's what I like to 
 see. That's the kind of sperrit I want to encourage among 
 my people. Them's the sort of females," said he, surveying 
 with great admiration Nan's square, lumpish face as she over- 
 hung the rail, " who, whether jer call 'em mothers or whether 
 jer call 'em wives, are a-going to make a first-class job of my 
 constitootion." 
 
 " A fagot," said I " I mean a stick of your fagot." 
 
 "Ah," he exclaimed, with a sigh of deep relish. " Jer may 
 talk of jer ladies, and jer may talk of jer gents. I've got 
 nothen to say agin refinement, which is the houtcome of civili- 
 zation, and means, perhaps, over-behaving of yourself, for, jer 
 see, there's more bowing and taffy a-going to it, false grins and 
 greased-boot politeness, than society stands for to need ; but 
 for the establishment of a constitootion, where civilization's 
 got to begin, and where the hissue may be dukes and earls
 
 A SAILOR'S TOMBSTONE. 243 
 
 though Gord knows when; I grant that give me your Nans 
 and your Hannahs," and he sent a slow look forward in search 
 of Miss Cobbs. 
 
 I stepped away to watch the cross and see what the men did. 
 The boat drew close. Wambold stood up, pencil and paper in 
 hand ; he and the cross leaped together on the jump of the 
 sea. I saw him peering with many jerking motions of his 
 head. . He then looked round at the ship, peered again at the 
 inscription, looked round again, peered yet afresh, and seemed 
 to me to manifest by his postures the utmost astonishment 
 and incredulity. 
 
 I sprang on to the rail in a fit of impatience and excite- 
 ment. 
 
 " Boat ahoy ! " I roared; " bear a hand with that copying 
 job, d'ye hear? " 
 
 But it occupied the fellow twenty minutes in writing what he 
 read, which looked as though Brigstock had overrated his 
 parts. The boat then returned, and Wambold came over the 
 side. Nan swept up to him with outstretched arms and 
 hugged him to her heart. 
 
 " None o' that none o' that," shouted Brigstock in tones 
 of disgust and dismay, while peal upon peal of laughter came 
 from the crowds of women along the bulwarks. " Miss 
 Honeyball, away jer go." 
 
 " What's the inscription ? " said I, and I took the paper 
 from Wambold. 
 
 The writing was a vile faint scrawl. I was some time in 
 making it out, then read aloud : 
 
 " To the memory of John Wambold. Aged fourteen. Carved by his 
 sorrowful father, boatswain, ship Abydos. Commended to God, the Sailor's 
 Hope." 
 
 " A sailor's grave," I exclaimed, and made a step to look 
 again at that strange, pathetic, lonesome ocean memorial. 
 
 " Wambold ! " exclaimed Brigstock. 
 
 I glanced round, and then at the paper, and said, " Yes 
 Wambold's the name." 
 
 " It was my brother," said the cook. 
 
 ''What jer mean, Lucky?" exclaimed Brigslock, while the 
 seamen, nearly all hands of them, who had come aft to hoist 
 the boat, drew close to listen, the women along the bulwarks 
 and deck all staring aft in a long row of white faces and 
 bright eyes and fluttering ribbons and feathers. 
 
 " John Wambold was my brother," said Wambold in a 
 gloomy voice, and a stupid, amazed look.
 
 244 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 " And the boatswain who sent v that thing adrift is your 
 father ? " said I. 
 
 " He is," answered Wambold. 
 
 It was the most extraordinary coincidence I ever heard of. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 AT PRAYERS. 
 
 THE boat was hoisted, the topsail yard swung, way got upon 
 the ship, and presently the rude floating cross, with its sorrow- 
 ful inscription, was slowly sliding past abeam within biscuit 
 toss. Wambold got into the main rigging, and leaning back 
 against the ratlines watched his brother's memorial, his head 
 bowed on his folded arms. It needed but his figure thus posed, 
 putting all the passion of rude human grief into that rocking 
 cross, to perfect the picture. 
 
 There have been times when the loneliness of the ocean, in 
 the blackness of some hushed night in a middle watch, has 
 oppressed my spirits so heavily that I have felt it as a sorrow ; 
 but never was the loneliness of the deep made so vast, sensi- 
 ble, overwhelming a presence of before to my heart as now by 
 the spectacle of that cross sliding into our wake. The whole 
 sea, laughing and splendid under the sun, was changed into a 
 mighty graveyard by it. Hundreds of miles, perhaps, separated 
 the body from the floating tombstone which the old boatswain 
 had launched, but somehow that did not affect the fancy of the 
 dead lad just underneath his father's cross, as he would lie if 
 buried ashore. 
 
 While the thing was still in sight I called Wambold out of 
 the rigging. 
 
 " It's a strange meeting, my man." 
 
 " Oh, my God, yes, sir. Poor Johnny ! I heard father had 
 taken him to sea lasfyear.". 
 
 He strained his eyes at the object in our wake with a dull 
 dumb look, like an animal in pain. 
 
 " Haint we to get no breakfast this morning ? " cried the 
 sharp voice of a woman on the quarter-deck. 
 
 " Poor Johnny ! " exclaimed Wambold, still straining his 
 eyes astern. " I allow father's 'eart was pretty nigh broke when 
 he launched that job." 
 
 He then went down the poop ladder to the galley. 
 
 After breakfast, when I was in my cabin, 1 heard through 
 the open porthole the notes, as I thought, of a bird singing
 
 A T PRA YERS. 245 
 
 most deliciously. I listened with astonishment, and put my 
 face to the window, expecting to catch sight of a vessel close 
 aboard. Then hearing the whistle again why, yes, thought 
 I, it's Kate piping up overhead. 
 
 I finished what I had been about, and went on deck, and 
 found Kate and Alice Perry seated side by side on the sky- 
 light, Kate at that instant trilling piercingly like a canary, the 
 other watching her with glowing eyes, and a wonderful grin 
 of glaring teeth, Mr. Joe Harding sourly trudging the deck 
 abreast of them, giving them a sideways sneering look as he 
 passed, while on the countenance of the man at the wheel, who 
 happened to be the gooseberry-eyed, ginger-haired, dandified 
 chap, Dick Hull, there sat an expression quite in keeping with 
 Joe's face. 
 
 When Kate saw me she brightened with color. She held a 
 handkerchief and polished the whistle when she took it from 
 her mouth to hand it to Perry, who piped while I approached, 
 but very badly ; I feared the girl had no ear. I shook hands 
 with Kate and thanked her for obliging me, then with Perry 
 and asked how she liked it. 
 
 " Oh, it's just beautiful," she answered. " If Miss Darnley 
 '11 kindly be patient, yer shan't want for music." 
 
 I took the pipe and blew an " all hands " call, then others, 
 smiling at Perry's stare of eager enjoyment and childish 
 wonder. But wishing to look to the ship, I handed the pipe 
 to Kate, who at once trilled till the echoes in the mizzen royal 
 were like a lark singing in the sky. Not that Miss Darnley 
 did as yet pipe that whistle with the ease of a salted boatswain, 
 but she had picked up such art as she possessed with a wonder- 
 fully clever quickness, and I guessed there was no boatswain 
 afloat whom she would not be a match for in this accomplish- 
 ment after a single voyage of piping. 
 
 I stood at the rail at the break, looking about me at the 
 crowds of females moving about the decks from abreast of the 
 galley to the cuddy front, at the seamen of the watch for whom 
 Brigstock had found jobs, at the noble show of marble-white 
 canvas swelling in stirless breasts to the golden balls of the 
 trucks. We were fortunate in our weather ; the sea was quiet, 
 and light as the breeze was, the run of the line of crystals and 
 prisms of froth over the side was six at the least. They had 
 killed a pig when the women were at breakfast and I below ; 
 they had managed the matter cleanly and quietly, and I 
 spied the carcase with Wambold busy upon it hanging in the 
 twilight of the forecastle break just forward of the wind- 
 lass.
 
 246 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 A girl after staring at me came up the poop ladder. She 
 was Susannah Corbin. I bade her good-morning. 
 
 " Good-morning to you, sir, 1 ' she exclaimed. " Oi'd loike 
 to ask, capt'n, if us gals of your company are to start agin at 
 laming how to be sailors ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said I, "and this very morning." 
 
 " Why's Miss Perry practicing the whistle ?" 
 
 " Because she wants to know how to play." 
 
 " Capt'n, don't let that there girl be too much all there with 
 you. Oi know what it is ; she wants to make out she's the 
 fittest of us all, the best for the deck and the best for aloft. 
 What Oi say is, don't give her all the chance ; let me'n the 
 others have a bit. Give me a suit of man's clothes, and Oi'm 
 game to lay out yon," said she, pointing to the main topsail 
 yardarm, " soon as I've got 'em on." 
 
 I told her I did not intend the girls should make any experi- 
 ments aloft at present, but that I was delighted to hear her 
 talk of the work with so much enthusiasm. I assured her I 
 did not value Alice Perry in the smallest degree above her and 
 the rest of my company, and that she was learning to play the 
 pipe because she loved the glitter of the silver, and hankered 
 after the thing as a decoration. This made Susannah laugh, 
 and she went down the steps saying she and the others would 
 be ready whenever I was. 
 
 Probably Harding had overheard us, for as I was stepping 
 aft again to join the two girls, who between them were making 
 a grove of the poop with their concert of the whistle, he 
 approached me with a civil salute of his thumb to his fore- 
 head, and said with a struggling smile : 
 
 " I beg pardon, capt'n, but your pardner blows uncommon 
 well, considering." 
 
 "She does," I answered shortly, but with entire indifference 
 to his neglect of quarter-deck etiquette, seeing that he was but 
 a forecastle hand, without knowledge of the ways of the world 
 aft ; it was enough that Brigstock and he were respectful, 
 suggesting, however covertly, by their bearing their sense of 
 .the wrong thay had done me. 
 
 " D'yer reckon upon finding the girls good aloft ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But God bless my 'eart," said he, rolling up his eyes to 
 the main topmast crosstrees, " what are they a-going to do 
 with nothen but soft muscle in their arms, and hands like 
 cheese, in a reefing job in a sudden hard gale on a black 
 night ? " 
 
 " When's that going to happen, Mr. Harding? "
 
 A T PRA YERS. 247 
 
 " Well, when it do, sir," said he, with a. look round at the 
 sea, as though it were coming. 
 
 " Not on this side of the Horn for the women, anyhow," 
 said I. "Afterward, when you're all gone ashore, we must 
 pray for fine weather." 
 
 " I aint going to say," said he, speaking with labor, as though 
 full of deep thought, " that it isn't a good idea and feasible. 
 Of course, as it's been put, it mightn't answer, with us men 
 out of the vessel, to ship a company of beach combers and take 
 strange hands out of such ships as 'ud loan 'em to yer, with a 
 heap of gals, some of 'em good-looking, still aboard. But I 
 dunno that I'd like the risk myself no mate to relieve me ; 
 none hable to take a cast of the lead ; the whole biling on the 
 back of one man, which, if he falls sick and dies only think ! 
 A cargo of females a-mucking about " 
 
 I interrupted him : 
 
 " Lord Nelson said that at sea much must be left to chance. 
 With me, in a sudden black gale, and a 'tween decks full of 
 women unfit to go aloft, its what can't stand must go. Would 
 it be the first time nothing's been left but a boltrope ? " and I 
 walked off singing aloud : 
 
 " Come all you young men and maidens that wishes for to sail, 
 
 And I will let you hear of where you must a-roam ; 
 We'll embark into a ship, which her taw'sle is let fall, 
 And all into an ileyand where we never will go home." 
 
 I allowed Kate half an hour to give her a lesson in, and 
 began to be somewhat hopeful of Perry's ear when on a sud- 
 den she piped " Belay ! " in as well managed a turn as ever I 
 could have given to the brief blast. 
 
 At three bells half-past nine the lesson being ended, I 
 asked Kate to pipe my company on to the poop, and away she 
 goes to the break of the deck, followed by Alice Perry who 
 looked hot and pleased as though fresh from a dance and 
 piped the familiar call of "All hands." I saw Bull just for- 
 ward of the fore rigging bobbing his burly bulk in efforts to 
 catch a clear view of her ; the others of the crew on deck 
 seemed mightily tickled. Indeed, as she stood erect, with the 
 silver pipe glittering like frost at the- pout of her red lips, 
 Kate was as fine a shape of woman as ever trod plank or soil. 
 All the swimming, flowing grace of the rolling billow came 
 into her figure out of the gentle motions of the ship. 
 
 When the women heard the pipe they rushed up on the poop 
 ladder in a scramble of hands, one pulling at another to pass. 
 I saluted them as they arrived by pulling off my hat four or
 
 248 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 five times, and when they were all massed to windward I 
 counted and made them forty-four. This number was fourteen 
 or fifteen more than I needed, so I politely requested those 
 who were not of my original company to betake themselves to 
 the main deck again, promising they should be the first to serve 
 as recruits if our number diminished. 
 
 One of them was Emma Marks. She glared at me ; her 
 eyes were like small sunflowers, as I have written. She said 
 she was as good as any of the others, and didn't mean to go. 
 As she was bound to prove as poor as a sailor as she was 
 unsightly as a woman, I begged her not to be impertinent, and 
 cautioned her that her very disobedience disqualified her as a 
 mariner. She then grew insolent, told me she could see 
 through my dirty tricks, that my teaching the girls was all 
 tomfoolery, meant to mask an intention to improve Alice 
 Perry's education and manners with a view to choosing her 
 as a " pardner," and settling down on Brigstock's island, and 
 she ended in putting out her tongue at me. 
 
 I said with a smile, " What character are you taking out 
 with you?" 
 
 Before she could answer, however, Perry was upon her, and 
 a scratching and screaming farce, as it might be called, was 
 scarcely averted by a number of the rejected females throwing 
 themselves upon Emma, and tumbling her and themselves 
 down on to the quarter-deck. 
 
 Our lesson that morning lasted two hours. I went the 
 rounds of the ship with the girls, carried them on to the fore- 
 castle, and taught them to distinguish between the jibs and 
 topmast staysail. I showed them the jib sheets and the jib 
 halyards ; we let go, hauled down, hoisted -afresh, to a song 
 which I started, the girls tailing on and singing out like a 
 peal of bells ; indeed they enjoyed the singing part of their 
 discipline most of all, I think, for they sang often when there 
 was no need, and out of time ; but it was wonderful how well 
 they managed, and what intelligence they showed. 
 
 I dismissed them at half-past eleven, telling them I must 
 fetch my sextant to get an observation. Some begged me to 
 teach them how to shoot the sun, but 1 laughed, and said I had 
 no time for that. 
 
 In the afternoon, between three and five, I 'gave seven of 
 them seven alone were qualified for that work a lesson in 
 the art of steering. It was very fine weather, the wind steady, 
 the sea smooth, the breeze abeam, and the ship easy to control. 
 Susannah Corbin promised to make the best hand among 
 them at this work. She grasped the wheel as though to the
 
 AT PRAYERS. 249 
 
 manner born, and the wake went away astern of her straight 
 as a ruled line while she glanced with her arch 'longshore 
 eyes from compass to canvas and back again. 
 
 Next day was Sunday. The weather was still very fair, the 
 sea flowing in lines of summer softness, the sky clad in places 
 in links of pearly vapor, rose edged, compacted like chain 
 armor ; gentle as the wind had been we had made good south- 
 ing, and I was well satisfied. 
 
 At breakfast Brigstock came out of his cabin. He only 
 used it to sleep in ; it had been the second mate's Jeremy 
 Latto's and that man's clothes and effects were still in it. 
 Brigstock's time, when he was not turned in, was either spent 
 in keeping a lookout or in talking to the crew and their part- 
 ners about his constitution. 
 
 He said to me this morning while we breakfasted : 
 
 " Capt'n, there's been no sarvice held aboard since Dr. 
 Roll's time." 
 
 " What's to prevent prayers from being read if the people 
 wish ? " said I. 
 
 " Suppose we have church this morning, then ? " said he. 
 
 I promptly assented, very well satisfied that his, and, as I 
 took it, the crew's taste should lie in such a direction. 
 
 "Will you read the sarvice, sir ? " said he. 
 
 I saw desire strong in his face, and answered : 
 
 " I believe, Mr. Brigstock, you are better qualified than I." 
 
 He looked as pleased as his long, serious, funereal counte- 
 nance permitted, and made me a bow. I told him since he was 
 to read the service I'd leave the ordering of it and the calling 
 of the people together to him, and putting a cigar in my 
 mouth, went to Kate, whom I had caught sight of on the 
 quarter-deck, and carried her on to the poop for a walk. 
 
 While we strolled the crew rigged up church on the quarter- 
 deck by bringing up benches out of the 'tween decks, chairs 
 from the cabin, and whatever else there was to sit upon ; they 
 covered the capstan with a red ensign upon which they placed 
 Brigstock's Bible, along with a volume of Common Prayer 
 which they had borrowed from one of the women. Their 
 partners helped them in a spirited way, as though this cere- 
 mony was part of the island scheme, but most of the females 
 gazed sulkily and at a distance in groups, and I told Kate 
 their looks did not promise Brigstock's good work much 
 encouragement. 
 
 By and by Alice Perry and another woman came on to 
 the poop. The other woman wore her bonnet somewhat 
 rakishly perched, and her gown had the swelled look of a fall-
 
 250 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 ing parachute. Her face was flat, her eyes pale blue and 
 globular, and drooped at you with a sidelong fall of her head 
 when she looked. Perry was in a piratical humor. There was 
 lightning in her eye, and she came along with a stormy swing 
 of figure. 
 
 " Aintyou going to preach, capt'n ? " said she. 
 
 " No," I answered. 
 
 " Who is, then ? " inquired the other woman. 
 
 " Brigstock." 
 
 "Cursed if I'm a-going to pray with him, then ! " cried 
 Alice Perry, looking around to see if he was within hearing. 
 
 " Nor me along with Miss Cobbs, so there ! " exclaimed the 
 other woman. 
 
 "You needn't attend; let's have no disturbance," said I 
 peremptorily. 
 
 " I've a good mind," cried the other woman, " to throw 
 some of them benches into the sea. What right have they to 
 take them out of our quarters ? They belong to us." 
 
 " I'll snivel that Brigstock into proper praying afore I've 
 clone with him ! " exclaimed Perry. " Only think of such a 
 beast stopping us from getting to Australia and keeping us in 
 hourly fear of drowning ! " 
 
 "Behave yourselves properly," said Kate warmly. " Don't 
 allow such women as Kate Davis and Sarah Harvey to set you 
 an example of decent conduct." 
 
 Alice stared at her mutinously, with her hands upon her 
 hips. I advised them to mind their eye lest the men should 
 fall foul of them, in which case I'd be helpless. I was not 
 going to permit them, I said, to act so as to imperil the safety 
 of the rest of the females, and after rating them into what 
 resembled an air of sulky submission, I dispatched them off 
 the poop. 
 
 At half-past ten a man started to ring the ship's bell ; the 
 crew came aft dressed up in their best togs ; their partners 
 also emerged from the main hatch arrayed in Sunday finery, 
 in bonnets and hats, feathers and flowers, and ribbons and 
 colors. Their appearance instantly painted a vision of the 
 area gate, the Sunday evening out, and the young man wait- 
 ing at the street corner. 
 
 Brigstock was skewered to the neck in his borrowed 
 buttoned-up coat, and was evidently trying to look his con- 
 ception of a man who combined in himself the functions of 
 the patriarch, the president, and the priest. His air was 
 reverent, his walk slow. He came to the capstan and stood 
 erect with his hand upon the Bible, gazing gravely around
 
 A T PR A YERS. 25 1 
 
 him. I was struck by his posture and appearance, and watched 
 him with interest, thinking that, though mean in degree as he 
 was, yet, after all, opinion and action in such men actually 
 mean civilization in the making. 
 
 Miss Cobbs took a chair close beside the capstan. The line 
 of her mouth was out of sight from the poop, but I could dis- 
 tinguish and enjoy an expression of prim self-complacency. 
 She wore a peculiar bonnet, very large ; it yawned round her 
 face, shooting upward, shovel-shaped, and was like a little 
 piece of market garden with its sham vegetable trimmings. I 
 recollect no more of her attire than that bonnet. 
 
 Kate went on to the quarter-deck and seated herself. The 
 seamen sat on either hand of Brigstock, each man with his 
 " pardner " at his side. Observing that the full complement 
 was wanting, I sung out to pass the word for Miss Susannah 
 Corbin ; she came out from a crowd in the waist, where there 
 was much noisy talk and flourishing of hands, with Alice 
 Perry and the woman in the rakishly perched bonnet in the 
 thick of the girls. Susannah stepped on to the poop ; I 
 asked if she would steer the ship while Brigstock read the 
 service. 
 
 " Whoy, yes," she answered, with her face lighting up ; 
 "you couldn't ask me to do anything Oi'd loike better," and 
 she ran aft laughing and in great spirits. 
 
 The fellow at the wheel was Prentice. I said to him : " Go 
 and sit with your pardner while Brigstock reads prayers. 
 This young lady will stand your trick." 
 
 The dark, high-colored, fisherman-looking seaman stared at 
 her for a moment with a grin, next at me, doubting I was in 
 earnest, then just saying, " Aye, aye, sir," he gave the wheel to 
 Susannah and went forward, rolling in his gait, and looking 
 astern as if he believed he'd be called back before he was 
 halfway. 
 
 I saw that the course was right, and told Susannah to mind it, 
 watching her a minute or two, by which time the bell had 
 ceased to ring, and I heard the sound of Brigstock's melan- 
 choly voice. But scarce had he opened with his nasal drawl, 
 deep-toned with lung power got by bawling to mastheads, 
 and answering from remote parts of ships, when a number of 
 women began to sing a hymn. I went to the rail to see what 
 was going to happen. The mass of the females, who had 
 declined to pray with Cobbs and Brigstock, had divided them- 
 selves into three mobs, one on either side the galley and one 
 on the forecastle ; and no sooner had one started a hymn 
 than the party on the starboard side of the deck swelled their
 
 252 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 throats in another hymn, while the forecastle mob shrieked a 
 further discord into the clamor by raising their voices in a third 
 quite different hymn. 
 
 Now this was the strangest thing to listen to you can imag- 
 ine ! and it was a memorable and impressive picture to behold 
 also. The ship was full of sunshine, color, and life, and so 
 was the air with the noise of the several hymns, through which 
 Brigstock's deep melancholy voice threaded its way as 
 patiently and doggedly as an ocean current a turbulent sea. 
 I considered it vile behavior in the women thus to disturb the 
 worshipers, and dangerous also, but there was no help for it. 
 I could but look on bare-headed keeping the poop that I 
 might watch the ship. 
 
 The Brigstock party listened very tranquilly, every eye 
 fixed upon the reader, who pored upon his book through mag- 
 nifying spectacles, often moving his hands with gestures of 
 agitation which contrasted strangely with the level funeral 
 flow of his voice. There were four women, not counting 
 Kate, in addition to the partners, and I own I was struck and 
 even affected as I looked down upon that scene of worship 
 from the height of the poop deck. Instead of ropes and 
 spars, and the glitter and music of the sea outside, and the 
 noise, and spectacle of the screeching females forward, you 
 needed but a wood or a little open space in a forest as a 
 theater for that group to help you to figure some quaint, 
 primitive scene of early settlement, when such another figure 
 as Brigstock, an elder or father, with lifted hands, and deep 
 voice trembling with fervor, invoked God's blessing upon the 
 soil the family knelt on, upon the hopes and resolutions which 
 had brought them to it, upon the little band whose seed here- 
 after was to be as the sands of the shore. 
 
 I was glad when the women silenced their noise, perhaps 
 ashamed of themselves, or curious to watch the worshipers, 
 or knowing no more hymns. I hated Brigstock, but all the 
 same I said amen along with the rest of them at the end of 
 his prayers. 
 
 They spent an hour thus, many of the women creeping in 
 twos and threes aft, nearer and nearer to hearken, then sitting 
 down and joining in the worship. It ended in Brigstock 
 looking round him and saying : 
 
 " Capt'n, my lads, and ladies, you that are of us, and you 
 that are simply a-listening, here's the first of some verses as I 
 learnt when I was a boy, which I can't tell jer the music of. 
 I've altered some words to suit this occasion. If yer please, 
 we'll sing it to the hair of ' So farey well, my pretty young
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 253 
 
 gell ! '" And in his deep voice he recited the following lines, 
 delivering them as solemnly as he had read prayers : 
 
 " Oh, we are the partners what sails the deep, 
 
 Hurrah, my boys ! Hurrah, my girls ! 
 The Lord's heye's on us awake or asleep, 
 
 Hurrah, my boys ! Good-by, fare yer well ! 
 We'll sing to his glory as on we sails, 
 
 Hurrah, my boys ! Hurrah, my girls ! 
 For he's our Capt'n in calms and in gales. 
 
 Hurrah, my boys, we're homeward bound ! " 
 
 The sailors sang these words to the famous windlass chantey, 
 with deep enjoyment of the melody, and not their partners 
 only, but many other women swelled the chorus. 
 
 Throughout stout-hearted Susannah Corbin held the ship 
 steady to her course. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 
 
 THIS same Sunday night it came on to blow in the middle 
 watch; it was the first of a spell of as heavy weather as ever I 
 can remember. We snugged down to a close-reefed main top- 
 sail and storm trysail ; and, under these and the fore topmast 
 staysail, the ship, with her fore and after yards braced aback, 
 her rigging blowing out, her decks full of water, pitched and 
 rolled, surging in thunderous heaves to windward to the 
 under-rush of the boiling steep, then sloping to leeward till it 
 was all roaring froth to the shear-poles. Sometimes we got a 
 slant and braced away for a run, but again and yet again we 
 had to heave her to. 
 
 A gale at sea is abominable at any time, but unspeakably so 
 when you are on board a ship full of women. It was impos- 
 sible to keep the girls battened down. Yet the hatches had to 
 be on if the ship was not to fill and founder. 
 
 Taking advantage of a lull after the women had been impris- 
 oned for many hours, I went below to see how things fared 
 there. The atmosphere was poisonous. It was wonderful the 
 lantern did not bum blue. A dark, dismal, miserable picture: 
 figures stretched helplessly about on the decks or on the 
 shelves; benches, mess utensils, and the like rushing and 
 plunging from side to side over the planks, with the swift and 
 frenzied heaving of the ship; creakings and strainings furious 
 as the noises of a battlefield, terrific to the imprisoned ears
 
 254 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 with the volcanic shock of the smiting surge bursting against 
 the side, or falling in tons overhead. 
 
 There was but one remedy. The women were not to be 
 stifled especially Kate so I brought the whole blessed lot of 
 them, eighty-nine in all, now that Mary Lonney had cut her 
 throat, not counting Miss Cobbs I brought the whole lot of 
 them, I say, into the cuddy, and there they lived for some 
 days of tempest, sleeping upon their own bedding on the cabin 
 deck, and eating at the table of such food as could be served 
 without fire; for the galley had been thrice washed out, and 
 Wambold nearly killed by a sea that dashed him against the 
 bulwarks, and left him stranded and unconscious under the 
 longboat. 
 
 Many of the women were shockingly seasick, Miss Cobbs 
 horribly so. I see her now sitting at the table leaning her 
 thin chin in her hands, speechless with nausea, her sausage 
 decorations out of curl, and Brigstock opposite, fresh from the 
 deck, in a streaming coat, and white-eyed with dried brine, 
 extending a pannikin of rum, and begging her, in his deep, 
 serious voice, to drain it down, as it was more settling than 
 brandy. I made Kate take my cabin, and she shared it with 
 five of the most delicate among the girls, three being govern- 
 esses, and, like Kate, gentlewomen. 
 
 After several days of this sort of thing, all wool-white cliffs 
 below straining and curling with the gale, all wet, flying shadow 
 on high, with never more than a sulphur-colored break where 
 it wasn't raining for one minute; the wind flew into the north, 
 the weather cleared, and a few hours later the ship was going 
 before it with dark mastheaded topsails, and lifting fore course, 
 and main topgallant sail still wrinkled with the long grip of the 
 gaskets; the sun sparkling in the northwest, a huge foam- 
 freckled swell of the sea in chase, and a large albatross hang- 
 ing over the wide race of wake; the decks already dry; the 
 watch below spreading their wet togs on the forecastle; the 
 main hatch open, and a dozen women about the decks holding 
 on and watching the majestic blue folds sweeping past the ship 
 to midway the height of the lower rigging. 
 
 Well, that albatross might have told them the Southern 
 Cross was now a nightly show, and that we could think of the 
 Horn as a thing no longer remote. 
 
 When I went on deck to get an observation of the sun on this 
 day, Joe Harding, whose face looked more than commonly 
 sour in its setting of narrow thatched sou'wester, said to me, 
 while I stood beside him to look at the ship as she went rolling 
 over the prodigious heave left by the gale:
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 255 
 
 "Them sailors o' yourn, sir, han't been of much use since it 
 came on to blow." 
 
 ".As useful as the rest of you. Nothing wanted doing." 
 
 "They'd ha' made a tidy show aloft a-reefing!" said he, 
 with an acid look at the topsail yard. 
 
 "There's to be no reefing for them this side of the Horn, I 
 told you." 
 
 "They'll go up for good, I allow," said he, "afore they 
 goes up at all." 
 
 You be hung! I thought to myself, turning from him; but 
 he had put a thought into my head, and next day I carried 
 it out. 
 
 It was fine enough to enable me to do so. All weight had 
 gone out of the run of the sea in the night, and at eight in the 
 morning the ship was thrusting through it at about seven; the 
 port fore topmast studding sail set, the wind cold and bright, 
 something to the south of east, with three sails close together 
 on the horizon, glittering icily under the sun, and the ship 
 forward like a laundry drying ground. 
 
 Once again in my cabin I had overhauled the ship's papers; 
 and, having clearly ascertained what I wanted to know, I said 
 to Brigstock after breakfast, when I went on deck: 
 
 "Where's the lading of clothing stowed in this ship, do you 
 know?" 
 
 "They're a light cargo, and '11 be on top, anyhow. Jer 
 dorn't dig to a vessel's dunnage for jackets and vests." 
 
 "Forward or aft?" 
 
 "Aft, I should think, sir." 
 
 "Well, then, Mr. Brigstock, whether forward or aft, a bale 
 or two of men's clothes must be come at, so send a couple of 
 hands into the hold down aft to start with." 
 
 He hailed the fore part of the ship and gave the necessary 
 instructions in his deep, preaching voice, leaning over the rail 
 to speak to the men. 
 
 While I paced the poop, Kate came aft with Perry to give 
 her a lesson on the pipe, and presently the wind was merry 
 with the silver whistling; than which there is no gayer sound, 
 and no better music in the wide world unto which to wed the 
 poem of a ship, whether it blows hard and the boatswain is 
 hoarsely bawling, or whether it is a gentle and a springlike 
 scene of ocean as this morning was, with the sunshine raining 
 upon the breasts of canvas till, looking off the leeches of the 
 sails, you see the overflow of light trembling into the blue 
 air in a silver sheen, lovely and wonderful, a miracle of deli- 
 cate reflection.
 
