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CHAPTER XIV - THE CABIN OF THE "FLYING SCUD."
The sun of the morrow had not cleared the morning bank: the
lake of the lagoon, the islets, and the wall of breakers now
beginning to subside, still lay clearly pictured in the flushed
obscurity of early day, when we stepped again upon the deck of
the Flying Scud: Nares, myself, the mate, two of the hands, and
one dozen bright, virgin axes, in war against that massive
structure. I think we all drew pleasurable breath; so profound
in man is the instinct of destruction, so engaging is the interest
of the chase. For we were now about to taste, in a supreme
degree, the double joys of demolishing a toy and playing "Hide
the handkerchief": sports from which we had all perhaps
desisted since the days of infancy. And the toy we were to
burst in pieces was a deep-sea ship; and the hidden good for
which we were to hunt was a prodigious fortune.
The decks were washed down, the main hatch removed, and a
gun-tackle purchase rigged before the boat arrived with
breakfast. I had grown so suspicious of the wreck, that it was a
positive relief to me to look down into the hold, and see it full,
or nearly full, of undeniable rice packed in the Chinese fashion
in boluses of matting. Breakfast over, Johnson and the hands
turned to upon the cargo; while Nares and I, having smashed
open the skylight and rigged up a windsail on deck, began the
work of rummaging the cabins.
I must not be expected to describe our first day's work, or (for
that matter) any of the rest, in order and detail as it occurred.
Such particularity might have been possible for several officers
and a draft of men from a ship of war, accompanied by an
experienced secretary with a knowledge of shorthand. For two
plain human beings, unaccustomed to the use of the broad-axe
and consumed with an impatient greed of the result, the whole
business melts, in the retrospect, into a nightmare of exertion,
heat, hurry, and bewilderment; sweat pouring from the face like
rain, the scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, and
the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes. I shall content
myself with giving the cream of our discoveries in a logical
rather than a temporal order; though the two indeed practically
coincided, and we had finished our exploration of the cabin,
before we could be certain of the nature of the cargo.
Nares and I began operations by tossing up pell-mell through
the companion, and piling in a squalid heap about the wheel,
all clothes, personal effects, the crockery, the carpet, stale
victuals, tins of meat, and in a word, all movables from the
main cabin. Thence, we transferred our attention to the
captain's quarters on the starboard side. Using the blankets for
a basket, we sent up the books, instruments, and clothes to
swell our growing midden on the deck; and then Nares, going
on hands and knees, began to forage underneath the bed. Box
after box of Manilla cigars rewarded his search. I took
occasion to smash some of these boxes open, and even to
guillotine the bundles of cigars; but quite in vain--no secret
cache of opium encouraged me to continue.
"I guess I've got hold of the dicky now!" exclaimed Nares, and
turning round from my perquisitions, I found he had drawn
forth a heavy iron box, secured to the bulkhead by chain and
padlock. On this he was now gazing, not with the triumph that
instantly inflamed my own bosom, but with a somewhat foolish
appearance of surprise.
"By George, we have it now!" I cried, and would have shaken
hands with my companion; but he did not see, or would not
accept, the salutation.
"Let's see what's in it first," he remarked dryly. And he
adjusted the box upon its side, and with some blows of an axe
burst the lock open. I threw myself beside him, as he replaced
the box on its bottom and removed the lid. I cannot tell what I
expected; a million's worth of diamonds might perhaps have
pleased me; my cheeks burned, my heart throbbed to bursting;
and lo! there was disclosed but a trayful of papers, neatly taped,
and a cheque-book of the customary pattern. I made a snatch at
the tray to see what was beneath; but the captain's hand fell on
mine, heavy and hard.
"Now, boss!" he cried, not unkindly, "is this to be run
shipshape? or is it a Dutch grab-racket?"
And he proceeded to untie and run over the contents of the
papers, with a serious face and what seemed an ostentation of
delay. Me and my impatience it would appear he had
forgotten; for when he was quite done, he sat a while thinking,
whistled a bar or two, refolded the papers, tied them up again;
and then, and not before, deliberately raised the tray.
I saw a cigar-box, tied with a piece of fishing-line, and four fat
canvas-bags. Nares whipped out his knife, cut the line, and
opened the box. It was about half full of sovereigns.
"And the bags?" I whispered.
The captain ripped them open one by one, and a flood of mixed
silver coin burst forth and rattled in the rusty bottom of the box.
Without a word, he set to work to count the gold.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It's the ship's money," he returned, doggedly continuing his
work.
