A High Wind in Jamaica

  From the point itself there is a whitish bank in two fathoms, bowed from north to north-east. The outer side is clean and steep-to, and in fine weather one can steer along it by eye. It ends in Black Key, a rock standing out of the water like a ship’s hull. Beyond that lies a channel, very foul and difficult to navigate: and beyond that again the Coloradoes Reef begins, the first of a long chain of reefs following the coast in a north-easterly direction as far as Honde Bay, two-thirds the way to Havana. Within the reefs lies the intricate Canal de Guaniguanico, of which this channel is the westernmost outlet, with its own rather dubious little ports. But ocean traffic, needless to say, shuns the whole box of tricks: and the Clorinda advisedly stood well away to the northward, keeping her course at a gentle amble for the open Atlantic.

  John was sitting outside the galley with the sailor called Curtis, who was instructing him in the neat mystery of a Turk’s-head. Young Henry Marpole was steering. Emily was messing around—not talking, just being by him.

  As for the other sailors, they were all congregated in a ring, up in the bows, so that one saw nothing but their backs. But every now and then a general guffaw, and a sudden surging of the whole group, showed they were up to something or other.

  John presently tiptoed forward, to see what it might be. He thrust his bullet-head among their legs, and worked his way in till he had as good a view as the earliest comer.

  He found they had got the old monkey, and were filling him up with rum. First they gave him biscuit soaked in it: then they dipped rags in a pannikin of the stuff, and squeezed them into his mouth. Then they tried to make him drink direct: but that he would not do—it only wasted a lot of spirit.

  John felt a vague horror at all this: though of course he did not guess the purpose behind it.

  The poor brute shivered and chattered, rolled his eyes, spluttered. I suppose it must have been an excruciatingly funny sight. Every now and then he would seem altogether overcome by the spirit. Then one of them would lay him on the top of an old beef barrel—but hey presto, he would be up like lightning, trying to streak through the air over their heads. But he was no bird: they caught him each time, and set to work to dope him again.

  As for John, he could no more have left the scene now than Jacko the monkey could.

  It was astonishing what a lot of spirit the wizened little brute could absorb. He was drunk, of course: hopelessly, blindly, madly drunk. But he was not paralytic, not even somnolent: and it seemed as if nothing could overcome him. So at last they gave up the attempt. They fetched a wooden box, and cut a notch in the edge. Then they put him on the barrel-top, and clapped the box over him, and after much maneuvering his gangrenous tail was made to come out through the notch. Anesthetized or not, the operation on him was to proceed. John stared, transfixed, at that obscene wriggling stump which was all one could see of the animal: and out of the corner of his eye he could see at the same time the uproarious operators, the tar-stained knife.

  But the moment the blade touched flesh, with an awful screech the mommet contrived to fling off his cage—leapt on the surgeon’s head—leapt from there high in the air—caught the forestay—and in a twinkling was away and up high in the forerigging.

  Then began the hue and cry. Sixteen men flinging about in lofty acrobatics, all to catch one poor old drunk monkey. For he was drunk as a lord, and sick as a cat. His course varied between wild and hair-raising leaps (a sort of inspired gymnastics), and doleful incompetent reelings on a taut rope which threatened at every moment to catapult him into the sea. But even so they could never quite catch him.

  No wonder that all the children, now, stood openmouthed and open-eyed on the deck beneath in the sun till their necks nearly broke— such a Free Fun Fair and Circus!

  And no wonder that on that passenger-schooner which Marpole, before going below, had sighted drifting towards them from the direction of the Black Key channel, the ladies had left the shade of the awning and were crowding at the rail, parasols twirling, lorgnettes and opera-glasses in action, all twittering like a cage of linnets. Just too far off to distinguish the tiny quarry, they might well have wondered what sort of a bedlam-vessel of sea-acrobats the light easterly air was bearing them down upon.

  They were so interested that presently a boat was hoisted out, and the ladies—and some gentlemen as well—crowded into it.

  Poor little Jacko missed his hold at last: fell plump on the deck and broke his neck. That was the end of him—and of the hunt too, of course. The aerial ballet was over, in its middle, with no final tableau. The sailors began, in twos and threes, to slide to the deck.

  But the visitors were already on board.

  That is how the Clorinda really was taken. There was no display of artillery—but then, Captain Marpole could hardly know this, seeing he was below in his bunk at the time. Henry was steering by that sixth sense which only comes into operation when the other five are asleep. The mate and crew had been so intent on what they were doing that the Flying Dutchman himself might have laid alongside, for all they cared.

  II

  Indeed, the whole maneuver was executed so quietly that Captain Marpole never even woke—incredible though this will seem to a seaman. But then, Marpole had begun life as a successful coal-merchant.

  The mate and crew were bundled into the fo’c’sle (the Fox-hole, the children thought it was called), and confined there, the scuttle being secured with a couple of nails.