 256 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 I stopped the piping to talk to Kate, and to promise Alice 
 Perry that our sailor classes would start afresh soon. While I 
 was talking earnestly and apart with Kate, Brigstock came to 
 tell me that the men had found the clothing in the after hold, 
 and had got several bales up. Where were they to be put? 
 In the cuddy, said I, and after a little left Kate and the other 
 to go on with their piping, and went below. 
 
 The men had brought up four large bales of wearing 
 apparel. These, I believe, were consignments from the Colo- 
 nization Society: I'm not sure. They were stitched like wool 
 bales. I sliced through a short length of stitching and found 
 the contents female apparel. But the next was men's, and I 
 noted the marks; a diamond for men's, and a cross with a 
 letter over it for women's. 
 
 Gouger entered the cabin just then, and I told him to shut 
 the door and help me. In fact, the curiosity of the women 
 was so great that, on catching sight of me in the cuddy stoop- 
 ing over three or four big bales, forty or fifty were already 
 crowding about the front, making deadlights for the windows 
 with their heads, and elbowing one another through the door. 
 
 I made Gouger hold up the articles of clothing as I pulled 
 them out of the bales. In a short time this end of the interior 
 looked like a cheap outfitter's shop; with trousers, caps, waist- 
 coats, and such things. The coats were mostly of shiny blue 
 cloth with velvet collars; I pulled many velvet waistcoats out 
 of the bale. The breeches, as they hung from Gouger's lifted 
 arms, showed of a flowing bell shape. There was a great 
 number of caps, both in cloth and fur. 
 
 I made the clothes into parcels every parcel a suit and 
 told Gouger to fetch Miss Cobbs. She promptly arrived, with 
 something of the greenish tinge of her recent severe spell of 
 sickness still lingering in her thin face, but her smirk was firm 
 and defined, the lift and fall of her eyes demurely coquettish. 
 
 She courtesied, and gazed with surprise at the clothes which 
 lay in little heaps along the deck. 
 
 "I intend," said I, "to equip my ship's company of women 
 with a suit apiece." 
 
 "Indeed, sir!" 
 
 ' 'Yes, Miss Cobbs. Their petticoats are in the way of their 
 work. Will you overlook the girls while they try the things 
 on? They can use these cabins. Everything must be done 
 with the strictest regard to propriety." 
 
 "Well, sir, I can only say it's a pleasure to sail along with 
 such a gentleman as you," she exclaimed, sinking her lean 
 figure in another courtesy. "So different from most ship
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 257 
 
 captains, I'm sure. Some very 'orrid stories are told of 
 female emigrant ships." 
 
 "Nothing horrid shall be told of the Earl of Leicester, Miss 
 Cobbs. Your partner, Brigstock, is a very remarkable person. 
 Only, when you become his wife, make him wary in forming 
 his judgment of men." 
 
 She courtesied again, as though to thank me. I asked her 
 to stay where she was and receive the women, and passed on 
 to the quarter-deck, where a large number of the girls were 
 assembled. Catching Kate's eye as she stood near the hatch, 
 I beckoned her to me and asked her to whistle "all hands." 
 She did so, and in a minute the girls of my company were 
 hurrying up the ladder on to the poop, with others who had 
 caught the note of the summons down in the 'tween decks, 
 running up the main hatch steps. I was amused by the inter- 
 est they took in the work, and by their alertness and zeal ; and 
 while I stood with Kate watching them flouncing up the 
 ladder, I said: 
 
 "What would they think at Blathford of your whistling all 
 those girls into that scramble, as though you were some god- 
 dess with a magic pipe, which you needed but to breathe into 
 to set everybody leaping?" 
 
 "I find," said she, "that this pipe makes me a boatswain. 
 I thought I was to be a mate." 
 
 "Whose mate?" said I, looking at her. 
 
 "Why, yours, of course," she answered ingenuously; and 
 the significance of the answer then occurring to her, she 
 colored a fine red, and went with confusion up the ladder 
 after the other women, I following. 
 
 The girls stood to windward, thinking I had called them to 
 drill. I pulled off my cap and gave them a bow; I observed 
 that this punctual salute pleased them, and said: 
 
 "Ladies, there's in this ship a quantity of men's wearing 
 apparel. It will be impossible for you to work in the clothes 
 you have on. I have a settled intention, if you will enable me 
 to carry it out, of navigating this ship to Sydney with your 
 help alone. I'll ship no risk of destruction, of murder, of 
 crime, in the shape of a crew of men. The Pacific beach 
 combers are mostly ruffians and scoundrels, escaped convicts, 
 savages of a bloodier character than the natives who'd eat 
 them. Nor will I make for the Sandwich Islands for a 
 Kanaka crew. When we are in sunny quiet seas t'other side 
 the Horn, you and I, ladies, will work the ship, and carry her 
 safely into Sydney Bay. Have you a doubt of it?" 
 
 "It's got to be done," cried Alice Perry, quick as lightning.
 
 258 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "We don't want no more men on board." 
 
 "No bad 'uns anyway," said Miss Emmy Reed. 
 
 "A pretty lot there's on board now!" exclaimed a woman, 
 "and yet I dare say what with their snivelin' psalm singing, 
 and their keeping to theirselves, they'd be considered respecta- 
 ble men for sailors." 
 
 Brigstock, who was on the other side of the deck listening, 
 on hearing this, delivered four or five deep-toned notes of 
 laughter,like the opening, hiccoughing music of a donkey's bray. 
 
 "Where's the clothes?" cried Perry, coming toward me. 
 
 "Ladies, let me have my say. It will be necessary that 
 those who work this ship should be dressed in men's clothes 
 after Mr. Brigstock and his people have left us. I propose 
 that this morning you try the suits on, and show yourselves in 
 them. It will be what actors would call a dress rehearsal. 
 Every day you'll clothe yourselves for drill, so that you'll 
 speedily grow used to the novelty of the garments, and lose 
 the embarrassment which, of course, I expect at the start you 
 will most, indeed all of you, feel." 
 
 "Not me, I swear!" said Alice Perry. 
 
 "Nor me," cried Fanny Pike, whom I should have consid- 
 ered the likeliest of any of them to hang back and make a 
 difficulty of the thing. 
 
 "Nor me nor me!" was shouted by several other voices. 
 
 Some, however, colored and looked shyly, and made 
 remarks one to another in low tones. There was a great deal 
 of giggling and headshaking, and "Oh, I can't!" and "What 
 a sight I'll be!" and "What '11 the sailors say!" and other 
 exclamations of the kind. Catching up one of these sen- 
 tences, I said: 
 
 "Don't trouble your heads about what the men may think. 
 They'll stare a bit and grin, I dare say. Will you mind that?" 
 
 A woman snapped her fingers, and Perry tossed her head 
 with a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders. 
 
 "But the crew," I went on, "will as quickly get used to the 
 sight of you as you to one another, and find no more to look 
 at in a girl with a man's coat on than in that mast there. 
 Miss Cobbs is waiting for you in the cuddy. Those willing to 
 make the experiment will please descend by the companion- 
 way yonder." 
 
 A rush followed. There were thirty girls in all, not count- 
 ing Kate. About twenty fled to the companion hatch and 
 disappeared as fast as they could move. The remainder stood 
 talking, giggling, staring at one another, everyone urging 
 the rest.
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 259 
 
 "I'd go if I had your figure, Miss Halsted." 
 
 "I can't abear the thought of making a sight of myself." 
 
 "Just try it once, Miss Hale, you'll make the prettiest 
 young man, you can't think." 
 
 "Well, if Margaret Evans has the courage to, I ought," said 
 a girl, and away she went. 
 
 Others presently followed her. Three then remained, and, 
 after I had talked with them a bit, and pointed out that the 
 larger the number the smaller the embarrassment, that there 
 were hundreds of instances of women passing as men, that our 
 case was peculiar, and that the apparel now to be tried on 
 need not be worn until after the crew had gone; after, I say, 
 I had talked to them in this way the three consented, and went 
 with blushes and titters to the companion hatch. 
 
 The women were a long time below. The skylight was 
 closed, and I heard no noise, but I guessed there would be 
 plenty shrieks of excitement, calls of mortification or delight; 
 thirty girls trying on clothes! wouldn't the cabin they used be 
 clamorous? They had looking-glasses, too, in the cuddy, long 
 slips of mirror which showed the figure; small wonder they 
 were in no hurry. 
 
 A heap of women watched at the cuddy front, but the door 
 was closed, and as the girls used the berths to dress in there 
 was little of the fun to be seen from the quarter-deck. 
 
 Kate went below by the companionway to take a look round 
 and report if any of the women were at a loss to fit themselves; 
 if so, Miss Cobbs was to open the other bale, making the third, 
 one of female clothes only having been brought up. While 
 I was looking over the poop-break, a woman called up to me 
 to ask if nobody but the girls I taught were to be dressed as 
 men. 
 
 "That's all," I answered. 
 
 "As I told you, Miss Stokes," exclaimed a woman. 
 
 "It won't be fair, then," yelped the other snappishly. 
 
 I pretended to be suddenly engrossed by some subject on 
 the horizon over the weather bow. 
 
 "I wonder what Mr. Brigstock thinks of the capt'n a-dressing 
 up his own party and taking no more notice of the rest of us 
 than's if we was dirt and slime under his feet?" snarled 
 Emma Marks, backing with the motions of a recoiling cat to 
 catch a view of Brigstock, who was standing to leeward. 
 
 He turned a wooden face upon the little Jewess, and, with- 
 out heeding her, slowly walked toward the wheel. 
 
 Nice samples as servants, some of you! thought I, to send 
 out at the public cost, and be kept on arrival at the expense of
 
 260 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the colony till you're furnished with situations you're as unfit 
 for as you'd be fit, durn ye, to marry costermongers, and 
 embark on a back alley life of drink and broken heads. But 
 let me be just! they were not all Emma Markses. Even in 
 that envious crowd down upon the quarter-deck I had noticed 
 countenances almost of refinement, with one fair girl on the 
 skirts of the mob looking up at me with a face, 
 
 Like the milky way i' the sky 
 A meeting of gentle lights without a name. 
 
 On a sudden I heard a great noise of laughter in the com- 
 panion, and five women dressed as men rushed out and began 
 to cut a hundred ridiculous capers, dancing, toe-and-heeling 
 as in the hornpipe, hopping, rolling in imitation of a drunken 
 sailor, laughing as if they would split their sides all the while, 
 with Brigstock beside the wheel, and Snortledge at it, shaking 
 and rumbling in convulsions of uncontrolled merriment. I 
 had never imagined Brigstock could have been so moved. 
 
 But indeed the antics of the girls thus dressed were very 
 ridiculous. I had to look hard before I recognized the little 
 fools. Their clothes shrunk them to half their former size ; 
 they seemed mere striplings of lads, spite of their swelling 
 shapes. 
 
 The first who had dashed up was Alice Perry. She wore 
 a fur cap, a buttoned-up round jacket with a velvet collar; and 
 her feet, which were not particularly small, were almost lost in 
 the bell-shaped foot of her trousers. She had piled her hair 
 up so as to get most of it under her cap, but plenty black, 
 tossed, wild upon her brow remained, and she looked the 
 most defiant, saucy, handsome figure of a young sailor the 
 fancy could picture. 
 
 Two others were similarly attired, saving that three wore 
 cloth caps, and had been at no pains to conceal their hair. 
 They larked about, squealing, romping, dancing, never heed- 
 ing me more than Brigstock or Snortledge. At last Alice 
 Perry, arresting herself in a certain extravagant hornpipe 
 shuffle and twirl with grace inimitable, because natural and 
 unconscious, cried with her eyes on fire, and her face red with 
 merriment and exertion: 
 
 "Aint I to be your bo'sun, capt'n, now I'm a man? Tell 
 Miss Darnley to give me the whistle. She can keep all on 
 teaching me if she will till I'm perfick! And do 'e say," she 
 cried, flashing her face upon Brigstock and pointing at him, 
 "that I'm afraid of the masts?" 
 
 She sprang, and with astonishing agility was in the mizzen
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 261 
 
 rigging before I could sing out; up she trotted in defiance of 
 my roars to her to come down, with an occasional miss of her 
 foot, so that one or the other leg would shoot through the 
 ratlines; but with a spirit I relished for its English daring spite 
 of her disobedience and my fear she'd go overboard, she 
 gained the futtock shrouds, squeezed through the lubbers' 
 hole, and standing erect in the top, pulled her fur cap off and 
 waved it frantically, shrieking, "Hurrah! hurrah!" 
 
 Nearly all the crew stood forward, staring aft with grins, 
 and that look of stupid delight and wonder which is charac- 
 teristic of a profession that sees little more than salt water, 
 and is therefore easily pleased. 
 
 While Perry was hurrahing up in the mizzen top, half a score 
 of girls, breeked and jacketed, dashed up the companionway, 
 laughing at the top of their pipes. One of them was Susan- 
 nah Corbin, who, the instant she caught sight of Perry aloft, 
 made for the mizzen rigging, and slapped her way up the rat- 
 lines with the nimbleness of an old hand. Nay, she took the 
 futtock shrouds and went over the edge of the top, and worked 
 her way up as high as the topmast crosstrees, where she 
 stood, looking down into the top while she called out, "Why 
 don't you come up here, Miss Perry? There's out'n away 
 more to be seen." 
 
 "Come down! Come down!" I shouted. 
 
 The rest of the women were by this time on deck. The 
 poop looked as though a boy's school had in some magical 
 manner come over the side. Kate alone, of the women aft, 
 wore the clothes of her sex; no, I must also except Miss 
 Cobbs, who had stationed herself alongside of Brigstock near 
 the wheel, and was staring up at the girls aloft with her thin 
 lips parted in a little yawn of horror. Screeches of laughter 
 were perpetually coming from the emigrants who watched the 
 scene from the bulwarks or the poop ladder. 
 
 Indeed the transformation was more extraordinary than lan- 
 guage can convey. All these girls wore their hair as before, 
 and still they looked as much boys and young men as though 
 they were so. The oddness lay in the manner the clothes 
 shrunk them; with few exceptions they seemed half their 
 former size; some, who would pass as fairly fine girls of the 
 average stature in their gowns, were so small in their male 
 attire you would have thought them as easy to lift and run 
 away with as little children. 
 
 They made a wild confusion with their laughter, shrill 
 remarks, rollicking airs, and graces for the diversion of the 
 main deck spectators.
 
 262 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 My repeated bawling to Perry and Corbin to come down 
 caused the general attention to be directed aloft; and, greatly 
 to my dismay and annoyance, four girls of whom I remem- 
 ber two were Ellen Clark (who wore spectacles) and Mary 
 Barker (a small, pretty, active girl, with beautiful chestnut 
 hair and soft dark eyes, though with a broken nose that put 
 the ugliest profile in the ship upon her); four girls, I say, 
 sprang to the rigging. I jumped, seized one, and pulled her 
 off the rail, shouting to the others not to attempt it that there 
 was plenty of time that I meant to give them lessons by and 
 by, but the three little fools persevered; and laughing and 
 squeaking, and gripping the shrouds as though to squeeze all 
 the tar out, they crawled about two-thirds high, and then came 
 down silently, and very slowly indeed, feeling for the ratlines 
 with extraordinarily wary feet, watched almost breathlessly by 
 me, who expected every moment to see one or another tumble 
 back overboard, and deaf to the impassioned invitation of 
 Corbin in the crosstrees, and the taunts and sneers of Perry 
 in the top. 
 
 Those two came down in a few minutes; Corbin as though 
 she had been used to running up and down rigging all her life, 
 Perry leisurely and carefully ; for to the beginner it is always 
 easier going up than coming down a rope ladder. Corbin, 
 when she gained the deck, looked at me with a hot, exulting 
 face filled with a demand for applause; Perry stuck her tongue 
 into her cheek at Brigstock and then shrieked: 
 
 "Why didn't the others finish goin' up, like me and Susan- 
 nah, to let the sailors see how 'ousemaids and cooks can do 
 without 'em?" 1 
 
 It was not for me to reprove those bold young spirits. I 
 had never for a moment doubted that a trained band of women 
 numbers adjusting the difference of strength between the 
 sexes could work a ship on deck just as well as any company 
 of seamen ; but I had now evidence that active, spirited girls, 
 with an eye fearless of height, could be made useful, fine- 
 weather sailors of for going aloft. More than this I had not 
 expected. In truth I had never dared hope for so much. To 
 carry the ship to Sydney, working her from the deck, with big 
 trust in the summer seas of the Pacific, leaving the weather to 
 work its will with such canvas as it might compel me to clew 
 up and haul down, was the extent of my dream. Any meas- 
 ure, no matter how impracticable or foolhardy at first sight, to 
 the diabolic risk of shipping a new, strange crew on board a 
 vessel full of women, with a single officer in command ! 
 
 When they were on deck after Perry had shrieked out, I
 
 MY GIRL CREW. 263 
 
 called to the girls to put themselves together in a body to 
 windward, and hold their tongues, as I wished to inspect them 
 and ask a question or two. By this time something of the 
 first blush of novelty was gone; the girls had exhausted 
 mutual criticism, and were perhaps tired of laughing and 
 posture making. I bade Kate blow the familiar music of "All 
 hands!" mainly to theatricalize the proceedings into the best 
 possible keeping with that sort of vulgar taste which I reck- 
 oned upon our company possessing. She blew as directed, 
 and then I bawled again: 
 
 "Fall in now, my lads! Get yourselves together there to 
 wind'ard," at which there was a general laugh, but they all 
 obeyed, and made the strangest picture of that poop you can 
 imagine, with their mass of thirty male-clad figures, their eyes 
 black, blue, bright, and otherwise, glancing mockingly, coyly, 
 with all sorts of expressions under their roughened curls or 
 smooth bands. 
 
 I was at no small trouble to keep my face steady, under the 
 converging stare, bright as light in some parts, of those thirty 
 pairs of eyes. The girls ranged themselves shoulder to shoul- 
 der in a double rank, very easily, and with feminine grace 
 yielding to the heave of the deck; some few were shy and wore 
 a little color on their cheeks, and looked awkwardly while I 
 ran my gaze over the lot of them, but on the whole there was 
 nothing of the embarrassment I had expected. On the con- 
 trary, I noticed much enjoyment of the thing as something 
 fresh and new a break in the melancholy monotony of ship- 
 board life. Then again their vanity was tickled. Doubtless 
 there, were but few who did not consider they looked charming, 
 and it was delightful to be envied by the women on the main- 
 deck ; also the sailors' grinning countenances and fixed 
 observation suggested enough of flattering appreciation to fill 
 up the poor things' measure of satisfaction. 
 
 I made them a short speech, thanking them for this fresh 
 instance of their willingness to oblige me, and assuring them 
 that never yet had a captain reason to be prouder of his ship's 
 company than I. I told them that if they, one and all, but 
 knew what a delicious crew of sailors they made in those 
 clothes, they would be in no hurry to take them off. 
 
 This tickled them finely. 
 
 I then inquired if the clothes fitted them comfortably. 
 They all said yes. Two or three complained that their coats 
 were rather large, and the sleeves long, holding up their arms 
 in proof. 
 
 "There are scissors and needles and thread among you,"
 
 264 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 said I. "You'll be able to make your clothes fit. Everyone 
 will keep her own suit when she removes it. Mark them for 
 yourselves that there may be no confusion and misfits." 
 
 "They haint yours to give away in that cool fashion," cried 
 the voice of one of the listeners who crowded the poop ladder. 
 
 That they might understand how very much more comfort- 
 ably they'd be able to pull and haul in male attire than in 
 gowns and petticoats, I made them let go the mizzen royal, 
 topgallant, and topsail halliards, and hoist the yards afresh. 
 It was truly an extraordinary sight to see them pulling. Perry 
 got on to the rail to sing out, the rest tailed on, and then to 
 the song of "Cheerily, men!" which they had picked up from 
 the sailors, they mastheaded the yards, one after the other, in 
 strokes as rhythmically pat to the time of their clear girlish 
 chant as the lift and fall of the oars of a man-of-war's man's 
 boat. 
 
 Brigstock looked on with a wooden face of astonishment. 
 Some of the sailors cheered the girls when they belayed the 
 topsail halliards a note of involuntary approval that proved 
 contagious, and twenty or thirty of the bulwark and poop 
 ladder spectators screamed a round of hurrahs. Miss Cobbs 
 alone seemed to dislike the picture. She stood beside Brig- 
 stock with her arms folded, her lips sourly curled to the shape 
 of a finger-nail paring, her glances darting and forbidding, and 
 her thin nostrils wide with objection. 
 
 I thanked the girls once more, and requested them to be so 
 good as to go below and change their clothes. 
 
 "Mayn't those willing to wear 'em keep 'em on?" asked 
 Alice Perry. 
 
 "No, if you please," I answered blandly. "Each will 
 make the suit she wears into a bundle ; and, to-morrow, weather 
 permitting, you will bring them into the cuddy, where you'll 
 change, as to-day, and we'll have two hours of drill." 
 
 This satisfied them, and quieted the few whose faces had 
 threatened a difficulty. 
 
 They ran below, again making a great noise with laughter, 
 jokes, and whistling, followed by Miss Cobbs. 
 
 "Well," said I to Kate, who was looking through the glass 
 of the skylight and laughing to herself, "what do you think?" 
 
 "That you'll make your extraordinary scheme answer," she 
 replied. 
 
 "I have sworn it," I exclaimed. "Once those fellows are 
 out of the ship, no man must step aboard till we've entered 
 the Heads." 
 
 "But will they go out of the ship?"
 
 THE HORN. 265 
 
 At that moment Brigstock solemnly stalked up to us. 
 
 "Capt'n Morgan," said he, with a sort of slow, brooding 
 stare, "if jer willing to reconsider jer decision and settle 
 along with us jer shall have my place." 
 
 "Thanks," said I, smiling, "but I rather want to get home." 
 
 "Jer an abler man than me," he continued, preserving his 
 queer gaze, and speaking in a voice charged with admiration, 
 but of a dead kind, without animation to give a turn to his 
 accents, "and the right sort of party, sir, to take the head of 
 a young constitootion. How jer manage to make them gals 
 do what jer tell 'em beats all my going a-fishing. Only Miss 
 Cobbs is of opinion that the dress you mean to put them into 
 haint exactly calculated to keep up that helement of propriety 
 which you've been all along for maintaining." 
 
 "I differ from Miss Cobbs," said I, "but respect her opin- 
 ion nevertheless. My scheme is as clear cut as yours, 
 Mr. Brigstock. It wants working up as yours did, and 
 Miss Cobbs does not of course forget the oath that you and 
 the crew have taken." 
 
 He inclined his head gravely, and left us. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE HORN. 
 
 AFTER this incident of the women dressing as men, the 
 shipboard routine went along very quietly and orderly, without 
 stop or break worth recurring to, till we entered the cold and 
 stormy parallels of the Horn. Day after day the women 
 habited themselves for the deck work; they viewed it as a 
 diversion, and made fun of it, yet did so well, were so willing, 
 nimble, and obedient for I was never weary of making them 
 understand that the safety of the ship rested with them, and 
 that if I shipped fresh hands, no matter whether from the land 
 or the sea, I stood to have my throat cut, while the ship would 
 be walked off with, her cargo stolen, and the women barbar- 
 ously ill-used. I say they were so willing and learned so 
 readily that before drill was stopped by the bitter, howling 
 weather of the far south, they were fully equal to handling the 
 ship, to the extent even of five of them, namely Alice Perry, 
 Susannah Corbin, Ellen Clark, Mary Barker, and a girl named 
 Mabel Marshall, being able to furl in very light weather the 
 mizzen royal (Perry and Corbin) and topgallant sail (all five) 
 while beside these there were four others, namely Elizabeth
 
 266 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Halsted, Alice Fitton, Emmy Reed, and Charlotte Brown 
 equal to the task of "laying out" on the cross-jack yard, and 
 assisting the other lot to stow the sail. 
 
 This was very well, but it will not be thought wonderful by 
 those who are acquainted with the marine records, nor by any 
 with knowledge of the class out of which I shaped my supple- 
 mental crew. 
 
 Brigstock and the men gave me no trouble whatever. They 
 went about their work soberly and decorously, kept to their 
 end of the ship, never laid hands upon anything to eat and 
 drink which they had not a right to, never once gave any of 
 the women occasion to complain of their conduct. And still, 
 though their bearing showed the influence of Brigstock strong 
 upon them, I never could persuade myself they would stick to 
 their resolution when it came to the point. When they saw 
 the island that was to suit them a smiling land if you will, a 
 paradise of an island, beautiful and romantic as that spot 
 which the passions and wickedness of man had in those times 
 made the blackest hell of on the face of the world, but without 
 a house, not an inch of manufactured roof for momentary 
 shelter, nothing stirring but the flashing breaker, or the boughs 
 of trees bending with the soft wind, or birds of lustrous 
 plumage, darting like beams of light from one green shadow 
 to another! 
 
 I never spoke to any of them saving Brigstock, and once or 
 twice Bull, about their scheme. All that the former had to 
 say about it convinced me of his patient resolution and rugged, 
 rough enthusiasm. Often when we sat together at table he'd 
 enlarge upon his project and tax my gravity with his voice. 
 He told me there were very few ideas he meant to borrow 
 from civilization; he couldn't see his way much further than 
 houses and ships like to what the Europeans build; he rather 
 leaned toward a post-office as a convenient institution when in 
 the course of time numbers should render it necessary. His 
 ceaseless regret was that he was not twenty years younger. 
 
 "That there Christian," he'd say, "never had a chance of 
 seeing what sort of a job Pitcairn was a-goin' to prove. I 
 allow that a man wants about forty year to carry out his 
 notions, to nurse 'em, to trim here and correct there, and so 
 lay what I calls concrete foundations. Look at New Zealand 
 look at Tasmania; take them places forty year ago, and see 
 what's happened to 'em since. I dorn't want no money in 
 our colony. Let all savin's be in produce. Money lowers 
 men's morals. I know men who'd pick the last flower off 
 their mother's graves if they could sell it. Another notion V
 
 THE HORN. 267 
 
 mine is this: I'm for teachin' my people to possess by en- 
 joyin' ! What I says is, the man that enjoys the hobject he 
 views possesses it. as much as the man that owns it. Take 
 picture, landscapes, dress, jools jer '11 find it true." And so 
 he'd talk, assuring me that among his other ambitions was a 
 wish to create a new and original kind of civilization, with a 
 little leaning toward old world institutions, such as a post- 
 office. 
 
 I was long suspicious of Bull, however, and often uneasy 
 with thoughts of how he might conceive a sudden aversion to 
 Brigstock's project; and, by talking as a man acquainted with 
 the South Seas, bring others in the forecastle into his way of 
 thinking. I was resolved, however, not to keep him should 
 he change his mind. No, I would not risk the having even 
 one man on board. 
 
 But not to dwell on this: one night when we were off the 
 Falklands, an icy, breathless night, and the ship rolling on a 
 large black swell, on going to look at the compass I found 
 Bull at the wheel. Harding, observing me, went to the for- 
 ward part of the poop. Over and over again I had been on 
 deck when Bull was at the helm, and every hour had provided 
 an opportunity to speak with him had I chosen to do so. Yet 
 not till this night it was between eleven and twelve, the decks 
 dark and still, and the ship filling the silent obscurity with a 
 fitful thunder of flapping canvas did I think proper to settle 
 my misgivings. 
 
 I entered into talk, warily leading to the subject of Brig- 
 stock's scheme, and asked him if he thought the crew had still 
 a good opinion of that man as a leader in a project of colon- 
 ization? 
 
 "Yes, sir," he answered, with all necessary warmth. 
 "We're agreed there could be no better man than Mr. Brig- 
 stock for the likes of such an undertaking. He's one of them 
 men there's no imitating; when he's gone up he draws his 
 ladder arter him." 
 
 "I've sometimes doubted he'll get all hands of you to go 
 ashore." 
 
 "No fear of their not going!" he exclaimed. "I reckon 
 the island my mates now call Bull Island '11 be the settlement. ' ' 
 
 " You know those parts; the others, most of them, anyhow, 
 don't; when they see an island without houses, white men, 
 any signs of civilization, what then?" 
 
 "If it's my island it '11 be the island we want, and it '11 be a 
 bad lookout if we do see houses, and white men." 
 
 This delighted me; something in his voice carried conviction.
 
 268 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "What will your partners think when you show them an 
 island without a roof in it? They're not sailors, Bull. 
 They've been used to sheets and blankets and ceilings, though 
 of attics." 
 
 He laughed and answered, "We'll be having a village built 
 in the inside of a week. Was you ever down among the 
 islands?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "The natives build their cottages oval, 'bout sixty feet long 
 and twenty wide; walls o' bamboo with openings for light and 
 air. They lashes a great piece of light, strong wood atop with 
 sennit for the support of the rafters, which they cover with 
 mats. The earth's the floor. They make rooms by hanging 
 up screens." 
 
 "You know all about it." 
 
 "I know a good deal about it," he answered, talking with 
 some excitement. "You mention blankets and sheets, sir; 
 the first lady in England's not going to sleep more comfortably 
 in a gilt four-poster with silk curtains than our partners on a 
 frame o' cane, and a pillow stuffed with sweet herbs." 
 
 "I believe that." 
 
 "I remember the master of a vessel," he went on, "telling 
 another down at Tahiti that a native of that there island may 
 start as a beggar at sunrise without e'er a tool to work with, 
 nor a hole to put his head in, and afore sundown he's clothed 
 and lodged, out and away better than thousands in England, 
 better than men earning a pound, aye, and two pound a 
 week." 
 
 "How is it done?" 
 
 "Out of the cocoanut, and the breadfruit, and the bamboo." 
 
 "No wonder Mr. Brigstock values you as an acquisition, 
 Bull." 
 
 "I've been hard worked long enough, sir," he exclaimed, 
 with some feeling in his strong, steady voice. "The chest o' 
 clothes I left aboard the schooner is all I own, and that, God 
 forgive me, arter more years of man-killing work than I like to 
 think of. I feel like relishing any sort o' scheme that's a-going 
 to give me ease, that's a-going to let me loaf and take all the 
 sleep I want, where there '11 be no skippers and mates, and 
 enough to eat and drink, and kind words." 
 
 "That's about the fo'c's'le view." 
 
 "About. Why not? A few inconveniences at the start 
 what's to be said of they as agin years of wet bunks, years of 
 pumping the ship out, years of all night work in living gales, 
 and food that dogs 'ud give their tails to?"
 
 THE HORN. 269 
 
 "You'll be making me in love with your scheme," said I, 
 with a short laugh. 
 
