The Ghost Ship/Chapter Twenty Six.
Chapter Twenty Six.
While Garry O’Neil and I were attending to the two French sailors who, though they had been a good bit knocked about in the course of the protracted struggle, were not seemingly very seriously hurt, suffering more, indeed, from want of proper food and rest than from the slight wounds they had received, we heard loud cries and a sort of dull moaning that appeared to proceed from the after part of the saloon.
Going thither at once, Captain Applegarth knocked with his knuckles on the panel of the closed door of one of the larger state rooms, running athwart the ship from whence the sounds proceeded.
“Hullo, within there!” he shouted, “what’s the matter? What’s the row? Come out!”
A shrill scream was the only response to his inquiries.
“What’s the matter?” repeated the skipper, speaking in a gentler tone. “You have nothing to fear. We’re all friends here!”
The cries and confused noises continued, however, and the skipper thereupon resumed his knocking, this time more forcibly, and with his fists aided by a kick from his heavy boot against the lower part of the still closed door.
At this imperative summons the shrieking ceased, and we heard a feeble voice within, calling out in French— “Mercy! for the love of God!” we could distinguish amidst a plentitude of sobs and violent groans in a deeper key. “Ah! brave Haytians! Have pity, and spare our lives!”
“Hang it all, you cowards, we’re not those cursed Haytians, and I wish you could have been left to their mercy! It is only what you deserve!” roared the skipper, infuriated and out of all patience at the Frenchwoman’s mistake and her appealing in such terms to the murderous scoundrels of whom we had made so summary an end. “We’re Englishmen; we’re your friends, I tell you, true-hearted British sailors, who have come to rescue you, so open the door!”
But Madame Boisson, who, of course, was his interlocutrice behind the door, remained obdurate.
“Ah! the false English,” she cried, “down with the pigs!”
At this the skipper laughed grimly, and all standing near him were much amused.
“She’s a good specimen of her race,” cried the captain. “They always abuse other nations and cry out that they are betrayed when ill luck comes to them, instead of trying to help themselves, as we perfidious Englishmen do.”
Finding it impossible to persuade her, though, to open the door of the cabin, which was bolted and barred within, the skipper sang out to me to go on deck and ask Elsie Vereker to come down and try what she could do, thinking that the obstinate prisoner would doubtless recognise the girl’s voice and so, through her means, be made more amenable to reason.
No sooner said than done.
Up I went and down the companion-way. I returned anon accompanied not only by Miss Elsie, but by the colonel as well, Garry O’Neil, who hurried up the ladder after me with that intent, insisting on his coming below so that he could the better attend to his wounded leg, which had broken out again and needed fresh dressing, and after some little difficulty Garry got him down in safety.
Thanks to Elsie’s pleadings, Madame Boisson at length capitulated, promising to come out of her retreat as soon as she had had time, “to make her toilet.”
“By George!” exclaimed the skipper, overhearing this and turning with an ironical grin to the colonel, who had his leg upon a chair, and Garry bustling about him, busy with bandages, “she’s a true Frenchwoman, as I said at the first. Fancy, after being imprisoned there in that stuffy cabin for four and twenty hours and imagining herself and husband might be murdered every minute by a lot of pirate scoundrels, thinking of nothing but titifying herself, instead of thanking God for their escape and rushing out at the very first opportunity, eager to be free. Strange creatures!”
“Heavens!” exclaimed the colonel, smiling at the other’s outburst. “It is true, but they’re all alike, and I’ve seen a good many of them, my friend.”
Presently out sailed Madame Boisson, who I noticed was a middle-aged and well-preserved woman, attired in an elaborate dressing gown with a profusion of bows and ribbons fluttering about it, and with a good deal of pearl powder or some other cosmetic of that sort on her face, and her cheeks tinted here and there with—well, colour.
Despite her screams and hysterics, however, there was no trace of a tear in her twinkling black eyes, although her fat little husband, who ambled meekly in her train, betrayed signs of great emotion, his red face all swollen from crying, and otherwise looking like a whipped cur.
Madame made a most gracious salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was pleased to observe, that I was “un beau garçon.”
In returning the skipper’s polite bow she happened to notice the poor wounded sailors lying on the cushions by the companion, and the blood all sprinkled about—a sight at which she turned up her nose, declaring very volubly that the place was like a “pigsty,” unfit for any lady to enter, and expressing her surprise at those “common seamen” being attended to and allowed to remain in the saloon, she having always understood that that apartment was only for “the use of the first-class passengers.”
The skipper, who understood her well enough, as I did too, having learnt the language at a French school near Rouen, was very angry at her remarks.
“Those men,” said he in his best Parisian, “are your own countrymen, all that are left of those who died to preserve the lives of you and your husband there, who ought to be ashamed of himself for skulking below while they were fighting on deck.”
Monsieur looked foolish, but said nothing in reply to this. Madame sniffed, and flashed her glittering black eyes, as if she could annihilate him at a glance.
