The Ghost Ship/Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Eighteen. A Black Business.

“Be jabers, sor!” exclaimed the Irishman in his very broadest brogue and with a comical grin on his face that certainly must have eclipsed that of which he complained in the professor of his college who had caught him and his fellow-student trespassing on his medical preserves. “To till the truth an’ shame the divvle, colonel, the poor ould crayture, whose complaint we couldn’t underconstumble at all at all, sure, was sufferin’ from a fit of apoplexy—a thing aisy enough to recognise by any docther of experience, though, faith, it moight have been Grake to us!”

We were all very much amused and had a good laugh at this naïve confession, even Colonel Vereker sharing in the general mirth, in spite of his profound melancholy and the pain he felt from his wounded leg, which made him wince every now and again, I noticed, during the narration of the story Garry O’Neil had thus told, with the utmost good humour, it must be confessed, at his own expense, as, indeed, he had made us understand beforehand that it would be.

“By George!” cried the skipper, after having his laugh out, “you’ll be the death of me some day with your queer yarns if you can’t manage to do for me with your professional skill or by the aid of your drugs and lotions, poisons, most of ’em, and all your murderous-looking instruments, besides!”

“No fear of that, cap’en; you’re too tough a customer,” rejoined the doctor with a knowing look in the direction of Mr Stokes, who had made himself purple in the face and was panting and puffing on his seat, trying to recover his breath. “Faith, though, sor, talkin’ of medical skill, the sooner I say afther that leg of our fri’nd here, the better, I’m thinkin’.”

“With the best of wills,” assented the colonel, who had finished his luncheon by this time and certainly presented a much improved appearance to that he had worn when entering the saloon. “I am quite at your service, doctor, and promise to be as quiet as that first patient of yours of whom you’ve just told us!”

“Belay that, colonel; none o’ your chaff about the ould leddy, if you love me, sure!” growled Garry, pretending to be indignant as he knelt down on the cabin floor and slit up the leg of the colonel’s trousers so as to inspect the wound. His nonsensical, quizzing manner changed instantly, however, on seeing the serious state of the injured limb, and he ejaculated in a subdued tone of voice, “Holy Moses!”

“Why, sir,” said the patient quietly, “what’s the matter now?”

“Ah, an’ ye are axin’ what’s the mather?” cried Garry in a still more astonished tone. “Faith, it’s wantin’ to know I am how the divvle you’ve iver been able to move about at all, at all, colonel, with that thing there. Look at it now, an’ till me what ye think of it yoursilf, me darlint. May the saints presairve us, but did any one iver say such a leg?”

It was, in truth, a fearful-looking object, being swollen to the most abnormal proportions from the ankle joint to the thigh, while the skin was of a dark hue, save where some extravasated blood clustered about a small punctured orifice just above the knee.

Colonel Vereker laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“The fortune of war,” he explained. “One of those brutes shot me where that mark is, but I think the bullet travelled all round my thigh and lodged somewhere in the groin, I fancy, for I feel a lump there.”

“Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin’!” cried Garry, who was probing for the missile all the time. “A man that can walk about, faith, loike an opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can’t have much faling at all, at all, I’m thinkin’!”

“Ah!” groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet near the spot the colonel had indicated. “Whew! that hurts at any rate, doctor!”

“Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint,” said the other soothingly, exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to extract the leaden messenger. “An’ if ye can’t be aisy, faith, try an’ be as aisy as ye can!”

In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.

“Ah!” ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench his teeth with an audible snap.

“Faith, you may say ‘ah’ now as much as you please,” said Garry, as he held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. “For there’s the baste that did you all the damage, an’ we’ll soon pull you up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!”

“Oh! dear me!” the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment to allay the swelling. “Would to God all the mischief could be as easily made good! Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!”

“Cheer up, colonel, cheer up,” whispered the skipper, coming in from the state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to hunt up some special cigars while Garry O’Neil was accomplishing his surgical operation. “We’re going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship can carry us, and we’ll rescue your child, I’ll wager, before nightfall. Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you’re trying one of the Havanah’s, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end. I should like to hear the account of your voyage right through, colonel, and how those blacks came to board you.”