 "You may depend upon it, there's a future afore a settle- 
 ment of Englishmen in them seas," he said, with a note of 
 Brigstock's earnestness in his voice. "Yes, an' a time may' 
 come when our little colony might even see its way to exports. 
 I've bin asked, what ha' yer got? and, arter looking into my 
 memory, for it's some years since I was in them parts, I've 
 answered, 'First of all yer might work up a trade in tortoise 
 shell; then there's cocoanuts, and cocoanut ile; yer may raise 
 arrowroot, and ginger, and coffee. Sugar too's to be consid- 
 ered ; and for what might be called light industries, there's the 
 making of straw hats.' " 
 
 He could not see my face, and for a little I stood silent, 
 shaking with suppressed laughter. 
 
 But this was a talk mightily to my liking, and I continued it 
 for another half hour, starting such objections as I thought 
 might occur to the seamen to hinder them from settling, and 
 listening to his answers, all which were plain, straight-headed^ 
 and satisfying. I recollect I asked him how the women would 
 arrange for clothes? He replied, 'as at Pitcairn, Tristan, and 
 other little settlements.' I pointed out that the Bounty people 
 had carried off native women to settle with, to whom one island 
 would yield as many of the conveniences they had been used 
 to as another, but that the crew's partners were English- 
 women, accustomed to clothes all their lives. 
 
 "Aye," said he, "but the descendants of the Bounty lot were 
 civilized. Adams made 'em dress. They got stuff for their 
 wants out of passing vessels." 
 
 "That," said I, "must leave you dependent upon the out- 
 side world for clothes. Should no ship touch, what then?" 
 
 "Well, yer see," he replied, "dress is one of them things 
 that needn't trouble anyone down in that climate. The 
 natives manage very well on tappa, and leaves, and feathers." 
 
 I called Kate on to the poop next morning; and, in a walk 
 that ran into an hour told her of my conversation with Bull, 
 and asked her to get at the views of the women, because, 
 should they hesitate when we rounded into the Pacific, the 
 men would be discouraged, and the scheme fall through. She 
 needed time to manage this, for the girls were reluctant to 
 talk, particularly to her; they classed her with those who 
 they believed sneered at them as degraded and unwomanly. 
 
 However, she succeeded first of all in getting hold of Sail 
 Simmonds, Prentice's choice, a shrill, hysterical, saucy girl, 
 and afterward of Weatherwax's partner, Maggie Dobree, who
 
 270 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 had shipped for Australia as a seamstress, and who, with her 
 tall, willowy form, white face, and smooth hair, looked the 
 most respectable of the sailors' choosings. 
 
 It was three days after my talk with Bull that Kate came on 
 to the poop of her own accord. It was in the afternoon ; the 
 wind was fresh abeam, the ship under single-reefed topsails, a 
 clear sky astern, but over the bows a heap of Cape Horn stuff, 
 sooty, stooping, hoary at its ragged edges as with snow. 
 
 Most of the women were below; they found the deck too 
 cold for them, though I had drilled my company for an hour 
 that morning, and the mizzen topgallant sail had been stowed 
 by Corbin, Alice Perry, and two others. 
 
 Kate looked charming in a thick cloth jacket, and some sort 
 of round, tight-fitting hat. Her eyes had the sparkle of the 
 ocean brine, and all the health of the sea was in her red 
 cheeks and red lips. 
 
 "I've come to have a walk with you," said she. "I've 
 talked to two of the girls, Dobree and Simmonds, and think 
 their views represent the others. Simmonds sees things as you 
 might suppose a forward, thoughtless, and not very intelligent 
 person would. She told me bluntly she wanted a husband, 
 and was sick of service. She likes her man, Prentice, she 
 said, and whatever's good for him is good for her." 
 
 "Did you ask how the colony was to clothe itself?" 
 
 "Yes. She said ships would bring all that the wives 
 wanted, and be glad to exchange fine things finer than any- 
 thing she could afford to buy out of her wages for potatoes, 
 cocoanuts, poultry, and other food." 
 
 "It looks as if the women were being made fools of," said I. 
 
 "I don't think so," she answered. "Ships do barter for 
 food, don't they?" 
 
 "Yes. But the vessels likely to touch at Brigstock's island 
 won't be freighted with clothes for women. There are no 
 silks and satins to be found in whalers' holds." 
 
 "Perhaps Brigstock says to them, 'Why take ye thought for 
 raiment?' and refers them to the lilies," said she. 
 
 "They'll help themselves, lilies or no lilies, to a good sup- 
 ply out of the stores aboard us. There's stuff enough to equip 
 them until they sicken and depart." 
 
 "How '11 they get away?" 
 
 "They'll be fetched, I fancy." 
 
 "Well," said she, "I thought them mad at first, but I now 
 see some glimmer of sanity in the project. The girl Dobree 
 put her case thus: 'I'm a seamstress; I was born at Notting- 
 ham, and am an orphan; and for a long while I've tried to
 
 THE HORN. 271 
 
 'keep myself alive with my needle, but I assure you, Miss 
 Darnley, if I was not here I should be in the workhouse, or in 
 my grave dead of want. How do I know what's going to 
 happen to me in Australia? Mr. Brigstock's scheme mayn't 
 prove a certainty for us women, but it might lead to better 
 things.' " 
 
 "What better things?" I asked. 
 
 "She's romantic, like others of her class. 'When you're 
 drowning,' says she, 'you're not particular what's thrown you !' 
 Those were her words. 'Brigstock's scheme is good enough 
 to float by,' she said." 
 
 "She hopes to wash on to a land where there '11 be some 
 sunshine of life for her and the like of her, poor thing," said I. 
 
 "I don't think any of them suppose Brigstock's scheme will 
 last. But it's a change, a toy, a novelty. Remember who 
 and what they are. The sailors are their equals, and good 
 enough for them. Wouldn't they keep company, as it's 
 called, with those seamen on shore? Suppose they were in 
 service, and the men hung about to take them for walks of a 
 Sunday? At Bristol three servants who had been in my 
 father's service married sailors." 
 
 "Aye, but they left them at home; they didn't carry them to 
 an island." 
 
 "I declare," said she, so governed by some instant impulse 
 of feeling that her fine speaking eyes glowed as with passion, 
 "if I had been born with the nature and instincts of those 
 women, used all my life to the work they are accustomed to, 
 I'd do as they're doing." 
 
 "Take a sailor and live on an island with him?" said I. 
 
 "Yes. Anything to get out of the rut of life; anything for 
 a walk of one's own, though but a footpath that wide," she 
 exclaimed, holding up her ringers, "so as not to be bespattered 
 with the mud of the passing carriages, or elbowed into the 
 gutter to make way for Mr. and Mrs. Snob." 
 
 "Aye, but imagine Brigstock your husband by virtue of his 
 own recitation of the marriage service." 
 
 "Hannah Cobbs is very pleased with him." 
 
 "He is good enough for Hannah." 
 
 "And that's what I mean. Let me be a Kate Davis, and 
 I'll thank you for Jackson as a beau." 
 
 "If I consent to join the Brigstock lot, will you be my 
 partner, Kate?" 
 
 "You asked me that question before." 
 
 "Will you?" 
 
 "No."
 
 272 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "Your convictions want courage. You admire this island 
 project, and refuse to be of it." 
 
 "It is a good project for those who have formed and are 
 carrying it out," said she warmly. "Those girls guess that 
 domestic service in the colonies is pretty much as it is in 
 England; scarcely better paid, and with all the difference of 
 thousands of miles of ocean rolling between them and home. 
 What have they to look forward to?" she exclaimed bitterly. 
 "Indeed, what are the hopes of the most sanguine among us? 
 Their best chance lies in getting husbands in Australia, and 
 those pardners, as you call them, say, 'We'll not wait. Here 
 are men willing to take us. They are respectable sailors, bent 
 upon making a home for themselves in the South Pacific!' 
 They are right," she cried with a flashing eye. "I'd do it if I 
 were they. But gentility is restrictive and depressing. It 
 prohibits audacity. So I shall be starting as a governess when 
 those women, whose choice makes you wonder, are living in 
 pretty bamboo cottages, according to Bull, everyone with a 
 charming garden of flowers to herself, her own mistress, one 
 of those few lucky ones of life who 'having nothing yet hath 
 all.'" 
 
 Her temper and advocacy amused and surprised me. But 
 though our talk left some features of the Brigstock enterprise 
 vague, I was at all events convinced that if the crew carried 
 out their project, the girls of their choice would stick to 
 them. 
 
 We doubled the Horn in the midwinter of the southern 
 hemisphere; but, though we met with some heavy weather, the 
 passage did not prove so formidable as I had feared. We 
 struck 58 S., and had eighteen hours of darkness a day, with 
 spears of ice at the catheads and plunging bowsprit, and more 
 than once the green, transparent shadow of an island of ice 
 close aboard, looming through some brooding thickness of 
 polar frost, and motionless on swelling hills of black water. 
 
 One narrow escape we had. It was at high noon, though I 
 have known some moonless midnights in England lighter. 
 The air was dark with snow. The figure of the lookout on 
 the forecastle, gleaming like glass in his oilskins, was scarcely 
 distinguishable from the poop. We were forging through it 
 under double-reefed topsails and a reefed foresail, just looking 
 up to our course; the dark head sea came slinging along out 
 of the flying thickness of snow in sheets of steel; the surge 
 smote the weather-bow in hurricane shocks, and the soft gloom 
 of the whirling whiteness trembled with a frequent flash of 
 clouds of foam filled with darts and daggers of ice which
 
 THE HORtf. 2?3 
 
 shrieked across the deck as they fled into the smoky thickness 
 of snow and spray to leeward. 
 
 I stood beside the wheel, turning an eager eye from bow to 
 bow. Prentice was at the helm; Harding, swathed to his heels 
 in painted clothes and sea helmet, stood at the brass rail for- 
 ward grasping it. A true picture of Antarctic desolation, that! 
 The bands of topsails came and went in dull, ghastly glares as 
 the ship swept into the olive dark hollow, leaping again in the 
 next breath till the very coppered bilge of her ruddily streaked 
 the foam of the rushing surge. The scupper holes hissed their 
 fountains, and it was sometimes up to a man's waist down 
 to leeward. 
 
 On a sudden I was sensible of a keener edge in the wind, a 
 wonderful new sharpness of bite that was like laying your 
 cheek against iron. Harding at the break of the poop looked 
 round at that moment. 
 
 "Forecastle, there," I shouted, advancing some paces. 
 "Keep a bright lookout for ice." 
 
 As the words left my lips a loud voice answered me: 
 
 "Ice right ahead, sir." 
 
 "Hard up!" I yelled. 
 
 Prentice was at the wheel; I sprang to his assistance. The 
 ship paid off nobly, swinging round in a stately sinking, upon 
 the slope of a great green sea; and, to the right of her slowly 
 circling jib boom, there sprang out of the hoary, blinding chaos 
 a monstrous mass of ice, an island that looked the more awful 
 and vast because of the snow and spray, and flying shadows of 
 inky vapor which nearly concealed it; glances only on high of 
 hard white crystal projections, abrupt ascending walls, spear- 
 headed pinnacles, shapes as of huge couchant beasts seen and 
 lost in the wink of an eye in the wool-white whirl. The mass 
 was full of thunder, which smote the ear in hollow, booming 
 shocks; I guessed the weight of the sea by that noise and by 
 the mountain of spray which roared backward from the frozen, 
 lifeless, motionless mass. 
 
 In a minute it was gone in the smother, but such a peril we 
 had no mind to meet again; in another two minutes we should 
 have been into it, stem-on, the ship telescoping to amidships, 
 and the whole life of her going out in one great shriek ; so, till 
 the weather cleared, we furled everything but the main topsail 
 and fore topmast staysail, backing the fore and after yards, 
 and left the rest to the vessel. 
 
 Yet, though on the whole our doubling of the Horn proved 
 a lighter business than I had dared count on at that season of 
 the year, it made a bad time for the girls. As before in heavy
 
 274 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 weather, so now I brought them into the cuddy, where they 
 lived for the most part, sleeping on deck and in the cabins, 
 though some twenty of them continued to occupy the 'tween 
 decks. Once again I surrendered my berth at night to Kate 
 Darnley and five others. 
 
 I got but little sleep; my anxieties were very heavy; I was 
 the sole navigator aboard; the whole safety of the ship 
 depended upon me; and, for lack of officers to help prop the 
 burden, the weight was crushing during those black, bitter 
 days of the Horn. 
 
 The weather and the cold miserably subdued and depressed 
 the women. I see them now in my mind's eye sitting in rows 
 in the cuddy, hugging their wraps about them, seldom speak- 
 ing, staring at one another, scarce venturing to stir, so desper- 
 ate was the plunging of the ship. For three days they fared 
 vilely, as indeed did we all. Wambold came floundering aft 
 and told me he must give up. He could not keep his fire 
 alight, and the galley was uninhabitable. So in those days we 
 got nothing hot to eat or drink. 
 
 Once Alice Perry was seized with a shrieking fit of temper. 
 She caught sight of me as I came down the companion into 
 the cuddy, and in a yelling voice asked me if I thought it right 
 that ' 'us poor gells should be brought into these 'owling frozen 
 parts of the world to be starved first, and then drownded by 
 being busted against icebergs, when the ship's proper road lay 
 the other way, where there was plenty of sun and smooth 
 water? If it wasn't for Brigstock and Cobbs, they'd all be in 
 Australia by this time." 
 
 She then let fly at Miss Cobbs, who sat nearly opposite, her 
 face pinched by the cold into a few pale blue lines betwixt 
 her sausage curls, the back of her bonnet crushed by being 
 repeatedly knocked against the bulkheads, hugging herself 
 to the heart under a plaid shawl, over which Brigstock 
 had thrown a fur-lined coat belonging to Latto, late second 
 mate. 
 
 The girl's passion made a hellish picture; her rage worked 
 in throes, and blackened and convulsed her; her screams rang 
 through the cuddy like the piping of the boatswain's whistle 
 she was now and had for some time been wearing. And her 
 fury was contagious; fifteen or twenty women, one after 
 another, and then all together, turned the hoses of their tongues 
 on Miss Cobbs, and played her with the boiling water of their 
 wrath. Kate and two others were reading in my cabin; I 
 stood looking on a minute or two, and then went on deck to 
 wait till the uproar ended. When I returned a number of the
 
 MV OATH. 275 
 
 women were crying; and Miss Cobbs sat bolt upright, looking 
 as if she had been frozen to death. 
 
 Thus we rounded the Horn, though not always thus; and 
 Tuesday, June 2oth, found the Earl of Leicester 's latitude 55 
 S., and her longitude 83 W. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MY OATH. 
 
 IT was a Monday morning. A light breeze, soft and sweet, 
 blew off the starboard quarter; lower and topmast studding 
 sails had been set to hold it, and the ship, with stirless wings 
 and on a level keel, and over a wide majestic heave of swell, 
 leisurely rippled onward, the sparkling blue of the Pacific 
 around, and over her gilded trucks a clear heaven of azure 
 dazzling with the cloudless morning light. 
 
 Two girls clothed in male attire were at the ship's wheel; 
 beside them stood Sampson, whose "trick" it was; he had 
 relinquished the spokes, but remained by my orders to con 
 and instruct. Five other girls, dressed as men, walked here 
 and there about the poop; they and those who were steering 
 were my helmsmen seven in all, namely Alice Perry, Charlotte 
 Brown, Flo' Lewis, Katherine Hale, Ellen Clark, Mary 
 Barker, and Susannah Corbin; their ages ranging from thirty 
 to, in the case of Mary Barker, eighteen. 
 
 These girls being dressed as they were, I kept aft, though 
 five of them were done with the helm, and the others would 
 quit it shortly. But the truth is, though the crew were civil 
 and even distant to the women who were not their "pardners," 
 they showed a disposition to chaff and take liberties when the 
 girls were clad as men. Moreover, the cuddy was my crews' 
 dressing room; there they kept their male clothes, and there 
 they shifted themselves before coming on deck, and after 
 going below. 
 
 The ship was gay that morning with the crowd that filled 
 her decks; all warm apparel had been stowed away; the Horn 
 was far astern; the temperature that of a warm English June, 
 kept cool with the ceaseless refreshment of the salt breast of 
 ocean; and the women were dressed in cottons and colors once 
 more, in feathered hats and bonnets and serge, and there was 
 a plentiful twinkle of Brummagen splendor. 
 
 The galley chimney was smoking bravely; they had killed a 
 pig, and there was to be a fresh mess at noon. Kate sat in the
 
 276 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 gangway reading aloud to a listening group from a book. 
 Over against her to starboard sat Miss Cobbs, in company 
 with seven or eight of the "pardners, " with whom she talked 
 earnestly. Near them stalked Brigstock. He occasionally 
 directed a thoughtful look at me when I approached the break 
 of the poop, and his air was that of a man who waits. A knot 
 of sailors gossiped on the forecastle head; 'hey were in Hard- 
 ing's watch, and he had charge; they were, therefore, on duty; 
 but, ever since the Horn, the crew had done little or nothing, 
 save handling the braces and making and shortening sail. I 
 had nothing to say. I was not their captain. Enough for me 
 that they continued sober and quiet. 
 
 I leaned over the rail to catch a view of the clock under the 
 break. 
 
 "It's 'arf-past eleven, capt'n," said a woman. 
 
 I thanked her; and, turning to Alice Perry, told her to pipe 
 the helmswomen below to shift clothes. She blew a shrill 
 turn very neatly and quick; a pair of gold earrings would not 
 have pleased her better as a gift than had the silver toy she 
 piped on, that dangled in sight upon her breast, no matter 
 how she was attired. 
 
 At once the two girls at the wheel abandoned it to Samp- 
 son, and the seven of them chatting and laughing danced below. 
 
 I followed to fetch my sextant. All the while I worked at 
 the sun Brigstock paced the waist, with a frequent dull lift of 
 his eyes at me. What does he want? thought I; his glances, 
 his grave, formal stumping to and fro in one place made me 
 uneasy. 
 
 After making eight bells I went below. By this time the 
 girls had changed and were gone. Gouger was lazily prepar- 
 ing the table for dinner. I passed into my cabin and worked 
 out the latitude; and, just when I was done, a knock sounded, 
 and Brigstock asked leave to enter. He walked in slowly; his 
 manner was awkward and constrained; he held a fur cap in 
 his hands, and twisted it while he brought his dark, peculiar 
 eyes to bear upon my face as though it gave him trouble to 
 look straight. 
 
 "Jermind letting me know where the ship is to-day?" said he. 
 
 I was sure more was signified by his presence than that ques- 
 tion implied; but, controlling my uneasiness by swift consider- 
 ation that, until the island was in sight, the crew were as help- 
 less as though the vessel was in the middle of a shoreless ocean, 
 I gave him the latitude and pointed to the ship's position on 
 the chart. 
 
 He put his magnifying spectacles on, and stooped his nose
 
 MY OATH. 277 
 
 to the sheet, and after a pause said, "It's a-drawing pretty 
 nigh." 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "How fur off jer reckon it, capt'n?" said he, with his eyes 
 upon the chart. 
 
 "With anything of a wind, the island should be in sight 
 to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 " He continued to gaze; then, with movements of his hand 
 which suggested agitation to my uneasy mood, he removed 
 his spectacles. 
 
 "Capt'n," said he in his level, lenten voice. "Jer've 
 acted like a gentleman, and we're obliged to jer." 
 
 I responded with a sharp nod. 
 
 "And I think jer'll agree, capt'n, that the crew have testi- 
 fied their sense of the hobligations they're under by acting 
 like men." 
 
 "They've acted well." 
 
 "They've tried ter. I've bin a-watching of 'em closely all 
 along. 'Ticularly Bull. One black tooth '11 spoil a set of 
 white 'uns. If one fiddle string's wrong jer '11 find it a job to 
 play all the tunes jer want. I'm satisfied myself with the 
 men, from Bull down; and, all things considered, I allow I've a 
 right ter. Now, sir, I hope jer '11 not be offended at what I'm 
 a-going to say." 
 
 "Say on," I exclaimed, plunging my hands in my pockets, 
 and holding the deck, so to speak, with a firmer grip of foot. 
 
 "Jer've acted like a gentleman I dorn't want to give no 
 offense." 
 
 "I've obeyed the Scriptural injunction," said I, looking at 
 him. " 'Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with 
 him twain ! ' I've done that." 
 
 "And more," said he earnestly, as though impressed by my 
 quotation. "Capt'n, what us men wants jer to do is to take 
 a hoath." 
 
 "An oath?" 
 
 "A hoath," he repeated; "like to what you read out to us, 
 only different, in the presence of all hands and the females, 
 as otirn was." 
 
 "You're deuced long winded, Mr. Brigstock," cried I, in 
 a torment of anxiety that was fast heating me into a passion. 
 "What do you want me to take an oath about?" 
 
 "That if, under Providence," said he, in his deepest, most 
 deliberate utterance, "jer '11 be lucky enough to carry this ship 
 to port, jer '11 not tell the situation of the island jer '11 leave
 
 278 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 I fetched a deep breath of sudden relief; was that all? 
 
 I stood thinking, with my eyes fastened upon him, then 
 said: 
 
 "Consider. Suppose your partners repent their decision, 
 you, as much as they the whole of you all round might find 
 reason to be grateful that an expedition was sent in search of 
 you." 
 
 "No!" he roared; then, checking himself with a self-control 
 I envied in him, so quickly it worked, so powerful was the will 
 it disclosed, he exclaimed: "No good starting constitootions 
 to be broke up by hexpeditions. I'll be square with jer, 
 capt'n. The long an' short's this: Me and the others have 
 had plenty of time to talk things over, and we've decided to 
 help ourselves to a little more of what this vessel contains than 
 we originally proposed. We reckon we've got a right to the 
 goods what Bull calls a line upon 'em; a legal tarm, signifying 
 a right to property where money's owed. Money's owed to us 
 as wages, likewise on salvage. What would ha' become of 
 this ship but for us? We also allow it's Bull's reasoning 
 that we've got a claim for the saving of life. Why shouldn't 
 we pay ourselves out of what's under foot, seeing but for us 
 the whole biling, women and all, might have been at the bot- 
 tom long ago?" 
 
 "True." 
 
 "But it's more'n likely our claims won't be allowed by them 
 as owns the cargo. Therefore we're for asking jer to take a 
 hoath not to reveal the island jer '11 leave us upon." 
 
 "You had better compel me." 
 
 "Jer '11 have ter, anyhow," said he with a grave smile. 
 
 "How much do you mean to take?" 
 
 He again put on his glasses, and pulled out a piece of paper 
 the fly leaf of a book on which he mused a minute, then 
 said: 
 
 "We calculate our want '11 amount to about this; and he 
 read: 'Longboat and one quarter-boat, with all necessary 
 gear; such hagricultural implements as we may choose; cloth- 
 ing to go on with ; spare sails for tents; beddin'; carpenter's 
 tool chest; chest of small arms, and the hammunition we may 
 meet with; the timepiece, and the ship's bell; provisions.' 
 Other hitems '11 consist of sailmakers' stores, along with a 
 spare compass, and the likes of that." 
 
 I listened with exultation. This catalogue made the island 
 scheme more real than ever I had been able to find it since 
 they stole me. Then there was the feeling of relief too, for 
 his looks when he stumped the deck, and his coming to me
 
 MY OATH. 279 
 
 with his solemn face and agitated gesture, had frightened me 
 horribly. 
 
 I had time to compose my countenance while he pulled off 
 his glasses and pocketed the paper. I then told him I consid- 
 ered his list moderate and reasonable; it would matter nothing 
 to me, I said, if they stripped the ship, so long as they left 
 enough to eat and drink in her to carry up seventy or eighty 
 souls to port; only the more they took the likelier the chance 
 of their being searched for, oath or no oath. If they helped 
 themselves in reason, under the circumstances nothing might 
 be said. 
 
 He answered he agreed with that, and no more would be 
 taken than was needful to keep twenty-six people going until 
 they had had time to look round. 
 
 "You talk of twenty-six," said I. "Will no others than 
 your pardners accompany you?" 
 
 "We don't want no others. I've thought it over. Others 
 without husbands might lead to trouble. We're opposed to 
 all chitty-chatty as the French tarm it, and scandal. No use 
 a-laying on gas if you don't want to burn it. Will jer take 
 the hoath, sir?" 
 
 "Yes; and I wish it administered as you propose, that there 
 may be plenty to say I took it." 
 
 "This afternoon?" 
 
 "Eight bells." 
 
 "Aye, aye, sir." 
 
 He was going. "Stop," said I; "if Bull's island's to your 
 liking you'll go ashore?" 
 
 "As prompt as possible. We're not for keeping the women 
 washing about." 
 
 "If it don't satisfy you?" 
 
 "Then I'm sorry to say we shall have to ask jer to keep 
 all on till we can find what we want," he answered. 
 
 Though there was a little damp to my hopes in this answer 
 of his, seeing the possibilities it gave one a glimpse of, yet 
 never since I had sailed from Bristol had I been in such spirits. 
 I whistled; my heart danced; I could have capered about the 
 cabin. It was like kicking off a heavy pair of boots when 
 you're swamming. There was distance to be measured I 
 might be drowned; but oh, the momentary thrill of lightness 
 and buoyancy, and the joy of the new courage, of the larger 
 hope! 
 
 Day after day and night after night for weeks had my mind 
 been strained by suspense. Would they abandon the island 
 scheme? Would they deliver up the ship to me? Would any-
 
 280 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 thing happen fatal to my own consuming desire a very 
 passion of ambition it was to carry the vessel and her crowd 
 of poor passengers single-handed to Sydney? I'll not sham 
 for a moment that it was all humanity. Certainly I hoped for 
 a considerable reward, both in command and money, but I 
 was also very much in earnest in wishing with mine own single 
 hand, so to speak, to deliver all these poor women from the 
 dire peril they had been in since that hour of Roll's death and 
 the captain's blindness; and desire was also sharpened by 
 vanity. I was a young fellow, and liked to believe I should 
 be talked of. Often I'd smile when I thought of myself as 
 being looked at as the young skipper who had carried an 
 emigrant ship to Sydney without a crew, worked by females 
 only. 
 
 I don't fancy it had been realized aboard how close the 
 ship was to the place assigned by Bull to his island, till Brig- 
 stock took the news forward that day after leaving me. He 
 kept with the men and did not join me at table. When I went 
 on deck after dinner, I observed in the general bearing the 
 impression the news had produced. A sort of quiet hung 
 upon the ship; the women talked low; the familiar laugh, the 
 familiar high-pitched note was rare; a number of the girls 
 dreamily overhung the bulwark rails with their eyes on the sea, 
 as though expecting a sight of land ; I saw Bull with a piece of 
 chalk drawing pictures on the deck abreast of the galley, some 
 sailors and women watching. I also saw Brigstock carefully 
 examining the longboat. If they took that boat and another, 
 they'd still leave the ship with two and the gig, which they 
 had hoisted after taking me out of her. 
 
 Kate came up out of the 'tween decks, and seeing me stood 
 gazing wistfully. I called to her to come up, and she 
 promptly arrived. 
 
 "What do they want us all to assemble on deck for?" said 
 she. 
 
 "Has the order gone forth?" 
 
 "Miss Cobbs has made the rounds asking us all to collect as 
 on the occasion when you administered an oath to the men. 
 She won't say what for. Perhaps she doesn't know. We live 
 in a continual state of dread." 
 
 ''The crew intend to make me take an oath." 
 
 "You?" she cried, starting, opening her eyes, halting in an 
 arrest of sudden sincere, fright, which whitened through her 
 face till she looked as sallow as a nun. 
 
 "Don't be afraid. They wish " and I told her what 
 
 the crew wanted.
 
 MY OATH. 281 
 
 "Are you sure that's all?" she exclaimed. 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 "Well," she said, letting her breath go in a great sigh. "I 
 had made up my mind if they sent you away, to go with 
 you." 
 
 "I'd have taken you." 
 
 "I couldn't go on as we are," she cried, "even with you in 
 command. But to be left with the crew! If they sent you 
 away, I'd go with you," and she set her teeth. 
 
 It was not long, however, before I made her mind easy; 
 and we had a good earnest talk about the discipline I meant 
 to put in force when the men were gone. 
 
 All this while the ship rippled through it, under one unvary- 
 ing pressure of soft, sweet wind; aloft everything motion- 
 less, of a moonlike whiteness against the blue, and a streak of 
 water alongside bubbling brooklike into a narrow wake of 
 feathers and jewels of foam. It was a perfect South Pacific 
 day, the lazy whaler's ideal of weather, when there's nothing 
 to be done but lounge over the windlass-end, pipe in mouth, 
 and let the warm wind waft you. 
 
 By four o'clock the women had gathered on the quarter- 
 deck on either hand the capstan, as on that day when I swore 
 the crew. I kept Kate by my side. The girls did not seem 
 to know why they had been asked to come together again, 
 and their faces were constantly rounding my way when I 
 approached the break of the poop, walking with Kate. 
 
 Someone struck eight bells. Brigstock then came forward 
 bearing his big Bible, and the sailors walked in his wake as in 
 a funeral procession. I observed relish of this sort of thing 
 strong in Brigstock's long face; he loved the ceremony in which 
 he prominently figured. He came to the capstan and put his 
 Bible upon it, and the men drew together in a group; a great 
 crowd of women on either hand them, most of them staring 
 up at me with looks of perplexity and fear. 
 
 I kept on the poop till I saw they were waiting, then leisurely 
 and with all the dignity of deportment I could command, went 
 down the ladder and advanced to the capstan. 
 
 "What's a-going to happen?" cried Alice Perry, in one of 
 her wild, screaming, ringing notes, leaping from the starboard 
 crowd like a bent band of steel released, her eyes on fire and 
 fury in her face. "What are you going to do to the capt'n? 
 S'elp me God! if there's e'er a one as lays a finger on 'im, 
 I'll knife the devil, though you kills me next minute;" and, so 
 shrieking, she whipped a table knife out of her pocket. 
 
 Miss Cobbs screamed.
 
 282 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "If yer don't fling that down " exclaimed the seaman 
 
 Luddy, rounding upon the girl with a ferocious scowl. 
 
 I was at her side even as the man was speaking. 
 
 ' 'Give that to me," said I. "They don't mean to hurt me!" 
 
 "I'll be sure of that first," she screamed, wrestling, amd the 
 knife glanced above her head, with my hand upon her wrist. 
 
 "Girls! girls! shall we let the men send our capt'n away for 
 us to be alone with 'em, now he's done all the work and the 
 island's close?" howled Susannah Corbin; and in a trice, 
 amid cries as wild as the whistling of a gale, thirty or forty 
 women came in a rush around me, encompassing Perry's and 
 my struggling figure. 
 
 "They shan't touch you!" 
 
 "We'll kill 'em sooner!" 
 
 "We don't care what happens we'll not be alone with 'em." 
 
