The Island Treasure. John C. Hutcheson
ship at the moment giving a lurch to port, as a fresh blast of wind caught her weather side, sending a big sea over the waist, I rolled up against him as I answered his question.
“Then ye ken skoot right away an’ tell him thet I guess I’m boss hyar,” cried he, after shoving me back with an oath against the cabin skylight, which I almost tumbled over. “I’m goin’ to hev my meals when I chooses, I say, younker, an’ not when anybody else likes, stooard or no stooard!”
With this return message, I retreated nimbly down the companion, glad to get out of his reach, he looked so savage when he shoved me; but I had hardly descended two steps, when he called after me with a loud shout, that echoed down the passage way and made my flesh creep.
“B’y!” he yelled, making a jump, as if to grab hold of me. “B’y!”
“Ye–e–e–yes, sir,” I stammered, in mortal terror, looking back up the hatchway, though too frightened to return to nearer quarters with him again. “Ye–e–yes, sir.”
My alarm amused him. It was a sort of implied compliment to his bullying powers; and he laughed harshly, nodding his head.
“What in thunder air ye afeard on?” he said. “I ain’t goin’ to kill ye this time, b’y; it’s another cuss I’m after, a kinder sort o’ skunk of a different colour, I guess. Look hyar, b’y, jest ye make tracks forrud when ye’ve told the stooard what I’ve said, an’ see whether thet tarnation black nigger’s asleep in his galley, or what. Won’t I give him fits when I catch him, thet’s all—thaar, be off with ye, smart!”
I did not need any second intimation to go, but plunged down the companion stairway as if a wild bull was after me; and, telling the Welshman, Morris Jones, who acted as steward, a poor, cowardly sort of creature, that the captain did not want his dinner yet, hastened through the cuddy, and on to the maindeck beyond, coming out by the sliding door under the break of the poop, which was the ‘back entrance,’ as it were, to the cabin.
The ship being close-hauled, heeled over so much to leeward that her port side was almost under water, the waves that broke over the fo’c’s’le running down in a cataract into the waist and forming a regular river inside the bulwarks, right flush up with the top of the gunwale, which slushed backwards and forwards as the vessel pitched and rose again, one moment with her bows in the air, and the next diving her nose deep down into the rocking seas; so, I had to scramble along towards the galley on the weather side, holding on to every rope I could clutch to secure my footing, the deck slanting so much from the Denver City laying over to the wind, even under the reduced canvas she had spread. To add to my difficulties, also, in getting forwards, the sheets of foam and spindrift were carried along by the fierce gusts—which came now and again between the lulls, when it blew more steadily, cutting off the tops of the billows and hurling the spray over the mainyard—drenched me almost to the skin before I arrived within hail of the fo’c’s’le.
However, I reached the galley all right at last, if dripping; when, as I looked in over the half-door that barred all admittance to the cook’s domain except to a privileged few, what did I see but Sam Jedfoot sitting down quite cosily in front of a blazing fire he had made up under the coppers containing the men’s tea, which would be served out bye and bye at ‘four bells’, enjoying himself as comfortably as you please, and actually playing the banjo—just as if he had nothing else to do, and there was no such person as Captain Snaggs in existence!
He had his back turned to me, and so could not notice that I was there, listening to him as he twanged the strings of the instrument and struck up that ‘tink-a-tink a tong-tong’ accompaniment familiar to all acquainted with the Christy Minstrels, the cook also humming away serenely to himself an old ditty dear to the darkey’s heart, and which I had heard the negroes often sing when I was over in New York, on the previous voyage I had taken a few months before, to which I have already alluded—when I ran away to sea, and shipped as a cabin boy on board one of the Liverpool liners, occupying a similar position to that I now held in the Denver City.
This was the song the cook chaunted, with that sad intonation of voice for which, somehow or other, the light-hearted African race always seem to have such a strange predilection. Sam touching the strings of the banjo in harmonious chords to a sort of running arpeggio movement:—
“Oh, down in Alabama, ’fore I wer sot free,
I lubbed a p’ooty yaller girl, an’ fought dat she lubbed me;
But she am proob unconstant, an’ leff me hyar to tell
How my pore hart am’ breakin’ fo’ croo-el Nancy Bell!”
He wound up with a resounding “twang” at the end of the bar, before giving the chorus—
“Den cheer up, Sam! Don’ let yer sperrits go down;
Dere’s many a gal dat I’se know wal am waitin’ fur you in
de town!”
“I fancy you do want cheering up, Sam,” said I, waiting till he had finished the verse. “The skipper’s in a regular tantrum about you, and says you’re to come aft at once.”
“My golly, sonny!” cried he, turning round, with a grin on his ebony face, that showed all his ivories, and looking in no whit alarmed, as I expected, at the captain’s summons, proceeding to reach up one of his long arms, which were like those of a monkey, and hang the banjo on to a cleat close to the roof of the galley, out of harm’s way. “What am de muss about?”
“Because you didn’t turn out on deck when all hands were called just now to reef topsails,” I explained. “The ‘old man’ is in a fine passion, I can tell you, though he didn’t notice your not being there at first. It was that mean sneak, the first-mate, that told him, on purpose to get you into a row.”
“Ah-ha! Jess so, I sabby,” said Sam, getting up from his seat; although he did not look any the taller for standing, being a little man and having short legs, which, however, were compensated for by his long arms and broad shoulders, denoting great strength. “I’se know what dat mean cuss do it fo’—‘cause I wouldn’t bring no hot coffee to um cabin fo’ him dis mornin’. Me tell him dat lazy stoo’ad’s place do dat; me ship’s cook, not one black niggah slabe!”
“He’s always at me, too,” I chorussed, in sympathy with this complaint. “Mr. Flinders is harder on me than even Captain Snaggs, and he’s bad enough, in all conscience.”
“Dat am true,” replied the cook, who had been my only friend since I had been on board, none of the others, officers or men, having a kind word for me, save the carpenter, a sturdy Englishman, named Tom Bullover, and one of the Yankee sailors, Hiram Bangs, who seemed rather good-natured, and told me he came from some place ‘down Chicopee way’—wherever that might be. “But, never yer mind, sonny; needer de cap’n nor dat brute ob a mate ken kill us no nohow.”
“ ‘Cheer up, Sam! Don’ let your ’perrits go down—’
“Guess, dough, I’se better go aft at once, or Cap’n Snaggs ’ll bust his biler!”
And so, humming away still at the refrain of his favourite ditty, he clambered along the bulwarks, making his way to the poop, where the captain, I could see, as I peered round the corner of the galley, was still waiting for him at the top of the ladder on the weather side, holding on to the brass rail with one hand, and clutching hold of a stay with the other.
I pitied the negro; but, of course, I couldn’t help him. All I could do was to look on, by no means an uninterested spectator, though keeping cautiously out of sight of Captain Snaggs’ watchful eye.
The wind was not making such a noise through the shrouds now, for one could distinguish above its moaning whistle the wash of the waves as they broke with a rippling roar and splashed against the side like the measured strokes of a sledge-hammer on the ship breasting them with her bluff bows, and contemptuously sailing on, spurning them beneath her fore foot; so, I was able to hear and see nearly all that passed, albeit I had to strain