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The Ocean Cat's Paw: The Story of a Strange Cruise, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 14. The Suspicious Craft |
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_ CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE SUSPICIOUS CRAFT "Oh, I say, Uncle Paul, isn't it horrible?" cried Rodd the next morning. Breakfast was just over, and Captain Chubb had gone on deck, while the wind was howling furiously as if in a rage to find its playthings, some two or three hundred vessels of different tonnage, safely moored in the shelter of the harbour, and out of its power to toss here and there and pitch so many helpless ruins to be beaten to pieces upon the shore. Down it kept coming right in amongst them, making them check at their mooring cables and chains, but in vain, for their crews had been too busy, and the only satisfaction that the tempest could obtain, was to hearken to the miserable dreary groans that were here and there emitted as some of the least fortunate and worst secured ground against each other. "Isn't it horrible, uncle?" shouted Rodd, for the rain just then was mingled with good-sized hailstones, and was rattling down upon the deck and skylight in a way that half-drowned the lad's voice. "Miserable weather, Pickle; but never mind. We must settle down to a good morning's work in the laboratory." "Oh no, not yet, uncle; we don't seem to have started. It will only be a makeshift." "But we might put things a little more straight, boy." "Oh no, uncle; they are too straight now, and I want to go on deck." "Bah! It isn't fit. Wait till the weather holds up." "Oh, I shall dress up accordingly, uncle. But I say, where does all the rain come from? It must be falling in millions of tons everywhere." "Ah, you might as well ask me where the wind comes from. Study up some book on meteorology." "Oh yes, I will, uncle; but not yet." "Very well; be off." Rodd hurried out of the cabin, and five minutes later came back rattling and crackling, to present himself before his uncle, who thrust up his spectacles upon his forehead and stared. "There," cried Rodd; "don't think I shall get wet. I wish I'd had it the other night. It's splendid, uncle, and so stiff that if I like to stoop down a little and spread my arms, I can almost rest in it. I say, don't I look like a dried haddock?" "Humph! Well, yes, you do look about the same colour," grumbled the doctor, for the boy was buttoned up in a glistening oilskin coat of a buff yellow tint; the turned-up collar just revealed the tips of his ears, and he was crowned by a sou'-wester securely tied beneath his chin. "I say, this will do, won't it?" "Yes, you look a beauty!" grunted the doctor; "but there, be off; I want to write a letter or two." Rodd went crackling up the cabin stairs, clump, clump, clump, for he was wearing a heavy pair of fisherman's boots that had been made waterproof by many applications of oil--a pair specially prepared for fishing purposes and future wading amongst the wonders of coral reef and strand. The deck was almost deserted, the only two personages of the schooner's crew being the captain and Joe Cross, both costumed so as to match exactly with the boy, who now joined them, to begin streaming with water to the same extent as they. They both looked at him in turn, Cross grinning and just showing a glint of his white teeth where the collar of his oilskin joined, while his companion scowled, or seemed to, and emitted a low grumbling sound that might have meant welcome or the finding of fault, which of the two Rodd did not grasp, for the skipper turned his back and rolled slowly away as if he were bobbing like a vessel through the flood which covered the deck and was streaming away from the scuppers. As the skipper went right forward and stood by the bowsprit, looking straight ahead through the haze formed by the streaming rain, Rodd was thrown back upon Joe Cross, with whom, almost from the day when the man had joined, he had begun to grow intimate; and as he went close up to him, the sailor gave his head a toss to distribute some of the rain that was splashing down upon his sou'-wester, and grinning visibly now, he cried-- "Why, Mr Rodd, sir, you've forgot your umbrella." "Get out!" cried Rodd good-humouredly. "But I say, Joe, how long is this rain going to last?" "Looks as if it means to go on for months, sir, but may leave off to-night. I say, though, that's a splendid fit, sir. You do look fine! Are you comfortable in there?" Rodd did not answer, for he was trying to pierce the streaming haze and make out whether the brig was visible. For a few moments he could not make it out, but there it was, looking faint and strange, about a hundred yards away. "That's the brig, isn't it, yonder?" he said at last. "Yes, sir, that's she, and they seem to have got her fast now; but she wouldn't hurt us if she broke from her moorings, for the wind's veered a point or two, and it would take her clear away." Rodd remained silent as he stood thinking, he did not know why, unless it was that the vessel with the tall, dimly-seen tapering spars bore a French name, and somehow--again he could not tell why, only that it seemed to him very ridiculous--the shadowy vessel associated itself with the two French officers he had encountered in the darkness of the previous night, when he heard one of them after brushing against him murmur the word "Pardon!" And he found himself thinking that if the vessel had been swept up against the schooner when her anchor was dragging, it would have been no use for her crew to cry "Pardon!" as that would not have cured the damage. "Well, sir, what do you make of her?" cried the sailor, putting an end to the lad's musings. "Can't see much," said Rodd, "for the rain, but she seems beautifully rigged." "Yes, sir, and