"The ship's money?" I repeated. "That's the money Trent
tramped and traded with? And there's his cheque-book to
draw upon his owners? And he has left it?"
"I guess he has," said Nares, austerely, jotting down a note of
the gold; and I was abashed into silence till his task should be
completed.
It came, I think, to three hundred and seventy-eight pounds
sterling; some nineteen pounds of it in silver: all of which we
turned again into the chest.
"And what do you think of that?" I asked.
"Mr. Dodd," he replied, "you see something of the rumness of
this job, but not the whole. The specie bothers you, but what
gets me is the papers. Are you aware that the master of a ship
has charge of all the cash in hand, pays the men advances,
receives freight and passage money, and runs up bills in every
port? All this he does as the owner's confidential agent, and
his integrity is proved by his receipted bills. I tell you, the
captain of a ship is more likely to forget his pants than these
bills which guarantee his character. I've known men drown to
save them: bad men, too; but this is the shipmaster's honour.
And here this Captain Trent--not hurried, not threatened with
anything but a free passage in a British man-of-war--has left
them all behind! I don't want to express myself too strongly,
because the facts appear against me, but the thing is
impossible."
Dinner came to us not long after, and we ate it on deck, in a
grim silence, each privately racking his brain for some solution
of the mysteries. I was indeed so swallowed up in these
considerations, that the wreck, the lagoon, the islets, and the
strident sea-fowl, the strong sun then beating on my head, and
even the gloomy countenance of the captain at my elbow, all
vanished from the field of consciousness. My mind was a
blackboard, on which I scrawled and blotted out hypotheses;
comparing each with the pictorial records in my memory:
cyphering with pictures. In the course of this tense mental
exercise I recalled and studied the faces of one memorial
masterpiece, the scene of the saloon; and here I found myself,
on a sudden, looking in the eyes of the Kanaka.
"There's one thing I can put beyond doubt, at all events," I
cried, relinquishing my dinner and getting briskly afoot.
"There was that Kanaka I saw in the bar with Captain Trent,
the fellow the newspapers and ship's articles made out to be a
Chinaman. I mean to rout his quarters out and settle that."
"All right," said Nares. "I'll lazy off a bit longer, Mr. Dodd; I
feel pretty rocky and mean."
We had thoroughly cleared out the three after-compartments of
the ship: all the stuff from the main cabin and the mate's and
captain's quarters lay piled about the wheel; but in the forward
stateroom with the two bunks, where Nares had said the mate
and cook most likely berthed, we had as yet done nothing.
Thither I went. It was very bare; a few photographs were
tacked on the bulkhead, one of them indecent; a single chest
stood open, and, like all we had yet found, it had been partly
rifled. An armful of two-shilling novels proved to me beyond a
doubt it was a European's; no Chinaman would have possessed
any, and the most literate Kanaka conceivable in a ship's galley
was not likely to have gone beyond one. It was plain, then, that
the cook had not berthed aft, and I must look elsewhere.
The men had stamped down the nests and driven the birds from
the galley, so that I could now enter without contest. One door
had been already blocked with rice; the place was in part
darkness, full of a foul stale smell, and a cloud of nasty flies; it
had been left, besides, in some disorder, or else the birds,
during their time of tenancy, had knocked the things about; and
the floor, like the deck before we washed it, was spread with
pasty filth. Against the wall, in the far corner, I found a
handsome chest of camphor-wood bound with brass, such as
Chinamen and sailors love, and indeed all of mankind that
plies in the Pacific. From its outside view I could thus make no
deduction; and, strange to say, the interior was concealed. All
the other chests, as I have said already, we had found gaping
open, and their contents scattered abroad; the same remark we
found to apply afterwards in the quarters of the seamen; only
this camphor-wood chest, a singular exception, was both closed
and locked.
I took an axe to it, readily forced the paltry Chinese fastening,
and, like a Custom-House officer, plunged my hands among
the contents. For some while I groped among linen and cotton.
Then my teeth were set on edge with silk, of which I drew forth
several strips covered with mysterious characters. And these
settled the business, for I recognised them as a kind of bed-
hanging popular with the commoner class of the Chinese. Nor
were further evidences wanting, such as night-clothes of an
extraordinary design, a three-stringed Chinese fiddle, a silk
handkerchief full of roots and herbs, and a neat apparatus for
smoking opium, with a liberal provision of the drug. Plainly,
then, the cook had been a Chinaman; and, if so, who was Jos.
Amalu? Or had Jos. stolen the chest before he proceeded to
ship under a false name and domicile? It was possible, as
anything was possible in such a welter; but, regarded as a
solution, it only led and left me deeper in the bog. For why
should this chest have been deserted and neglected, when the
others were rummaged or removed? and where had Jos. come
by that second chest, with which (according to the clerk at the
What Cheer) he had started for Honolulu?
