Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/496

 men so that it could be read on board the stranger. Captain Jones on the forecastle head watched the chase through his glass. The words "Martha M. Stubbs, Windsor, N.S.," were written in large white letters upon her stern. Nothing was to be seen of Mr. Chips and the Only Mate. A man wearing a fur hat, resembling Robinson Crusoe's, paced the short poop of the barque. He carried a glass in his hand, and to judge by the frequent glances he directed at the Rose, it was to be guessed that he had interpreted the handwriting on the black board.

The breeze freshened. Sheets and tacks strained to the increased pressure. The Rose, with foam midway to the hawsepipe, went shearing alongside the barque within pistol shot.

"Hard up!" shrieked the man in the Robinson Crusoe cap, and the fellow at the helm made the spokes spin like the driving wheel of a locomotive.

"Hard up and into him!" roared Captain Jones, and round fizzed the wheel of the Rose in true firework fashion.

For the next two hours the Rose was occupied in endeavouring to run down the barque, the barque on her side cutting a hundred nimble nautical capers to evade the shearing stem of the enraged Jones. But at the end of two hours it had become plain to the man in the Robinson Crusoe hat that the Rose was in earnest. He then gave up, backed his main-topsail yard, and sent the Only Mate and Mr. Chips aboard the Rose in a boat pulled by two men. Captain Jones at once put Mr. Chips into irons and sent the Only Mate to his cabin. He then called to the two fellows who were sitting in the boat under the gangway: "Are ye undermanned?"

"Fearful—ly," was the answer.

"I thought so," said Captain Jones. "Step on board, my livelies, and have a glass of grog afore you return."

The two men cheerfully crawled over the side, but instead of giving them a glass of grog apiece, Captain Jones ordered them forward to turn to with the rest of his crew, and with his own hand let go the line which held the barque's boat to the Rose. Sail was then trimmed, and in less than three hours the barque was hull down, though still in pursuit of the Rose.

The Only Mate admitted, with a countenance of hate and loathing, that he was sick of the Rose, sick of Captain Jones, that he hadn't any intention of working a big vessel of 700 tons single-handed with old Chips, the carpenter, and that when he boarded the Nova Scotiaman and heard that she was very short-handed, he accepted the captain's handsome offer of a number of dollars for the rest of the run to Windsor, as did Mr. Chips. The Only Mate added that both he and Mr. Chips were in debt to the Rose as it was, and that Captain Jones would have been welcome to their clothes and nautical instruments had the Nova Scotiaman succeeded in getting clear off.

Captain Jones's troubles were not yet at an end. He wished to put into Lisbon, but the crew refused to work the ship unless he returned to England.

"We're not going to be convarted into blooming distressed mariners," said the