“My brave Hercules!” she cried indignantly, “be easy. You have been out in the Bois and have established your reputation as a hero and have no need to notice the insulting remarks of this Englishman. But for you,” she added, turning angrily to the colonel, “this would not have happened.”
“I? Good Heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Vereker, greatly astonished at her turning on him thus. “Why, it was I who did all in my power to prevent Captain Alphonse from allowing those cursed blacks on board the ship in the first instance, but you and Monsieur Boisson, both of you, persuaded him to the contrary.”
“My God! dear Hercules, see how we are calumniated,” said the irate Frenchwoman, rather illogically, turning to her miserable atom of a husband, who gesticulated and shrugged his shoulders in response, and looking over the skipper and Colonel Vereker as if neither existed, she went on to remark to Elsie, who, however, did not appear to relish very much her conversation or endearments, that, “some persons whom she would not condescend to name, were, of monsters, the most infamous and ungrateful—men, indeed, of the gutter—but that she, the little one, was an angel.”
Here the skipper put an end to the interview. He had evidently seen and had enough of the Boissons, husband and wife, and, ascending the companion-ladder at the same time as Garry and myself, I heard him muttering to himself as he went along and just caught the following words: “To think—brave men—lose—valuable—save such—theirs—too dreadful. She frivolous—he—a—damned coward!” laying a rather strong emphasis on the last words.
We afterwards went down again, Garry and I, and managed between us to bring up little Mr Johnson, the brave fellow having picked up wonderfully after the attention we had given him, and the knife-thrust he had received from the negro was found to have only grazed his ribs, and he was anxious for fresh air, after his long imprisonment below, and to see and judge for himself how things were looking on deck after our scrimmage.
Here the light was waning and there was a good deal to be done.
“I think, Fosset,” said the skipper to our worthy first mate, who had been ordering matters forward while the former had come aft, “we had better muster the hands first so as to know who’s missing. I’m afraid several of our poor fellows have lost the number of their mess in the fight.”
“Aye, sir, they have,” replied Mr Fosset. “Poor Stoddart’s gone, for one!”
“Poor fellow, I am sorry,” exclaimed the captain with much feeling. “We couldn’t have lost a better man, for he was about the best we had on board, poor fellow—a good engineer, a good mess-mate, and good at everything he handled, besides being the finest fellow that ever wore shoe leather. How did it happen?”
“He was knifed by one of those black devils, sir, as he led the boarders forrad!”
“Poor Stoddart! I am sorry to lose you! Well, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, and all my words will never bring him back again. Mr O’Neil, just muster the men in the waist and let us know the worst at once!”
“Faith, ye’re roight, sor; we’d betther count noses an’ have the job over,” returned Garry, sotto voce, singing out in a louder key to the survivors of the fray, who were grouped in the waist about the mainmast, where the remaining Haytians who had not been killed outright were tied up feet to the wrists, as the skipper had told Colonel Vereker when he came up. “Now all you Star of the Norths that are still alive come over here to starboard; the chaps that are d’id, sure, can shtop where they are!”
The hands laughed at this Hibernian way of putting the matter to them, and answered their names readily on Garry proceeding to read out the muster roll from a paper he had drawn out of his pocket—all, that is, save those that had fallen, eight in number, including poor Stoddart, our energetic second engineer, and one of his firemen who had volunteered to swell the boarding party, as well as six of our best sailors amongst the foremast hands.
Of the rest of the crew four were badly hurt and a few slightly wounded. Spokeshave was one of these latter, having, unfortunately, the end of his nose—that prominent feature of his—cut clean off by a slash from a cutlass; but the majority, we were glad to find, mostly escaped unscathed.
Seeing old Masters all right, I thought of his morbid forebodings before we came up with the ship, and determined to take a rise out of him.
“I’m awfully sorry about the old bo’sun,” I said with a wink to Garry, right behind his back. “He wasn’t a bad seaman, but an awful old grumbler, and so superstitious that he funked his own shadow and daren’t walk up a hatchway in the dark. Poor old chap, though, it’s a pity he’s dead; I shall miss him if only from not hearing his continued growling over things that might happen.”
“Well I’m blessed!” cried old Masters, completely flabbergasted at this exordium of mine; “I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak ag’in me like that. I allays believed you was a friend, that I did.”
I pretended not to see him, and so too did Garry O’Neil, “tumbling to my game,” as the saying goes, while I went on with my chaff.
“How did he die?” I asked. “Was he killed at the first rush?”
“Faith, I can’t say corrictly,” replied Garry in a very melancholy tone of voice. “I’m afeard care carried him off, somehow or other, as it killed the cat, for he war the most disconsolate, doleful, down-hearted chap I ivver saw piping the hands to dinner. An’ so he’s d’id! Poor old bo’sun! we’ll nivver see his loike ag’in.”
