Part 34 (2/2)

”Don't murder me, your arnr, and I'll tell ye. It's meself looked over the starrn just now; and I seen there was no rudder at all at all.

Mille diaoul, sis I; ye old b.i.t.c.h, I'll tell his arur what y'are after, slipping your rudder like my granny's list shoe, I will.”

Dodd ran to the helm and looked down; the brat was right: the blows which had so endangered the s.h.i.+p, had broken the rudder, and the sea had washed away more than half of it. The sight and the reflection made him faintish for a moment. Death pa.s.sing so very close to a man sickens him _afterwards,_ unless he has the luck to be brainless.

”What is your name, urchin?”

”Ned Murphy, sir.”

”Very well, Murphy, then you are a fine little fellow, and have wiped all our eyes in the s.h.i.+p: run and send the carpenter aft.”

”Ay, ay, sir.”

The carpenter came. Like most artisans, he was clever in a groove: take him out of that, and lo! a mule, a pig, an owl. He was not only unable to invent, but so stiffly disinclined: a makes.h.i.+ft rudder was clean out of his way; and, as his whole struggle was to get away from every suggestion Dodd made back to groove aforesaid, the thing looked hopeless. Then Fullalove, who had stood by grinning, offered to make a bunk.u.m rudder, provided the carpenter and mates were put under his orders. ”But” said he, ”I must bargain they shall be disrated if they attempt to reason.”

”That is no more than fair,” said Dodd. The Yankee inventor demanded a spare maincap, and cut away one end of the square piece, so as to make it fit the stem-post: through the circle of the cap he introduced a spare mizen topmast: to this he seized a length of junk, another to that, another to that, and so on: to the outside junk he seized a spare maintop-gallant mast, and this conglomerate being now nearly as broad as a rudder, he planked over all. The sea by this time was calm; he got the machine over the stern, and had the square end of the cap bolted to the stern-post. He had already fixed four spans of nine-inch hawser to the sides of the makes.h.i.+ft, two fastened to tackles, which led into the gunroom ports, and were housed taut--these kept the lower part of the makes.h.i.+ft close to the stern post--and two, to which guys were now fixed and led through the aftermost ports on to the quarter-deck, where luff- tackles were attached to them, by means of which the makes.h.i.+ft was to be worked as a rudder.

Some sail was now got on the s.h.i.+p, and she was found to steer very well.

Dodd tried her on every tack, and at last ordered Sharpe to make all sail and head for the Cape.

This electrified the first mate. The breeze was very faint but southerly, and the Mauritius under their lee. They could make it in a night and there refit, and s.h.i.+p a new rudder. He suggested the danger of sailing sixteen hundred miles steered by a gimcrack; and implored Dodd to put into port.

Dodd answered with a roughness and a certain wildness never seen in him before: ”Danger, sir! There will be no more foul weather this voyage; Jonah is overboard.” Sharpe stared an inquiry. ”I tell you we shan't lower our topgallants once from this to the Cape: Jonah is overboard:”

and he slapped his forehead in despair; then, stamping impatiently with his foot, told Sharpe his duty was to obey orders, not discuss them.

”Certainly, sir,” said Sharpe sullenly, and went out of the cabin with serious thoughts of communicating to the other mates an alarming suspicion about Dodd, that now, for the first time, crossed his mind.

But long habit of discipline prevailed, and he made all sail on the s.h.i.+p, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command.

Towards evening it became nearly dead calm. The sea heaved a little, but was waveless, gla.s.sy, and the colour of a rose, incredibly brave and delicate.

The look-out reported pieces of wreck to windward. As the s.h.i.+p was making so little way, Dodd beat up towards them: he feared it was a British s.h.i.+p that had foundered in the storm, and thought it his duty to ascertain and carry the sad news home. In two tacks they got near enough to see with their gla.s.ses that the fragments belonged, not to a stranger, but to the _Agra_ herself. There was one of her waterb.u.t.ts, and a broken mast with some rigging: and as more wreck was descried coming in at a little distance, Dodd kept the s.h.i.+p close to the wind to inspect it: on drifting near, it proved to be several pieces of the bulwark, and a mahogany table out of the cuddy This sort of flotsam was not worth delaying the s.h.i.+p to pick it up; so Dodd made sail again, steering now south-east.

He had sailed about half a mile when the look-out hailed the deck again.

”A man in the water!”

”Whereabouts?”

”A short league on the weather quarter.”

”Oh, we can't beat to windward for _him,_” said Sharpe; ”he is dead long ago.”

”Holds his head very high for a corpse,” said the look-out.

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