she can sail well too--for a brig--but I should set her down as being too heavily sparred, and likely to be top-heavy. If she was going along full sail, and was caught in such a squall as we had yesterday, and laid flat like the schooner, I don't believe she'd lift again. Anyhow, I shouldn't like to be aboard." "No, it wouldn't be pleasant," said Rodd; "but I say, I can't see anything of that long gun you talked about." "No wonder, sir. You want that there long water-glass, as you called it--that there one you showed me as you was unpacking it. Don't you remember? Like a big pipe with panes of glass in it as you said you could stick down into the sea and make out what was on the bottom. You want that now." The man passed his hand along the brow edge of his sou'-wester to sweep away the drops, and then took a long look at the deck of the brig. "No, sir; can't make it out now; but I see it plainly enough this morning, covered with a lashed down tarpaulin as if to hide it, and I knew at once. I can almost tell a big gun by the smell--I mean feel it like, if it's there." "But do you still think she's a privateer?" "Well, I don't say she is, sir, for that's a thing you can't tell for sartain unless you see a ship's papers; but she is something of that kind, I should say, and--Ay, ay, sir!--There's the skipper hailed me, sir. I say, Mr Rodd, sir, do mind you don't get wet!" This was as the man rolled away sailor fashion, and emitting a crackling whishing sound as he made for the vessel's bows, where he received some order from his captain which sent him to the covered-in hatchway of the forecastle, where he slowly disappeared into a kind of haze, half water, half smoke, for several of the water-bound crew had given up the chewing of their tobacco to indulge in pipes. But Rodd was in a talkative humour, and made his way to the skipper, saluting him with-- "I say, Captain Chubb, how do you manage to do it?" "Do what, my lad?" "Why, say for certain what the weather's going to be." There was a low chuckling sound such as might have been emitted by a good-humoured porpoise which had just ended one of its underwater curves, and thrust its head above the surface to take a good deep breath before it turned itself over and dived down again. "Second natur', youngster, and that's use. Takes a long time to learn, and when you have larnt your lesson perfect as you think, you find that you don't know it a bit." "But you did know it," said Rodd. "You said that the storm would come on again, when it was beautiful and fine yesterday evening; and here it is." "Well, yes, my lad, if you goes on for years trying to hit something you must get a lucky shot sometimes." "Oh yes, but there's something more than that," said Rodd. "When I have been amongst the fishermen in Plymouth, and over in Saltash, I have wondered to find how exact they were about the weather, and how whenever they wouldn't take us out fishing they were always right. They seemed to know that bad weather was coming on." "Oh, of course," said the skipper. "Why, my lad, if you got your living by going out in your boat, don't you think the first thing you would try to learn would be to make it your living?" "Why, of course," cried Rodd. "Ah, you don't mean the same as I do. I mean, make it your living and not your dying." "Oh, I see." "You wouldn't want," continued the skipper, "to go out at times that might mean having them as you left at home standing on the shore looking out to sea for a boat as would never come back." "No," said the boy, with something like a sigh. "I know what you mean. Ah, it has been very horrible sometimes, and all those little churchyards at the different villages about the coast with that regular 'Drowned at sea' over and over and over again." "Right, my lad. Things go wrong sometimes; but that's what makes sailors and fishermen get to learn what the moon says and the sun and the clouds, and the bit of haze that gathers sometimes off the coast means. Why, if you'd looked out yesterday afternoon when the wind went down and the glint of sunshine come out, there was a nasty dirty look in the sky. You wait a bit and keep your eyes open, and put that and that together, and as you grow up you'll find that it isn't so hard as you'd think to say what the weather is going to be to-morrow. You'll often be wrong, same as I am." "Ah! then I shall begin at once," cried Rodd eagerly, as he looked sharply round. "Well, it can't go on pelting down like this with hail coming now and then in showers. Showers come and go." "Right!" said the skipper, clapping him on the shoulder. "Oh!" cried Rodd sharply. "Hullo! Why, you don't mean to say that hurt?" "Hurt! No," cried Rodd, shaking his head violently. "You shot a lot of cold water right up into my ear." "Oh, that will soon dry up. Well, what do you say the weather's going to be?" "The storm soon over, and a fine day to-morrow." "Done?" asked the skipper. "Oh yes; but mind, that's only a try." "Then it's my turn now, youngster, so here goes. I say we shall have worse weather to-morrow than we have got to-day." "Oh, it can't be!" cried Rodd. "Well," cried the skipper, chuckling, "we shall see who's right." "Oh, but I don't want for us to have to stop here in this French port." "More don't I, my lad, so we think the same there. You going to stop on deck?" "Yes, till dinner-time," cried Rodd, and just then the haze of rain out seaward opened a little, revealing the brig with its tall spars and web of rigging. This somehow set the boy thinking about the escape from accident when they came into port, and then of the encounter ashore, and he began talking. "It's no use to go down below. It's so stuffy, and I want to chat. I say, captain, what do you think of that brig?" "Very smartly built craft indeed, my lad--one as I should like to sail if I could do as I