“Certainly!” said Colonel Vereker, leaning back in his easy chair when Garry O’Neil had made an end of bandaging his leg, and accepting one of the choice cigars the skipper offered him. “I will tell you willingly, captain, and you, gentlemen, turning round and bowing to us, the sad story of our thrice ill-fated voyage.”

“Thrice ill-fated?” repeated Mr Stokes inquiringly, the chief being rather argumentative by nature and possessing what he called a strictly logical turn of mind. “But how’s that, sir?”

The colonel had his answer quite ready.

“I said ‘thrice ill-fated’ advisedly, sir,” he replied, removing his cigar from his lips to emit a cloud of perfumed smoke, and then restoring the fragrant roll of tobacco to the mouth again. “In the first place, sir, from my having been unlucky enough ever to start upon the voyage at all. Secondly, from the fact of a calm delaying us when passing between Puerto Rico and San Domingo, thereby enabling those treacherous negro scoundrels to see our ship in time to put out for us from the shore; and thirdly, because Captain Alphonse would not take my advice and use strong measures when the mutiny originally broke out, which might have prevented the terrible events that afterwards occurred! But, sir, if you will allow me, I shall get along better by telling you what happened just in my own way!”

“Certainly, sir,” immediately replied Mr Stokes, profuse in his apologies. “Pray pardon my interruption!”

The colonel bowed in token of his forgiveness and then resumed his yarn.

“Our ship, the Saint Pierre, of Marseilles, Jacques Alphonse master and part owner, sailed from La Guayra on October 25, barely a fortnight ago!” said he. “In addition to her captain, of course, she carried two mates and a crew of twenty-five hands all told, and she was bound for Liverpool, with a general cargo of cocoa, coffee and hides, besides a mixed assortment of indigo, orris root, sarsaparilla and other raw drugs for the English market.”

“Were you and your little daughter the only passengers?”

“No, Señor Applegarth,” replied the other. “There were also on board Monsieur and Madame Boisson, from Caracas, returning home to Europe after a lengthened residence in the Venezuelan capital, where they had carried on a large millinery business, supplying the dusky señoritas of the hybrid Spanish and native republic with the latest Parisian modes; Don Miguel, the proprietor of an extensive estancia in the interior; and little Mr Johnson, a Britisher, of not much account in your country, I guess, not a gentleman—at all events, in my humble opinion. He was travelling for some mercantile house in London connected with the manufactory of chocolates or sweets, or something of that sort. I cannot say I cared much for the lot, as they were not people of my class, so I did not allow my Elsie, my darling, my pet, to associate with them more than could be helped, save with Madame Boisson, who was a kind, good-natured sort of woman, though decidedly vulgar. Oh dear me! It was a thousand pities we ever started on that disastrous voyage. It was unlucky from the very first!”

“Faith!” interposed Garry O’Neil. “But how was that, sor?”

“We were too late in reaching La Guayra in the first instance,” replied Colonel Vereker. “I had planned, my friend, to take the French steamer for Brest, but on arriving at the port I found she had already left, and while deliberating about what I should do under the circumstances—for there would not be another mail boat for a fortnight at least—I met Captain Alphonse. He was an old friend of mine, a friend of long standing, so, on his telling me that his vessel was going to sail on the following day and would probably convey me to Brest, where he said he would have to report himself prior to proceeding to Liverpool with his cargo, quite as soon as I should arrive if I waited for the next steamer, I made up my mind to accompany him.”

“But, colonel,” suggested Captain Applegarth, “you might have gone direct to England by one of the West India mail steamers which touch at La Guayra on their route homeward from Colon.”

“I know that, my friend,” said the other. “I could have caught one of them the following week. This would not have suited my purpose, however, sir. I wished to proceed direct to Brest, for I could get easily on to Paris, where I intended placing my little Elsie at school in the convent of L’enfant Jesu, at Neuilly, under the guardianship of some good nuns, by whom her poor mother was educated and brought up. It was a promise, my friend, to the dead.”

“I see, colonel,” rejoined the skipper apologetically, lighting his cigar again, having allowed it to go out while listening to the other; “I see, sir. Go on; I’m all attention.”

