The Shoes of Fortune. Munro Neil
flying, as it seemed, to a world of less imminent danger, yet unalluring still.
I looked aloft at the straining spars; they seemed to prick the clouds between the swelling sails; the ropes and shrouds stretched infinitely into a region very grey and chill. Oh, the pallor! oh, the cold and heartless spirit of the sea in that first dawning morn!
“It’s like to be a good day,” said Horn, breaking in upon my silence, and turning to him I saw his face exceeding hollow and wan. The watch lay forward, all but a lad who seemed half-dozing at the helm; Risk and his mate had lapsed to silence in the cuddy.
“You’re no frien’, seemingly, o’ the pair below!” said Horn again, whispering, and with a glance across his shoulder at the helm.
“It did not look as if I were, a minute or two ago,” said I. “Yon’s a scoundrel, and yet I did him an injustice when I thought he meant to sell me.”
“I never sailed with a more cheat-the-widdy crew since I followed the sea,” said Horn, “and whether it’s the one way or the other, sold ye are.”
“Eh?” said I, uncomprehending.
He looked again at the helm, and moved over to a water-breaker further forward, obviously meaning that I should follow. He drew a drink of water for himself, drank slowly, but seemed not to be much in the need for it from the little he took, but he had got out of ear-shot of the man steering.
“You and me’s the gulls this time, Mr. Greig,” said he, whispering. “This is a doomed ship.”
“I thought as much from her rotten spars,” I answered. “So long as she takes me to Nova Scotia I care little what happens to her.”
“It’s a long way to Halifax,” said he. “I wish I could be sure we were likely even to have Land’s End on our starboard before waur happens. Will ye step this way, Mr. Greig?” and he cautiously led the way forward. There was a look-out humming a stave of song somewhere in the bows, and two men stretched among the chains, otherwise that part of the ship was all our own. We went down the fo’c’sle scuttle quietly, and I found myself among the carpenter’s stores, in darkness, divided by a bulkhead door from the quarters of the sleeping men. Rats were scurrying among the timbers and squealing till Horn stamped lightly with his feet and secured stillness.
“Listen!” said he.
I could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of a seaman within, and the wash of water against the ship’s sides.
“Well?” I queried, wondering.
“Put your lug here,” said he, indicating a beam that was dimly revealed by the light from the lamp swinging in the fo’c’sle. I did so, and heard water running as from a pipe somewhere in the bowels of the vessel.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That’s all,” said he and led me aft again.
The dawn by now had spread over half the heavens; behind us the mouth of the Firth gulped enormous clouds, and the fringe of Fife was as flat as a bannock; before us the sea spread chill, leaden, all unlovely. “My sorrow!” says I, “if this is travelling, give me the high-roads and the hot noon.”
Horn’s face seemed more hollow and dark than ever in the wan morning. I waited his explanation. “I think ye said Halifax, Mr. Greig?” said he. “I signed on, mysel’, for the same port, but you and me’s perhaps the only ones on this ship that ever hoped to get there. God give me grace to get foot on shore and Dan Risk will swing for this!”
Somebody sneezed behind us as Horn thus rashly expressed himself; we both turned suddenly on the rail we had been leaning against, expecting that this was the skipper, and though it was not Risk, it was one whose black visage and gleaming teeth and rolling eyes gave me momentarily something of a turn.
It was the cook Ferdinando. He had come up behind on his bare feet, and out upon the sea he gazed with that odd eerie look of the deaf and dumb, heedless of us, it seemed, as we had been dead portions of the ship’s fabric, seeing but the salt wave, the rim of rising sun, blood-red upon the horizon, communing with an old familiar.
“A cauld momin’, cook,” said Horn, like one who tests a humbug pretending to be dumb, but Ferdinando heard him not.
“It might have been a man wi’ all his faculties,” said the seaman whispering, “and it’s time we werena seen thegether. I’ll tell ye later on.”
With that we separated, he to some trivial duty of his office, I, with a mind all disturbed, back to my berth to lie awake, tossing and speculating on the meaning of Horn’s mystery.
CHAPTER XI
THE SCUTTLED SHIP
When I went on deck next morning there was something great ado. We were out of sight of land, sailing large, as the old phrase went, on a brisk quarter breeze with top-sails atrip, and the sky a vast fine open blue. The crew were gathered at the poop, the pump was clanking in the midst of them, and I saw they were taking spells at the cruellest labour a seaman knows.
At first I was noway troubled at the spectacle; a leak was to be expected in old rotten-beams, and I went forward with the heart of me not a pulse the faster.
Risk was leaning over the poop-rail, humped up and his beard on his hands; Murchison, a little apart, swept the horizon with a prospect-glass, and the pump sent a great spate of bilge-water upon the deck. But for a man at the tiller who kept the ship from yawing in the swell that swung below her counter the Seven Sisters sailed at her sweet will; all the interest of her company was in this stream of stinking water that she retched into the scuppers. And yet I could not but be struck by the half-hearted manner in which the seamen wrought; they were visibly shirking; I saw it in the slack muscles, in the heedless eyes.
Risk rose and looked sourly at me as I went up. “Are ye for a job?” said he. “It’s more in your line perhaps than clerkin’.”
“What, at the pumps? Is the old randy geyzing already?”
“Like a washing-boyne,” said he. “Bear a hand like a good lad! we maun keep her afloat at least till some other vessel heaves in sight.”
In the tone and look of the man there was something extraordinary. His words were meant to suggest imminent peril, and yet his voice was shallow as that of a burgh bellman crying an auction sale, and his eyes had more interest in the horizon that his mate still searched with the prospect-glass than in the spate of bilge that gulped upon the deck.
Bilge did I say? Heavens! it was bilge no more, but the pure sea-green that answered to the clanking pump. It was no time for idle wonder at the complacence of the skipper; I flew to the break and threw my strength into the seaman’s task. “Clank-click, clank-click” – the instrument worked reluctantly as if the sucker moved in slime, and in a little the sweat poured from me.
“How is she now, Campbell?” asked Risk, as the carpenter came on deck.
“Three feet in the hold,” said Campbell airily, like one that had an easy conscience.
“Good lord, a foot already!” cried Risk, and then in a tone of sarcasm, “Hearty, lads, hearty there! A little more Renfrewshire beef into it, Mr. Greig, if you please.”
At that I ceased my exertion, stood back straight and looked at the faces about me. There was only one man in the company who did not seem to be amused at me, and that was Horn, who stood with folded arms, moodily eying the open sea.
“You seem mighty joco about it,” I said to Risk, and I wonder to this day at my blindness that never read the whole tale in these hurried events.
“I can afford to be,” he said quickly; “if I gang I gang wi’ clean hands,” and he spat into the seawater streaming from the pump where the port-watch now were working with as much listlessness as the men they superseded.
To the taunt I made no reply, but moved after Horn who had gone forward with his hands in his pockets.
“What does this mean, Horn?” I asked him. “Is the vessel in great danger?”
“I