  The children themselves were shepherded, as related, into the deck-house, where the chairs, and perfectly useless pieces of old rope, and broken tools, and dried-up paint-pots were kept, without taking alarm. But the door was immediately shut on them. They had to wait for hours and hours before anything else happened—nearly all day, in fact: and they got very bored, and rather cross.

  The actual number of the men who had effected the capture cannot have been more than eight or nine, most of them “women” at that, and not armed—at least with any visible weapon. But a second boatload soon followed them from the schooner. These, for form’s sake, were armed with muskets. But there was no possible resistance to fear. Two long nails through the scuttle can secure any number of men pretty effectually.

  With this second boatload came both the captain and the mate. The former was a clumsy great fellow, with a sad, silly face. He was bulky; yet so ill-proportioned one got no impression of power. He was modestly dressed in a drab shore-going suit: he was newly shaven, and his sparse hair was pomaded so that it lay in a few dark ribbons across his baldish head-top. But all this shoredecency of appearance only accentuated his big splodgy brown hands, stained and scarred and corned with his calling. Moreover, instead of boots he wore a pair of gigantic heel-less slippers in the Moorish manner, which he must have sliced with a knife out of some pair of dead sea-boots. Even his great spreading feet could hardly keep them on, so that he was obliged to walk at the slowest of shuffles, flop-flop along the deck. He stooped, as if always afraid of banging his head on something; and carried the backs of his hands forward, like an orangutan.

  Meanwhile the men set to work methodically but very quietly to remove the wedges that held the battens of the hatches, getting ready to haul up the cargo.

  Their leader took several turns up and down the deck before he seemed able to make up his mind to the interview: then lowered himself into Marpole’s cabin, followed by his mate.

  This mate was a small man: very fair, and intelligentlooking beside his chief. He was almost dapper, in a quiet way, in his dress.

  They found Captain Marpole even now only half awake: and the stranger stood for a moment in silence, nervously twiddling his cap in his hands. When he spoke at last, it was with a soft German accent:

  “Excuse me,” he began, “but would you have the goodness to lend me a few stores?”

&nbs
p; Captain Marpole stared in astonishment, first at him and then at the much be-painted faces of the “ladies” pressed against his cabin skylight.

  “Who the devil are you?” he contrived to ask at last.

  “I hold a commission in the Columbian navy,” the stranger explained: “and I am in need of a few stores.”

  (Meanwhile his men had the hatches off, and were preparing to help themselves to everything in the ship.) Marpole looked him up and down. It was barely conceivable that even the Columbian navy should have such a figure of an officer. Then his eye wandered back to the skylight:

  “If you call yourself a man-of-war, sir, who in Heaven’s name are those ?” As he pointed, the smirking faces hastily retreated.

  The stranger blushed.

  “They are rather difficult to explain,” he admitted ingenuously.

  “If you had said Turkish navy, that would have been more reasonable-sounding!” said Marpole.

  But the stranger did not seem to take the joke. He stood, silent, in a characteristic attitude: rocking himself from foot to foot, and rubbing his cheek on his shoulder.

  Suddenly Marpole’s ear caught the muffled racketing forward. Almost at the same time a bump that shivered the whole barque told that the schooner had been laid alongside.

  “What’s that?” he exclaimed. “Is there some one in my hold?”

  “Stores...” mumbled the stranger.

  Marpole up to now had lain growling in his bunk like a dog in its kennel. Now for the first time realizing that something serious was afoot he flung himself out and made for the companion-way. The little silent fair man tripped him up, and he fell against the table.

  “You had much better stay here, yes?” said the big man. “My fellows shall keep a tally, you shall be paid in full for everything we take.”

  The eyes of the marine coal-merchant gleamed momentarily:

  “You’ll have to pay for this outrage to a pretty tune!” he growled.

  “I will pay you,” said the stranger, with a sudden magnificence in his voice, “at the very least five thousand pounds!”

  Marpole stared in astonishment.

  “I will write you an order on the Columbian government for that amount,” the other went on.

  Marpole thumped the table, almost speechless:

  “D’you think I believe that cock-and-bull story?” he thundered.

  Captain Jonsen made no protest.

  “Do you realize that you are technically guilty of piracy , making a forced requisition on a British ship like this, even if you pay every farthing?”

  Still Jonsen made no reply: though the bored expression of his mate was lit up for a moment by a smile.

  “You’ll pay me in cash !” Marpole concluded. Then he went off on a fresh tack: “Though how the devil you got on board without being called beats me!—Where’s my mate?”

  Jonsen began in a toneless voice, as if by rote: “I will write you an order for five thousand pounds: three thousand for the stores, and two thousand you will give me in money.”

  “We know you’ve got specie on board,” interjected the little fair mate, speaking for the first time.

  “Our information is certain!” declared Jonsen.

  Marpole at last went white and began to sweat. It took even Fear an extraordinarily long time to penetrate his thick skull. But he denied that he had any treasure on board.