"And how have YOU fared?" inquired the captain, whom I
found luxuriously reclining in our mound of litter. And the
accent on the pronoun, the heightened colour of the speaker's
face, and the contained excitement in his tones, advertised me
at once that I had not been alone to make discoveries.
"I have found a Chinaman's chest in the galley," said I, "and
John (if there was any John) was not so much as at the pains to
take his opium."
Nares seemed to take it mighty quietly. "That so?" said he.
"Now, cast your eyes on that and own you're beaten!" And with
a formidable clap of his open hand he flattened out before me,
on the deck, a pair of newspapers.
I gazed upon them dully, being in no mood for fresh
discoveries.
"Look at them, Mr. Dodd," cried the captain sharply. "Can't
you look at them?" And he ran a dirty thumb along the title.
"'_Sydney Morning Herald, November 26th,' can't you make
that out?" he cried, with rising energy. "And don't you know,
sir, that not thirteen days after this paper appeared in New
South Pole, this ship we're standing in heaved her blessed
anchors out of China? How did the _Sydney Morning Herald_
get to Hong Kong in thirteen days? Trent made no land, he
spoke no ship, till he got here. Then he either got it here or in
Hong Kong. I give you your choice, my son!" he cried, and fell
back among the clothes like a man weary of life.
"Where did you find them?" I asked. "In that black bag?"
"Guess so," he said. "You needn't fool with it. There's nothing
else but a lead-pencil and a kind of worked-out knife."
I looked in the bag, however, and was well rewarded.
"Every man to his trade, captain," said I. "You're a sailor, and
you've given me plenty of points; but I am an artist, and allow
me to inform you this is quite as strange as all the rest. The
knife is a palette-knife; the pencil a Winsor and Newton, and a
B B B at that. A palette-knife and a B B B on a tramp brig! It's
against the laws of nature."
"It would sicken a dog, wouldn't it?" said Nares.
"Yes," I continued, "it's been used by an artist, too: see how it's
sharpened--not for writing--no man could write with that. An
artist, and straight from Sydney? How can he come in?"
"O, that's natural enough," sneered Nares. "They cabled him to
come up and illustrate this dime novel."
We fell a while silent.
"Captain," I said at last, "there is something deuced underhand
about this brig. You tell me you've been to sea a good part of
your life. You must have seen shady things done on ships, and
heard of more. Well, what is this? is it insurance? is it piracy?
what is it ABOUT? what can it be for?"
"Mr. Dodd," returned Nares, "you're right about me having
been to sea the bigger part of my life. And you're right again
when you think I know a good many ways in which a dishonest
captain mayn't be on the square, nor do exactly the right thing
by his owners, and altogether be just a little too smart by
ninety-nine and three-quarters. There's a good many ways, but
not so many as you'd think; and not one that has any mortal
thing to do with Trent. Trent and his whole racket has got to
do with nothing--that's the bed-rock fact; there's no sense to it,
and no use in it, and no story to it: it's a beastly dream. And
don't you run away with that notion that landsmen take about
ships. A society actress don't go around more publicly than
what a ship does, nor is more interviewed, nor more
humbugged, nor more run after by all sorts of little fussinesses
in brass buttons. And more than an actress, a ship has a deal to
lose; she's capital, and the actress only character--if she's that.
The ports of the world are thick with people ready to kick a
captain into the penitentiary if he's not as bright as a dollar and
as honest as the morning star; and what with Lloyd keeping
watch and watch in every corner of the three oceans, and the
insurance leeches, and the consuls, and the customs bugs, and
the medicos, you can only get the idea by thinking of a
landsman watched by a hundred and fifty detectives, or a
stranger in a village Down East."
"Well, but at sea?" I said.
"You make me tired," retorted the captain. "What's the use--at
sea? Everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't
it? You can't stop at sea for ever, can you?--No; the Flying
Scud is rubbish; if it meant anything, it would have to mean
something so almighty intricate that James G. Blaine hasn't got
the brains to engineer it; and I vote for more axeing, pioneering,
and opening up the resources of this phenomenal brig, and less
general fuss," he added, arising. "The dime-museum
symptoms will drop in of themselves, I guess, to keep us
cheery."
But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day;
and we left the brig about sundown, without being further
puzzled or further enlightened. The best of the cabin spoils--
books, instruments, papers, silks, and curiosities--we carried
along with us in a blanket, however, to divert the evening
hours; and when supper was over, and the table cleared, and
Johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his
right hand and his left, the captain and I turned out our blanket
on the floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the
spoils.