“Well, then,” continued the colonel, “these preliminaries being all arranged, Elsie and I went aboard the Saint Pierre, a full-rigged sailing ship of some eight hundred tons, the morning of the twenty-eighth of last month; and on the evening of the same day, as I have already told you, we made sail and quitted the anchorage where the ship had been loading—abreast of San Miguel, a port that guards the roadstead to the eastward, where it is open to the sea.”

“Aye, I know La Guayra well, colonel,” put in the skipper at this point, showing that he was following every detail. “I was in the Royal Mail Line when I was a nipper, before joining my present company.”

“I recollect the night we sailed,” resumed the other, paying no attention to Captain Applegarth’s remark, but speaking with his eyes fixed, as if in a dream and seeing mentally before him the scenes he described. “The moon was shining brightly when we got under way, lighting up the Trinchera bastion and making the mountains in the background seem higher than they were from the deep shadows they cast over the town lying below. This latter lay embosomed amid a mass of tall cocoanut trees and gorgeous palms, with other tropical foliage, and had a shining beach of white sand immediately in its front, stretching round the curling bay, on which the surf broke in the moonlight, with a phosphorescent glow and a hollow sound as if beating over a grave. Heavens! It was the grave of all my dearest hopes and plans, for that, sir, was one of the few last peaceful nights I have of late known, and very probably ever shall know again!”

“Faith, don’t say that now, sir,” cried out Garry at this. “You’ll have a peaceful one to-night, sure, or I’m no prophet. Begorrah, though, I niver was, so far as that goes!”

The skipper grinned at this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel’s sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the speaker, as if wishing to share his hopefulness.

“Ah, doctor, you do not know what grief and anguish are like!” he said mournfully. “But to go on with my story. I may tell you that, had our voyage progressed like our start, I should have nothing to deplore, for, the land breeze filling our sails, we bore away buoyantly from the Venezuelan coast, the ship shaping a course north by west towards the Mona passage, as the channel way is called, from a rock in its centre, lying between Hayti and Puerto Rico. This route is held to be the best, I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is a course, too, which by its directness and the northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt, captain, very well know.”

The skipper nodded his head.

“You’re quite a sailor, colonel,” he said approvingly. “Where did you manage to pick up your knowledge of navigation and sea-faring matters, if I may ask the question, sir?”

“In the many voyages I have made during a somewhat adventurous life,” replied the other. “I have invariably kept my ears and eyes open, captain. There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes, indeed, almost unexpectedly so!”

“Aye, aye, colonel. My opinion, sir, right down to the ground,” said the skipper, looking towards me. “Just you put that in your pipe, Dick Haldane, and smoke it!”

“Yes, young sir,” added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of advice. “That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one occasion, both on land and on shipboard. Had I not learnt something of the ways of your sailors, for instance, I might not have thought of lashing the Saint Pierre’s helm amidships on the breaking out of the mutiny, and so prevented all our going to the bottom subsequently, when it came on to blow; for all of us were then fighting for our lives and no one had time to attend to the ship, save in the way of letting go what ropes were handiest.”

“Aye, that may be well enough, colonel,” observed the skipper in his dry fashion. “But your argument cuts both ways. If your helm hadn’t been lashed down, remember, the ship would have been yawing about and drifting in this direction and that, and we should probably have come across her long ago, like that boat from which we picked you up, instead of her bearing away right before the wind and our having to go in chase of her, sir, as we are now doing.”

“It is true! I did not think of that!” returned the colonel impulsively, half-starting from his seat in his excitement. “We must be near her now, captain, though, surely. We must find them, and I must see my little girl again!”

“Kape aisy, me darlint; kape aisy,” here interposed Garry O’Neil, before Captain Applegarth could answer the question. “Sure, Mr Fosset promised to give us the worrd whin she hove in sight, an’ you’re only distarbin’ yoursilf for nothing, colonel! More’s the pity, too, mabruchal, whin your leg is progressin’ so illigantly an’ the swillin’ goin’ down as swately as possible. Now kape aisy, if only to oblige me. Faith, colonel, me profissional reputation’s at shtake!”