 "You're capt'n, and if you're sent away there '11 be no one 
 to look to." 
 
 These, and fifty like cries yelped, and yelled, and screamed 
 all together, combined into a continuous stream of ear-piercing, 
 soul-confounding noise beyond all art of words to convey. 
 The knife fell from Alice Perry's hand. I stooped, got it, 
 and flung it overboard. 
 
 "Silence!" I roared. "Silence, I beg, while I speak"; 
 and, putting my hand on Perry's shoulder, rearing my stature 
 to the topmost of its inches, to get command with my eyes, I 
 bawled out that all was right the men desired me to take an 
 oath no mischief, nothing but kindness was intended; and, 
 by virtue of superior lungs, I shouted the women into silence. 
 Then with coaxing gestures and repeated assurances that all 
 was well, delivered in tones that might have been a lover's, I 
 got Perry back again into her place, and with her came others, 
 so that, in eight or ten minutes I had cleared the deck; that 
 is, got the people grouped as before, and once more stepped 
 to the capstan. 
 
 But I own I was deeply agitated. I trembled, and knew 
 myself pale. Indeed, something bloody and terrific in ocean 
 tragedy outside all record of marine horrors had been averted 
 by the very dark of one's finger nail, as they say ; in another 
 minute Perry's knife would have been in some man's heart, 
 and then, oh, my God ! I feel sick when I think of it, after all 
 these years: the sudden loosing of forecastle passions, of 
 passions wilder and ghastlier still in the thirteen chosen females 
 fighting on the men's side against the crowd of women! 
 
 Brigstock was as pale as any blank page in his Bible : the 
 seamen glanced threateningly about, as though fearful of foul
 
 MY OATH. 283 
 
 play, hidden knives, sudden murderous surprise. The hush 
 of at least a minute that followed was extraordinarily impress- 
 ive not a whisper! nothing but the angry breathing of the 
 seamen standing near me> and the noise of the rippling waters. 
 
 Then Brigstock, sucking in a big breath, exclaimed in a voice 
 which betokened that his perception of our escape from a 
 business that might have proved a massacre was as acute at 
 all events as mine, said: 
 
 "Captain Morgan, yer know no harm's meant." 
 
 "None. Now recite the oath." 
 
 In a broken voice, his breathing labored, after putting the 
 Bible into my hand, he dictated an oath un grammatical, 
 pompous, and confused; in phrase and construction to the 
 verge of unintelligibility. I was to swear I would not reveal 
 the whereabouts of the island occupied by the settlers; also 
 that I would not make any entries in the log-book calculated 
 to furnish a clew; and the terms of the oath granted Mr. Brig- 
 stock permission to tear out of the said log-book as many pages 
 as he and the crew might think proper. 
 
 Bareheaded, I kissed the Bible with all proper reverence, and 
 then, addressing the women, exclaimed: 
 
 '%adies, you have heard me swear not to reveal the place 
 where Mr. Brigstock and his party go ashore. Though no 
 threats have been used, I am glad to say Mr. Brigstock will tell 
 you it was his and the crew's intention to compel me to take this 
 oath. That's so, I think," said I, looking round to Brigstock. 
 
 "We shouldn't have left the ship without it," he answered. 
 "We've a right to warrant ourselves against intrusion till such 
 times as the settlement shall become too flourishing to be 
 meddled with. It was the case with Pitcairn ; had a man o' 
 war lighted on the mutineers, she'd ha' taken 'em. Long 
 arter the trouble a man of war fell in with the island, and 
 found the settlers' descendants with one original mutineer 
 among 'em, old Adams. They left him to carry on his duties 
 as father and magistrate, and sailed away impressed and 
 hedified by what they'd seen. That's how I mean it to be with 
 us," said he, with a glance at the crew. "Not that we're 
 mutineers, God knows; but the little we're a-going to take 
 might lead to difficulties there's no call to provoke." 
 
 "Very well. It's now understood by all these witnesses," 
 said I, with a flourish of my hand to right and left, "that I've 
 taken an oath, under compulsion, not to betray the secret of 
 your whereabouts." 
 
 I pronounced these words clearly and with emphasis; then 
 lifting my hat, went into the cuddy.
 
 284 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 BULL'S ISLAND. 
 
 No reference was made by Brigstock or Harding to the 
 scene on the quarter-deck. I was afraid the crew would fasten 
 upon Perry, lock her up, in some fashion punish her. Afraid, 
 I say, because in that case I must have stood forward with the 
 prospect of bringing about vile, heavy, tragic trouble on the 
 very eve of the men's leaving us. Nothing was said or 
 done, at least in my hearing or seeing. For the rest of 
 the day I kept my eye on Perry when she was on deck, 
 but never saw that she was addressed or interfered with by 
 the crew. 
 
 Indeed, the prospect of the island showing next day, lay 
 like an influence upon the ship; the sailors lounged on the 
 forecastle with their partners, gazing ahead; Brigstock was 
 restless, coming again and again to the compass, looking 
 round at the sea, going forward, and talking with the men; 
 sometimes in passages of silence I'd hear his deep voice thrill- 
 ing near the galley. 
 
 I need not say my own anxiety was heavy and wearing to 
 the last degree. I was in seas almost new to me, sole navi- 
 gator of the ship; in an ocean full of islands and shoals, many 
 at that time uncharted. Then, had Bull's island existence in 
 the place he named it as lying in seven and twenty leagues 
 east of Hercules Island? Or, supposing the island there, yet 
 it might not suit the men either, in which case I was to find 
 one to please them. And how long was that to take with 
 the anxieties of a perilous navigation attending the quest, a 
 hundred lives in the vessel, and vicious threats in looks, 
 deportment, and speech; of further delay, exasperating the 
 women into behavior that might make a hell of the craft? 
 
 But to proceed: the afternoon passed quietly under the 
 subduing influence of the general expectation. The second 
 dog watch was one of ruddy splendor; the heavens of a burn- 
 ing gold westward, and the sea streaming and sheeting in 
 sapphire out of the east, winding into gold upon the horizon 
 as it swept to the setting sun, under which it trembled, glori- 
 ous as the effulgence it mirrored. The breeze of the day still 
 blew, soft and sweet as the air of the seashore where the 
 smell of brine blends with the scent of orchard and meadow; 
 and the ship, with wings of studding sail stretching far beyond 
 the yardarms, floated northwest with the sunset before eight
 
 BULL'S ISLAND. 285 
 
 bells, dimming on the port bow, and the sky darkened into 
 starlight on the quarter. 
 
 Luckily I could count upon a bright moon by ten. Before 
 it fell night-dark, I ordered the studding sails to be hauled 
 down and sail shortened to the main topgallant sail, leaving the 
 mainsail to hang through the quiet night in the festooning grip 
 of its gear. When this was done, the hour was about two 
 bells, nine o'clock. The ship sat upon the sea like a shadowy 
 fabric of alabaster; a long sighing sort of swell ran through 
 the dark ocean in wide breathings abeam, and the arc of the 
 ship's roll was scarce four times the diameter of the moon. 
 Until she rose to pale the firmament I had never before beheld 
 a grander play of meteors. They sailed over our trucks like 
 a legion of fireflies running athwart one another's hawse; the 
 stars sparkled placidly and blandly above them, and, at our 
 mizzen peak end, poised there as though by the signal halliards, 
 hung that vastly over-estimated jewel of the south, the 
 Southern Cross. 
 
 Although I had no reason to suppose we were near any shoal 
 or land invisible by such starshine as we had, or by such 
 moonshine as was to come, I nevertheless told Brigstock to 
 get a cast of the lead from time to time. I had heard of low 
 coral islands in these seas, like a fleet at anchor, through your 
 seeing nothing but trees, which come and go as the vessel 
 pitches. To be sure there was no magic in the lead to provide 
 against running foul of some steep-to concern of that sort, and 
 still I ordered Brigstock to get a cast from time to time. 
 
 I was also careful to keep the log going. Under reduced 
 canvas at nine o'clock the ship was passing through the water 
 at five and a half; the green fire burned in the holes of her 
 furrow, and very steady on our quarter, within pistol-shot, 
 back fin clear, floated at the exact speed of the ship a large 
 phosphorescent shape of shark big as a grampus he looked 
 in his husk of luminous mist. 
 
 The women hung about the decks till a late hour this night; 
 they were too restless and excited to turn in at the usual hour. 
 I called a number of them up to look at the wonderful picture 
 the shark made. Among these were many of my crew ; and 
 they liked this part of the deck so well I would not suffer 
 Mr. Harding, who had charge till midnight, to order them off. 
 
 When the moon rose and shone white, making ivory of the 
 decks, with the shadows of the rigging in every trance betwixt 
 the rolls looking like ebony inlaid, it was the strangest thing 
 to see the crowds of women moving about the main deck; their 
 clothes were tinged with silver, and their shapes seemed unsub-
 
 286 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 stantial; the only solid part seemed their ink-black shadows. 
 From time to time, at considerable intervals, a voice sang 
 hoarsely in the fore chains, and went to pieces in twenty echoes 
 aloft. 
 
 I put Kate's arm under mine for a turn, and kept her at my 
 side for an hour. I was feverish with thought, and it did me 
 good to talk. Was the island where Bull said it was? Would 
 the men be satisfied with it? Would the women shrink at the 
 last moment? Would there be recoil in any of the crew when 
 the spot, repellent in desolation in proportion as it was appeal- 
 ing in beauty, hung within an easy pull? I could talk about 
 nothing else. 
 
 Somewhere about five bells, while I was looking at the wake 
 of light under the moon a broad, trembling, glorious breast 
 it was I saw a ship swim into it about four miles off; a black, 
 lean shape, the sharp of her sails being at us. She was prob- 
 ably a whaler. It was the first vessel we had sighted for 
 weeks, and I looked at her with as much interest as though I 
 had never seen a ship before. The sight of her strangely 
 accentuated the thought of land being near. 
 
 Brigstock came up from the main deck and solemnly pointed 
 to her, while she was still under the moon. 
 
 "Yes," said I, "I've been watching her. Pity she's not 
 within hail. She might be able to give me some news of 
 Bull's island." 
 
 "We'd rather not ask her for any noose," he said, his long 
 face gray in the silver light. "She'd be putting two an' two 
 together, and giving in the report jer on jer oath to keep 
 bark, capt'n." 
 
 "Well, you may be right," said I. "Still, I should have 
 been glad to compare time, and get a hint or two." 
 
 "There's no fear of your navigation a-going wrong," said 
 he, smiling. "I only wish /had jer eddication and science. 
 But may I ask, sir, if jer still detarmined to work this ship 
 with women when we leave her?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I've thought it over, and dorn't see how it's to answer." 
 
 "Remove your thirteen partners, " said I, pointing to the 
 women who lingered on the poop and main deck, "and still 
 that crowd's but a little smaller. Now consider. I'm aft 
 here as the only officer, unarmed and helpless. It's such 
 another night as this, and in, or on, that forecastle there are 
 eight or ten fellows snipped, no matter how. Something hap- 
 pens there are ruffians among them; one scoundrel there must 
 be; show me a ship's fo'c's'le without him. Why, Mr. Brig-
 
 BULL'S ISLAND. 287 
 
 stock, you don't want much imagination to see what I'm 
 driving at. With you on board, and those twelve or thirteen 
 fellows yonder tractable and quiet under you, all's well. But 
 when you and your party are gone, I'm the only man in all 
 the oceans of this world who's going to carry this ship to port." 
 
 He stood silent in meditation, looking along the decks. 
 
 "Capt'n," said he, "putting it as jer have, I allow you're 
 right." 
 
 I was up and about all night. The lead was kept going, 
 but at long intervals. The breeze blew with a wonderful soft 
 steadiness; never so much as a puff of vapor soiled the starry 
 sky. It was an exquisite night indeed; a marvelous sweet 
 climate. There was the fragrance of the moon lily in it; and 
 often I'd fancy a pleasant scent in the wind as though land 
 were near. 
 
 Bull, who had the wheel from twelve to two, asked me if it 
 was strange that the natives in those parts of the great ocean 
 found a bamboo house and a suit of tappa shelter and cloth- 
 ing enough all the year round ? Upon my word, when I looked 
 up at the deep, sparkling sky, with the moonlight melting and 
 steeping to the furthest reaches, and tasted the soft air, and 
 put before my mind's eye such another island as Bull had 
 sketched, and then reflected upon the sort of homes and lives 
 such women as Kate Davis and Sarah Salmon and others were 
 fresh from, the yearly round of dull hard work they would 
 have entered upon in Australia, I couldn't help seeing some 
 wisdom in Brigstock's scheme, and its acceptance by the 
 females. It would be their own fault if in time the settlers 
 did not flourish as a community; enjoying full liberty, living 
 under laws of their own making, good for their peculiar and 
 particular state, nurtured by a bountiful mother unchallenged 
 lords and ladies of the isle that fed and clothed them. 
 
 I left the deck at dawn. Nothing was then in sight. I had 
 scanned the sealine eagerly, while it swept black against the 
 lilac of daybreak ere sunrise flashed it into blue. I was worn 
 out with anxiety, expectation, and want of sleep, and lay down 
 fully clothed in my cabin for an off-shore spell of twenty min- 
 utes. I slept a little more than an hour, and was then 
 disturbed. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "There's land right ahead, sir," said Brigstock, holding 
 the door open. 
 
 "Ha!" 
 
 I jumped for the telescope, and was on deck in a minute. 
 About two points on the port bow, the wind still blowing over
 
 288 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the starboard quarter, was the shadow of land. I leveled the 
 glass at it. The lenses made a firm blue heap of the shadow. 
 It was land, and no deceit of cloud. 
 
 "Make sail on the ship, Mr. Brigstock. Heap it on her," 
 said I. 
 
 Royals and topgallant sails were set, studding sails run aloft; 
 the breeze was gushing with a trade wind's steadiness; the 
 ocean floated like a lake upon its own long-drawn cradling 
 breathings. We hove the log and found the speed six. 
 
 "In another hour Bull will be able to tell us if that's his 
 island," said I to Brigstock. 
 
 When news that land was in sight got below, the women 
 sprang from their beds, dressed themselves in a fury of hurry 
 and excitement, and rushed on deck as though to some loud 
 and fearful summons. It was the first bit of land they had 
 seen for two months; and they crowded on to the forecastle, 
 thirstily staring and crying out and exclaiming in notes like a 
 noise of monkeys and parrots. They made a difficulty in 
 getting breakfast; some of the mess girls refused to leave the 
 deck to carry the tea and cocoa below. All the sensations and 
 passions of the voyage might have been packed into this time 
 of waiting, while the ship blew leisurely onward, and the land 
 hardened and enlarged, changing from airy blue into silvery 
 green. 
 
 It was shortly after ten that, spying Bull on the fo'c's'le, I 
 called him. 
 
 "Take this glass," said I, "and tell me if that land there is 
 your island?" 
 
 He put the tubes upon the rail and knelt. Expectation was 
 now at its highest pitch. The quarter-deck was a surface of 
 pale faces staring up at us, that is, at me, Brigstock, and 
 Harding, and at Bull kneeling and looking. In a transport 
 of impatience, Brigstock called out: 
 
 "Can't yer make anything of it, Tom?" 
 
 Still Bull looked ; all the fat of him with his three chins 
 and horse-rump breadth of shoulder was in that dogged, feed- 
 ing gaze, making the very intention that held his eye at the 
 telescope as massive in suggestion as something heavy with 
 flesh. Still kneeling, he looked up and nodded at Brigstock. 
 
 "It is then!" exclaimed Harding. 
 
 "To the littlest blade of grass upon it, smother me!" 
 answered Bull, and he got upon his feet. 
 
 Brigstock pulled off his cap, and looking at me with a twitch 
 or two in his lips, his black eyes expressive of astonishment 
 and respect, exclaimed:
 
 BULLS ISLAND. 289 
 
 "We trusted jer, sir, and jer've justified our faith. Capt'n, 
 in the crew's name I thank jer, and, whether she suits or not," 
 and here he pointed to the island, "we'll fore and aft be 
 always for allowing that it was well done." 
 
 I thought this very handsome of Brigstock, and thanked him 
 with a smile, and a careless assurance that a man must be a 
 poor navigator not to make land when its situation is known. 
 Nevertheless, secretly, I counted this bringing an uncharted 
 island right under my bow, in waters unknown to me, no con- 
 temptible feat, perhaps not wanting in luck either; for, had 
 Bull been out by twenty miles I should have missed the 
 place. 
 
 "It's Bull's island right enough, mates!" roared Harding 
 to the forecastle. 
 
 But there was nothing to cheer. Would the island suit? 
 It was that which worked in me now; and I knelt, as Bull had, 
 to take for the twentieth time another look at the silver 
 green heap. 
 
 Approaching it as we were from the southwest, it was hove 
 up by this time into an irregular outline; a block of shelving 
 terraced stuff to the left, inland a rise that was scarcely a hill, 
 then a long sweep of land going away down into the sea, dis- 
 appearing in a tremble of surf. The women were crowding 
 the bulwarks again to look; the seamen, with their partners, 
 filled the fo'c's'le head with twenty figures; Prentice was at 
 the wheel; Brigstock kept aft with me, and sometimes we 
 walked, talking, and sometimes we paused to look at the 
 growing land. 
 
 By and by I said, "In stun'sails, Mr. Brigstock, and put a 
 leadsman in the chains. Also send Bull on to the flying jib 
 boom end, and let him keep a bright lookout on the water 
 ahead." 
 
 This was done; the men rushing about eagerly and nimbly. 
 I then ordered them to rig the stunsail booms in, and to shorten 
 sail down to the main topgallant sail as before, furling everything 
 that was clewed up. This work brought us to hard upon 
 twelve, which hour I made by an observation of the sun, being 
 anxious to fix the island to my satisfaction, in case we should 
 be blown away. 
 
 The women got but a poor dinner; in fact, Wambold, in 
 the excitement of that time, had forgotten to boil the 'tween 
 decks soup and duff, and there was nothing to eat but pork, 
 of which, happily, in a lucid interval he had dropped the emi- 
 grants' allowance in his coppers. 
 
 Some of the girls wanted to make a trouble of this. Emma
 
 290 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 Marks came up through the hatch with a piece of pork in a tin 
 dish, and shrieked up at me: 
 
 "See 'ere! this is all! and Brigstock knows it's forbid! 
 Am I to be starved 'cause of this messing about after an island, 
 \vhich don't concern them as ought to be in Orstralia by this? 
 Look how I dine!" yelled the odious black creature; and she 
 threw the pork over the rail into the sea. 
 
 I called to Gouger to give the girl something to eat out of 
 the pantry; and, to escape the trouble I saw threatened in the 
 faces of others, I walked aft. 
 
 Soon after we had come into these seas, that is when we 
 had struck the fine weather parallels, the men had got the 
 chain cables up, and made all ready with the ground tackle. It 
 remained to be seen, however, whether, supposing the island 
 was to the taste of the people, it would be safer to lie off under 
 command of the helm, than to bring up; and, if the latter, 
 whether we should find holding ground. By half past one 
 o'clock we were within a mile, with no bottom in reach of 
 the lead. 
 
 It was a feast to the sight after our long weeks of brine. 
 Perhaps a deeper spirit of beauty than belonged to it went 
 into that richly draped and brightly feathered isle out of the 
 wonder that the freshness and novelty of it raised in us. It 
 showed us a foreshore of three miles as it bore, and ran away 
 inland perhaps four or five; it was swollen with undulations 
 lifting in glittering billows of verdure to a central elevation of 
 about two hundred feet. I saw the gleams of waterfalls like 
 sparkling mist. Bull, who stood near me, said that to the 
 best of his recollection the great lagoon was to the nor'rard 
 round the point. The Pacific comber broken by creeks and 
 inlets melted in white flashes upon the whiter dazzle of the 
 beach. In some places the vegetation came down thick as a 
 wood to where the glistening line of strand ruled it off sharp. 
 
 I turned the telescope in all directions, but saw no habita- 
 tion, no sign of life. This was not extraordinary, for in some 
 parts down here the natives are migratory; sometimes they are 
 driven out by war; more than one island Eden, such as Pit- 
 cairn and Norfolk, has been touched at, and found empty of 
 human life; others vacant, though with memorials of skilled 
 labor and an advanced civilization; but still, while I looked at 
 that beautiful coast, I expected at any moment to see a swarm 
 of canoes glide like insects from one of the many green and 
 shadowed creeks. 
 
 The women gazed fascinated. Many were on the forecastle, 
 a crowd along the bulwarks, a number on the poop; they
 
 BULL'S ISLAND. .291 
 
 hummed in talk with frequent clear cries and sharp calls, one 
 to another. The rich scene was a revelation to them ; and I 
 suspected that many would be thinking, while they looked, that 
 the seamens' partners were not the debased fools they had 
 been called. 
 
 When the ship had been brought to a stand, the wind blow- 
 ing softly away from the southeast, and the sea rippling silkily 
 to the very lift of the opal-hued comber, arching snakelike for 
 the shoreward run, Brigstock, with as respectful, composed 
 a demeanor as ever he had worn, though you might have 
 noticed a little color of triumph and importance in his bearing 
 and looks, asked leave to take charge of the going ashore job. 
 
 "Oh, certainly," said I; "do what you like. I hope the 
 island will suit you." 
 
 "I think it will," said he in his deep voice, with a glance at it. 
 
 He then called the crew on to the poop, Susannah Corbin 
 taking the wheel at my request that the seaman there might 
 join the sailors' council. I beckoned Kate from the main 
 deck, and walked aft with her that I might not appear to 
 attend to what the men said. 
 
 "What a beautiful island it is!" Kate exclaimed, her face 
 alight with the pleasure the sight gave her. 
 
 "Pray Heaven they decide to take it, that we may be off." 
 
 "What are they going to do?" 
 
 "Jaw a bit," said I. 
 
 "Some of the partners are in transports," she exclaimed. 
 "Jess Honeyball, standing near me with Isabella Dobson, cried 
 out just now, 'Oh, what a lovely home it will make. Tom 
 shall build our house there.' 'And Dick shall build ours 
 there' said Dobson." 
 
 "It's happened before," said I, "and is therefore true. 
 But it's hard to realize even while it's doing under one's very 
 nose;" and then I clenched my fists and worked my arms, 
 softly crying, "Lord, if they will but decide upon it, that we 
 may be off that we may be off!" 
 
 The seamen, with Brigstock in the midst of them, talked in 
 aclose group just forward of the mizzenmast. I was at no 
 pains to catch what they said. After a little, three or four 
 went off the poop, but they returned in a short time with three 
 ships' muskets, four pistols, and three or four cutlasses no 
 doubt all the small arms' chest held; for in those days, as 
 perhaps in these, the merchantman went afloat very ill 
 equipped for purposes of defense. 
 
 One of the men handed Brigstock a large flask of powder, 
 with which, one after another, they loaded their weapons.
 
 292 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 (Observe here that Brigstock knew of the arms' chest and 
 ammunition by occupying the berth where they were; I had 
 never entered his sleeping place from the hour of setting foot 
 in the ship.) They then approached one of the port quarter- 
 boats; and, while they were clearing her away, Brigstock came 
 along to where I sat with Kate, to tell me he and Bull and six 
 seamen were going ashore to thoroughly overhaul the island. 
 I told him I'd keep the ship hove-to; should a change of 
 weather happen they must return quickly. 
 
 By this time the boat was lowered ; it was then three 
 o'clock: the afternoon exquisitely fair and serene. Brig- 
 stock dropped into the boat by the falls ; their oars rose and 
 fell, and away they went, followed by a loud cheering from the 
 remaining sailors and all the partners. 
 
 "Choose a good place for us, Isaac!" yelled Emma Grubb. 
 
 "Down by the water, Bill, down by the water for me!" 
 shrieked Sail Simmonds. "It's to be a cottage by the sea for 
 us two." 
 
 "Don't forget your Soosie, Thomas!" cried Bull's partner. 
 
 The fellows, laughing and shouting back, gave way with a 
 will, and were presently out of earshot. 
 
 The seamen who stayed were Weatherwax, Luddy, Gouger, 
 Wambold, and Sampson. I sent Wambold to his work in the 
 galley, bidding him have a care not to forget the women's 
 supper. I then called Sampson aft to the wheel, and told the 
 others to hold themselves in readiness for a sudden call. I 
 next asked Alice Perry to pipe all hands; my ship's company, 
 filled with excitement and wonder, rushed on to the poop; I 
 believe some of the girls had a notion that I meant to sail the 
 ship straight away to Australia; and I saw a suspicion of that 
 sort in the seamen, for the three of them went to the galley, 
 and talked to Wambold, and all of them watched us with six 
 or eight of their partners standing near. 
 
 But I had no other motive in summoning the girls than to 
 request them to change into male attire, so as to have a good, 
 useful working force fitly draped in case of emergency. The 
 seamen saw what I meant, when the girls came up clothed as 
 lads, and went on to the forecastle with the partners. 
 
 The after part of the ship now looked full of men ; familiar 
 as this feature of our shipboard life had long since grown, for 
 ever since the worst of the Horn was over I had gone on 
 patiently and ploddingly training my female crew, I could 
 not help laughing when I gazed around at the dressed-up 
 women; if it hadn't been for their hair they'd have appeared 
 the completest sailors you can imagine; rather short for the
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 293 
 
 most part, it is true, but in the main as broad-shouldered, 
 stout, and vigorous as .any lads I was ever shipmate with; 
 and most of them in their male duds, spite of their hair, look- 
 ing much more like young men than young women. 
 
 I was talking to Kate when Alice Perry in her man's 
 clothes rolled up to me; her coarse beauty was wonderfully 
 heightened by her dress ; she, of them all, looked the charac- 
 ter of handsome, mutinous, dare-devil young seadog the best. 
 She drew close, with a flashing glance toward the helmsman, 
 and said in a sharp whisper: 
 
 "Capt'n, why's the ship standing still?" 
 
 "Don't you know I'm waiting for those men to return?" 
 
 "That's just it, then!" she snapped. "What d'yer want 
 with 'em? They've served us beastly bad, haven't they? I'd 
 like to dish that Cobbs too she and the rest." 
 
 "Mind how you talk," said I, looking into her eyes, which, 
 though sometimes as cold as a cat's, were now on fire with 
 temper; with an angry cat's expression in them too. 
 
 "Here's thirty of us, and you're a man; and the rest of the 
 girls '11 help," said she. "Lock up the sailors that's left, and 
 sail away." 
 
 "No," I answered, frowning at her. 
 
 "Yer always agin what I ask." 
 
 I grasped her by the arm. "If the sailors overhear you 
 they'll drown you." 
 
 We stared at each other, and then she gave me one of her 
 wild, glaring grins, wheeling round immediately afterward, 
 and trying to whistle as she walked away. 
 
 "There's the soul of a pirate in that figure," said Kate, 
 looking after her. 
 
 "Whoever bore her mulled her sex," I exclaimed. 
 
 "She's so much in love with you," said Kate, "she'd kill 
 you for jealousy, if you provoked her." 
 
 "Then she mustn't know, or I'm a dead man," I answered. 
 
 She did not ask me to explain myself. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 
 
 WHILE Brigstock was on shore, I stood out to improve my 
 offing. My crew of women filled on the topsail, braced up, 
 hauled taut to windward, and coiled down as smartly as any 
 forecastle company. When I had increased the distance by
 
 294 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 about half a mile, the girls backed the yards again. The 
 fellow at the helm steered with a face of admiration while this 
 was doing. Two others were in the chains swinging the lead; 
 the remaining two would have pulled with the women, but the 
 girls told them to get out of the way ; and they held aloof, 
 looking on, grinning like thirsty spaniels. 
 
 I constantly swept the island with the telescope- but the 
 vegetation was wonderfully thick and rich, and, when Brig- 
 stock's boat had entered one of the green shady creeks, I saw 
 no more of the men. Sometimes I'd strain my ear, fancying 
 I caught a sound of firearms. Imagination was lively, and I'd 
 see a movement down in the vegetation near the shore as of 
 something creeping and black, with a greasy gleam. But the 
 glass resolved me nothing, save bushes, and tall grasses, and 
 trees, when I directed it at the spot. 
 
 About seven o'clock I came on deck, after taking some 
 supper, and saw the boat. My heart beat hard at the sight of 
 her. It was a scene of tender, spacious, indeed glorious 
 beauty just then, for the sun was burning behind the island, 
 and the mass of the land stood out in dyes deepened to a 
 heart-melting loveliness, by the splendor of their setting, and 
 the sky line ran in feathers of palm and cocoa, till it was 
 smoothed out by distance or altitude into the dark green 
 polished round of the hill. The western light sank so deep 
 into the evening shadow that the distance of the illimitable 
 night eastward seemed to open, and the ocean streamed in 
 ripples of gilt into it. 
 
 All the while, saving a short interval for supper, the women 
 thronged the bulwarks and forecastle, feasting their eyes on 
 that delicious, restful scene of land. It was pitiful to mark 
 the yearning, devouring looks of many of them ; the heart- 
 craving for a run ashore, a roll in the grass, for a handful of 
 sweet-cool fruit that should luxuriously sink through and 
 through to the marrow; for a drink from one of the bright 
 falls shining afar. 
 
 The boat came along leisurely; the partners screamed a 
 welcome when she was within earshot, and the rowers looked 
 round and nodded, but they pulled like men dead beat. The 
 first to come over the side was Brigstock; Miss Cobbs darted 
 from under the break of the poop to meet him, and they stood 
 together talking for some moments very earnestly, he holding 
 her by both hands. 
 
 I composed my face, but my heart beat hard with anxiety 
 while I walked the poop, waiting for Brigstock. He arrived 
 presently, moving very slowly.
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 295 
 
 "Well?" said I. 
 
 "It's a beautiful island, capt'n." 
 
 "Will it suit you?" 
 
 "We believe it will, sir." 
 
 "Believe!" 
 
 "We're all agreed it'll answer," said he,'raising his voice 
 that the man at the wheel, who was straining his ear, might 
 hear him. "But," he continued, talking as much at that 
 worthy (Weatherwax) as at me, "afore we decide our pardners 
 must view it." 
 
 "That's but right." 
 
 He then described the island; but his description scarcely 
 went further than Bull's. He said there was a fine lagoon 
 round the point, where, should they agree to occupy the place, 
 the ship would lie snug and safe as in harbor, while they took 
 what they wanted out of her. "I'll accept no risk of that 
 sort," said I. "What! Enter a lagoon with a ship drawing 
 eighteen feet, without a pilot, or a chart of soundings! And 
 more than a hundred souls to occupy that island till something 
 comes along should we touch and stick, and go to pieces all 
 in due course! No lagoon for me. We'll work in close 
 inshore; you've plenty of good landing places." 
 
 "Well," said he, with a smothered yawn, "we'll not let that 
 be a difficulty, sir." 
 