The books were the first to engage our notice. These were
rather numerous (as Nares contemptuously put it) "for a lime-
juicer." Scorn of the British mercantile marine glows in the
breast of every Yankee merchant captain; as the scorn is not
reciprocated, I can only suppose it justified in fact; and
certainly the old country mariner appears of a less studious
disposition. The more credit to the officers of the Flying Scud,
who had quite a library, both literary and professional. There
were Findlay's five directories of the world--all broken-backed,
as is usual with Findlay, and all marked and scribbled over
with corrections and additions--several books of navigation, a
signal code, and an Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue,
called _Islands of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Vol. III._, which
appeared from its imprint to be the latest authority, and showed
marks of frequent consultation in the passages about the French
Frigate Shoals, the Harman, Cure, Pearl, and Hermes reefs,
Lisiansky Island, Ocean Island, and the place where we then
lay--Brooks or Midway. A volume of Macaulay's _Essays_
and a shilling Shakespeare led the van of the belles lettres; the
rest were novels: several Miss Braddons--of course, _Aurora
Floyd_, which has penetrated to every isle of the Pacific, a good
many cheap detective books, _Rob Roy_, Auerbach's _Auf der
Hohe_ in the German, and a prize temperance story, pillaged
(to judge by the stamp) from an Anglo-Indian circulating
library.
"The Admiralty man gives a fine picture of our island,"
remarked Nares, who had turned up Midway Island. "He
draws the dreariness rather mild, but you can make out he
knows the place."
"Captain," I cried, "you've struck another point in this mad
business. See here," I went on eagerly, drawing from my
pocket a crumpled fragment of the _Daily Occidental_ which I
had inherited from Jim: "'misled by Hoyt's Pacific Directory'?
Where's Hoyt?"
"Let's look into that," said Nares. "I got that book on purpose
for this cruise." Therewith he fetched it from the shelf in his
berth, turned to Midway Island, and read the account aloud. It
stated with precision that the Pacific Mail Company were about
to form a depot there, in preference to Honolulu, and that they
had already a station on the island.
"I wonder who gives these Directory men their information,"
Nares reflected. "Nobody can blame Trent after that. I never
got in company with squarer lying; it reminds a man of a
presidential campaign."
"All very well," said I. "That's your Hoyt, and a fine, tall copy.
But what I want to know is, where is Trent's Hoyt?"
"Took it with him," chuckled Nares. "He had left everything
else, bills and money and all the rest; he was bound to take
something, or it would have aroused attention on the Tempest:
'Happy thought,' says he, 'let's take Hoyt.'"
"And has it not occurred to you," I went on, "that all the Hoyts
in creation couldn't have misled Trent, since he had in his hand
that red admiralty book, an official publication, later in date,
and particularly full on Midway Island?"
"That's a fact!" cried Nares; "and I bet the first Hoyt he ever
saw was out of the mercantile library of San Francisco. Looks
as if he had brought her here on purpose, don't it? But then
that's inconsistent with the steam-crusher of the sale. That's the
trouble with this brig racket; any one can make half a dozen
theories for sixty or seventy per cent of it; but when they're
made, there's always a fathom or two of slack hanging out of
the other end."
I believe our attention fell next on the papers, of which we had
altogether a considerable bulk. I had hoped to find among
these matter for a full-length character of Captain Trent; but
here I was doomed, on the whole, to disappointment. We
could make out he was an orderly man, for all his bills were
docketed and preserved. That he was convivial, and inclined to
be frugal even in conviviality, several documents proclaimed.
Such letters as we found were, with one exception, arid notes
from tradesmen. The exception, signed Hannah Trent, was a
somewhat fervid appeal for a loan. "You know what
misfortunes I have had to bear," wrote Hannah, "and how much
I am disappointed in George. The landlady appeared a true
friend when I first came here, and I thought her a perfect lady.
But she has come out since then in her true colours; and if you
will not be softened by this last appeal, I can't think what is to
become of your affectionate----" and then the signature. This
document was without place or date, and a voice told me that it
had gone likewise without answer. On the whole, there were
few letters anywhere in the ship; but we found one before we
were finished, in a seaman's chest, of which I must transcribe
some sentences. It was dated from some place on the Clyde.
"My dearist son," it ran, "this is to tell you your dearist father
passed away, Jan twelft, in the peace of the Lord. He had your
photo and dear David's lade upon his bed, made me sit by him.
