Part 23 (2/2)

”Gentlemen, these men want every s.h.i.+lling on this s.h.i.+p. Give it them now and save your lives, for you have no alternative. If you give the money up, you have my word that they won't touch you.”

”If there's a G.o.d above,” exclaimed the young captain, ”they shall pay for this day's work with their lives. I hand my specie over under this protest; but don't deceive yourselves--half the war-s.h.i.+ps in Europe shall follow you within a week.”

He turned away, and presently the ruffians with me had lowered money to the value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds into their launch. The third mate seemed then somewhat cowed by my interference, and though he went round the s.h.i.+p and cried ”Bail up!” every time he met a pa.s.senger, he did not touch one of them. I remained on the bridge a silent spectator of it all; and when at last we put off again, and the launch was full of the jewels and the money, it seemed that I had pa.s.sed through a hideous dream.

At the time, I shrank from the ruffians in the boat as from men who were savage fiends and a hundred times a.s.sa.s.sins; and their brutality of speech and threat fell upon ears that would not hear; nor did their pretence of doing me violence then and there move me one jot. I maintained a stubborn indifference, my pistol still in my hand, my teeth shut in the defiance of them, until we reached the great craft, and joined Black upon the gallery. There, the man John explained that I had stood between him and his purpose of hanging the skipper of the _Bellonic_; indeed, with such warmth and anger, that I thought my end had come upon the spot.

”You barking cub,” said Black, more quietly than usual, but none the less to be feared for that, ”what d'ye mean by interfering with my men and my orders?”

”To save you from yourself,” I answered, looking him full in the face; ”you've killed children on that s.h.i.+p, if that's news to you!”

He had a spy-gla.s.s in his hand, and he raised it as though to strike me; but I continued to look him full in the face, and he remained swaying his body slightly, his arm still above his head. Then, suddenly it dropped at his side, as though paralysed; and he turned away from me.

”Get to your kennel,” said he; ”and don't leave it till I fetch you.”

I was glad to escape, if only for a few moments, from the danger of it; and I went to my cabin in the upper gallery, but not before the angry shouts of the men convinced me that Black had risked much on my behalf for the second time. Even when my own door was locked upon me, such cries as ”You're afeared of him!” ”Is he going to boss you, skipper!”

and other jeers were audible to me; and the uproar lasted for some time, accompanied at last by the sound of blows, and cries as of men whipped. But no one came to me except the negro who brought my meals; and whatever danger there was of a mutiny was averted, as Dr. Osbart told me later in the day, by the appearance of a second pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p on the horizon. The report of the single shot, by which we brought her to, shook me in my berth, where I lay thinking of the horrid scenes of the morning; and for some time I scarce dared look from my window, lest they should be repeated. Only after a long silence did I open the port, and see a majestic vessel, not a hundred yards from us, with our launch at her side; and I could make out the forms of our men walking amongst the pa.s.sengers and robbing them.

The details of this attack Osbart told me with keen relish when he came in to smoke a cigar with me after my dinner.

”We stripped them without killing a man,” said he with hilarious satisfaction, ”and took fifty thousand. Black's pleased; for, to tell you the truth, there's an ugly spirit aboard amongst the men, and you upset them altogether this morning. I never saw another who could have said what you said to the skipper and have lived; but you mustn't show on deck for a day or two--they'd murder you to pa.s.s time; and, as it is, we've had to post a man at your door, or I doubt if you'd save your skin in here.”

”You seem to be making a paying cruise,” I said sarcastically.

”Yes; and it's funny, for the sea is swarming with war vermin. Don't you feel the pace we're going now? I expect we're showing our heels to one of them, and shall show them a good many times between this and the first of next month, though Karl below is grumbling about the oil again: you want gallons of it with gas-engines. If we don't pick up the tender to-morrow, it's a bad look-out.”

He did not come to me again for three days, but I saw from my port early the following morning that the tender was with us; and I concluded regretfully that the difficulty of the oil was overcome. On the second day after the robbery of the _Bellonic_, we stopped a third s.h.i.+p; though I saw nothing of it, as all the fighting was on the starboard side, and my cabin was to port; but there was a sharp fight on the third morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually frivolous.

”Poor business to-day,” he said, throwing himself into a lounge and lighting a cigar; ”not an ounce of specie, and no jewellery to mention--and there was no killing, so don't put on that face of yours.

Why, my dear boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was full of baby linen. And I'll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with the bundle. As for 'Four-Eyes,' he took what he thought was five hundred in notes from a card-player, but they're bad, dear boy, bad--every one of them.”

”You don't seem very depressed about it,” said I.

”Don't I?” replied he. ”Well, things aren't all they should be. The tender we sent to Liverpool came out in a hurry, as they began to watch her, with a mere bucketful of oil aboard. We must get oil from somewhere or we shall all swing as sure as we're doing twenty-eight knots now. That's what I've come to tell you about to-night. The skipper can't stand it any more, and is going to run to England himself, and see what those mighty smart naval people of yours are doing. He'll take you with him, for it would be as good as signing your death-warrant to leave you here. Don't count upon it, though, for we shan't let you out of our sight, and you've got to swear a pretty big oath not to give us away before you set foot on the tender.”

I was overjoyed at his saying, but I feared to let him see it, and asked with nonchalance--”How do you pick up this s.h.i.+p again?”

”Oh, we fix a position,” he replied, ”and they'll keep it every day at mid-day after ten days. Meanwhile we're running north out of the track of the cruisers.”

”I can't quite understand why the skipper takes me with him this time,”

I remarked, endeavouring to draw him, but he answered--

”No more can I; between ourselves, he's been half daft ever since you came aboard. Do you know that the man's more fond of you, in his way, than of any living thing? I know it. I'm the only man on the s.h.i.+p who does know it, and why it is I can't tell you. I didn't think he was capable of a human feeling.”

”It's very good of him to waste so much affection on me,” said I, meaning to be derisive, but Osbart checked me.

”Don't laugh,” he exclaimed; ”you owe your life to him alone.”

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