My Shipmate Louise: The Romance of a Wreck, Volume 3 (of 3)

For a couple of days nothing that need find a place in this narrative happened. On the afternoon of the third day of our being aboard the barque we sighted a sail, hull down, to windward. I climbed into the main-top and examined her through the glass, and found her a brig, very loftily rigged, her canvas soaring into moonsails, a sight I had never before witnessed at sea, even in those days when ships went more heavily draped than they do in these. She was heading our course, perhaps making a slightly more weatherly navigation, and full blown as she looked to be—a large, soft cloud of canvas in the lenses of the telescope—we passed her at the rate of two feet to her one; and some time before sunset we had sunk her to her royals on the quarter.

Miss Temple wanted me to ask Captain Braine to run the Lady Blanche into speaking distance of the brig, that we might ascertain where she was bound to and get on board of her. ‘For she may be sailing,’ she said, ‘to some South American port that will be, comparatively speaking, close at hand, where we shall be easily able to find a ship to convey us home.’ But after thinking a little, I decided to keep quiet. It would not sound very graciously to request Captain Braine to tranship us into an outward-bound vessel: nor would it be wise to put him to the trouble of deviating from his course merely, perhaps, to ascertain that the brig was bound round the Horn to parts more distant than the Mauritius. Besides, I had no wish to court a blunt refusal from Captain Braine to put his vessel within hailing distance of another until a real opportunity to get to England should present itself by some homeward-bound ship passing close; when, of course, I should take my chance of his assent or refusal. So I suffered the brig to veer away out of sight without speaking to the captain about her, or even appearing to again heed her after I had come down from aloft.

It was a terribly dull, anxious, weary time; I am speaking of those two uneventful days. The hot breeze had drawn abeam, and blew feverishly under a cloudless sky that was a dazzle of brass all about the sun from morn till evening. We showed royals and a foretopmast-studdingsail to it, and drove along over the smooth plain with half a fathom’s height of foam at the cutwater, and a spin and hurry of snow alongside that made the eyes which watched it reel. I entered the day’s work and the necessary observations, and so forth, in the log-book in compliance with the captain’s request. He was delighted with my handwriting, sat contemplating it with his unwinking gaze for some considerable time, as though it were a picture, and then, drawing a deep breath, exclaimed: ‘There’s no question but that eddication’s a first-class article. Look at your writing alongside of mine, and at mine alongside of Chicken’s. Chicken and me was brought up in the same college—a ship’s forecastle, and so far from standing amazed at my own fist and that there spelling, I’m only astonished that I’m able to read or write at all.”

However, though he broke forth thus, he fell silent, and remained so afterwards, became, indeed, extraordinarily meditative, and at mealtimes scarcely opened his lips, though his stare grew more deliberate in proportion as his reserve increased, until it came at last to his never taking his eyes off one or the other of us. Again and again Miss Temple would say to me that she was certain he had something on his mind, and she looked frightened as she theorized upon his secret. Sometimes, when on deck, I would observe him standing at the rail, gazing seaward, and talking to himself, frequently snapping his fingers, whipping round, as though suddenly conscious that he had talked aloud, then starting off in a short, restless, unsteady walk, coming to an abrupt halt to again mutter and to snap his fingers with the air of one laboring to form a resolution.

It was on the afternoon of the second day of those two about which I have spoken, and it was drawing on to six o’clock, four bells of the first dog-watch. The captain had been on deck since four, and for the last twenty minutes he had been standing a little to the right of the fellow who was steering, eyeing me with an intentness that had a long time before become embarrassing, and I may say distressing. Whenever I turned my head towards him, I found his gaze fixed upon me. Miss Temple and I were seated too near him to admit of our commenting upon the singular regard that he was bestowing upon me. She contrived to whisper, however, that she was certain his secret, whatever it was, was slowly rising from the depths of his soul to the surface of his mind.

‘I seem to find a change in the man’s face,’ she said under her breath. ‘Let us walk, Mr. Dugdale. Such scrutiny as that is unbearable.’

As she spoke, four bells were struck forward. Mr. Lush, who was leaning against his windlass end, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slowly came aft to relieve the deck. I rose to walk with Miss Temple as she had proposed. Captain Braine called my name. He met me as I approached him, and said: ‘I want to have a talk with you in my cabin.’

There was something in his manner that alarmed me. How shall I express it? An air of uneasy exultation, as of a mind proud of the achievement of a resolution at which the secret instincts tremble. For a moment I hung in the wind, strongly reluctant to box myself up alone, unarmed as I was, with a man whose insanity, to call it so, seemed stronger in him at this moment than I had ever before observed it. But the carpenter had now gained the poop; and the captain, on seeing him, instantly walked to the companion, down which he went to midway the ladder, and there stood waiting for me to follow him.

Tut, thought I, surely I am more than his match in strength, and I am on my guard! As I put my foot on the ladder—the captain descending on seeing me coming—I paused to lean over the cover and say to Miss Temple:

‘If you will remain on deck, I shall be able to get away from him if he should prove tedious, by telling him that I have you to look after.’