 I stepped to the side to see what they were doing in the 
 boat, and found them handing up a quantity of cocoanuts and 
 plantains to the women. Brigstock sung out for fruit for the 
 captain. I observed that only the partners were to be regaled, 
 and asked for a few nuts and clusters, as a treat for some of 
 my own people. Then, as the dark was drawing down, I 
 ordered the boat to be hoisted, and my crew of girls braced 
 the topsail yard to the wind. 
 
 There was nothing for it but to stand on and off throughout 
 the night, and keep a bright lookout for reefs. Fortunately, 
 the moon gave a clear light, and robed the island in a mist of 
 silver which shone faintly upon the sea, so that we could never 
 lose sight of the land. All this night long I was up and down. 
 The women kept the decks till eleven ; and some of the part- 
 ners were talking to the seamen down in the waist, where the 
 moonlight lay bright after eight bells had been struck. 
 
 Dawn found us off the island again; and soon after sunrise 
 the ship was full of life. It was just such weather as had 
 shone yesterday, with the same warm gushing of wind, only 
 weaker. The men got breakfast early, doing nothing to the 
 ship save laying the topsail to the mast. The women were at
 
 296 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 breakfast in, the 'tween decks, when the crew cleaned out the 
 longboat, and hoisted her over the side. 
 
 There was a big party of them to go ashore; and they 
 needed a boat of some burden. 
 
 Brigstock conversed with me on the poop, while the men 
 were at this job. He told me there were no signs of life on 
 the island. They had looked about them carefully and dis- 
 covered nothing to tell that the spot had been inhabited at any 
 period. He said if he took possession in the name of Queen 
 Victoria, would it belong to England, or to him and his party 
 as its settlers? 
 
 I said if they settled the island, Great Britain was not 
 likely to dispossess them. If they flourished they'd call 
 themselves a dependency, and England would send out 
 help to enable them to fight with their enemies should they 
 be attacked. 
 
 "We shan't want no help," said he, "for we don't hintend 
 no fighting. Who's a-going to attack us? There's some 
 custom in taking possession; can yer name it, sir?" 
 
 "Hoist the British flag, and say, 'I take possession in the 
 Queen's name,' and then call for three cheers." 
 
 "Suppose it's been already took possession of by the 
 French?" 
 
 "They may attempt to turn you out; you appeal to your 
 native country; you become the subject of a long diplomatic 
 correspondence, and perhaps the occasion of a war; and the 
 name of Brigstock passes into tradition, as not only a father of 
 South Sea settlements, but a creator of history." 
 
 He relished all this with one of his slow smiles, and, after 
 eying the island for a while, stepped to the rail to see what 
 they were at in the boat. 
 
 Observing Alice Perry on the quarter-deck, I bade her pipe, 
 "all hands shift clothes." One of twenty women overhang- 
 ing the bulwark rail called up to me: 
 
 "Capt'n, mayn't we go on shore for a treat?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 "Why not?" cried Emma Marks. 
 
 I answered with a scowl, and turned my back. Gladly 
 would I have sent the poor women ashore for a run for the day, 
 to eat the sweet tropical fruit, and refresh themselves at the cold, 
 bright springs, and forget their dreary habitation of 'tween 
 decks in the twinkling shadows of the rich woods. But who 
 was to put them ashore and bring them off, and be responsible 
 for their safety when landed? 
 
 Not until ten o'clock did the longboat get away. There
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 297 
 
 went in her eleven men and all the chosen females. Bull and 
 Jackson remained in the ship. 
 
 I found something incredible in the sight of the respectable, 
 sausage-curled Miss Cobbs, attired as though she was going on 
 a visit to friends, descending the gangway ladder the men had 
 thrown over, with her countenance defined in lines of self- 
 complacency, and demure importance under her bonnet. The 
 looks of the others, such as Kate Davis and the two Honey- 
 balls, rendered realization of this settling scheme easy; but 
 Miss Cobbs! 
 
 Brigstock handed her down, and seated her in the stern 
 sheets; the men and women made a big boatful as they shoved 
 off, hoisting the sail, laughing and chatting like a party on 
 pleasure, looking up at the faces along the bulwark rail, and 
 nodding and answering shrill calls not to forget to return with 
 plenty of cocoanuts and plantains. 
 
 While the boat was going ashore, I observed Perry and 
 three or four others in earnest conversation. All my girl 
 company, male-attired, were on the poop. Perry and the girl 
 she talked with came and asked me to proceed on the voyage. 
 I pointed to the longboat, and said, "And leave those people?" 
 
 "Yes," cried Alice passionately. 
 
 "We had enough of this yesterday, my girl," said I. 
 
 Her face darkened, and she exclaimed, "YVhy are we to be 
 kept waiting? What's those beasts there done that they re to 
 keep us messing about here, while they goes ashore and enjies 
 themselves?" 
 
 "Lord, if I was but a man!" exclaimed Emmy Reed, with 
 a grin of temper that exhibited a mouthful of teeth, not so 
 white and glaring as Perry's, though. 
 
 "For two pins," said Alice, "we'd lock yer up, and sail 
 away with the ship just to spite 'em. Ah, that we would," 
 she cried, with a saucy red flashing toss of her head; "if we 
 knew which way to steer!" 
 
 "Would you?" said I. "Would you?" 
 
 And putting my arm coaxingly and caressingly through 
 hers, I looked her in the eyes, and led her away from her 
 companions ; and then, in lover-like accents, told her to keep 
 her temper, and to suffer me to have my way ; the mutiny of 
 her spirit softened out of her gaze ; she liked my caressing 
 manner, and was presently purring to it after her style. 
 
 I observed that Kate watched us. 
 
 The boat, I have said, got away at ten, and did not return 
 until seven. I guessed they were enjoying a fine holiday 
 ashore. They had plenty of fruit to eat, and water to drink,
 
 290 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 and a delicious little scene of country to ramble in. Three 
 times my girls trimmed sail for a "ratch, " as we term it, by 
 which means I kept a safe offing. I often looked through the 
 glass, but never could see a sign of the Brigstock party. 
 
 I'll not enlarge upon the incidents of that day. Alice Perry 
 gave me no more trouble; but that blister of a female, Emma 
 Marks, came very near to causing confusion by rushing on to 
 the poop, and calling upon my crew to lower the remaining 
 boats without regard to my orders, so that parties might go 
 ashore. 
 
 "I can pull an oar," she squeaked. "There's Corbin there 
 can row, and Hann Wright, and Fanny Pike." 
 
 How did my heart grieve she was no man, that I might have 
 griped her by breech and scruff, and flung her over the 
 poop rail ! 
 
 Thus all day, with a brief break of three boards for an 
 offing, did the Earl of Leicester lie, softly breathing rather than 
 rolling, with the light delicate pulse of swell out of the north, 
 and her sails slightly fanning as she swayed, and the sky 
 cloudless from sealine to sealine. 
 
 In the afternoon Kate told me that, while the women were 
 at dinner, she overheard some of them say they meant to ask 
 Brigstock to let them join the settlers on the island. I had all 
 along reckoned, from the moment when the whole beauty of 
 this little Pacific Eden was revealed to us, that many would 
 yield to its witchery ; those particularly who were orphans, and 
 perhaps utterly friendless in England, with but vague ideas 
 and lean hopes when they thought of Australia, and of work 
 and wages there. 
 
 At about seven o'clock in the evening, when the sunset was 
 splendid behind the island, I saw the longboat creep, a black 
 spot, with the wink of oars on either hand, out of the creek it 
 had vanished in ; she came along briskly, and was speedily 
 alonsgide. The girls stepped on board very merry, browned, 
 somewhat bedraggled, as though with horse play and caper 
 cutting in the woods; they brought a good cargo of nuts and 
 plantains, which were freely distributed. Miss Cobbs alone 
 looked as though she had sat still and watched the others; 
 her attire was as neat as when she left. Brigstock maddened 
 me with impatience by lingering in the boat. I was burning 
 with curiosity to know the decision the party had arrived at, 
 and, unable to bear myself any longer, called to Miss Cobbs, 
 who stood chatting in the gangway with several of the women. 
 She came promptly, smirking as usual, but dropped me no 
 courtesy.
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 299 
 
 "Well, Miss Cobbs," said I, "what do you and the others 
 think of the island?" 
 
 "Captain Morgan, it is simply lovely," she replied with an 
 air of superiority. "Oh, what flowers! the 'ole place smells 
 like a nosegay!" she exclaimed, bringing her fingers together, 
 and rolling up her eyes. 
 
 "Do you mean to settle upon it?" 
 
 "We do indeed, and on no other. Only think," she cried> 
 extending her hand toward the land, "of natur, as Mr. Brig- 
 stock says, endowing us poor people with such a beautiful 
 estate! It's nigh as big as a county, sir, and to be had for the 
 taking. No wild beasts sweeter birds than ever you could 
 dream of such beautiful waterfalls, too! a natural 'arbor; 
 and on the other side, past the 'ill, an 'ole row of caves, clean 
 and airy living rooms till houses can be contrived, and then 
 most useful by and by, as Mr. Brigstock was saying, as 
 bonded warehouses." 
 
 I let her run on; indeed her tongue's sharp end had cut so 
 great a weight of anxiety from my spirits, that my heart could 
 not have beaten a gayer measure had yonder island been Syd- 
 ney Heads, and our ship with a pilot aboard entering the bay. 
 
 Brigstock now coming up, I said to him: "So that island 
 proves to your liking?" 
 
 "It's a Heden," he answered. 
 
 "There's a hundred gentlemen's estates on it," said Miss 
 Cobbs, "and all beautifuller than the beautifullestin England." 
 
 "Nothen '11 be wanted," said Brigstock, "but homes." 
 
 "You'll not keep the ship hanging off here longer than's 
 necessary, I hope? We've had two days of it; the weather 
 favors us, but there may come a change," said I, looking east- 
 ward, where I thought I saw an orange flake of sail in the 
 shadow, but it melted soon, and was nothing. 
 
 "We'll be taming to first thing in the morning," said he. 
 "Will the boat lie safe? Bit of a job chocking and gettin' 
 her over agin." 
 
 We settled to tow her, as I meant to keep under way all 
 night as before. We had some further conversation about the 
 island; Brigstock and Cobbs then left me, and I got my girl 
 crew to trim sail, while the men saw to the longboat. 
 
 It was then nearly dark ; the moon not yet risen, and a 
 gaping crimson scar of sunset past the island, that made me 
 think somehow as though I was gone mad of the red mouth 
 of a yawning black cat. But all was starry, balmy, and 
 serene ; throughout the day the barometer had warranted the 
 weather, and now came a third passage of ocean night-beauty,
 
 300 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 the firmament hovering in trembling prisms over our mast- 
 heads, the sea stretching flat in liquid black, east and west, 
 sparkling in a little light here and there, where some larger 
 ripple broke. 
 
 While my crew were below changing, and at the moment 
 that the green dawn in the east was whitening into dim silver, 
 over a red arch of moon upon the black sea line, the Brigstock 
 party, who had gathered together on the forecastle, struck up 
 a hymn. All of the "settlers" were there, saving Harding, 
 who watched the ship, and Coffin at the wheel. They sang 
 with strength, spirit, and something of sweetness; it was a 
 familiar hymn, and many on the main deck joined in; that 
 song of adoration thus sung by shapes of shadow, forward or 
 standing near the main hatch and elsewhere, with the silence in 
 the faint white hollow sails climbing to the black line of the furled 
 royal, gave a wonderful solemnity to the rising of the moon. 
 
 When the hymn was ended, I heard Brigstock's deep rolling 
 voice; he was either lecturing or praying. Presently they sang 
 a second hymn. Just then I spied Kate standing in the moon- 
 light at the gangway; I called her to me, and told her that the 
 people had decided to settle that island yonder; in a few days 
 we should be heading for Australia; in a month, under God, 
 we should have arrived at Sydney! Never had my spirits 
 danced so in all my years! Had they sung anything but 
 hymns, I should have capered to the music. 
 
 While I walked, talking with great excitement to this girl 
 think of our teeming topics! the island scheme, the passage to 
 Sydney with girls for a crew, the afterward a tall, stoutly 
 built woman, named Sarah Thomas, came along the poop and 
 stopped us. 
 
 "Capt'n, may I have a word?" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "D'yer think the notion of living upon that there island," 
 said she, pointing to the black mass of it on the quarter, "is 
 worth entertaining?" 
 
 "By whom?" 
 
 "By me and some others." 
 
 "They don't want you." 
 
 "Why not?" she exclaimed, with some heat. "We 
 wouldn't meddle with them. We'd be a separate establish- 
 ment. They aint got no right to all the island. We'd choose 
 bits of ground in a separate part; the men 'ud build 'omes for 
 us, and in return we'd wash for them, wait upon 'em, clean, 
 and dp their herrants. A plenty we could do," he added 
 suspiciously, as though afraid of my laughter.
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 301 
 
 Laugh I did, nevertheless; and, to get rid of her, bade her 
 go to Brigstock. She went away muttering sulkily; and, at the 
 head of the ladder, called to others below aggressively, "He 
 says they don't want us. As if bein' single, we wasn't of use. 
 They can't take it all, I swear; not lawfully. Who's them 
 sailors to grant rights?" and thus calling, she sank down the 
 ladder, and vanished. 
 
 We were off the island again in our former position before 
 daybreak. The sight was beautiful when the rising sunshine 
 streamed upon the land. The dyes shone out in silver, green, 
 and gilt, in the steady gleam of ivory, the flashful throb of 
 foam upon the beach, in lines of delicate lacelike vapor 
 motionless upon the hillside. Yet, captivating as was the pic- 
 ture, would not some of the people hang back at the last? 
 
 The longboat was brought to the gangway, and all three 
 remaining boats lowered; this was done at daylight. The 
 hatches were then opened, and the men went to work to break 
 out the goods they meant to take. The bales of clothes were 
 easily come at, and before breakfast they had loaded the gig 
 with bundles of attire, male and female. Such bountiful 
 appropriation was nothing short of piracy; for lighter offenses 
 than bagging those bundles Brigstock and his party would 
 have been turned off at Execution Dock and elsewhere in 
 days when the youngest of them were sucklings. I could not 
 reconcile so very downright a robbery with the excellent prin- 
 ciples professed by Brigstock. There went, I dare say, the 
 value of the men's pay down to this time, in the gig's lading 
 alone. But I resolved to hold my peace. So far as /was 
 concerned, they might gut the ship, if they left me the where- 
 withal to carry her to Sydney. 
 
 After breakfast they started again, and got a whip to the 
 winch to sway some of the heavy things out of the hold. I 
 begged Brigstock to break out in such fashion as to give the 
 ship no list, for the women would be unable to trim her; he 
 promised to see to it. He also consented, if the weather per- 
 mitted, to raft some casks ashore and fill them with fresh 
 water when they were done with their own business. As I 
 have elsewhere said, the ship's lading consisted largely of 
 argicultural implements; but the catalogue of commodities 
 also comprised many articles always needed by young settle- 
 ments, particularly districts distant from a cargo-fed source 
 such as Sydney. Brigstock, no doubt, before I was stolen out 
 of the Caroline, had acquainted himself with the character of 
 the Earl of Leicester's freight; it was this, perhaps, that set his 
 colonizing scheme going. Anyway, down in our ship's hold
 
 302 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 was nearly all that a gang of settlers would need. Figure the 
 contents of a large ironmonger's shop ; then add a ready-made 
 tailor's establishment; enlarge with a quantity of plowshares, 
 rakes, hoes, pickaxes, and so forth; there were bales of coarse 
 blankets in the forehold, and, which was of great consequence 
 to the Brigstock party, a considerable stock of household stuff, 
 such as small square looking-glasses, cheap crockery in crates, 
 folding chairs, and bedsteads. 
 
 They had four boats, and all were filled by noon ; so that, 
 after getting some dinner and smoking a pipe, they were able 
 to start right away for the island. The longboat, with hoisted 
 sail, took the other boats in tow. Brigstock was in charge, 
 and went with eight men, leaving Harding and two others 
 behind. There was a pleasant little inshore breeze, and, as we 
 lay hove-to within a mile of the shore, the boats soon vanished 
 in the green and shady creek the men had headed for on pre- 
 vious occasions. They were absent two hours; then returned 
 rowing. My girl crew trimmed sail for a board, while the 
 men went below into the hold, and I ratched to an offing out- 
 side of a mile, which our drift was bound to narrow before the 
 crew were ready with the second cargo. 
 
 All this while the weather continued splendid and quiet, for 
 which my heart beat in gratitude every time I looked round 
 the sea, for I was already bitterly sick of this business of loit- 
 ering; I was feverishly eager for the start, the more so because 
 of that sort of nervousness that makes you crazy to make an 
 end of the difficulty; is it a tooth or an arm? In the name of 
 the angels, quick ! that it may be over ! Before me lay the 
 task of sailing the ship for a month, and perhaps longer, 
 through perilous waters, with only women to work the vessel, 
 and myself the sole navigator. You'll suppose I wished it 
 bedtime, and all well. 
 
 They went away with a second cargo of four boatfuls in the 
 afternoon, two hours before sundown. All the partners helped 
 at the winch, antl were busy wherever they could be useful. I 
 kept my own girls dressed in male attire on the poop, which 
 diminished the main deck crowd ; but there were nearly fifty 
 others to hang about, to get in the way of the men, to pass 
 remarks, to strive, in short, to breed trouble. 
 
 The worst of these was not Emma Marks, as I might have 
 expected, but that stout, strong female, Sarah Thomas, who, 
 with others, wanted to go ashore with the Brigstock party. I 
 learned from Kate that Thomas had spoken to Brigstock, and 
 that he had sternly refused to take any other than the men's 
 own women. Hot words had followed, and in revenge a mob
 
 THE SAILORS DECIDE. 303 
 
 of the girls who wished to settle, Thomas acting as ringleader, 
 went about the deck, calling insolent remarks down to the 
 sailors in the boats, or in the hold, whenever they caught sight 
 of them, mocking and sneering at the "pardners," and making 
 themselves offensive in that sort of way in which people of 
 their condition are usually artists. The men took but little 
 notice of them. Now and then you'd hear a deep growl of 
 "Stow that ballyrag!" or a cry faint in the depths of "Hold 
 your blather, you trulls!" "Dry up, you fagots!" 
 
 Once, Brigstock faced Sarah Thomas, and in deep, warning 
 notes asked her if she thought such behavior "was a-going to 
 bring her a hinvitation to jine the island party? I'd rather 
 land a boatful of rats than two such as you," said he. "Yer 
 should marry a militiaman; dorn't hentertain no notion of 
 'spectable sailors. Jer stare arter yer drink? Then you're 
 drunk now. My opinion is," he exclaimed, looking round, 
 "that this here Thomas is one of them parties as picks up 
 their knowledge of life by putting their heye to the neck of a 
 whisky bottle, and using it as a telescope." He nodded 
 severely at her, and, amid a little squeal of laughter from some 
 of the partners, went over the side into one of the boats there. 
 
 The surprising part was the enthusiasm of the women who 
 were to take up their abode on the island with the seamen. 
 They kept together, and throughout the day laughed and 
 talked, and sang; bustling about in a gang to help the men, all 
 with faces glowing with holiday pleasure and happy expecta- 
 tion. I never witnessed the least suggestion in them of hang- 
 ing back. You'd see them staring at the island as at something 
 newly given to them, as a man after he's bought a house looks 
 at it, and walks on t'other side the street to see it, though he 
 may have lived in it for years. My notion had been, the 
 recoil in them would have been fatal to Brigstock's scheme, 
 when a day of staring had staled the island as a picture, and 
 when they noticed how blank was the circle of sea, how lonely 
 that spot of land in the midst of it; nothing alive moving upon 
 its white beach; no feathering of smoke anywhere to indicate 
 human existence. But, in truth, imagination in those poor, 
 rude, homely souls stopped at perception that yonder was a 
 piece of country, which they were at liberty to divide among 
 them, where every woman would have a husband, where 
 they'd build houses, and plant gardens, and lounge their lives 
 away, wiping out of memory all the unpleasant parts the 
 severe mistresses, the month's notice, the bad character. 
 
 Another night drew down: a night of moonlight and silence 
 upon the sea; the soft wind blew, the stars trembled in their
 
 394 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 hosts; again the Brigstock party sang hymns upon the fore- 
 castle till nine o'clock, and till eleven sat talking there. 
 Most of the women went to bed early; they were sick of this 
 detention, weary of the sight of land they were not permitted 
 to visit, and many were sulky and gloomy with envy. 
 
 By noon, however, next day, the men had carried ashore all 
 they proposed to take, including a raft of spare booms and a 
 couple of ensigns. Hospitably had the hold served them! 
 Two boats they loaded with provisions, chiefly tinned goods, 
 which sight so alarmed me that I went below before they put 
 off, to ascertain what supplies they intended to leave us. 
 There was not plenty, indeed, but I reckoned there would be 
 enough, unless we should be sorely put to it by head winds or 
 foul weather; of beef and pork they took as much as the gig 
 could swim with. This was to be their last load; and, with a 
 whole squadron of spare booms in tow, and three boats laden 
 down to the gunwhales, away they went in the longboat, rais- 
 ing a mighty cheering, which was answered by a hundred 
 shrill cries by their partners, who waved hats, shawl, hands 
 in a most impassioned, grotesque exhibition of encouragement 
 and Wapping-like devotion. 
 
 Brigstock had kept his word, and left the ship on a level 
 keel; basing my calculations on the burden of the longboat 
 and the other three boats, I reckoned they had taken about 
 fifty tons of goods. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE START FOR SYDNEY. 
 
 ON the morning of the fifth day, dating from our arrival off 
 the island, we were heading in for it once more to heave-to for 
 the last time that the Brigstock party might go ashore. We 
 towed the longboat in our wake. Everything had been com- 
 pleted before dark on the previous night when, with the help 
 of my women crew at the winch, we had hoisted aboard a 
 number of casks filled with fresh water for us by Brigstock 
 and his men, and rafted off in tow of the boats. 
 
 The wind had shifted: it was blowing south; a merry 
 whistling wind, cool and refreshing; the ocean was a wide 
 dance of diamonds under the sun, and the life of little white 
 clouds swarming briskly northward was in the sky. It was 
 about half-past nine in the morning; I stood in conversation 
 with Brigstock at the break of the poop. All my crew,
 
 THE START FOR SYDNEY. 305 
 
 dressed in male attire, were scattered about the decks, 
 mingling and conversing with the rest of the females. The 
 chests and boxes belonging to the settlers had been taken 
 ashore on the previous day, together with half a suit of canvas 
 to supply the people with roofs until they had built houses. 
 The ship's bell was also gone; likewise the clock, and many 
 other conveniences and necessaries. The whole group of sail- 
 ors and partners, barring one at the helm and Brigstock, were 
 on the forecastle, attired ready for the shore. The women 
 had put on their-best things; even in this trifling particular they 
 showed an incapacity of distinguishing that touched me. 
 
 Brigstock was dressed as parsonically as his clothes would 
 admit of. He had found a white shawl, and had buttoned 
 himself up to it; his head cover was a slop black wideawake; 
 but the fellow's best claims in this way lay in his face, which 
 this morning, as we drove slowly toward the island under a 
 main topgallant sail, was unusually long, yellow, and com- 
 placent; his dark eyes dwelt steadfastly and thoughtfully upon 
 the island; and often a slow smile of deep and serious gratifi- 
 cation, breaking out at his mouth, overran his face and disap- 
 peared at his eyebrows. 
 
 "Capt'n," said he, turning to me after a long pause in our 
 talk, "the time for saying good-by has pretty nigh come." 
 
 "Yes, it's close at hand," said I. 
 
 "I hope we're forgiven the wrong we done yer?" 
 
 "You and your men have atoned fully and handsomely. 
 The behavior of the seamen will remain one of the most mem- 
 orable of my life experiences. Well for the red flag if there 
 were more influences of your sort in our forecastles." 
 
 He sunk his head in a solemn gesture of thanks, and said: 
 "As our oath has been kept by us, so you'll keep your'n, sir." 
 
 "Undoubtedly." 
 
 "It'll take us some time to settle down, and we dorn't want 
 to be broke up just when we've got comfortable." 
 
 "You'll not be broken up through me." 
 
 "We shall hoist the flag arter we've got a spar set up, and 
 then take possession. There's a beautiful valley t'other side, 
 past that hill there; that's where we mean to build! It's 
 convenient for the lagoon, which we'll make a road ter in 
 doo course." 
 
 "Your first act, I suppose, will be to marry yourselves?" 
 
 "I'll see to that," he answered, with a stiff, severe air, as if 
 he would have no levity in that direction. 
 
 "Who'll marry you to Miss Cobbs?" 
 
 "The party I delegates; him as I empowers by my rights as
 
 36 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 president helect, " he answered fluently, as though the subject 
 had been long ago argued and settled. 
 
 "It's a heroic undertaking," said I, looking at the island 
 that was fast broadening and deepening into proportion and 
 beauty, though frightful for loneliness to my mind, figuring it 
 as I did on the chart, and thinking of the leagues and leagues 
 the sea went away from it on all hands ere washing the land 
 of white men and the civilization of Australia and South 
 America. "How shall one get to hear whether you nourish 
 or not?" 
 
 "Ah!" said he, "there can't be no noosepapers with us for 
 yet a bit. But it's a home and a beautiful one; as much land 
 as is in a hundred gentlemen's seats, as Miss Cobbs truly says, 
 only finer, cultivated by the fust of all gardeners Natur; 
 such a home as I dorn't wonder makes many of them poor 
 women down there wild to share, but it couldn't be. There'd 
 be nothen but rows. Let 'em find pardners, and learn civility, 
 and they'll be welcome to jine us if they can find us," he 
 added, with a dry askew glance at me. 
 
 Thus we conversed. I saw Miss Cobbs talking with Kate 
 Darnley in the waist ; the minutes slipped by ; the ship drove 
 along over smooth water, the long Pacific swell helping her. 
 
 "We're close enough in, I think," said I presently. A fit 
 of nervousness took me suddenly, and my heart beat quick. 
 
 "Back the main topsail yard!" I bawled. ''Port main 
 brace!" 
 
 The girls, full of zeal, eagerness, expectation, rushed aft to 
 where the ropes led. 
 
 "For the last time, sweethearts," cried Alice Perry, in a 
 voice merry as music with the emotions of that hour. She 
 struck up one of the many sailor songs she and the rest knew, 
 and the girls pulled with a will and a chorus. The topsail 
 came aback; the ship lost way. 
 
 "Are we all ready?" shouted Brigstock. 
 
 His party answered by coming quickly from the forecastle, 
 and gathering about the gangway. 
 
 "Corbin, take the wheel," said I. 
 
 She replaced Jackson, who came along smiling, and said, 
 when close to me, "Is it to be good-by here, sir?" 
 
 "If you please, my man," said I. 
 
 "Then good-by, and God bless ye," said he, extending his 
 hand; "and may you have a prosperous voyage to Sydney, and 
 do as well by our stealing of you, as you fared ill by our mis- 
 understanding of yer." 
 
 I shook his hand, and he left the poop.
 
 THE START FOR SYDNEY. 307 
 
 They lowered the quarter-boat they meant to take and keep, 
 brought the longboat to the gangway, and got the steps over. 
 Brigstock stood with his hands upon the brass rail of the poop- 
 break, looking round and along the ship as though to make 
 sure he'd forgotten nothing. He turned to me in a minute 
 or two, and said: 
 
 "Is there nothen we can do for you, capt'n, afore we go?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "The anchors are at the catheads," said he, "all's ready 
 with your ground tackle. But how about your canvas, sir?" 
 he continued, rolling up his eyes at the sails. "Would yer 
 like us to leave you snugger? None of the gells I expect '11 
 be able to handle them main and fore top's'ls." 
 
 I told him I meant to keep the vessel under the shortened 
 canvas she now carried; should it come on to blow, I'd lower 
 the yards, haul out the reef-tackles, and leave the rest to the 
 gods. I said I looked for fine weather. If I wanted help I'd 
 shift my helm for it; it could never be far off in this ocean of 
 islands and whalers. 
 
 He looked at me with a dull admiration in his slow gaze; 
 then, going to the rail and observing the boats were ready, this 
 formal, solemn mid-century reproduction of the famous muti- 
 neer, Christian, returned and said: 
 
 "Capt'n, we're ready to go." 
 
 "I'll bid you all good-by at the gangway," said I, and went 
 on to the quarter-deck. 
 
 The women crowded about the settlers, as I call them, and 
 stared at the sailors and girls as though they had been stran- 
 gers, just come over the side. The prevalent emotion was 
 wonder; the looks of most of the females expressed it. They 
 hardly spoke. The partners, on the other hand, waiting for 
 Brigstock and perhaps for me, chatted briskly with the seamen. 
 
 When Brigstock joined them they were twenty-six in all. 
 I could not view them without feeling a little affected. 
 Doubtless I refined upon their thoughts. There was nothing 
 in their faces, in the notes of their laughter and talk to infuse 
 a melancholy into my contemplation of what lay before them. 
 Then again, in fruit and fish there was abundance to subsist on, 
 though the island should remain unvisited for years. Still, 
 the association of shipboard life wrought in me. I could not 
 behold those people thus departing, thus exiling themselves, 
 my own countrymen and countrywomen, full of brave hopes 
 and sturdy resolves, intrepid as. any family that ever set sail 
 from the shores of our native country to extend our dominion 
 by perilous exploration and by labor hard, patient, and
 
 38 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 obscure; I say I could not view them without emotion, with- 
 out being moved for a little to a degree that had nearly 
 dimmed my eyes. 
 
 "Captain Morgan," said Brigstock, taking off his hat and 
 extending his hand, "farewell, and may God's eye be upon 
 yer, and upon all these people who have only you to look to, 
 after the Almighty, for protection and safety." 
 
 "Mr. Brigstock," I answered, "from the bottom of my 
 heart I wish you well. May your settlement prosper, and 
 may your name achieve the renown the heroic example you 
 have set your followers entitles you to." 
 
 I then shook hands with Miss Cobbs. This seemed to me 
 the only unreal passage in the whole prosaic piece. While I 
 looked at her I could not believe it possible that this highly 
 respectable person, with her sausage curls and prim attire, was 
 one, indeed the leader, of the women who were going ashore 
 to live with thirteen seamen, first under canvas, then in bam- 
 boo houses. With one after another of the settlers, male and 
 female, I shook hands. This was followed by some hand- 
 shaking between the people who were going, and a few, but a 
 few only, of the emigrants. The flourish of farewell being 
 ended, the women were handed into the boats by the men, 
 who followed them and then cast off; Brigstock steering the 
 longboat, and sour Harding the quarter-boat. 
 