Let's be a' thegither, he said, and gave you all his blessing. O
my dear laddie, why were nae you and Davie here? He would
have had a happier passage. He spok of both of ye all night
most beautiful, and how ye used to stravaig on the Saturday
afternoons, and of auld Kelvinside. Sooth the tune to me, he
said, though it was the Sabbath, and I had to sooth him Kelvin
Grove, and he looked at his fiddle, the dear man. I cannae bear
the sight of it, he'll never play it mair. O my lamb, come home
to me, I'm all by my lane now." The rest was in a religious
vein and quite conventional. I have never seen any one more
put out than Nares, when I handed him this letter; he had read
but a few words, before he cast it down; it was perhaps a
minute ere he picked it up again, and the performance was
repeated the third time before he reached the end.
"It's touching, isn't it?" said I.
For all answer, Nares exploded in a brutal oath; and it was
some half an hour later that he vouchsafed an explanation. "I'll
tell you what broke me up about that letter," said he. "My old
man played the fiddle, played it all out of tune: one of the
things he played was _Martyrdom,_ I remember--it was all
martyrdom to me. He was a pig of a father, and I was a pig of
a son; but it sort of came over me I would like to hear that
fiddle squeak again. Natural," he added; "I guess we're all
beasts."
"All sons are, I guess," said I. "I have the same trouble on my
conscience: we can shake hands on that." Which (oddly
enough, perhaps) we did.
Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of
photographs; for the most part either of very debonair-looking
young ladies or old women of the lodging-house persuasion.
But one among them was the means of our crowning discovery.
"They're not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?" said Nares, as he
passed it over.
"Who?" I asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-
plate) in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late,
the day had been laborious, and I was wearying for bed.
"Trent and Company," said he. "That's a historic picture of the
gang."
I held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen
Captain Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again.
It was a photograph of the deck of the brig, taken from forward:
all in apple-pie order; the hands gathered in the waist, the
officers on the poop. At the foot of the card was written "Brig
Flying Scud, Rangoon," and a date; and above or below each
individual figure the name had been carefully noted.
As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness
of sleep and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the
channel; and I beheld with startled clearness the photographic
presentment of a crowd of strangers. "J. Trent, Master" at the
top of the card directed me to a smallish, weazened man, with
bushy eyebrows and full white beard, dressed in a frock coat
and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button-hole, his
bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with habitual
determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks,
but plenty of the martinet: a dry, precise man, who might pass
for a preacher in some rigid sect; and whatever he was, not the
Captain Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to
me: the cook, an unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic
dress, standing apart on the poop steps. But perhaps I turned
on the whole with the greatest curiosity to the figure labelled
"E. Goddedaal, 1st off." He whom I had never seen, he might
be the identical; he might be the clue and spring of all this
mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a detective.
He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a viking, his hair
clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous
whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from
his cheeks. With these virile appendages and the defiant
attitude in which he stood, the expression of his face only
imperfectly harmonised. It was wild, heroic, and womanish
looking; and I felt I was prepared to hear he was a
sentimentalist, and to see him weep.
For some while I digested my discovery in private, reflecting
how best, and how with most of drama, I might share it with
the captain. Then my sketch-book came in my head; and I
fished it out from where it lay, with other miscellaneous
possessions, at the foot of my bunk and turned to my sketch of
Captain Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying Scud
in the San Francisco bar-room.
"Nares," said I, "I've told you how I first saw Captain Trent in
that saloon in 'Frisco? how he came with his men, one of them
a Kanaka with a canary-bird in a cage? and how I saw him
afterwards at the auction, frightened to death, and as much
surprised at how the figures skipped up as anybody there?
Well," said I, "there's the man I saw"--and I laid the sketch
before him--"there's Trent of 'Frisco and there are his three
hands. Find one of them in the photograph, and I'll be
obliged."
Nares compared the two in silence. "Well," he said at last, "I
call this rather a relief: seems to clear the horizon. We might
have guessed at something of the kind from the double ration of
chests that figured."
"Does it explain anything?" I asked.
"It would explain everything," Nares replied, "but for the
steam-crusher. It'll all tally as neat as a patent puzzle, if you
leave out the way these people bid the wreck up. And there we
come to a stone wall. But whatever it is, Mr. Dodd, it's on the
crook."
"And looks like piracy," I added.
"Looks like blind hookey!" cried the captain. "No, don't you
deceive yourself; neither your head nor mine is big enough to
put a name on this business."
Content of CHAPTER XIV - THE CABIN OF THE "FLYING SCUD." [Robert Louis Stevenson's novel: The Wrecker]
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