liked." "Do as you liked?" asked Rodd. "Yes; alter her rig--make a schooner of her. But as she is she's as pretty a vessel as I ever see--for a brig. Frenchmen don't often turn out a boat like that." "What should you think she is?" asked Rodd. "A merchantman?" "No, my lad; I should say she was something of a dispatch boat, though she aren't a man-of-war. I don't quite make her out. She's got a very smart crew, and I saw two of her officers go aboard in some sort of uniform, though it was too dark to quite make it out." "But if she's a man-of-war she would carry guns, wouldn't she?" asked Rodd. "Well, I don't think she's a man-of-war, my lad," replied the skipper; "but she do carry guns, and one of them's a big swivel I just saw amidships. But men-of-war, merchantmen, and coasters, we're all alike in a storm, and glad to get into shelter." "Yes, it is a fine-looking brig. Is she likely to be a privateer?" "Eh? What do you know about privateers?" "Oh, not much," said Rodd. "But going about at Plymouth and talking to the sailors, of course I used to hear something about them." "Well, yes, of course," said the skipper thoughtfully, as he too swept the drops from the front of his sou'-wester, and tried to pierce the falling rain. "She might be a French privateer out of work, as you may say, for their game's at an end now that the war's over. Yes, a very smart craft." "But do you think she's here for any particular purpose?" "Yes, my lad; a very particular purpose." "Ah!" cried the boy rather excitedly. "What?" "To take care of herself and keep in harbour till the weather turns right. Why? What were you thinking?" "I was wondering why she came in so close after us, and then anchored where she is." "Oh, I can tell you that," said the skipper, chuckling. "It was because she couldn't help herself." "Then you don't think she was watching us?" "No-o! What should she want to watch us for?" "Why, to take us as a prize, seeing what a beautiful little schooner it is." "Bah! She'd better not try," said the skipper grimly. "Why, what stuff have you got in your head, boy? We are not at war with France." "No-o," said Rodd thoughtfully; "but her captain might have taken a fancy to the Maid of Salcombe, and I've read that privateers are not very particular when they get a chance. And the war's only just over." "No. But then, you see, my lad, even if you were right, that brig wouldn't have a chance." "Why, suppose she waited till we had sailed, and followed till she thought it was a good opportunity, and then her captain led his men aboard and took her?" "Oh, I see," said the skipper dryly. "Well, my lad, as I say, she wouldn't have a chance. First, because she couldn't catch us, for give me sea room I could sail right round her." "Ah, but suppose it was a calm, and she sent her boats full of men on board to take us?" "Well, what then?" "What then? Why, wouldn't that be very awkward?" asked Rodd. "Very, for them," said the skipper grimly. "What would my boys be about?" "Why, they'd be taken prisoners." "I should just like to see her try," said the skipper. "If the boats' crews of that brig were to get a lodgment aboard my craft, how long do you think it would take our lads to clear them off?" "Oh, I am sure our crew would be very brave, but I should say that brig's got twice as many men as we have." "What of that?" said the skipper contemptuously. "Well, then," said Rodd argumentatively, "she's got her guns, and might sink us." "And we've got our guns, and might sink her," growled the skipper. "Look here, my lad; why did I give my lads gun drill and cutlass and pike drill, while you and the doctor were taking in your tackle and bags of tricks?" "Why, to defend the schooner against any savages who might attack us when we are off the West Coast or among the islands." "Right, my lad. Well, as Pat would say, by the same token couldn't they just as well fight a pack of Frenchies as a tribe of niggers? Bah! You're all wrong. It's quite like enough that yon brig may have been fitted out for a privateer, though I rather think she wouldn't be fast enough. But that game's all over, and we are all going to be at peace now we have put Bony away like a wild beast in a cage and he can't do anybody any hurt. There, you needn't fidget yourself about that. All the same, I don't quite understand why a craft that isn't a man-of-war, but carries a long gun amidships and has officers in uniform aboard, should be taking refuge in this port. I dunno. She looks too smart and clean, but it might mean that she's going to the West Coast, blackbirding." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Rodd. "Why, that's what you thought about us, Captain Chubb." "So I did; so I did, my lad," said the skipper good-humouredly. "You see, I am like other men--think I am very wise, but I do stupid things sometimes. Well, I'll be safe this time, and say I don't know what she is, and I don't much care. But I am pretty sure that she aren't after us, and I dare say, if the truth's known, she don't think we are after her. There, squint out yonder to windward. That don't look like fine weather, does it?" "No; worse than ever!" cried Rodd. "That's so, my lad, and you may take this for certain; we shan't sail to-day, and you won't see another vessel put out to sea. Take my word for it." "That I will, Captain Chubb!" cried the boy earnestly, and the skipper nodded his head so quickly that the water flew off in a shower. But, as some wag once said, the wisest way is to wait till after something has happened before you begin to prophesy about it. Captain Chubb had probably never heard about the wisdom of this proceeding in foretelling events, for it so happened that in spite of the storm increasing in violence for many hours, his words proved to be entirely wrong. _ |
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