 I ran on to the poop, and Kate came after me, and together 
 we stood looking. My girl sailors lined the rail, and a crowd 
 of women got on to the forecastle. I meant to watch the boats 
 vanish in the creek before trimming for Sydney. When they 
 had gone about a cable's length, all the people stood up and 
 cheered the ship loud and long; that large cry of farewell came 
 to the ear edged with the female voices in it. I flourished my 
 cap, and roared back a cheer, and Kate waved her hand, and 
 a few women forward flourished to the boats, but the greater 
 mass of us were mute as death, and deadly was the chill of 
 that silence upon the spirits, generous at the sight and warmed 
 by the huzzaing of those departing men and women. 
 
 "It is a spiteful sex! " I burst out. 
 
 "They hate Cobbs," said Kate. 
 
 "for such kitchen trollops to sneer!" I exclaimed, savage 
 with the silence of the women. "Cobbs or no Cobbs, there 
 goes the making of a great nation in those boats!" 
 
 She seemed to measure the island, then looked at me with a 
 smile. 
 
 In the boats they continued to strain their eyes at the ship. 
 The faces of the women, all turned our way, were white as
 
 THE START FOR SYDNEY. 309 
 
 paper. It was the one thrilling passage in their experiences; 
 the last sigh as it were in the death scene; the pause of the 
 gallows before the hangman draws his bolt ; the flash ere the 
 murderous missile strikes; a something soul-moving in the 
 instant of its doing. I could not shift my eyes from the boats; 
 they constrained me as by magic; and, when at last they van- 
 ished in the creek I gave a sigh as though I had been sobbing, 
 then came to myself on a sudden with desperate perception of 
 my great responsibilities. 
 
 Needless to say, I had long before, in these five days of 
 waiting off the island, explored the charts in the cabin and 
 settled upon the course to be steered; and I determined to 
 start by heading due south, till I should have struck the lati- 
 tude of 26 or 27; then heading due west I should have a 
 wide field of clear Pacific before me, nothing to trouble about 
 in the shape of land, providing I was not blown to the north- 
 ward, till we should have reached the longitude of 175. We 
 should then be within easy sail of Sydney. 
 
 The moment the boats had disappeared, and I had come to 
 myself, so to speak, I stepped from the rail and looking round 
 me I shouted: 
 
 "Now, girls, hurrah for Sydney! Let's get that main top- 
 sail swung, and away we go!" 
 
 "Hurrah for Sydney!" echoed Alice Perry, springing into 
 the air. 
 
 "Now's to show what we're made of!" cried Emmy 
 Reed. 
 
 "Brace round lively, sweethearts!" I bawled. 
 
 The girls, perfectly disciplined by this time as you'll sup- 
 pose, judging by the prodigious pains I had taken, fled with- 
 out the least disorder to the several braces; and in a moment 
 the poop was alive with bending and lifting figures, all pulling 
 as rhythmically together as a pendulum swings; and the wind 
 was gay with their girlish chanting of sailors' songs. 
 
 There were thirty of them ; not one had so far failed me. 
 Long since they had become as accustomed to their garb as I 
 to mine; all novelty had many weeks before passed out of thai 
 condition of their training; it was as commonplace and famil- 
 iar a detail of our everyday life as my shooting the sun, or the 
 getting of our meals. 
 
 We had soon trimmed sail, but the wind directly headed us, 
 and, fearful of reefs if I stood to the westward, I kept the ship 
 on the starboard tack, proposing a twenty-four hours' board 
 so if the wind held. It was about eleven o'clock when we 
 started; the sail we had hove-to under was the sail I carried,
 
 310 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 nothing above a main topgallant sail, and the mainsail was 
 furled. 
 
 When we had braced to the breeze, and the girls had coiled 
 down, I went to the break of the poop, and called the women 
 to assemble on the quarter-deck, and to my crew to gather 
 about me. Susannah Corbin was at the wheel, handling the 
 helm as artistically as any able seaman I ever sailed with. I 
 waited while the women collected, and now it was that I real- 
 ized the position I was in. I don't mean to say I had not all 
 along clearly grasped the significance of my scheme to carry 
 this ship to port with women only; all that it involved, 
 every possibility of successful, perilous, or tragic issue, I had 
 perceived and dwelt on over and over again; but at this 
 moment realization was rendered acute, in a sense before 
 impossible: first, by the absence of the seamen, then by our 
 being under way, by the sight of the crowds dependent upon 
 me, by the emptiness of, by the silence in, that forecastle 
 yonder. 
 
 The women assembled on the quarter-deck; my crew, as I 
 call them, ranged themselves on either hand, in divisions of 
 port and starboard watches, for long ago they had been thus 
 divided and regularly mustered. We were now, all told, 
 seventy-seven souls; that is, seventy-six women and one 
 man. 
 
 "I haven't called you together to make a speech," said I 
 after a pause. "We're bound to Sydney at last, and there's 
 not one of you but will do her dead best to help me to get 
 there. My duty is to arrange for the discipline of the ship. 
 I am captain, of course; my chief mate is Alice Perry, with 
 whom I associate Miss Kate Darnley; they will keep a lookout 
 together. My second mate is Miss Emmy Reed, with whom 
 I associate Charlotte Brown. My crew know their duties, 
 they are fifteen in each watch ; and, after the forecastle has 
 been cleaned and made fit for their reception, they will occupy 
 it, as being more convenient for quickly answering a call than 
 the 'tween decks. These arrangements, I hope, are to your 
 satisfaction?" 
 
 A murmur of assent arose from among my crew; the women 
 on the quarter-deck made no sign, perhaps holding that this 
 part of the discipline did not concern them. 
 
 "The seven who can steer will do so by rotation; Corbin 
 starts, and the helmswomen will arrange among themselves 
 as to how the succession shall run when two hours' trick is 
 up. And now," said I, leaning over the rail to address the 
 females below, "we shall want a cook and a cook's mate: call
 
 THE START FOR SYDNEY. 311 
 
 it two cooks. There are many of you perfectly qualified for 
 that situation. The two ladies who cook will have nothing 
 else to do. I call for volunteers." 
 
 Several hands were raised, and a number of women cried 
 out together. 
 
 "Two only," said I. 
 
 '"Taint an orfice to be jumped for," shouted Emma Marks. 
 "What's there to cook?" 
 
 "Time we got a meal fit to eat," cried a woman. 
 
 "Who can make pies and currant puddens?" yelled another. 
 "It's been salt pork and salt beef ever since "ome." 
 
 "Settle it among yourselves," said I; "we shall want our 
 dinner, and it's drawing on to twelve o'clock." 
 
 Kate, who stood in the crowd, proposed that those who 
 desired to be cooks should draw for the post; after much 
 wrangling it was agreed that two women, whose names I forget, 
 should take the galley work, and they went forward laughing 
 and highly pleased. 
 
 "I shall want a steward. Who'll wait upon me?" said I. 
 
 A general shout followed this. The post of steward seemed 
 even more coveted than that of cook. 
 
 "Let Miss Darnley wait on yer," called Emma Marks. 
 
 There was so much eagerness that I perceived it would be 
 hopeless to wait for the women to agree. To end the diffi- 
 culty, I fastened my eye upon Sarah Harvey, who, as you may 
 remember, was a short, very strong hunchback, with a fierce 
 squint, and coarse red hair ; of a countenance and shape as 
 though fashioned after a design by Hogarth; and, pointing to 
 her, I sung out: 
 
 "Miss Harvey, will you wait upon me in the cabin?" 
 
 She squinted with astonishment, suspecting a joke; the 
 vulgar-minded laughed, and an alley laugh it was! I put on 
 a stern face, and said: 
 
 "Harvey, will you or won't you wait upon me in the cabin?" 
 
 "If you are in earnest, I will, and gladly," she answered, 
 coloring. 
 
 "Then you're the steward. I'll tell you your duties by 
 and by." 
 
 I spoke peremptorily; and my manner and face silenced the 
 girls, some of whom might otherwise have diverted themselves 
 at Sarah Harvey's expense. 
 
 "Now, ladies," said I, "a situation's vacant by Miss Cobbs' 
 withdrawal. We must have a matron. We must appoint 
 some head who'll be responsible for the cleanliness of your 
 quarters, contrive that your meals are punctually served, act
 
 312 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 as referee in disputes. You recognize the necessity for such 
 a head?" 
 
 Many answered "Yes." 
 
 "Then," said I, "I leave it to you to choose the likeliest 
 person among you. Whoever is kind, and amiable, and popu- 
 lar, let her be your choice." 
 
 There were no more posts for the women to fill; all other 
 work would be mine. I told them I should be satisfied if they 
 chose a head by sundown, and then, thanking them for their 
 attendance, I called to Kate to come up and walk the deck on 
 a lookout with Perry, and went forward. 
 
 I looked into the galley; the two women were waiting for 
 provisions to cook. I put a few questions to them, and, having 
 satisfied myself that they understood the sea equipment of this 
 big emigrant caboose, I called Sarah Harvey, told off four of 
 the girls, and bade them accompany me ; and, with the assist- 
 ance of these five women, I sent forward out of the lazarette, 
 pantry, and harness cask, all the supplies necessary to provide 
 the women with a dinner. 
 
 The girls crowded round the galley to watch the two cooks 
 at work. As I passed on my way to the forecastle, I heard 
 one say: 
 
 "Soak a biscuit with currants it 'ud bake nicely." 
 
 And another: "Try your 'and at a pie; whether beef or 
 pork; mince it fine; mix with biscuit; the tinned meat '11 
 make gravy " I lost the rest. 
 
 I walked quickly into the forecastle, feeling uneasy when 
 the ship was out of my sight. This sea parlor was a large 
 interior, corresponding, as a structure, with the raised deck 
 aft. It was a gloomy cave, but dry and clean, and sweet 
 enough in smell ; the front of it was blocked by the great 
 windlass, and the shadow lay heavy under the break there; the 
 chain cables were bent, and the lengths of massive rusty links 
 arched serpent-like, sheer through the interior from the wind- 
 lass barrel to the hawsepipe. The forecastle was a little 
 square; the sunshine streamed through it, and lay in a flood 
 of light on the deck beneath. The sailors had made a clean 
 sweep; chests, bedding, clothes, and blankets everything 
 was gone. Nothing survived the Jacks' occupancy but a black 
 bowl of pipe in the midst of the sunshine, and an old sea 
 boot. 
 
 Two rows of bunks went on either hand into the eyes of the 
 ship; with these and the cabins to port and starboard outside, 
 intended for the use of the ship's bo'sun, sailmaker, and car- 
 penter, I calculated berthing room for twenty-two; which was
 
 THE START FOR SYDNEY. 313 
 
 all I needed, since of the thirty girls, fifteen turn and turn 
 about must be continuously up and dressed, ready for a call. 
 
 I am entering into these minute particulars at the risk of 
 fatiguing you, but this is a voyage memorable in tradition. I 
 have never yet told the story, and now that I am upon it the 
 whole seafaring world will be interested to learn how I managed. 
 
 My present anxiety was to settle the discipline of the ship, 
 that I might devote myself to the navigation of her. As I was 
 walking aft a number of women crossed the deck ; they were 
 among the most respectable of the people; one of them 
 explained. 
 
 ' 'We wish Miss Darnley would take the post of matron. 
 She's our choice, if she's willing." 
 
 I thought a minute, and then considered the notion good. 
 
 "She shall be the matron," said I; "but you must support 
 her authority. The pudding is a pretty gritty one with your 
 Emma Marks and others, and I don't want the job of biting 
 to prove tooth-breaking to Miss Darnley." 
 
 They all, in several forms of expression, promised to back 
 her up. I then went on the poop, where she was standing 
 beside Alice Perry. It startled me for a breath, though used 
 as I was to the sight even, and accustomed as my mind was to 
 the thought of it, to see that figure of a boy at the wheel; 
 other figures of boys standing about the poop, and that boyish 
 figure alongside Kate. And not that only, but to feel that I 
 was the only man in the ship! 
 
 Perry stood with her hand upon the main royal backstay, 
 looking to sea; she made a handsome sailorly lad ; had she 
 but cropped her hair, you'd have thought her the beau ideal of 
 a young English seaman, with her cloth cap on the back of 
 her head, her rough hair tossed upon her forehead, her eyes 
 fixed, as though she watched an object afar, the coarse beauty 
 of her profile showing clear-cut against the sky, her glowing 
 lips parted, her figure swaying on the long-drawn heave of the 
 plank. Kate might have been her sweetheart; it was the mas- 
 culine, vulgar beauty of the one that made her the manly figure 
 she looked; the other was all refinement, you saw the lady in 
 her the plainer for the face and bearing of her companion. 
 
 "Kate," said I. 
 
 She turned and came to me. 
 
 "They want you to be matron." 
 
 She made a face, and looked at the women on the main deck. 
 
 "Take the post, dear." 
 
 I had never called her that before. She colored, and stared, 
 and said: "They won't obey me."
 
 3M THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "The best of them will back you, and then there's my 
 authority." 
 
 "What shall I have to do?" 
 
 I ran over Hannah Cobbs' routine, dwelling strongly on 
 the necessity of the airing of the bedding, of keeping the 
 'tween decks well washed and sweet, and thoroughly ventilated. 
 
 "Think of sickness happening," said I, "of a fever break- 
 ing out. They're an illiterate, raw, slum-like lot ir the mass, 
 and need such a head as you." 
 
 After a short chat to this effect she consented, and left me 
 to arrange for the mess, and to see that the people got their 
 dinner. 
 
 "What's the sign of a change of weather?" said Alice Perry, 
 rolling up to me. There is a theatrical instinct and talent of 
 impersonation in all women, and this girl, when dressed as a 
 man, rolled in her walk as though she had used the sea all 
 her life. 
 
 "A ring round the moon, clouds to windward, twenty 
 things; but the sure sign's the barometer." 
 
 "I want to know what to look out for when I keep watch," 
 said she. 
 
 "Observe the ship's course; see that the girl at the wheel 
 holds her straight, or we shall be ashore. Keep awake. Be 
 careful of that at night. Miss Darnley's going to be matron; 
 I'll take her place, and be your associate in keeping watch." 
 
 She smiled, and said, "I'm still your chief mate, aint I?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "I mean to keep this," said she, swinging the silver whistle. 
 
 "So you shall," said I, and left her to see how Susannah 
 Corbin was doing at the wheel. 
 
 It was a fine, clear, brilliant day, a wonderful picture of 
 little gilt clouds in the air, rolling along with the wind in puffs, 
 as though some vast globe' of vapor had burst in orbs or bulbs; 
 I found the ship's course true to a hair. 
 
 "Well done," said I. "You're the girl to haul in the slack, 
 eh, Susannah? You're the sort for the homeward bounder's 
 tow rope." 
 
 "Whoy," she answered with a laugh, "what 'ud father ha' 
 thought if I couldn't steer a ship?" 
 
 I looked at the island. Already its features were sunk in 
 shadow, and it hung like a long blue cloud upon the sea. 
 Were the people there watching the gleaming shaft our canvas 
 made upon the ocean? Had any of them already repented of 
 their resolution? Why, thought I, I might figure them as pen- 
 sively gazing at our distant sail, a melancholy, regretful crowd
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 315 
 
 upon some hillside, when, in reality, they at this very moment 
 might be making a jolly picnic holiday of the hours, sitting in 
 a ring round a banquet of fruit and ship dainties, talking and 
 ogling, enjoying to the very heart of them the coolness of the 
 fragrant shade, and the beauty and color of the trees, and 
 wild plants, after their months of salt pork and 'tween decks; 
 looking forward with gay hearts to encamping for the night, 
 and to choosing on the morrow, some fairy scene of estate for 
 the building of houses and the digging of plantations. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 
 
 WE had run the island out of sight by four o'clock, at which 
 hour I was noticing, with some uneasiness, a windy appearance 
 in the sky northeast. The breeze still blew out of the south, 
 a pleasant sailing wind, but the canvas we were under was 
 half as much as we could have expanded, and when, with the 
 help of four of the girls, I hove the log a machine my crew 
 were perfectly acquainted with the use of I found the speed 
 six, when it might easily have been made nine. 
 
 About this hour a sail sprang up on the weather bow. I 
 fetched the glass, and found she was heading directly for us. 
 Anxiety was lying very heavy upon my spirits at this time. 
 The sight of that sail seemed almost like a heavenly injunction 
 to me to obtain the assistance of men to work the ship. Reso- 
 lution will swerve though it keeps the onward path; I own my 
 mind reeled to and fro while I looked at the distant sail. A 
 crowd of women were about the galley door, with Kate in the 
 thick of them, seeing, as I took it, that the girls' supper was 
 being got ready. 
 
 Alice Perry stood near me, her gaze fixed upon the approach- 
 ing craft. I stared at her a minute, and then called her. 
 
 "You're one of the most sensible of all my girls," said I. 
 "Give me your opinion." 
 
 "About what?" she answered, with a sudden brisk expres- 
 sion in her face; for now, when I had a word of kindness, 
 sympathy, or confidence for this girl, she would color and 
 glow in cheeks and eyes, as though every pulse in her quick- 
 ened its beat. 
 
 "Will you girls stick to your work?" 
 
 "Why shouldn't we?" she said. "It's light and jolly 
 enough, and it aint going to last long."
 
 316 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "Yonder comes a ship; a signal might bring two or three 
 hands in her to help us along. What do you think?" 
 
 "What do I think?" she cried. "Why, that you don't 
 trust us." 
 
 "I trust you all; but have you strength and will to hold 
 out? There's a month there may be six weeks before us." 
 
 "Have we failed you once?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Look at little Ellen Clark there at the wheel! Is there 
 e'er a man in that ship out there a-going to do better? Is it 
 that we haven't the spirit? Then we Aave, one and all! 
 Some may lose it by and by, but there's others with plenty of 
 courage, ready to take their places. Oh, capt'n, why, what's 
 makin' your heart low all of a sudden like this?" 
 
 She fixed her fiery eyes on me, and watched steadily. It 
 was as though the strange, wild, coarse, handsome creature 
 sought to stare her own burning spirit and temper out of her 
 into me. I let her look, meeting her full, then smiled, but as 
 I smiled she frowned, till she looked haggishly fierce and 
 malevolent. 
 
 "It's been understood from the beginning," she cried, "that 
 us girls of your crew are to sail the ship to Sydney." 
 
 I felt a little afraid of her. 
 
 "S'help me God!" she exclaimed, "if I had your larnin' 
 'bout the sun and things, I'd take the ship off your 'ands, and 
 save yer all the trouble. We don't want no men 'ere. We've 
 had enough of that. If e'er a one comes, I and the rest will 
 give up and I don't know about that either," she cried out, 
 in a voice that was beginning to attract the attention of the 
 women within earshot. "What '11 ha' bin the good of us pull- 
 ing and hauling, learnin' to steer, running up them ladders, if 
 we're to give up when everything's settled, and all's goin' along 
 sweetly nice, because, being a gentleman, you can't put your 
 trust in pore girls of our class. If men are to come, fired if 
 some of us don't make it too 'ot f or them to be of use to yer." 
 
 I put on a stern face, not choosing her to suppose I could 
 endure such talk and airs; but secretly I was never better 
 pleased with anything than the spirit she was now showing. 
 I feigned to look sullenly, as though I was offended, and 
 then said: 
 
 "Well, I hope all the rest of the girls will prove as heroic as 
 you. I don't like your speech, but I love your heart;" and, 
 softening my eyes, I gave her a faint smile, that she might see 
 how it stood between us, and walked away. 
 
 The ship was abreast of us in an hour ; the breeze had
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 3*7 
 
 freshened out of the south, and the heel of our vessel was lift- 
 ing the leeward water yellow as cream to the chain-plate bolts, 
 and spinning it in a giddy dazzle of eddies off the quarters 
 into a fan-shaped wake, which glanced with the glare of snow 
 astern, where the blue sea was brokenly tumbling abreast of 
 the moist red face of the sinking sun. 
 
 The stranger was a big full-rigged ship, light as a cask, with 
 painted ports, and half her own height of green sheathing 
 showing. The sallow color of the Spaniard flew at her peak. 
 She was probably from around the Horn, for the Philippines, 
 on a true Jack Spaniard course for those islands. My girls 
 had never been taught to handle the signal halliards, and I 
 made no sign. I stood close beside the helm, keeping an 
 anxious eye upon the little spectacled woman Clark, ready to 
 instantly grasp the wheel, if the need arose. 
 
 The two ships passed within easy speaking distance; we 
 could distinguish the faces of the people on board her. A 
 whole crowd of men filled her forecastle, and a number of 
 people of both sexes surveyed us from the poop. Doubtless 
 they had no difficulty in guessing what we were: the heaps of 
 women on our decks would explain our character. But what 
 was an English female emigrant ship doing up in these parts? 
 And Sancta Maria purissima ! who the dickens were all those 
 boys, staring along the line of the poop rail? 
 
 She yawed just before she came abreast, as though she 
 would close us to see better. A man sprang into the mizzen 
 rigging, and yelled out; I silently flourished my hand. She 
 was squat, wall-sided, a rude, square-ended wagon, with stump 
 topgallant masts; but the sun cast a splendor upon her, and 
 she went away clothed in beauty not her own. 
 
 I had snatched a good view of the fellows on her forecastle, 
 and observed them to be of a hairy, chocolate-colored type, 
 some of them negroes; many wore the sugar-loaf hat, and sev- 
 eral were hardly clothed in shirt and breeches. The sight of 
 them surprisingly reconciled me to my resolution; as though 
 that ship had been hove up to strengthen rather than stagger 
 my scheme. All my old passion of dislike to the idea of 
 loosing a strange crew of men among the girls, came upon me 
 afresh. I figured half a score of those Spaniards in my fore- 
 castle; I witnessed the thirsty roll of their eyes over the 
 women; I imaged them coming together in a gang, just down 
 there, in the shadow of the break of the forecastle, making 
 their whispers tragically significant by side looks aft, and a 
 frequent caress of the sheath knife strapped to their hips; I 
 thought of myself unarmed alone.
 
 318 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "No, by thunder, Clark," cried I to the astonished girl at 
 the wheel; "Perry's right. We'll 'keep .all on' as we are!" 
 
 When the Spanish vessel had diminished into a small square 
 of faint crimson light right astern, with the dark sea ridging 
 between, and the line of the horizon faint and doubtful as mist 
 in the west, where the sky was barred with streaks, like gashes 
 of rusty, blood-red light, the dark scud out of the south pour- 
 ing through the dying radiance like so much smoke, tht weight 
 went out of the wind on a sudden in a dead drop; and aloft 
 the collapsed and startled sails beat out the thunder of twenty 
 small guns, while in that strange pause the briskness left the 
 surge, and it ran softly, with a sulky lift of sea to right and 
 left, that made one think of a sullen pout of preparation for a 
 whipping. 
 
 I guessed what was to come, but whence I knew not, till a 
 turn in the flight of the scud overhead gave me the news. It 
 was not yet eight o'clock; Clark was still at the wheel. 
 
 "Keep your helm as it is!" I cried to her; and shouted 
 with all my lungs for Perry, Lewis, Brown, Corbin any one 
 of them to lay aft to the lee wheel. 
 
 A girl came rushing up the poop ladder with all her might; 
 it was brave little Susannah Corbin of Deal. I sprang on to 
 the main deck to let go the topgallant halliards, bellowing like 
 a bull to the girls to man the starboard braces and square the 
 yards. 
 
 This was testing them ! And splendidly the sweethearts 
 responded! Many were in the forecastle when my cry 
 sounded; Emmy Reed and Charlotte Brown as joint second 
 mates were on the poop, when I jumped to the topgallant 
 halliards; save these, and Clark at the wheel, not five of the 
 girls were on deck when I shouted for a second hand to the 
 wheel. But scarcely were the echoes of my voice hushed, 
 when all the girls were running out of the forecastle. I 
 shouted instructions as they came; one gang fled to the fore, 
 another to the after braces, and ere the wind hit us I had 
 trimmed sail to the flight of the scud, with the girls standing 
 quiet and breathing hard at the braces, ready for further haul- 
 ing in a moment. 
 
 It was a shift of wind neither sudden, nor immediately vio- 
 lent, into the northeast, and when the first slap of it was in 
 our canvas I shifted the helm for a dead on-end run, satisfied 
 to hold a southwest course till noon next day. Before a 
 couple of hours had passed, it had hardened from a royal 
 breeze into a blow that must have double reefed the topsails of 
 a ship on a bowline. But we were rolling dead before it, with
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 319 
 
 our topgallant yard hoisted afresh, and it was inexpressibly 
 comforting to think, not only that this wind was rushing us 
 onward toward Sydney, at ten or eleven knots in the hour, but 
 that it would need to breeze up as hard again to reduce me to 
 the only reefing shift it had ever been in my power to contem- 
 plate; I mean lowering the topsail yards on to the caps, hauling 
 out the reef tackles, and taking my chance of the rest. 
 
 My chief anxiety was land or shoals some low, ragged line 
 of island leaping right ahead into the windy moonshine, or, 
 worse still, a little tract of boiling reef, invisible till right 
 under the jib boom end. There was a good binocular glass in 
 the captain's berth, and again and again I took it on to the 
 forecastle, and stared into the confused blending of moonshine 
 and flying vapor and haze of wind till my eyes reeled and 
 my brain was sick. 
 
 Another huge anxiety of mine, too, on this, our first night 
 of windy weather, was the helm; it takes a practiced hand to 
 steer a running ship; we had a following sea now, and the 
 ship's head fell off and came to as the surge underran her, 
 rolling in snow to the bows, and racing aft again in shattered 
 Avhite water, like an avalanche down a mountain steep. But, 
 credit me or not as you will, the girls, as they replaced one 
 another at the helm in couples Perry and Brown, then Lewis 
 and Hale, then Clark and Barker, then Corbin and Perry 
 again for an hour's spell at a time was as long as their 
 strength was equal to these spirited, heroic, fearless creat- 
 ures, dressed as men, and acting like men, revolved the spokes 
 with a judgment that held me dumb, meeting her, easing her, 
 keeping her nose at the mean of the swing of the points at the 
 lubbers' mark, with such coolness and skill and alertness, 
 there is no measure for my admiration while I recall them. 
 
 At nine o'clock I sent for Kate, and told her to get all the 
 women below out of the way of my girls, who might be easily 
 thrown into confusion in the darkness should the decks be 
 crowded. The women went to their quarters very obediently; 
 the sudden wild weather frightened them; they were subdued 
 and rendered the more tractable, too, by a sort of wondering 
 admiration at the behavior of the girls of my crew. Shortly 
 before ten, Kate reported that all was right in the 'tween 
 decks. As Sarah Harvey had turned in, I asked Kate to get 
 some wine out of the pantry, and fill the swing trays with 
 refreshment for my crew during the night; this she did, also 
 going into the forecastle to see that all was safe with the lamp ; 
 I then told her to go below to bed, and we bade each other 
 good-night.
 
 320 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 It frequently rained in brief black squalls, which burst in 
 guns over the quarter, and flashed in hissing shrieks into our 
 whole topsails, straining them and the topgallant sail till they 
 roared, and then the ship piled the water under her bows as 
 high as the spritsail yard. But these spasms of weather were 
 soon over; the moon shone green and clear after ten, shearing 
 through the scud, which she whitened, till the heavens round 
 about her seemed filled with flying steam. 
 
 I kept the starboard watch of girls on deck ; the others I 
 sent into the forecastle for rest and shelter. Even of those 
 who remained, two-thirds I dispatched into the cuddy, there 
 to sit and refresh themselves. At times, in some moon-bright 
 interval, when the wind swept steadily and when all the ship 
 needed was an amidship helm, with a keen eye upon the 
 illuminated compass card and an occasional play of spoke to 
 hold the mean of the oscillation true, I'd step below to say a 
 cheery word to the women and keep them awake and see to 
 them. The lamp burned brightly; the cuddy looked hospita- 
 ble and brilliant; it was strange to see eight or ten girls, dressed 
 as men, sitting at the table, munching biscuit and beef and 
 drinking the thin red wine, of which Kate had put three or 
 four bottles on the swing trays. 
 
 Once, on looking into the cuddy, I found Mary Barker 
 leaning against the side asleep, with her head on Alice Perry's 
 shoulder. A sudden movement of Perry awoke her; she 
 started, and began to talk betwixt dreaming and waking: 
 
 "All right; I'm awake. Has the cook gone downstairs?" 
 
 A shriek of laughter awoke her thoroughly. 
 
 "Lor!" she cried, "I thought I was at Mrs. Perkins'!" 
 
 "It'll be midnight soon, and then you'll sleep till four," 
 said I. 
 
 "We'll stop awake all night if you wish us to, " said one 
 of the girls. 
 
 "It's better than nursing, anyway," said another. "I'd 
 rather be a sailor than a sick nurse." 
 
 "Or sleep with a baby," said one of them. 
 
 "Capt'n," cried Alice, "you're looking hollow; why don't 
 yer sleep? I'll take any oath you like to call you, if you want 
 it." I shook my head and returned on deck. 
 
 There was to be no rest for me that night. At twelve the 
 girls who lay in the forecastle came out, and the others who 
 had been on the watch went to their bunks, lying down in 
 their clothes. Most of these women of the port watch I sent 
 into the cuddy for shelter and refreshments, as in the case of 
 the others. In fact, I kept but two on deck (besides the girls
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 321 
 
 at the wheel), and those I contrived to shelter by seating 
 them in the companionway, with the hood up and one 
 door shut. 
 
 Throughout the hours I stood beside the wheel, seldom 
 leaving it lest the nerves or muscles of the two plucky creat- 
 ures who steered should fail them; when, of course, the ship 
 might broach to, with a chance of being wrecked to her lower 
 masts or foundering. A high sea chased us, but it was a fol- 
 lowing sea, and we swung over it comfortably, nothing damp 
 from "the eyes" to the taffrail but the wet of the rain, and a 
 twelve-knot wake pouring off astern, lighting up the darkness 
 there when a squall blackened the moon. And all the while I 
 was thanking my good angel the wind blew as it did, for had 
 it headed us we must have sagged away to leeward, under 
 bladders of topsails, and flogging jibs and staysails; there 
 would have been no virtue in reef tackles as reef -points that 
 night on a wind, but for the gale chasing us the morning light 
 would have disclosed aloft but little more than boltropes and 
 rags. 
 
 In those long hours, while watching the ship, I'd think of 
 the Brigstock party, and wonder how they were managing. 
 There was wind enough to blow away a stronger habitation 
 than a tent. As to their notion of my chances if ever they 
 gave us a thought they were sailors, and would know there 
 was nothing in such a blow as this to hurt a running ship, 
 under such canvas as our vessel carried when they left her. 
 