The Irishman all the time he was talking was carefully attending to the injured limb, loosening a bandage here, tightening another there, and keeping the lint dressing moist the while with a lotion which he applied gently to the surface by means of a sponge. So, impressed alike by his tender solicitude thus practically shown on his behalf as much as by his opportune admonition, the colonel was forced to remain quiet.

“I wish he’d be quick about it!” he muttered to himself. “Well, doctor, as you will not let me move, I suppose you will let me go on with my tale; that is, if it interests you!”

“Aye, aye; I want to hear everything,” said the skipper. “And fire away, colonel; there’s plenty of time for you to reel off your yarn before we overhaul the chase.”

“All right,—then, I will proceed,” replied the other. “All went well with us on the voyage until the afternoon of the third day after sailing from La Guayra, when, unfortunately, the weather changed and the westerly wind, which had favoured us so far, suddenly failed us after wafting us through the Mona Passage, and we became becalmed off Cap San Engaño, to the northward of Hayti.”

“Hayti!” exclaimed old Mr Stokes, waking up from a short nap he had been having on the sly, and pretending to be keenly alive to the conversation. “That’s the famous black republic, ain’t it?”

“Famous black pandemonium, you mean!” retorted the colonel fiercely, his eyes flashing at once with fire. “Excuse me, sir, but I have seen so much of these negro brutes, who ape the airs of civilisation and yet after a century of freedom are more uncivilised in their habits and mode of life than the African slaves, their forefathers whom Toussaint-L’Overture, as he styled himself, their leader, freed from the yoke of their French masters a hundred years ago, that I feel the glorious name ‘republic’ to be dishonoured when associated with such vile wretches, wretches a thousand times worse than the Fantees of the West Coast from whom they originally sprang!”

“My dear sir,” said Mr Stokes, aghast at the tempest he had raised by his innocent remark, “you surprise me!”

“Heavens! you would be surprised, sir, if you knew these Haytians as I know them to be,” continued the colonel, his indignation still struggling for the mastery—“a race of devil worshippers and cannibals, who confound liberty with license, and have added all the vices of civilisation to the inherent savagery of their innate animal nature. Ah, sir, I should like to tell you a great deal more, but have not the time now. I am afraid I am forgetting myself. Where was I?”

“Becalmed off Cape San Engaño,” promptly replied the skipper, sailor fashion—“at least, so you said, colonel; but I fancy you must have had a little rougher weather in that latitude than you mentioned at first!”

“We had,” said Colonel Vereker meaningly. “Towards nightfall we drifted with the current more inshore, Captain Alphonse not dropping our anchor, as we expected the land breeze would spring up at sunset. This did not come for an hour later, however, for already darkness had begun to surround us and we could see the fireflies illuminating the brush beyond the beach. But this wasn’t all observed, sir. Just as our sails filled again and the ship slowly drew out into the offing, we heard the splash of oars in the water astern. It was a boat coming after us, propelled by a dozen oars at least, pulling as hard as those handling them knew how, a shot or two from the shore and the sound of musket balls ripping the water explaining, in some way, the reason for their anxiety to get beyond the range of the firing, on which account they sought the shelter of the Saint Pierre, of course—at least, so we thought!

“‘Who goes there?’ shouted out Captain Alphonse, who was standing alone with me, close to the taffrail. ‘Poor devils! there is probably another insurrection at Port au Prince, and President Salomon up or down again. He is always one or the other every year or so, and these poor fellows may be flying to save their miserable necks. Who goes there? Who goes there?’ But, whether wanting all their energy for their oars or for some other reason known to themselves, those in the boat made no reply to our hail, and the next moment, ere the ship gathered way sufficient to gain on them, they were alongside, their long unwieldy craft grating against the ship’s timbers beneath her counter.

“‘Look-out there, forrads!’ cried Captain Alphonse, seeing the boat making apparently for our bows, but before a hand could be raised to prevent them, without asking permission in any way or offering the slightest apology or excuse in advance for their conduct, a number of negroes jumped out of her and began climbing aboard the Saint Pierre.

“Heavens! gentlemen, clad in little beyond Nature’s own covering, as the majority of the intruders were, and looking in the dim light as black as the ace of spades, they seemed like so many demons, come to take possession of our unfortunate ship—as indeed they were. Oh dear me!”