‘What do you imagine he wishes to say?’ she exclaimed with a face of alarm that came very near to consternation.

I could only answer with a helpless shrug of the shoulders, and the next minute I had entered Captain Braine’s cabin.

‘Pray sit you down,’ said he. He pulled off his straw hat and sent it wheeling through the air into a corner, as though it were a boomerang, and fell to drying his perspiring face upon a large pocket-handkerchief; then folding his arms tightly across his breast, and crooking his right knee whilst he dropped his chin somewhat, he stood gazing at me under the shadow of his very heavy eyebrows with a steadfastness I could only compare to the stare of a cat’s eye.

‘Well, Captain Braine,’ said I in an off-hand way, though I watched him with the narrowness of a man who goes in fear, ‘what now is it that I am to hear from you? Do you propose to ask me more questions on navigation and seamanship?’

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, speaking very slowly, though the excitement that worked in him rendered his voice deep and unusually clear and loud, ‘I have come to the conclusion that you are a gentleman very well able to sarve me, and by sarving me to sarve yourself. I’ve been a-turning of it over in all hours of the day and a good many hours in the night, too, since the moment when ye first stepped over the side, and I’ve resolved to take ye into my confidence.’

He nodded, and stood looking at me without speech for a few moments; then seated himself near me and leaned forwards with a forefinger upon his thumb in a posture of computing.

‘It was in the year 1831,’ he began, ‘that I was third-mate aboard of a ship called the Ocean Monarch. We sailed from London with a cargo of mixed goods, bound to the port of Callao. Nothing happened till we was well round to the west’ards of Cape Horn, when the ship was set afire by the live cinders of the cabin stove burning through the deck. The cargo was of an inflammable kind. In less than two hours the vessel was in a blaze from stem to starn, by which time we had got the boats over, and lay at a distance waiting for her to disappear. There was two boats, the long-boat and a jolly-boat. The long-boat was a middling big consarn, and most of the men went in her along with the captain, a man named Matthews, and the second mate, a foreign chap named Falck. In our boat was the chief mate, Mr. Ruddiman, myself, two sailors, and a couple of young apprentices. We was badly stocked with water and food; and after the Ocean Monarch had foundered, Captain Matthews sings out to Mr. Ruddiman to keep company. But it wasn’t to be done. The long-boat ran away from us, and then she hove-to and took us in tow; but there came on a bit of a sea, and the line parted, and next morning we was alone.’

He paused.

‘I am closely following you,’ said I, fancying I perceived in his face a suspicion of inattention in me, and wondering what on earth his story was going to lead to. He stood up, and folding his arms in the first attitude he had adopted, proceeded, his voice deep and clear.

‘It came on to blow hard from the south’ard and east’ard, and we had to up hellum and run before the seas for our lives. This went on for three or four days, till Mr. Ruddiman reckoned that we was blowed pretty nigh half-way across to the Marquesas. It then fell a stark calm, and we lay roasting under a broiling sun with no fresh water in the boat, and nothing to eat but a handful of mouldy fragments of biscuit in the bottom of a bag that had been soaked with spray o’er and o’er again. One of the apprentices went mad, and jumped overboard, and was drownded. We was too weak to help him; besides, ne’er a one of us but thought him well off in that cool water, leaving thirst and hunger behind him, and sinking into a deep sleep, as it might be. Then the other apprentice was took bad, and died in a fit of retching, and we put him over the side. When daylight broke on the morning following that job, we saw one of the sailors dead in the bottom of the boat. T’other was the sicklier man of the two, yet he hung out, sir, and lived for three days. We kept his body.’

His deep tones ceased, and he stared at me. Just a story of a bad shipwreck, thought I, so far.

‘There came a light breeze from the east’ard,’ he continued after a little pause; ‘but neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me had the strength of a kitten in our arms, and we let the boat drive, waiting for death. I thought it had come that same afternoon, and on top of the sensation followed a fit, I allow, for I recollect no more, till on opening my eyes I found myself in a hammock in the ’tweendecks of a little ship. The craft was a small Spanish vessel, called the Rosario. She had floated into sight of our boat, and there was just enough strength left in Mr. Ruddiman to enable him to flourish his handkerchief so as they might see the boat had something alive in her. Ne’er a soul aboard spoke a syllable of English, and neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me understood a word of Spanish. We couldn’t even get to larn where the brigantine was bound to, or where she hailed from. We conversed with the crew in signs all the same as though we had been cast away among savages. We was both hearty men in those days, and it wasn’t long afore we had picked up what we had let fall during our ramble in the boat. Well, the course the vessel made was something to the south’ard o’ west, and I took it we were heading for an Australian port; but though I’d make motions, and draw with a piece of chalk on the deck, I’d never get more’n a stare, and a shake of the head and a grin, and a shrug of the shoulders, for an answer. In fact, it was like being sent adrift along with a company of monkeys.’