 At daybreak the wind slackened. While the dawn was 
 brightening astern I saw land on the starboard bow, and rushed 
 below for the chart and telescope. I had a clear conception 
 of the ship's place, and was astonished and alarmed on looking 
 at the chart to find that no land was marked where this was. 
 As we steered we should be giving the island a wide enough 
 berth, but were there sunken reefs in the neighborhood? I 
 overhung the rail, and gazed with passionate anxiety ahead. 
 The seas were arching everywhere in foam, but I nowhere 
 caught any appearance of the boiling of water upon a shoal. 
 I looked at the island through the glass, and saw some huts 
 covered with reeds, and about ten or fifteen black figures run- 
 ning along the shore. The land was covered with bushes and 
 cocoanut trees, and the windward bit of coast was magnificent 
 with the bursting of the seas upon it; the white water leaped 
 up in mountains fifty feet high, and the flash of the sun made 
 a huge glorious jewel of each volcanic discharge. 
 
 The land slipped by at the rate of ten miles an hour, and 
 in half that time was gone behind the ridges; but, until it van- 
 
 I
 
 322 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 ished, my heart was in my throat, for never could I tell but 
 that, in the next instant, there would be the thrilling shock 
 of arrest. 
 
 All this day it blew a fresh breeze; sparkling green hills of 
 water chased and helped us along; in twenty-four hours we 
 made over 230 miles of westing. In the afternoon I saw the 
 shadow of land on the starboard beam, and just before sun- 
 down we passed an island, but it was on the chart, and I was 
 prepared for it. I brought the ship's glass to bear, and dis- 
 tinguished a few huts, a row of canoes on the white foreshore, 
 and some red and white dogs, with one native only, close 
 beside them, waving. 
 
 I contrived, in snatches during the day, to get as much sleep 
 as would enable me to keep the deck all night. Shortly after 
 sundown the wind scanted, the sea flattened, the vapor floated 
 off the face of the heavens, and we sailed in the midst of as fair 
 a night as had ever darkened upon us since we entered these 
 seas. Many of the women, when the dusk fell, assembled round 
 the main hatch, and sang songs and hymns. I walked the deck 
 with Kate for an hour, in high spirits and full of confidence. 
 The test of the preceding night had been as severe as any our 
 run to Sydney was likely to impose upon the girls, and they 
 had responded nobly. 
 
 "You said it might be done!" I exclaimed, "but I never 
 hoped it would be so well done." 
 
 "Almost ever since you first took charge of this ship you 
 have been drilling them," said Kate. 
 
 "Yes, there's no difficulty in learning the names of the 
 ropes, and you can teach monkeys to pull and haul. But the 
 wheel ! Who'd dream that girls, in two months, should get 
 the art of the helm as my seven have it? Look how finely 
 that woman poses herself at the spokes," said I, and we 
 paused to look at the figure at the wheel. 
 
 The boyish outline was clear against the stars ; in the sheen 
 of the binnacle lamp, her white face sank and rose as she car- 
 ried her eyes from the card to the canvas. I watched a star at 
 the crossjack yardarm, and marked the pendulum accuracy of 
 its motions there as it swung to the heave of the ship, and its 
 oscillation was true to a hair. 
 
 "No old seaman could keep a vessel steadier to it," said I; 
 "who's the girl?" 
 
 We walked aft; it was Alice Perry. 
 
 "Hard lines that the chief mate of a ship should have to 
 steer her," said I, laughing. "I'm afraid I've spoiled 
 you."
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 323 
 
 "Have you?" she answered. 
 
 "You'll not take to service after this?" 
 
 "P'raps not," she replied. 
 
 "You'll go dressed as a man through life, and some day 
 command a ship," said Kate. 
 
 The girl strained her eyes through the sheen, but made no 
 answer. 
 
 Five or six of the "crew" were walking about the poop. 
 One of them suddenly cried out: 'What's that?" 
 
 I said: "What do you see?" 
 
 She answered, "Isn't that a fire there?" 
 
 "It's the moon rising," exclaimed Kate. 
 
 I took the glass from the skylight, and resolved the little 
 globe-shaped glow upon the horizon into a small tongue of 
 flame, and after I had looked a minute I distinguished the 
 black dye of land. It was in the north; a few minutes later a 
 dim purple blush upon the horizon, over the starboard quar- 
 ter, reddened into a scar of moon. The fragment of orb, 
 bloated, distorted, soared off the rim of the sea; there was, at 
 this time, a great hush upon the ship; the women on the main 
 deck, the girls aft, all of us were silent, watching the moon 
 rise or the distant native fire. 
 
 It was then there sounded, in the air overhead, such another 
 long-drawn peculiar moaning noise as had run like a sound of 
 lamentation through the Atlantic hush on that night which 
 preceded the suicide of Mary Lonney, and my being sent 
 adrift by Brigstock. Doubtless it proceeded from some invis- 
 ible concourse of wild fowl winging to an island; it's a sign 
 that an island is uninhabited when you see many birds hover- 
 ing over it; a number of uninhabited islands there were in 
 those days hereabouts, and that strange, melancholy cry echo- 
 ing through the silent wind over our trucks was undoubtedly 
 the piping of some migratory procession of seafowl traveling 
 by night for a reason known to themselves. 
 
 The sound was miserably dismal, the girls on the poop, 
 while listening to it, crowded together as though terrified; and 
 we all stared upward, but nothing was to be seen there save a 
 beautiful field of stars. 
 
 "Hollo!" cried I. "Where's the ship going to?" 
 
 I looked round and sprang to the wheel. Alice Perry had 
 fallen on her knees beside it, and with her face buried in her 
 hands was sobbing hysterically. I brought the ship to her 
 course, while Kate and a dozen others gathered around that 
 strange, kneeling, weeping, boyish figure. 
 
 "What is it, dear?" cried one.
 
 324 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "What's the matter with her?" exclaimed another in a 
 voice of awe. 
 
 Kate knelt beside the sobbing girl, and soothingly addressed 
 and caressed her; but she held her face obstinately buried and 
 made no reply, only that she went on crying as though her 
 heart was breaking. Then all at once springing to her feet, 
 she exclaimed: 
 
 "It's nothing. It's all right now. Let me be, I tell yer! 
 Leave me alone, will yer; I want air!" and she went to the 
 rail and overhung it. 
 
 The island with the native signal fire burning was doubtless 
 Elizabeth Island; as I hoped there might be nothing to fear in 
 the way of shoals this side the Four Crowns, which were a 
 day's sail ahead, I altered the course to the southward by a 
 point and a half, then called to Corbin and delivered the wheel 
 up to her. Kate wanted to talk to me about the singular 
 wailing noise up in the air; it was time, however, for the 
 women to go below, and I asked her to see to it, and report 
 the lights safe, and tell the women that the sound was made 
 by birds and not by ghosts, as I guessed many of them imagined. 
 
 "We heard the same noise that night Mary Lonney cut her 
 throat," said Kate as she was going. "I hope it '11 be no ill- 
 omen this time." 
 
 Perry stood alone at the rail right aft on the quarter; the 
 hearty little Deal girl grasped the wheel; others of the women 
 crew stood about the deck staring at the signal fire, and talk- 
 ing about the sighing noise that had passed through the air. 
 It was the influence of that noise still acting upon my nerves 
 which made me find the ship a solemn visionary picture at this 
 time, as though she had gathered from the starshine and the 
 dusk and the distorted corner of moon astern, some quality of 
 mystery which carried her out of nature. The moon made no 
 light as yet, and the vessel swam in shadow; she lifted and fell 
 upon the long black heave of the sea, her canvas pulling 
 steadily, and a little curl of dim fire shone under either bow. 
 The point of light, sparkling upon the low, inky dye of land, 
 made a romantic wonder and even horror of the gloom there, 
 with its suggestion of the savage cannibal spirit, and midnight 
 rites and orgies without a name. 
 
 "What's the matter with you, Alice?" said I, going to her 
 side and putting my hand upon her shoulder. 
 
 She made no answer. 
 
 "Did that strange noise overhead just now scare you?" 
 
 "No," she replied quickly. "Can't people wish themselves 
 dead without being interfered with?"
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 325 
 
 "Why, my brave little woman, what's raised that ugly 
 desire?" 
 
 "I wish I'd never been born," she exclaimed. 
 
 "So do most of us. You're hysterical. Come into the 
 cuddy, and I'll give you a little brandy and water." 
 
 "I don't want anything. Isn't it beastly hard upon a girl 
 that she should haw feelin's, and not know words to speak 
 'em with? If Miss Darnley had my thoughts she'd make her- 
 self sweet to you with her language. She's a lady, and her 
 father was a parson. Mine was a baker, which died of drink 
 and left me to the parish. Why should there be such a differ- 
 ence? Them stars are pretty much alike; some are brighter 
 than t'others that's only 'cause they're nearer; they all shine; 
 but it aint so with people. Don't I know 'ow you're laughin' 
 in your 'art at me when you hear me talk, though your breedin' 
 keeps your face calm." 
 
 "Don't be a fool. I admire and respect you, so does Miss 
 Darnley. All must who know you. Nature has made you a 
 lady, and you're grumbling because she hasn't acted school- 
 mistress as well as mother." 
 
 "Don't talk rubbidge. A baker's brat a lady!" 
 
 Her eyes glowed in the starlight, as they stared at me in her 
 white face, under the shaggy heap of hair upon her brow. She 
 suddenly softened her voice, and said, "I'm sorry I let go the 
 wheel. Yer angry with me for that." 
 
 "I could be angry with you for nothing but temper and 1 
 silliness. To listen to you, who have the heart of a heroine, 
 with a finer spirit than ever I've met with in your own sex to 
 listen to you, of them all on board, talking twaddle! Come 
 below. I'll give you a small glass of brandy. Then turn 
 in." 
 
 She eyed me steadfastly while I spoke. 
 
 "I suppose," said she, 'if ever we gets to Australia you'll 
 stop there a little, and then go 'ome?" 
 
 "Why, yes, I hope to go home." 
 
 "Shall you marry Miss Darnley there, or take her 'ome 
 single?" 
 
 "Never you mind," said I, laughing and looking round 
 toward the wheel, for Corbin was not out of earshot, though 
 she was, perhaps, too occupied by her duty to hear us. 
 
 " 'Ow long have you known her before you met her here?" 
 
 "No chief mate is permitted to cross-examine his captain in 
 this fashion," said I; then fearing if I made her sulky she'd 
 breed trouble among the others, I said, "I'm grateful to you, 
 and as fond as I ought to be. They shall make a, lady of you
 
 326 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 in Sydney. What should I have done without you?" and I 
 took her hand. 
 
 She snatched it from me with a shudder, buried her face, 
 then went forward. 
 
 Soon after she was gone I heard a faint distant hallooing out 
 upon the sea; it sounded as though it came from midway the 
 ship and the low black shadow of island with the spaikle upon 
 it ; it was nearer however than that, as I had afterward reason 
 to suppose. 
 
 I pointed the glass at the place where the hallooing seemed 
 to sound, imagining that some small colonial trader was there, 
 but seeing nothing I concluded the shouts came from a canoe. 
 The idea of a swarm of savages drawing within arrow shot 
 fifty or a hundred of them for all I could tell, so thick was the 
 dusk upon the face of the water, would have frightened me 
 horribly but for our rate of going; I looked over the side and 
 calculated in the passage of the stars of seafire a full six, and I 
 guessed that at that, if ever a chase was entered on we'd soon 
 be alone again. 
 
 Three times I heard that distant faint hallooing. Corbin 
 asked what it was; none of the others about the decks seemed 
 to heed it. 
 
 Kate arrived, and said all was right in the 'tween decks. 
 
 "Have you looked into the forecastle?" 
 
 "No," she answered. 
 
 "Alice Perry's been talking very queerly; she's gone for- 
 ward with her eyes on fire and a hand of ice. She is ill, or 
 going to be. Step forward, will you, dear, and tell me how 
 she does? She is a valuable hand, worth cherishing." 
 
 She went away without a word. Her silence was like a 
 sulky look. 
 
 I stepped to the rail, and stared at the water in the direction 
 whence the hallooing had come. In about a quarter of an hour 
 Kate returned. She told me that Alice Perry was lying down, 
 and seemed well. 
 
 "She asked me," said she, "to beg you to forgive her for 
 speaking rudely." 
 
 "Chaw! a poor servant girl !" said I. 
 
 We bade each other good-night, and she went to her 
 quarters. 
 
 The moon was now glowing with some power; the island 
 had veered on to our quarter, and was just under the moon, 
 like a little dusky cloud, with a faint sheet of greenish radi- 
 ance trembling under it. I noticed a tiny black spot in the 
 midst of that dim luster, and on pointing my telescope saw it
 
 A SECOND SUICIDE. 3 2 7 
 
 was a canoe; it seemed motionless while I watched, and pres- 
 ently the passage of our ship swept it into the shadow and I 
 lost it. 
 
 I replaced Corbin at the wheel by Barker, and told two of 
 the women to keep a bright lookout, while I went on to the 
 forecastle to take a view of the sea ahead. Nothing was to be 
 seen from either bow. I let my naked sight sink into the 
 obscurity, then swept with the telescope (over and over again 
 at night at sea the telescope has found me objects I had missed 
 with the binocular glass). All was wide sea, darkling to the 
 stars. 
 
 The scuttle, as the forecastle hatch is called, lay open; I 
 had no thought of prying into the privacy of the girls down 
 there, but, imagining that the lamp was making too strong a 
 light, I stopped and peered into the hatch, and saw Alice 
 Perry seated on the deck writing on the flyleaf of a book, 
 with the forecastle lamp beside her. This was highly improper 
 and dangerous; but as I did not wish to provoke her tongue 
 after what had already passed, I went aft quickly and told one of 
 the girls to run forward and hook the lamp to its lanyard again. 
 
 "If Perry resists," said I, "come to me." 
 
 When the girl returned, she told me she found the lamp 
 hanging under the beam as usual, and Perry getting into her 
 bunk. 
 
 "All right," said I, and went aft, musing on the picture of 
 Perry seated on the deck, and wondering what on earth she 
 had written. It was news, indeed, to discover that the girl 
 could even read. There was a grating over the tiller, and I 
 got upon it to sit and smoke and doze. I was close to the 
 wheel, and needed but to stretch my neck to see the compass 
 card. I was awakened from a short nap by Marshall coming 
 to relieve the helm. I talked with her a while, took a turn, 
 smiled at the sight of three of my crew sound asleep on the 
 skylight, and two of them nodding with their backs against 
 the companion, then -returned to the grating and smoked and 
 meditated, with an occasional spell of forty winks between 
 whiles as before. 
 
 I had borrowed a watch from one of the women, and look- 
 ing at it by and by found it was midnight. I called out at the 
 top of my voice that it was eight bells; the sleepers awoke, 
 half the watch came out of the cuddy, and the whole wearied 
 lot of them went forward. After a bit three or four girls of 
 the other watch came on to the poop. One of them was Flo' 
 Lewis, who, while approaching the wheel, stooped and peered, 
 and exclaimed:
 
 328 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "Isn't Perry here?" 
 
 "No," I answered, going to her. "Marshall's at the 
 wheel." 
 
 "Then where's Perry, captain?" said Lewis. 
 
 "Isn't she in the forecastle?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 I walked to the break of the poop and called for Alice 
 Perry. The name was caught up, and shrilly repeated by 
 some girls on the main deck. I said to someone who stood 
 near: 
 
 "Run below and tell Miss Darnley that Perry's missing, 
 and ask her to search the 'tween decks." 
 
 I then went forward slowly, looking to right and left of me, 
 for the girl had a fierce spirit, and I couldn't guess what hellish 
 intention might be covered by this hiding of herself. I peered 
 warily and eagerly into the darkness about the foremast and 
 galley till I came to the forecastle, where I halted and asked 
 permission to enter. A number of voices called to me to 
 come in. 
 
 Thirteen or fourteen young women, looking for all the world 
 like stout, well-grown boys in their clothes, were here, a few 
 sitting in their bunks, most of them standing. They were 
 talking about Alice Perry. 
 
 "What's become of the girl?" said I. "Are you sure she's 
 not in her bed hidden under a blanket?" 
 
 "That's where she sleeps," said one of the women, pointing 
 to a bunk in the fore part of the interior. "I take turn and 
 turn with her in that shelf. Her coat's there." 
 
 "Her coat!" I walked to the bunk and picked up the gar- 
 ment, and saw a piece of paper pinned to the sleeve. I 
 brought it to the light, and read, faintly penciled in an extra- 
 ordinary, unformed handwriting, these words: 
 
 I kil myself for ef I dont I shall kil K. D. let C.M. gess what for I 
 keeps my own Secrait and carries my poor soul before Gord pure. 
 
 A. P. 
 
 "She's committed suicide!" I said. 
 
 "There now!" shrieked a girl. "I told yer that noise 
 meant the death of one of us." 
 
 I walked out and the women followed me, silent with hor- 
 ror. I had scarcely gained the poop when Kate joined me. 
 
 "Alice Perry is not in our quarters," she said. 
 
 I took her to the binnacle and gave her the paper to read 
 by the lamplight there, and left her while I thoroughly 
 searched the ship.
 
 / NEWSPAPER CUTTING. 329 
 
 I called some of the girls to me, and we explored every nook 
 and corner of the cuddy and steerage; I caused the 'tween 
 decks to be searched afresh. I overhauled the forecastle 
 again, looked into the galley, ran aloft, fancying she might be 
 hiding in the tops or crosstrees. Then, knowing quite surely 
 she was not in the ship, I realized what had happened, and 
 how; she had crept through the hatch out of the forecastle, 
 and so got into the head of the ship, and dropped silently 
 overboard ! 
 
 Could nothing be done? It might have happened an hour 
 before our discovery of it ! The ship's speed was six knots; 
 the women knew nothing about lowering and handling a boat. 
 Had she taken the plunge but five minutes before we missed 
 her, still there would have been no more chance of rescuing 
 her, though she floated alive within the ship's own length, 
 than of putting life into her body had we picked her up dead. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 A NEWSPAPER CUTTING, AND THE STORY PROCEEDS. 
 
 "THE emigrant ship Earl of Leicester arrived at this port 
 early yesterday morning. She left the Thames with ninety 
 unmarried female emigrants at the close of March last. When 
 she had reached a few degrees south of the equator she was 
 struck by lightning, which killed the surgeon (Rolt), blinded 
 the captain (Halcrow), and in some manner so injured the 
 chief officer, Mr. Jonathan Billing, as to affect his brain, and 
 shortly after the disaster the unfortunate gentleman threw 
 himself overboard and perished. 
 
 "Captain Halcrow was, at his own request, transferred to a 
 homeward-bound ship. Among those who went in the boat 
 with him were Mr. Jeremy Latto, the second mate, and James 
 Cox, the boatswain. A heavy squall separated the vessels; 
 dark, tempestuous weather followed, and the female emigrants 
 found themselves adrift, in company with a diminished crew 
 of sailors and without a navigator! 
 
 "The ship was in this helpless state for ten days, in which 
 time the crew, having plenty of leisure for thought, plotted 
 with the ship's carpenter, Brigstock, to settle an island in the 
 South Pacific. They chose twelve (afterward thirteen) 
 women from among the emigrants. The girls, it is said, read- 
 ily consented to become their wives. Many were jealous
 
 33 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 because they were not chosen. Of such is the nature of the 
 female domestic. 
 
 "The most extraordinary part remains. Since the crew 
 could not manage to reach the Pacific without a navigator, 
 they determined to steal one. A bark named the Caroline, of 
 four hundred tons, hove in sight. All the female emigrants 
 were ordered below, the hatches closed, and a signal of dis- 
 tress hoisted. The bark sent her mate, Mr. Charles Morgan, 
 to see what was wrong; he was conducted into the cabin, 
 locked up, and the crew then sailed away with him. Finding 
 himself helpless in the sailors' hands, and having already 
 undergone an even wilder and more terrible experience, so 
 that he felt careless as to what new adventure he embarked 
 on providing it was honest, Mr. Morgan consented to navi- 
 gate the ship to an island. 
 
 "Soon after he took command, he trained a number of the 
 women as sailors. He foresaw that when the crew left the 
 vessel she would require fresh hands ; he was determined to 
 take no risks of South Sea rowdyism and ruffianism into his 
 forecastle, with a number of women in the ship, a valuable, or 
 at least a useful cargo in the hold, and himself the only officer 
 on board. They rounded the Horn in June, and fell in with 
 an island that suited them in the middle of July. Brigstock 
 and his party went ashore, carrying with them about fifty tons 
 of the Earl of Leicester's cargo. The situation of the place 
 will not be got from Mr. Morgan; an oath of secrecy was 
 imposed upon him by Brigstock and the crew in the presence 
 of the women, and though it is true that 
 
 Vows made in pain, ease will recant 
 As violent and void ; 
 
 yet Mr. Morgan shows a proper sense of honor and of the 
 value of an oath by declining to supply any clew to the where- 
 abouts of Brigstock's settlement. The women have been 
 questioned, but their descriptions are imperfect and convey, 
 no ideas upon which a theory of the island's situation can be 
 based. They speak of it as hilly and well-wooded; so are 
 most of the islands. It is more than probable, however, that 
 his Excellency will send a vessel to search for the party. 
 
 "The ship's agents are Messrs. Norton & Jackson, and the 
 consignee of the cargo is the Government Emigration Agent. 
 It is not conceivable that these gentlemen will accept the 
 crew's plea, as stated by Mr. Morgan, and submit to be 
 defrauded on the grounds, first, that money in wages is due to
 
 A NEWSPAPER CUTTING. 331 
 
 the crew, next that they have a claim as salvors of property, 
 third, as salvors of life. 
 
 "To proceed: after the Brigstock party had landed, Mr. 
 Morgan continued the voyage to this port, himself being the 
 only man in the ship; his crew consisted of thirty girls, who, 
 that they might not be inconvenienced by their petticoats in 
 running about, were dressed in male attire, of which a large 
 quantity forms a portion of the vessel's lading. Our readers 
 will probably receive our assurance with incredulity; it is 
 nevertheless the fact that Mr. Morgan navigated the vessel 
 through several thousand miles of ocean with the assistance of 
 his crew of women only ! The thing is unprecedented. We 
 are acquainted with but one marine incident which at all cor- 
 responds with it; we refer to the case of the female convict 
 ship mentioned by Mrs. Colonel Elwood in her narrative of 
 a journey to India in 1828. 'A number of female convicts,' 
 she says, 'having seized the vessel they were in, the deter- 
 mined Amazon, their leader, with her own hands cut off the 
 head of the captain, and then, forcing the crew to navigate the 
 vessel, carried it in triumph into a South American port, 
 where the heroine is now established as the mistress of a hotel. ' 
 This is terrific; it is not even wanting in the sublime, but it is 
 deficient in the heroic. The female convicts, as we have seen, 
 compelled the men to work the ship. In Mr. Morgan's case, 
 the girls themselves did all the pulling and hauling, and in 
 moderate weather the furling, for it is stated that he had 
 taught some of them to stow the mizzen, topgallant sail, and 
 royal, while it is certain that seven of them proved as expert 
 at the helm as any master could wish his sailors to be. 
 
 "The women, on their arrival, were sent by the agent to the 
 Immigration Depot, where they have been visited by crowds 
 of people. Many of them have already obtained engagements. 
 Mr. Morgan has not a single case of sickness to report during 
 the voyage. Strangely enough there were two suicides, each 
 of them rendered remarkable by a melancholy prophetic wail- 
 ing in the air, heard by all hands on the nights preceding the 
 tragic occurrences. One of the girls, Mary Lonney, cut her 
 throat with a table knife, while she lay on the sleeping shelf 
 with her companions; it is universally allowed by the women 
 that she was insane. The other, Alice Perry, drowned her- 
 self on the second night following the ship's departure from 
 the island, by silently lowering herself over the bows and 
 dropping into the sea. 
 
 "The scene of leave-taking between Mr. Morgan and the 
 women whom he has served so nobly was exceedingly inter-
 
 332 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 esting and moving. They crowded about him, they kissed 
 his hands, many saluted his cheeks; they blessed him again 
 and again, coming back a dozen times to bless him once more 
 and press his hand. The ship will immediately begin to dis- 
 charge, and then load wool for London. It is almost certain 
 that the command of her will be given to Mr. Charles Morgan, 
 who holds a certificate as a master-mariner." 
 
 So ran the account of the ship's arrival and voyage to Syd- 
 ney from Bull's Island, as printed in the Sydney Morning 
 Herald of that date. 
 
 It was the morning following our arrival in Sydney Bay. 
 All the women had gone ashore on the preceding afternoon 
 Kate among them. I had asked her what she meant to do. 
 
 "Mean to do!" she replied with a look of wonder. "I 
 shall go with the rest to the Immigration Depot, and stop 
 there till somebody hires me as a governess." 
 
 "Very well," said I; "but you'll let me have your address 
 should you be quickly engaged?" 
 
 "Where shall I send it?" 
 
 "Address me to the care of Messrs. Norton & Jackson." 
 
 After a few more sentences to the above effect, we had 
 parted, she having stood aloof while all the rest were crowd- 
 ing about me; then, when they were gone, coming to me. 
 
 We had entered the Heads on Monday, at dawn of day, 
 August 28, 1851; this was Tuesday, the 29th, a lovely clear 
 morning. A hundred pleasure boats whitened the bright blue 
 waters of the magnificent harbor; the coves were filled with 
 shipping; crowds of boats hovered about us, their occupants 
 staring with devouring eyes at the Earl of Leicester. Men and 
 women were galloping on horseback along the crescent-shaped 
 slips of land. The gleam of white houses amid the thick foli- 
 age, the sweeping bays wooded to the very sip of the surf, the 
 carriages appearing and disappearing among the trees, the 
 crowds of people, many-colored with military uniforms, and 
 the gay apparel of women, walking to and fro upon a prome- 
 nade close to the town, formed a picture infinitely refreshing, 
 as you will suppose, to my eyes, worn dim with the ceaseless 
 lookout I had been forced to keep, and with the hundred days 
 of ocean I had lived through. 
 
 I was talking to Mr. Jackson, one of the ship's agents, on 
 the poop, recounting all the particulars of my voyage, not 
 omitting my experience on board the Hebe, and was explaining 
 why it was that many leaves of the log book were torn out, and 
 no entries made since the Brigstock lot had left the ship, when
 
 A NEWSPAPER CUTTING. 333 
 
 a short man in a white hat and a yellow coat, and a head 
 round as a cannon-ball, very blue where the cheek was shaved, 
 and the eyes small, black, and sharp, came over the side, and 
 stepped on to the poop. He saluted me with a low theatrical 
 bow, and then nodded to Mr. Jackson as though knowing him. 
 
 ''I have the honor, I believe," said he, "of addressing 
 Captain Charles Morgan?" 
 
 I answered that was so. 
 
 "May I be permitted, sir, to shake the hand of a living 
 'ero?" 
 
 He advanced his arm, and we shook hands. 
 
 "My name, sir, is Levy." (This was not his name, but it 
 will serve). "I'm manager of the Theater Royal. My object 
 in intruding's this: I've 'ad an interview with the Immigration 
 Agent, and he's willing the 'eroic young parties as formed 
 your crew wonderful thing, sir, most wonderful, indeed!" he 
 ejaculated, interrupting himself to gaze along the deck, and 
 then up aloft, "shall appear, in the male clothes which they 
 wore during the voyage, upon the stage of my theater, at a 
 performance to be given for their benefit." 
 
 "What do the girls say?" said Mr. Jackson. 
 
 "All, with the exception of five, are at the depot. They are 
 proud and 'appy to oblige. The other five are easily assembled 
 making twenty-nine in all. Sorry to hear you lost the favor- 
 ite. If Alice Perry was what they tell me, she should have 
 'ad ten pound a week. Captain, I'm 'ere to ask you to do me 
 the honner, to do the town of Sydney the honner, to appear 
 upon my stage in company with your crew. What a picture 
 it '11 make, sir!" he cried, addressing Mr. Jackson, with a grin 
 of triumphant enjoyment of the vision of it. 
 
 "Not for all the value of the wool in this colony," said I. 
 
 "How, sir?" he cried, with a tragic start. 
 
 I gave him "No" again very warmly. 
 
 "But," he exclaimed, with a look of decision, "you'll not 
 object to occupying a box?" 
 
 "How do you know?" said I. 
 
 However, on his representing that the whole receipts of the 
 performance, without deduction of any sort, would be handed 
 over to the women, and that my absence must lessen the 
 attraction of the exhibition, I consented to be present. 
 
 Mr. Levy then shook hands with me and went on shore, 
 after saying I should hear from him when he had fixed a night. 
 
 Next morning, having some leisure, I walked to the Immi- 
 gration Depot, a large, walled barrack, where single females, 
 on the arrival of an emigrant ship, were lodged, boarded, and
 
 334 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 looked after; I hoped to see Kate, having something on my 
 mind to communicate, but I arrived too late; twenty minutes 
 earlier a lady had called in a carriage to drive her to Darling- 
 hurst, to settle, as I understood, the terms of an engagement. 
 
 This same day I was informed by Mr. Jackson that the 
 command of the Earl of Leicester was mine, and that I was to 
 carry her home with a cargo of wool, tallow, horns, and other 
 Australian produce. I believe but for this offer I should 
 have been tempted to try my luck at the gold diggings. In the 
 preceding May gold had been discovered in the Bathhurst dis- 
 trict, and the colony, at this time, was crazy over the find. 
 Trade was almost paralyzed by the desertion of labor. A blue 
 and red serge shirt, a cabbage-tree hat, a leather belt, gold 
 digging gloves, a pair of mining boots, and a couple of blank- 
 ets, topped with a thirty shilling license for the privilege to 
 dig, sufficed to equip a man for the realization of wealth 
 beyond the dreams of avarice. Nothing sobered me but the 
 agent's offer. It came not one hour too soon. Mr. Jackson 
 had advanced some money to me, and I should have been off 
 next day for Wellington, or Ballarat, or Geelong, but for the 
 Earl of Leicester. 
 
 But having accepted the post, I became straightway a very 
 busy man. Then people of Sydney would have made much 
 of me. I received dozens of invitations to dinner ; a score of 
 houses were opened tome; the proprietor of Petty's Hotel 
 begged me to use his house, free of all charge, while I was in 
 Sydney; but I dined nowhere save at Mr. Jackson's and one 
 or two other houses; I lived on board the ship, and wanted no 
 better home. 
 
 Three days after I had called upon Kate at the Immigration 
 Depot, I received a letter from her; she had accepted a situa- 
 tion as governess to the children of a family living at Darling- 
 hurst; she did not yet know whether she would like the place. 
 They gave her twenty-five pounds a year, which did not seem 
 more than the pay of such posts in England. She congratu- 
 lated me upon having obtained command, asked me to let her 
 know the day on which the ship sailed, and hoped I would 
 call and say good-by before I left. 
 
 I read the letter with a smile. In every word of it was the 
 same spirit which had confined her to the dark, melancholy 
 'tween decks when the bright, cheerful cuddy was at her ser- 
 vice. 
 
 I was busy with the affairs of the ship one morning, within 
 a week of our arrival, when Mr. Norton, one of the agents, 
 came on board, and told me that his Excellency, Sir Charles
 
 A NEWSPAPER CUTTING. 335 
 
 Augustus Fitzroy, Governor of New South Wales, would be 
 glad to see me if I called upon him that afternoon. 
 