“Lord bless you!” cried old Masters angrily, stepping up nearer and confronting us, “I’m not dead at all, I tell you—I tell you I’m not—I’m blessed if I am. Can’t you see me here alive and hearty afore you? Look at me.”
“Ah, it’s his ghost!” I said, with an affected and tremulous start. “He told me, poor fellow, he felt himself doomed, and nothing could save him; and I suppose his spirit wants to prove to me he wasn’t a liar, as I always thought he was, the old sinner!”
This was too much for Garry, and he couldn’t hold in any longer, and both of us roared at Masters, who looked scared; and, though angry and highly incensed with us at first, was only too glad at its being but a joke, and not a fact that he was dead, to bear us any ill-feeling long.
We were horrified when we were told later on, while we were committing to the deep the corpses of those slain—negroes and white men impartially sharing the same grave beneath the placid sea, at rest like themselves, the breeze having died away again soon after sunset—that Etienne Brago and François Terne, the two wounded sailors we had left below with the Boissons, and little Mr Johnson and the colonel and Elsie of course, that these were the only ones left of the thirty odd souls on board the Saint Pierre when she sailed from La Guayra a fortnight before!
After all the bodies had been buried in their watery tomb, not forgetting that of poor Ivan, who we all thought merited an honoured place by the side of his biped brethren of valour—well, after all this had been done the skipper had the pumps rigged and the decks sluiced down to wash away all traces of the fray.
A council of war was then held between us all on the poop, the skipper of course presiding, and the colonel coming up from the cabin to take part in the proceedings, as well as old Mr Stokes from our ship, where he had remained attending singlehanded to the duties of the engine-room, denying himself, as Garry O’Neil remarked, “all the foin of the foighting!”
This conclave had been called for the purpose of deciding what was to be done with the Saint Pierre and the captured black pirates from whom we had salvaged her, and without much deliberation it was pretty soon decided, on the colonel’s suggestion, to send the ship to her destined port, Liverpool, taking the negroes in her, so that they could be tried before a proper court in England for the offence they had committed. “It’s of no use your fetching them up to New York,” said the colonel, “for though I’m an American myself and am proud of my nationality, I must confess those Yanks of the north mix up dollars and justice in a way that puzzles folk that are not accustomed to their way of holding the scales.”
The skipper was of the same opinion as Colonel Vereker; so, the matter having been settled, a navigating party was selected to work the Saint Pierre across the Atlantic, with Garry O’Neil as chief officer. The skipper was unable to spare Mr Fosset, and Garry was all the more fit in every way for the part, as he would be able to look after the wounded French sailors, who would naturally go in the ship as they were the principal witnesses against the blacks on the charges that would be brought against them of “piracy on the high seas.”
It was dark when all these details were finally arranged, and all of them went back aboard on our vessel for rest and refreshment, the colonel and his daughter, of course, accompanying us.
Madame and Monsieur Boisson, however, could not be made to leave the ship, saying they would not do so—Madame, that is, said it, and the brave Hercule, following her lead as usual, “would not leave,” said she repeatedly, “until they once more touched terra firma,” and not wishing they should be starved for their obstinacy, the skipper ordered Weston to look after the happy pair and provide them with food at the same time as he did the wounded and prisoners.
The two vessels remained for the night, still lashed alongside for better security, all hands being too tired out besides to be able to do anything further beyond “turning in” and getting as much rest and sleep as they could after the fatigue and excitement of the day.
Next morning at sunrise Garry O’Neil went back to his ship with his crew of eight men—all the skipper was able to spare him—and by breakfast time they had made her all atauto, bending new sails, which they found below in the forepeak, in place of the tattered rags that hung from some of the yards, and otherwise making good defects, preparing the vessel for her passage home.
We were all sorry to part with Garry even for the short period that would elapse before he would rejoin the old barquey, for he was the life of all us aboard; but the same regret was not felt for Master Spokeshave when we saw him go over the side to accompany the Irishman, the skipper having so decreed, as his assistant navigator, the damage to his nose not necessarily affecting his “taking the sun,” though it might interfere with the little beggar’s altitudes of another character.
By eight bells all the details necessary under the circumstances were satisfactorily arranged, including the transfer of the effects belonging to the colonel and Miss Elsie, these two preferring to voyage with us, unlike their whilom passengers, the Boissons, who remained in their old quarters, going with “Captain Garry,” as we all dubbed our mess-mate on his promotion to a separate command; and half an hour or so later a splendid breeze just then springing up from the westwards and flecking the still blue water with buoyant life, the two ships parted company amid a round of enthusiastic cheers that only grew faint as the distance widened them apart, the Saint Pierre sailing off right before the wind, with everything set below, and aloft, across the ocean on her course for Saint George’s Channel, while we braced our yards sharp up and bore away full speed ahead in the opposite direction, bound for New York, which port we safely reached without further mishap four days later.