Kabanata Kabanata 7 · I GO TO SEA IN THE BRIG _COVENANT_ OF DYSART

. I GO TO SEA IN THE BRIG _COVENANT_ OF DYSART

I came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and

deafened by many unfamiliar noises. There sounded in my ears a roaring

of water as of a huge mill-dam, the thrashing of heavy sprays, the

thundering of the sails, and the shrill cries of seamen. The whole world

now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and

hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a

long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by

a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in

the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened

to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a

blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion

of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft me of my senses.

When I returned again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and

violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other

pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman

on the sea. In that time of my adventurous youth, I suffered many

hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by

so few hopes, as these first hours aboard the brig.

I heard a gun fire, and supposed the storm had proved too strong for us,

and we were firing signals of distress. The thought of deliverance, even

by death in the deep sea, was welcome to me. Yet it was no such matter;

but (as I was afterwards told) a common habit of the captain’s, which

I here set down to show that even the worst man may have his kindlier

side. We were then passing, it appeared, within some miles of Dysart,

where the brig was built, and where old Mrs. Hoseason, the captain’s

mother, had come some years before to live; and whether outward or

inward bound, the _Covenant_ was never suffered to go by that place by

day, without a gun fired and colours shown.

I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling

cavern of the ship’s bowels where I lay; and the misery of my situation

drew out the hours to double. How long, therefore, I lay waiting to hear

the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head foremost into

the depths of the sea, I have not the means of computation. But sleep at

length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow.

I was awakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A

small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair,

stood looking down at me.

“Well,” said he, “how goes it?”

I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and

set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp.

“Ay,” said he, “a sore dunt.[10] What, man? Cheer up! The world’s no done;

you’ve made a bad start of it but you’ll make a better. Have you had any

meat?”

[10] Stroke.

I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and

water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself.

The next time he came to see me, I was lying betwixt sleep and waking,

my eyes wide open in the darkness, the sickness quite departed, but

succeeded by a horrid giddiness and swimming that was almost worse

to bear. I ached, besides, in every limb, and the cords that bound me

seemed to be of fire. The smell of the hole in which I lay seemed to

have become a part of me; and during the long interval since his last

visit I had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the

ship’s rats, that sometimes pattered on my very face, and now from the

dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever.

The glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the heaven’s

sunlight; and though it only showed me the strong, dark beams of the

ship that was my prison, I could have cried aloud for gladness. The man

with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and I noticed

that he came somewhat unsteadily. He was followed by the captain.

Neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and dressed

my wound as before, while Hoseason looked me in my face with an odd,

black look.

“Now, sir, you see for yourself,” said the first: “a high fever, no

appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means.”

“I am no conjurer, Mr. Riach,” said the captain.

“Give me leave, sir,” said Riach; “you’ve a good head upon your

shoulders, and a good Scotch tongue to ask with; but I will leave you no

manner of excuse; I want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the

forecastle.”

“What ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel’,”

returned the captain; “but I can tell ye that which is to be. Here he

is; here he shall bide.”

“Admitting that you have been paid in a proportion,” said the other, “I

will crave leave humbly to say that I have not. Paid I am, and none too

much, to be the second officer of this old tub, and you ken very well if

I do my best to earn it. But I was paid for nothing more.”

“If ye could hold back your hand from the tin-pan, Mr. Riach, I would

have no complaint to make of ye,” returned the skipper; “and instead

of asking riddles, I make bold to say that ye would keep your breath to

cool your porridge. We’ll be required on deck,” he added, in a sharper

note, and set one foot upon the ladder.

But Mr. Riach caught him by the sleeve.

“Admitting that you have been paid to do a murder----” he began.

Hoseason turned upon him with a flash.

“What’s that?” he cried. “What kind of talk is that?”

“It seems it is the talk that you can understand,” said Mr. Riach,

looking him steadily in the face.

“Mr. Riach, I have sailed with ye three cruises,” replied the captain.

“In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I’m a stiff

man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now--fie, fie!--it comes

from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the lad will die----”

“Ay, will he!” said Mr. Riach.

“Well, sir, is not that enough?” said Hoseason. “Flit him where ye

please!”

Thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and I, who had lain silent

throughout this strange conversation, beheld Mr. Riach turn after him

and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision.

Even in my then state of sickness, I perceived two things: that the

mate was touched with liquor, as the captain hinted, and that (drunk or

sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend.

Five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, I was hoisted on a man’s

back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some

sea-blankets; where the first thing that I did was to lose my senses.

It was a blessed thing indeed to open my eyes again upon the daylight,

and to find myself in the society of men. The forecastle was a roomy

place enough, set all about with berths, in which the men of the watch

below were seated smoking, or lying down asleep. The day being calm and

the wind fair, the scuttle was open, and not only the good daylight, but

from time to time (as the ship rolled) a dusty beam of sunlight shone

in, and dazzled and delighted me. I had no sooner moved, moreover, than

one of the men brought me a drink of something healing which Mr. Riach

had prepared, and bade me lie still and I should soon be well again.

There were no bones broken, he explained: “A clour[11] on the head was

naething. Man,” said he, “it was me that gave it ye!”

[11] Blow.

Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got

my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot

indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly

parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with

masters no less cruel. There were some among them that had sailed with

the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some

were men that had run from the king’s ships, and went with a halter

round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying

goes, were “at a word and a blow” with their best friends. Yet I had

not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my

first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as

though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad,

but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine

were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I

suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to

them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and

had some glimmerings of honesty.

There was one man, of maybe forty, that would sit on my berthside for

hours and tell me of his wife and child. He was a fisher that had lost

his boat, and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging. Well, it is

years ago now: but I have never forgotten him. His wife (who was “young

by him,” as he often told me) waited in vain to see her man return; he

would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep

the bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the

event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal

fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ill of the

dead.

Among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had

been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, I was

very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was

going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; and you must not suppose

that I was going to that place merely as an exile. The trade was even

then much depressed; since that, and with the rebellion of the colonies

and the formation of the United States, it has, of course, come to

an end; but in those days of my youth, white men were still sold into

slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked

uncle had condemned me.

The cabin-boy Ransome (from whom I had first heard of these atrocities)

came in at times from