Page:The Clipper Ship Era.djvu/207

Rh measured: length 221 feet, breadth 41 feet 6 inches, depth 24 feet 10 inches. She was commanded by Captain H. W. Johnson, a gentleman who possessed a merry wit and a vivid imagination. Some of his experiences by land and sea, as related by himself, were certainly startling, and he told them with a minuteness of detail and an earnestness of manner that carried conviction equal to the most realistic illusions of the drama. There was one story about a mutiny on board the British brig Diadem, of which vessel Johnson said he was second mate. This craft carried a Lascar crew, and was in the Bay of Bengal, bound from Calcutta to Hong-kong with a cargo of opium, when a mutiny broke out in which all hands took part with such ferocious valor that the second mate and the serang, both badly wounded, were the only survivors.

The listeners are shown the dead bodies of Europeans and Asiatics, lying about the blood-stained deck under the fierce rays of the southern sun, and we breathe the tainted air, while chattering cormorants and screeching fishhawks tear the thin clothing of the corpses into shreds and fight with claw and beak over the decaying flesh. Johnson and the serang, so widely separated by blood, language, and religion, now united by a bond of common suffering, help each other to crawl into the caboose for shelter from the heat and from the birds of prey. Now we hear the gentle chafing of the gear aloft, and the lazy slatting of the sails, as the brig rolls upon the long, glassy swell; we see the sun sink beyond the ocean's rim in a glory of gold and purple that illumines the zenith and