  “Is that your answer?” said Jonsen. He drew a heavy pistol from his side pocket. “If you do not tell us the truth, your life shall pay the forfeit.” His voice was peculiarly gentle, and mechanical, as if he did not attach much meaning to what he said. “Do not expect mercy, for this is my profession, and in it I am inured to blood.”

  A frightful squawking from the deck above told Marpole that his chickens were being moved to new quarters.

  In an agony of feeling Marpole told him that he had a wife and children, who would be left destitute if his life was taken.

  Jonsen, with rather a perplexed look on his face, put the gun back in his pocket, and the two of them began to search for themselves, at the same time stripping the saloon and cabins of everything they contained: firearms, wearing apparel, the bedclothes, and even (as Marpole with a rare touch of accuracy mentioned in his report) the bell-pulls.

  Overhead there was a continuous bumping: the rolling of casks, cases, etc.

  “Remember,” Jonsen went on over his shoulder while he searched, “money cannot recall life, nor in the least avail you when you are dead. If you regard your life in the least, at once acquaint me with the hiding-place, and your life shall be safe.”

  Marpole’s only reply was again to invoke the thought of his wife and children (he was, as a matter of fact, a widower: and his only relative, a niece, would be the better off by his death to the tune of some ten thousand pounds).

  But this reiteration seemed to give the mate an idea: and he began to talk to his chief rapidly in a language Marpole had never even heard. For a moment a curious glint came into Jonsen’s eye: but soon he was chuckling in the sentimentalest manner, and rubbing his hands.

  The mate went on deck to prepare things.

  Marpole had no inkling of what was afoot. The mate went on deck to prepare his plan, whatever it was: and Jonsen busied himself with a last futile search for the hiding-place, in silence.

  Presently the mate shouted down to him, and he ordered Marpole on deck.

  Poor Marpole groaned. Unloading cargo is inclined to be a messy business any way: but these visitors had been none too careful. There is no smell in the world worse than when molasses and bilge-water marry: now it was let loose like ten thousand devils. His heart was almost broken when he saw the havoc that had been made with the cargo: broken cases, casks, bottles, all about the deck: everything in the greatest confusion: tarpaulins cut to pieces: hatches broken.

  From the deck-house came the piercing voice of Laura:

  “ I want to come out! ”

  The Spanish ladies seemed to have returned to the schooner. His own men were shut up in the fo’c’sle. It was obvious where all the children were, for Laura was not the only vociferator. But the only persons to be seen were six members of the visiting crew, who stood in a line, facing the deck-house, a musket apiece.

  It was the little mate who now took charge of the situation:

  “Where is your specie hid, Captain?”

  The musketeers having their backs to him, “Go to the Devil!” replied Marpole.

  A startling volley rang out: six neat holes were punctured in the top of the deck-house.

  “Hi! Steady there, what are you doing?” John cried out indignantly from within.

  “If you refuse to tell us, next time their aim will be a foot lower.”

  “You fiends!” cried Marpole.

  “Will you tell me?”

  “ No! ”

  “ Fire! ”

  The second row of holes can only have missed the taller children by a few inches.

  There was a moment’s silence: then a sudden wild shriek from within the deck-house. It was so terrified a sound not their own mothers could have told which throat it came from. One only, though.

  The stranger-captain had been slouching about in an agitated way: but at that shriek he turned on Marpole, his face purple with a sudden fury:

  “ Now will you say?”

  But Marpole was now completely master of himself. He did not hesitate:

  “NO!”

  “Next time he gives the order it will be to shoot right through their little bodies!”

  So tha
t was what Marpole had meant in his letter by “ every possible threat which villainy could devise ”! But even by this he was not to be daunted:

  “No, I tell you!”

  Heroic obstinacy! But instead of giving the fatal order, Jonsen lifted a paw like a bear’s, and banged Marpole’s jaw with it. The latter fell to the deck, stunned.

  It was then they took the children out of the deck-house.

  They were not really much frightened; except Margaret, who did seem to be taking it all to heart rather. Being shot at is so unlike what one expects it to be that one can hardly connect the two ideas enough to have the appropriate emotions, the first few times. It is not half so startling as some one jumping out on you with a “ Boo! ” in the dark, for instance. The boys were crying a little: the girls were hot and cross and hungry.

  “What were you doing?” Rachel asked brightly of one of the firing-party.

  But only the captain and the mate could speak English. The latter, ignoring Rachel’s question explained that they were all to go on board the schooner—“to have some supper,” he said.

  He had all a sailor’s reassuring charm of manner. So under the charge of two Spanish seamen they were helped over the bulwarks onto the smaller vessel, which was just casting off.

  There the strange sailors broke open a whole case of crystallized fruits, on which they might turn the edge of their long appetites as much as they would.

  When poor stunned Captain Marpole came to his senses, it was to find himself tied to the mainmast. Several handfuls of shavings and splintered wood were piled round his feet, and Jonsen was sprinkling them plentifully with gun-powder—though not perhaps enough, it is true, to “blow up the ship and all in it.”