 Accompanied by Mr. Norton, I attended at Government 
 House, a fine building with great staring windows. My 
 reception was very flattering and gratifying. Sir Charles was 
 one of the finest, most accomplished gentlemen I ever met, or 
 my slender social experience could figure. He introduced 
 me to Lady Mary Fitzroy, and I passed an hour with them, 
 going over the ground which you have traversed in this 
 book. 
 
 I perceived that his Excellency was extremely anxious to 
 learn the situation of Brigstock's island, but his courtesy and 
 high sense of honor would not suffer him to question me. He 
 was much amused by my representation of Brigstock's scheme, 
 and said that it would be a bad lookout for the hopes of that 
 patriarch and father if news of the gold find reached the settle- 
 ment; "for, in that case, they'll not long remain there," said he. 
 
 I asked if steps would be taken to discover the island, and 
 bring the settlers to Sydney? He said yes. He shook me 
 cordially by the hand, and made me many handsome compli- 
 ments when I took my leave. 
 
 I had no idea, however, until some days afterward, that this 
 agreeable reception was no more than the engaging preface to 
 an honor, and to an expression of public feeling, the time, the 
 manner, the circumstance of which I cannot recall without 
 emotion. It happened too long ago to bring modesty into 
 question in the narrative of it. 
 
 I went to dine with Mr. Jackson at his house in Lyon's Ter- 
 race; the day was Tuesday. Before we repaired to the dining 
 room, Mr. Jackson said: 
 
 "You are to receive a fine compliment, Captain Morgan; I 
 hope you won't decline it." 
 
 "What is it, sir?" 
 
 "The inhabitants of Sydney have subscribed a purse for you, 
 and his Excellency has expressed his willingness to present it 
 publicly, at the Theater Royal." 
 
 "He is very kind, and so are the inhabitants of Sydney," 
 said I, feeling uncomfortably nervous and pale on a sudden. 
 "Of course, if it is the general wish indeed the part Sir 
 Charles takes lays a command upon me what shall I be 
 expected to do?" 
 
 "Smile, and pocket the money." 
 
 "No speech?" 
 
 "Oh, a few manly sentences." 
 
 My throat felt dry.
 
 33 6 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "I'd rather sail the Earl of Leicester round the world with 
 six women for a crew, than face it," said I. 
 
 "Tut, tut! Besides, it will be a fine advertisement for the 
 ship, both here and at home." 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders. But the long and short of it was, 
 Mr. Jackson meant that I should accept, and seeing that he 
 represented the owners of the Earl of Leicester, there was 
 nothing for it but expostulation and submission. 
 
 While lunching at Petty's Hotel next day, I heard that 
 Mr. Levy, of the Theater Royal, was at the bottom of this 
 theatrical presentation. The Mayor of Sydney headed the 
 subscription list, and Mr. Levy had postponed the exhibition 
 of my sailor crew till my presence was to be secured on the 
 stage. I suppose the rogue guessed I was bound to consent 
 to any programme the governor approved and was willing to 
 figure in. The fact is, as it afterward turned out, Levy had 
 offered engagements to several of my crew of women to act in 
 a nautical drama he and another had planned, and our benefit 
 was intended as his advertisement. 
 
 "You can't trust 'em," the master of a ship said to me in 
 the course of a chat about this benefit and Levy's motives. 
 "There's a verse in the New Testament that fits all that sort 
 of philanthropists"; and he quoted in a deep sea voice, "This 
 he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief."" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE benefit and presentation were fixed by his Excellency 
 to take place on a Monday evening, that is about ten or twelve 
 days after the arrival of the ship at Sydney. In all this time, 
 owing to my having had scarcely an hour to myself, I had seen 
 nothing of Kate Darnley; a few letters had passed between us, 
 and I was aware that she was fairly comfortable, though I 
 found no note of good spirits in what she wrote. When I was 
 informed that Monday was the night of the presentation, I 
 asked her, in a letter, to attend the theater with me. She 
 wrote yes, requested me to fetch her, and inclosed an invita- 
 tion to dinner from Mrs. Carey, in whose family she was 
 governess. 
 
 On Monday afternoon I drove to Mrs. Carey's villa in Dar- 
 linghurst. Kate received me alone in the drawing room. She 
 was dressed in white, ready for the play; not a shilling's worth
 
 CONCLUSION. 337 
 
 of jewelry was on her, save a plain ring and a little brooch 
 which had been her mother's. She wore some lovely red 
 flower of those lands in her rich black hair; her eyes were soft 
 and wistful ; I missed the clear light that glowed in them at 
 sea. She looked sweet and well; a fine full figure of a girl, 
 and a lady. 
 
 "This," said I, as I gazed round the charmingly furnished 
 apartment, "is almost as brilliant and breezy as the cuddy of 
 the Earl of Leicester. Are you kindly treated?" 
 
 "Very kindly." 
 
 "Are you happy?" 
 
 "I am now," she answered. 
 
 I misunderstood her, and said, You must give yourself 
 time to find people out." 
 
 "I don't mean that. I am happy now because you're here. 
 
 It does me good to see you. I am at Blathford again " 
 
 she broke off. 
 
 "I would have been with you every day, but could not." 
 
 "When do you sail?" 
 
 "The date's not yet fixed; in eight or ten weeks hence, I 
 dare say." Finding her silent, I said, "Have you made any 
 friends? People, I mean, who ask you to their houses, and 
 cultivate you for yourself?" 
 
 "No, nor am I likely to do so as a governess. Those I 
 have met are stiff and distant. I don't fancy they want poor 
 ladies out here. The position is a false one in England; it is 
 falser still in this country. I feel as though people walked 
 around me, and eyed me from head to heel, saying, 'What's 
 this? It's not a servant or a working woman. It can't be a 
 lady, because it's poor, and lives by teaching. What, then, 
 is it?' That's how they make me feel." 
 
 "Kate, what will grieve you more than people's behavior is 
 the thought that England is sixteen thousand miles off." 
 
 "Don't speak of it!" she cried quickly, with a passionate 
 shake of her head, as though angered by some sudden trouble 
 of tears. "Let it be as far distant as the moon. I am as 
 friendless there as here. What has distance to do with the 
 sorrows or happiness of such as I? Distance is not time." 
 
 "Kate, when I am in England you'll not be without a 
 friend there," said I. 
 
 She looked at me peevishly, went to the window, and 
 exclaimed: "Is not this a sweet picture of a garden?" 
 
 "Not so sweet as a garden I know at Blathford." 
 
 "Look at those heavenly little green parrots! How mer- 
 rily they whistle! I am getting to know many of the names
 
 33 8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 of the trees and flowers. But oh, for the real thing! Those 
 trees are not the ash nor the larch, though they try to look so, 
 nor is that the fuchsia, lovely as it is with its delicate pendu- 
 lous flowers. Nor is that the true rose! There's no perfume; 
 the birds have no song. Will they ever get garden scents and 
 the music of the woods in this land? But they'll not want it!" 
 she exclaimed, turning to me with a pout. "There a-e no 
 memories, and traditions for birds to sweeten, and flowers to 
 color. In a thousand years' time, perhaps, it will be a country 
 of legend, and then the nightingale may sing to the moon in 
 the north, and the owl hoot in ruins. It's too long to wait!" 
 said she. 
 
 Just then Mrs. Carey entered; a tall, handsome lady, very 
 richly dressed for the play, and in a few minutes I was deep in 
 talk with her, on the now inevitable subject of my experience 
 in the Pacific. Half an hour later we went to dinner; an 
 elegant Australian meal, of which I recollect but these dishes, 
 namely: wallibi-tail soup, wonga-wonga pigeon, Kangaroo 
 venison, and a wonderful dessert of plantains, guavas, and 
 cherimoyas. 
 
 The Careys had taken seats at the theater, and Mrs. Carey 
 sat at dinner in full fig; she had dazzling shoulders and splen- 
 did diamonds, and her age was about eight and forty. The 
 brightness was something dimmed in her large blue eyes, 
 fine but fading, yet there had been a time 
 
 When the gleam of her silken sock had drawn 
 Sighs from an epaulet ! 
 
 We started together; the Careys in their own, Kate and I in 
 a hired carriage. The road opposite the theater was crowded 
 with people; every variety of the Larrikin and Cornstalk was 
 there assembled; the coachman forced his way to the entrance 
 with difficulty, and taking Kate by the hand I quickly passed 
 into the lobby, where almost the first person I met was Mr. 
 Levy. He saluted me as though I had been his Excellency 
 himself, and accompanied us at once to a small private box 
 overlooking the stage, where he stayed a few minutes to rapidly 
 run through the programme of the evening. 
 
 Already the theater was crammed. I took a peep at the 
 ocean of hair in the pit the colony was too young for bald 
 heads in those days and warily squinted at the billow of faces 
 rolling down from gallery to circle. 
 
 "They mean to convey me on to that stage there, where I 
 shall have to make a speech," said I. "The very thought
 
 CONCLUSION. 339 
 
 deprives me of utterance, and my tongue feels to be coiled up 
 like a rope that wants the turns taken out of it." 
 
 "Say little, and think only of what you say, not at all of 
 those who listen. Have you got a speech by heart?" 
 
 "Twenty, and I forget them all!" 
 
 At this moment the orchestra played "God save the Queen," 
 and Sir Charles and Lady Mary and two or three others, all 
 brilliant in uniform, her ladyship gorgeous in satin and spark- 
 ling ornaments, entered a large stage box almost abreast of 
 the one we occupied. I kept out of sight, and Kate sat well 
 back. 
 
 The curtain rose upon a nautical drama. It was called 
 "Tempest Tossed." I suppose there is nothing in the world's 
 literature so bad as the British nautical drama, and there 
 could be nothing in the British nautical drama worse than 
 "Tempest Tossed." It contained a libel on us gentlemen of 
 the jacket, in the character of a mate, who four or five times 
 during the performance ran up out of a trap door, chased by 
 black beetles, and mad with delirium tremens; in vain the 
 wretch tried to cast himself overboard; the manly, bawling 
 crew (how that crew bawled) hauled him back, and remorse- 
 lessly flung him down again through the trap door to his hell 
 of vermin. 
 
 However, even the worst of the acting was handsomely 
 applauded; everything pleased; when a piece of the scenery 
 stuck they cheered it. The curtain fell at ten o'clock, and I 
 observed a movement in his Excellency's box, and fancied I 
 caught a vision of Mr. Levy's face among the uniforms. Sud- 
 denly the orchestra struck up "Hearts of Oak," the curtain 
 rose, and my spirits sank. All this while the pit and gallery 
 were roaring, for when the curtain rose this was the picture it 
 exposed: at the back was a representation, very well done, of 
 Sydney Bay, with the Earl of Leicester at anchor; the colors 
 of all nations were draped on either hand, and. to left and 
 right, in front of the stage, hung huge British ensigns, the 
 crimson cross, the royal standard, and other flags of our 
 country. On each side of the stage were grouped the girls 
 who had formed my crew. Levy had collected them all, and 
 there they were! Yes! There was Emmy Reed, and there 
 was Charlotte Brown, and brave little Susannah Corbin, Fanny 
 Pike, Mabel Marshall the whole of them saving Alice Perry; 
 all dressed in the clothes they had worn at sea. 
 
 But even while I was looking, and while the pit and gallery 
 were thundering, the door of our box was opened, and Mr. Levy 
 entered to bear me away to the stage. I followed, with the
 
 34 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 sensations of a malefactor who walks from his cell to the place 
 where he is to be pinioned. Mr. Levy sought to cheer me up, 
 and, when we were arrived behind the scenes, he gave me a 
 bumper of champagne. I heard somebody talking on the 
 stage; there was now a profound stillness in the house. I 
 approached the "wings," and perceived a gentleman in a frock 
 coat close to the footlights, addressing the audience. I asked 
 Mr. Levy what the gentleman was doing. He said he was 
 relating the story of the adventures of the Earl of Leicester. 
 The gentleman was frequently interrupted by clapping and 
 cheers. Mr. Levy told me the speaker was a distinguished 
 tragedian, Mr. Littleworth; he had been sent to this country 
 in trouble, and on his enlargement had betaken himself to 
 the stage. He declaimed with a deep, thrilling voice that 
 reminded me of Brigstock's. 
 
 I was too nervous to heed him, and all the while was trying 
 to hearten myself by looking at the girls of my crew, many of 
 whom stood plain in my sight, though they could not see me. 
 Presently Mr. Littleworth ceased; this was the dreaded "cue." 
 
 "Now, captain," said Mr. Levy, and marched me right on 
 to the middle of the stage. 
 
 I do not recollect what then exactly happened. I was car- 
 ried down to the orchestra, which struck up at sight of me, 
 and the noise was deafening, while the hurrahs! roared in the 
 building like the bellowing of a Horn gale through naked spars. 
 
 Mr. Levy led me to the box where sat the governor, who 
 arose, amid a profound stillness, and addressed me. The 
 newspapers printed a full account of this presentation, but 
 why should I inflict the speeches upon you? Enough if I say 
 that Sir Charles, after speaking for about a quarter of an hour, 
 handed me a purse of seven hundred guineas, "in testimony 
 of the admiration felt by the people of Sydney, for my having 
 delivered, from a situation of terrible peril, between seventy 
 and eighty helpless female emigrants, who, but for the judg- 
 ment I had exhibited, might have suffered even a worse fate 
 than shipwreck." 
 
 All this was well understood, and it was true ! 
 
 I stuttered out a few sentences of thanks, though I was 
 afterward told I did not make so ill a figure as I had supposed. 
 
 When the presentation was over, the curtain fell amid a 
 fresh outburst of roaring, but for another quarter of an hour I 
 was occupied behind the scenes in shaking hands with my girls, 
 asking them questions, and drinking their health in champagne. 
 
 In the lobby of the theater, while on my way with Kate to 
 the carriage I had hired, we met Mr. and Mrs. Carey, who
 
 CONCLUSION. 341 
 
 wanted to drive us home; but my opportunities for seeing 
 Kate were few, and I wished to be alone with her. Then 
 would I take a bed at their house in Darlinghurst? I accepted 
 the offer with thanks. They got into their landau, and Kate 
 and I followed in a cab. 
 
 I pulled out the purse, and, by the help of the lampposts we 
 passed, found that the gift was in notes, with fifty pounds in 
 gold and odd money to make up the guineas. 
 
 "What do you think of it all?" said I to Kate, while I 
 pocketed the money. 
 
 "I'm very glad you're so fortunate." 
 
 "Nothing of it's deserved, I suppose? It's all luck!" 
 
 "A bit of both," she answered. 
 
 "Did I make a good speech?" 
 
 She laughed, but returned no answer. 
 
 "How long will it take," said I, "for the people of this 
 liberal and prosperous colony to forget all about my exploit?" 
 
 "They can think of nothing but the gold diggings. If I 
 were a man I would go and dig. Mr. Carey was saying yes- 
 terday that he met a man who, in three days, had found gold 
 at a place called Ophir worth eleven hundred pounds. His 
 cradle cost him five shillings, and his whole outfit two pounds 
 twelve ! ' ' 
 
 "I'm going home to London," said I, and I began to whistle. 
 
 Presently I said, "I may now consider myself very well off. 
 What don't I owe Brigstock? He stole me, and now behold 
 me! I'm worth seven hundred pounds odd, in what is termed 
 hard cash; I've obtained command at twelve pounds a month ; 
 the agents assure me that the owners are not likely to resist 
 any modest claims I may make for salvage for preserving the 
 ship and most of the cargo anyhow. There's no earthly 
 reason, now that I'm skipper of the vessel, why I shouldn't go 
 on holding that post till they give me another appointment, 
 unless I go into steam, which I've rather a fancy for. Don't 
 I owe Brigstock much, Kate?" 
 
 "Why, yes, as you put it." 
 
 "He brought us together, Kate." 
 
 "In the middle of the ocean." 
 
 "I once said you should sail home with me in the cuddy of 
 the Earl of Leicester. Do you remember?" 
 
 She was silent. I felt for, and found her hand, and held it. 
 
 "Do you remember?" I repeated. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I also, on several occasions, said that you were my only 
 mate."
 
 34 2 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 "You always put Alice Perry before me." 
 
 "Chaw, my honeybird! See here, Kate. You know what's 
 coming; not that I feel it in your hand, though most girls, it's 
 said, tremble on these occasions. You know what's coming, 
 Kate?" 
 
 ''How can I imagine?" 
 
 "Will you be my wife?" 
 
 "O Charlie! Are you in earnest?" 
 
 "Do you think I'm old Harding or Jupe Jackson? In 
 earnest!" and here I put my arm round her waist. 
 
 She made no fuss, but said quite calmly, "Charlie, I love 
 you, and if I did not know that, as a wife, I should be a burden 
 to you, I'd say yes. Think it over, dear; you'll have plenty of 
 leisure while sailing home, and you may come out here again. 
 If you do, and are still of the same mind, you'll find me ready. ' ' 
 
 "Perhaps married," said I. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Think! You are the sweetest girl in this colony. How 
 long shall you remain single? There may be a jolly old 
 squatter there, or there," cried I, pointing through one win- 
 dow, then through the other, "with a fortune of a hundred 
 thousand waiting for you. What though the iron in times 
 gone by did enter his ankles? His soul is purged of the Old 
 Bailey. He's now a fine old gentleman with such another 
 house to live in as Roslyn Hall or Larbert Cottage ; he drives 
 a better turnout than the governor's, and has but another 
 hurdle or two to jump for the Premiership. Give me this 
 hand before he takes it!" said I, squeezing her fingers. 
 
 She laughed softly and nervously, and said, "You're not 
 old enough to marry." 
 
 "Don't believe it!" 
 
 "You can't know your own mind." 
 
 "I know my own heart." 
 
 "O Charlie, I wish I knew what to do!" 
 
 And now I really felt the dear girl's hand tremble. 
 
 "Say yes. They were quick enough aboard ship. Han- 
 nah didn't keep Brigstock waiting in this fashion." 
 
 Then losing patience I caught her in my arms, brought her 
 face to mine, and held her till she said yes, by which time we 
 were within three minutes of Mrs. Carey's house. 
 
 So reluctant are girls to get married ! 
 
 I sailed from Sydney a married man, in command of the 
 Earl of Leicester, on the 24th of October, 1851, and with me 
 went my young wife and six saloon and fourteen steerage
 
 CONCLUSION. 343 
 
 passengers. The voyage home was as flat and commonplace 
 a procession of weeks, as the passage out had been feverishly 
 exciting with incident, menace, and ever-haunting peril; and 
 we anchored in the River Thames, January 30, 1852, without 
 a log-entry good enough to detain the eye for a moment. 
 
 You will not suppose that in all these months I had for- 
 gotten the Hebe, and Captain Cadman and Mr. Fletcher of 
 Bristol. Ever since the hour of my regaining consciousness 
 on the great Salvage Island, I had determined, when I got 
 home, to swear an information against the scoundrels who, 
 whether they had succeeded or not in defrauding the under- 
 writers, were to all intents and purposes my murderers. And 
 now my ship was hardly berthed in the West India Docks 
 when I received news of the Hebe. 
 
 Messrs. Norton & Jackson had, as may be supposed, writ- 
 ten a full account of my experiences to the owners of the Earl 
 of Leicester by an early ship soon after my arrival at Sydney, 
 therefore on my meeting Mr. Donald Grant, a partner in the 
 firm, almost the first words he addressed to me were: 
 
 "Did you hear as you came up Channel that they succeeded 
 in wrecking the Hebe in Table Bay? but so clumsily that the 
 man Fletcher was drowned, along with two of the crew; so 
 clumsily indeed, that the rogue Cadman, through overtalking 
 himself with Fletcher during the passage out, put it into the 
 power of the crew to inform against .him? Portions of the 
 cargo which washed ashore were examined; the wreck, as she 
 lay stranded, was overhauled, and Cadman was sent home to 
 take his trial on the charge of casting the brig away." 
 
 I listened with open-mouthed, devouring attention, 
 astounded, delighted. 
 
 "Is Cadman in custody in this country?" 
 
 "Aye, they have him snug and tight in the Old Bailey." 
 
 "Oh, well, sir, I do thank God for that! I'll give evidence 
 against him. Thunder! but I'm grateful I'm in time!" 
 
 As early as possible I procured the address of the solicitors 
 for the prosecution. They welcomed me. It seems that the 
 man had almost slipped through their fingers. The ship he 
 had been sent home in touched at Madeira, and Cadman 
 escaped by swimming to a vessel that lay closer inshore than 
 his own; he hung by her cable it was night-time and called 
 for help, and was put ashore by the ship's boat; the seamen, 
 who were French, supposing that he belonged to the island, 
 and had been capsized while out fishing. 
 
 He secreted himself to so much purpose that this advertise- 
 ment was widely distributed:
 
 344 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 SHIP " HEBE "-FELONY 100 REWARD. 
 
 Whereas James Cadman, Master Mariner, late Captain of the brig Hebe, 
 bound from Bristol to Capetown in the month of March last, and wrecked 
 off Green Point in Table Bay in the month of May last, stands charged with 
 felony for having willfully destroyed the said ship Hebe on her said voyage, 
 for the purpose of defrauding the Insurance Companies, or Underwriters, 
 who had effected Insurance by the said vessel A Reward of ^100 will be 
 paid to any person who will lodge him in any of Her Majesty's jails upon an 
 application to 
 
 Here followed the name of an insurance office, together 
 with a description of Cadman, which I own made me laugh, 
 for it was exceedingly good. 
 
 Cadman escaped from Madeira in a schooner; his adven- 
 tures afterward I am unable to relate; when next heard of he 
 had arrived in England in the William Wallace, from Cape de 
 Verde, whether in custody or not I cannot say; on landing, 
 he was immediately collared and locked up. 
 
 His trial took place in April, at the Central Criminal Court. 
 There was yet a fortnight till the sailing of the Earl of Leices- 
 ter, and I was able to attend the trial without inconvenience. 
 Cadman, I presume, did not know that I was to be called, 
 and I shall never forget the scoundrel's face when he saw me. 
 For months he had thought of me as dead. Fletcher had 
 come off from the island, and told him he had thrown me over 
 a hundred feet of cliff. It is no trifling shock to stumble 
 suddenly upon a man whom you have been told is dead, and 
 are used to think of as buried; but how volcanic must be the 
 emotions of one who, on a sudden, meets face to face a person 
 whom he knows was murdered, and in whose assassination he 
 was concerned ! 
 
 The visage of the miscreant, at sight of me, would have 
 transported him, though there had been no other evidence of 
 his guilt. I see him now, as he stands in the dock, eying me 
 with his malevolent, askant gaze, motionless, yellow, every 
 muscle of his face rigid, as though I had been the devil fleshed 
 in the most frightful of the monkish imagination of that spirit, 
 waiting for the Judge to pass sentence to fly away with him. 
 
 The man was of course guilty, and the jury pronounced him 
 so, that is, of casting the Hebe away (he was not charged with 
 conspiring to murder me, possibly because they could not have 
 brought it home to him). The evidence was damning, and I 
 had the satisfaction of hearing the judge sentence James Cad- 
 man to be transported beyond the seas for the term of his 
 natural life. 
 
 I was in Sydney again in August, 1852, and heard that an
 
 CONCLUSION. 345 
 
 armed brig, which had been dispatched to search for the Brig- 
 stock settlement, had returned without having anything to 
 report. I saw her log book, and understood why they had not 
 fallen in with Bull's Island. Some pressure, as the term is, 
 was put upon me to disclose the men's whereabouts, but I 
 kept the oath and the secret with an obstinacy worthy a better 
 cause. 
 
 However, when a voyage later I was again at Sydney, they 
 had news to give me. A colonial trader belonging to Mel- 
 bourne had spoken a whaler; the captains had exchanged visits 
 during a prolonged calm ; and the whaling captain told the 
 other that he had touched at an island he had once or twice 
 visited for water and nuts, and, greatly to his surprise, found it 
 inhabited by white men and women. He said that the chief 
 of the party was one Brigstock, a grave, formal, solemn-faced 
 fellow. They had built themselves a village, and appeared to 
 want for nothing, yet some of them seemed restless and uneasy. 
 The whaling skipper, who had heard of the affair of the Earl 
 of Leicester, guessed who those people were, and told them 
 that the governor of New South Wales had dispatched an 
 armed vessel in search of them. He also gave them the news 
 of the discovery of gold in the Wellington and Bathurst dis- 
 tricts; this intelligence he had got from a Yankee at the 
 Sandwich Islands. 
 
 The little trading schooner arrived at Melbourne with this 
 report, which was immediately forwarded to the governor at 
 Sydney. No latitude and longitude had been stated by the 
 whaling skipper, but the master of the schooner gathered from 
 the other's conversation that the island the Brigstock party 
 had settled was situated on the parallel of Hercules' Island, 
 some leagues to the eastward of it. 
 
 The armed brig found the island without difficulty ; a boat's 
 crew went ashore; the village, as described by the whaling 
 skipper, was discovered, charmingly situated in a beautiful 
 valley near the great lagoon; every house stood in a large 
 inclosed garden, but not a living creature was to be seen! 
 
 The goods taken from the hold of the Earl of Leicester were 
 distributed among the houses, or stored in a little gallery of 
 natural caverns on the north shore of the island. They were 
 collected and taken on board, and when they were examined 
 at Sydney the quantity missing chiefly tinned food, wearing 
 apparel, blankets, and the like did not exceed in value the 
 amount the ship was indebted to the sailors for wages. 
 
 Of Brigstock and his family of settlers nothing was ever 
 heard nothing, at all events, that reached my ears. The
 
 346 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 boats they had taken had not been seen by the people of the 
 armed brig; it was assumed that the party had gone aboard a 
 vessel in them, and that they had been held in discharge of 
 the cost of giving the women a passage the men working it 
 out for themselves. No doubt the people had been alarmed 
 by learning that an armed brig was seeking them; their views, 
 too, on settling and becoming fathers and elders might also 
 have been influenced by the news of gold in a continent that 
 was hard by. Likely enough, they all went secretly to some 
 Australian port, and there dispersed, each man taking his 
 partner with him or not ! as it might have happened. I own 
 I lamented this failure of Brigstock's scheme. He deserved 
 a better fortune. Spite of his and the men's inhuman usage 
 of me, I am bound to say a straighter-headed, more sober, 
 respectable body of men never swing in hammocks at sea. I 
 had great hope of their establishing a successful little colony, 
 and was astonished to learn that, after they had built homes for 
 themselves, they had suffered the news of a brig being in search 
 of them to break them up. 
 
 Now for a final curious incident: it was in this same year 
 of 1853, and my ship was lying abreast of the wool sheds at 
 Sydney, loaded down to the chain-plate bolts, ready to sail in 
 three days. I was writing a letter at the cuddy table, when my 
 chief officer came in, and said that a lady was on the quay 
 side asking permission to step aboard and see me. 
 
 "Doesn't she give her name?" said I. 
 
 "No, sir. She's a handsome woman, finely dressed, yet 
 she don't look a lady either." 
 
 "Bring her aboard, and show her aft here," said I. 
 
 I went on with my letter. Presently I was sensible of some- 
 body entering the cuddy door. I dropped my pen, started 
 up, looked, and yet looked again, almost as stiff with the 
 paralysis of astonishment as Cadman had been at sight of me. 
 
 It was Alice Perry ! 
 
 I recognized her in a moment, for all that I had reckoned 
 her dead as the ooze at the bottom of the salt sea. She was 
 dressed as fashionably as any grand lady in Sydney at that 
 time; the sight of me filled her face with color; -her eyes 
 sparkled; and she advanced, her hand extended, with one of 
 her well-remembered smiles, a very glare of large white teeth. 
 
 "Capt'n," she cried, "do you want an 'ousemaid?" And 
 she burst into one of her hysteric, shrieking laughs, to the 
 amazement of the mate, a sober, slow-minded Irishman, who 
 stood viewing us at the cuddy door. 
 
 I peered at her with my head stretched forward, like a game-
 
 CONCLUSION. 347 
 
 cock looking at another, incredulous of the evidence of my 
 vision. I then said, taking her hand: 
 
 "I thought you were drowned?" 
 
 "I ought to be," she answered; "and all along of you, too 
 but that's passed." Yet she gave me a look as she said 
 this, which made me fancy it was not quite so. 
 
 I made her sit down, and sat beside her, and then after I 
 had answered the fifty questions she plied me with if it was 
 true I had married Kate Darnley; if I could tell her what 
 had become of my crew of girls, and how they were doing; 
 if it was true the Brigstock settlement had been broken up, 
 and so on she related her extraordinary story. 
 
 She told it with her eyes on fire, her cheeks hot as a tropic 
 sunset, but with a most intrepid audacious expression of face. 
 
 She had thought herself in love with me, and so she might 
 have been, she said ; her jealousy was making a devil of her; 
 often when Kate Darnley had been quietly talking with her, 
 she had scarcely been able to restrain her passion of desire to 
 stab her to the heart. She feared she would go mad. She 
 was in secret most horribly miserable; so she resolved to 
 destroy herself. 
 
 The night she was missing, after writing her strange letter 
 to me she dropped down over the bows (as I had supposed) 
 and sank silently. The ship rippled onward, leaving her 
 floating astern; she declared she floated an hour in full con- 
 sciousness watching the stars, and wondering if God would 
 forgive her. All then was blank till, coming to her senses, 
 she found herself in a native hut, watched by a number of 
 dusky men and women. 
 
 Undoubtedly she had been picked up by the canoe whose 
 people I had heard hallooing, that speck I had noticed in the 
 midst of the silver under the moon. The natives treated her 
 with great humanity. An old chief asked her to be his wife. 
 They offered her no indignities, and let her do as she liked. 
 As her male attire wore out, they furnished her with a cover- 
 ing of tappa. She lived in this condition for seven months, 
 during which time she never saw a ship. 
 
 At last, one morning a small bark appeared off the island; 
 at her request, without the least manifestation of reluctance, 
 the natives put her aboard, and she was carried to Hobart 
 Town, where she married a young butcher. 
 
 Her husband, hearing of the gold rush, brought her to 
 Australia, where he was fortunate enough to pick up in a few 
 months a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. She was living, 
 she told me, in a little villa at a place called (I forget the
 
 34 8 THE EMIGRANT SHIP. 
 
 name). Would I visit her? Would I honor her and her 
 husband by dining with them next day? My engagements 
 would not admit of this, otherwise nothing would have given 
 me more pleasure than to eat a piece of Australian mutton 
 with my saucy, handsome sailor-girl, Alice. Before going she 
 told me the savages had stolen her whistle! 
 
 The next voyage I made was to India; when I was again in 
 Sydney I learned that Alice had died two months before the 
 ship's arrival. 
 
 THE END.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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 M. 25 1965 
 
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