The Tragedy of Ida Noble. William Clark Russell
solve the problem submitted by Captain Dopping's reticence.
He left me abruptly, and walked forward and addressed one of the men, apparently speaking of the job the fellow was upon. I listened for that note of bullying, for that tone of habitual brutal temper, which I should have expected to hear in him when he accosted the seamen, and was surprised to find that he spoke as a comrade rather than as a captain; with something even of careless familiarity in his manner as he addressed the man.
I had now an opportunity for the first time since I came on deck to inspect the schooner. It was easy to see that she had never been built as a yacht; her appearance, indeed, suggested that in her day she had been employed as a slaver. She was old, but very powerfully constructed, and seemingly still as fine a sea-boat as was at that time to be encountered on the ocean. Her bulwarks were high and immensely thick; the fore-part of her had a rise, or "spring" as it is called, which gave a look of domination and defiance to her round bows which at the forefoot narrowed into a stem of knife-like sharpness. She was very loftily rigged and expanded an enormous breadth of mainsail. I had never before seen so long a gaff, and the boom when amidships forked far out over the stern. Her decks were very clean but grayish with brine and years of hard usage. I noticed that she carried a small boat hanging in davits on the starboard side, and a large boat abaft the little caboose or kitchen that stood like a sentry-box forward. This boat, indeed, resembled a man-of-war's cutter—such a long and heavy fabric as one would certainly not think of looking for on board a craft of the size of La Casandra. It was my sailor's eye that carried my mind to this detail. No man but a sailor, and perhaps a suspicious sailor as I then was, standing as I did upon the deck of a vessel whose destination was still a secret to me, would have noticed that boat.
The five of a crew were all of them Englishmen, strong, hearty fellows. I inspected them curiously, but could find nothing in them that did not suggest the plain, average, honest merchant sailor. They were well clothed for men of their class, habited in the jackets, round hats and wide trousers of the Jacks of my period, and I took notice that though their captain stood near them they worked as though without sense of his presence, occasionally calling a remark one to another, and laughing, but not noisily, as if what discipline there was on board the schooner existed largely in the crew's choice of behavior. These and other points I remarked, but nothing that I saw helped me to any sort of conclusion as to the destination of the little ship or the motive of the cruise. All that I could collect was that here was a schooner bearing a Spanish name and owned or hired by one or both of those Spaniards, who continued to pace the quarter-deck arm-in-arm, but manned, so far as I could see, by a company of five Englishmen and a negro lad, and commanded by an English skipper.
I walked a little way forward, the better to observe the vessel's rig at the fore, and on my approaching the galley, a fellow put his head out of it—making a sixth man now visible. He kept his head out to stare at me. Many ugly men have I met in my time, but never so hideous a creature as that. His nationality I could not imagine, though it was not long before I learned that he was a Spaniard. His coal-black hair fell in a shower of greasy snake-like ringlets upon his back and shoulders. One eye was whitened by a cataract or some large pearly blotch, and the other seemed to me to possess as malevolent an expression as could possibly deform a pupil unnaturally large, and still further disfigured by a very net-work of blood-red lines. His nose appeared to have been leveled flat with his face at the bridge by a blow, leaving the lower portion of it standing straight out in the shape of the thick end of a small broken carrot. His lips of leather, his complexion of chocolate, his three or four yellow fangs, his mat of close cropped whiskers, coarse as horse-hair, his apparel of blue shirt open at the neck and revealing a little gilt or gold crucifix, a pair of tarry leather trousers, carpet slippers, and the remains of an old Scotch cap that lay rather than sat upon his hair; all these points combined in producing one of the most extraordinary figures that had ever crossed my path—a path, I may say, that in my time had carried me into many wild scenes, and to the contemplation of many strange surprising sights.
While this prodigy of ugliness and I were staring at each other, the captain came across the deck to me.
"What do you think of this schooner?" he said.
"She is a very good schooner. She is old—perhaps thirty years old. I believe she has carried slaves in her time."
"I know it," he replied, with a strong nod, to which his furiously red hair seemed to impart a character of hot temper.
"I have seen," said I, "handsomer men than yonder beauty who is staring at me from the galley door."
"Ay. He is good enough to shut up in a box and to carry about as a show. He is cook and steward. His name is Juan de Mariana. He cooks well, and is or has been a domestic in Don Lazarillo's establishment."
"How many go to your crew?" said I, questioning him with an air of indifference now that I found he was disposed to be communicative.
"Eight."
"The number includes you and the cook and the nigger lad?"
He nodded, and looked at me suddenly, as though about to deliver something on the top of his mind, then checked himself, and pulling out his watch, exclaimed: "I understand you are willing to serve as mate of this vessel."
"I am willing to do anything. Do not I owe my life to you all?"
"Well," said he, "that may be settled now. It is Don Christoval's wish. As to pay, him and me will go into that matter with you by and by."
I opened my eyes at the sound of the word pay, but made no remark. It was a grateful sound, as you will suppose, to a man who had as good as lost everything save what he stood up in, and who, when he got ashore, might find it very hard to obtain another berth. The two Spanish gentlemen had left the deck. Captain Dopping said: "Step aft with me," and we walked as far as the cabin skylight, where facing about the captain called out, "Trapp, South, Butler, Scott, lay aft, my lads. I have a word to say to you." He then turned to the fellow who stood at the helm and exclaimed, "Tubb, you'll be listening."
The seamen quitted their several employments and came to the quarter-deck. The Spanish cook stepped out of the galley to hearken, and a moment later the ebony face of the negro showed in the square of the forecastle hatch. The sailors looked as though they pretty well guessed what was coming.
"Lads," said Captain Dopping, placing his hand upon my arm, "this here is Mr. James Portlack. He was second mate of the bark, Ocean Ranger, a ship I know."
"And I know her, too," said one of the men.
"Mr. Portlack," continued Captain Dopping, "holds a master's certificate, which is more than I do, and he tops me by that. But I'm your captain, and your captain I remain. Mr. Portlack consents to act as the mate of the Casandra. Is this agreeable to you, lads?"
"Ay, ay; agreeable enough," was the general answer.
"Well, then, Butler, you're displaced, d'ye see? No call for you to relieve me any longer."
"And a good job too," said the man, a heavy, sturdy, powerfully built fellow with small, honest, glittering blue eyes, and immense bushy whiskers; "there was nothin' said about my taking charge of the deck in the agreement."
"Well, you're out of it," exclaimed Captain Dopping, "and the ship's company's stronger by a hand, which is as it should be. D'ye hear me, cook?"
"Yash, yash, I hear all right, capitan," answered the swarthy creature from the door of his galley, contorting his countenance into the aspect of a horrid face beheld by one in a high fever, in his struggle to articulate in English.
"That'll do, my lads," said the captain.
The men leisurely rounded and went forward again. There was nothing unusual in this proceeding. It was customary, it may still be customary at sea, to invite the decision of the crew before electing a man to fill a vacant post as first or second mate. All that I found singular lay in the behavior of the men. There was something in their bearing I find it impossible to convey—a suggestion of resolution struggling with reluctance, or it might be that they gave me the impression of fellows who had entered upon an undertaking without wholly understanding its nature or without fully believing in