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- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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During the remainder of the afternoon I was left to my own reflections, which were anything but agreeable; for I could not banish from my mind the threat about the thumbscrews, of the nature and use of which I had a vague but terrible conception. I was still meditating on my unhappy fate when, just after nightfall, one of the watch on deck called down the hatchway:
“Hallo, there! One o’ you tumble up and light the cabin lamp, and send that boy aft to the captain—sharp!”
“Now, then, do you hear, youngster? the captain wants you. Look alive!” said Bloody Bill, raising his huge frame from the locker on which he had been asleep for the last two hours. He sprang up the ladder, and I instantly followed him, and going aft, was shown into the cabin by one of the men, who closed the door after me.
A small silver lamp which hung from a beam threw a dim, soft light over the cabin, which was a small apartment, and comfortably but plainly furnished. Seated on a camp-stool at the table, and busily engaged in examining a chart of the Pacific, was the captain, who looked up as I entered, and in a quiet voice bade me be seated, while he threw down his pencil, and rising from the table, stretched himself on a sofa at the upper end of the cabin.
“Boy,” said he, looking me full in the face, “what is your name?”
“Ralph Rover,” I replied.
“Where did you come from, and how came you to be on that island? How many companions had you on it? Answer me, now, and mind you tell no lies.”
“I never tell lies,” said I firmly.
The captain received this reply with a cold, sarcastic smile, and bade me answer his questions.
I then told him the history of myself and my companions from the time we sailed till the day of his visit to the island—taking care, however, to make no mention of the Diamond Cave. After I had concluded, he was silent for a few minutes; then looking up, he said, “Boy, I believe you.”
I was surprised at this remark, for I could not imagine why he should not believe me. However, I made no reply.
“And what,” continued the captain, “makes you think that this schooner is a pirate?”
“The black flag,” said I, “showed me what you are; and if any further proof were wanting, I have had it in the brutal treatment I have received at your hands.”
The captain frowned as I spoke; but, subduing his anger, he continued, “Boy, you are too bold. I admit that we treated you roughly, but that was because you made us lose time and gave us a good deal of trouble. As to the black flag, that is merely a joke that my fellows play off upon people sometimes in order to frighten them. It is their humour, and does no harm. I am no pirate, boy, but a lawful trader—a rough one, I grant you; but one can’t help that in these seas, where there are so many pirates on the water and such murderous blackguards on the land. I carry on a trade in sandal-wood with the Feejee Islands; and if you choose, Ralph, to behave yourself and be a good boy, I’ll take you along with me and give you a good share of the profits. You see, I’m in want of an honest boy like you to look after the cabin, and keep the log, and superintend the traffic on shore sometimes. What say you, Ralph: would you like to become a sandal-wood trader?”
I was much surprised by this explanation, and a good deal relieved to find that the vessel, after all, was not a pirate; but instead of replying, I said, “If it be as you state, then why did you take me from my island, and why do you not now take me back?”
The captain smiled as he replied, “I took you off in anger, boy, and I’m sorry for it. I would even now take you back, but we are too far away from it. See, there it is,” he added, laying his finger on the chart; “and we are now here—fifty miles, at least. It would not be fair to my men to put about now, for they have all an interest in the trade.”
I could make no reply to this; so, after a little more conversation, I agreed to become one of the crew—at least, until we could reach some civilised island where I might be put ashore. The captain assented to this proposition; and after thanking him for the promise, I left the cabin and went on deck with feelings that ought to have been lighter, but which were, I could not tell why, marvellously heavy and uncomfortable still.
Three weeks after the conversation narrated in the last chapter I was standing on the quarter-deck of the schooner, watching the gambols of a shoal of porpoises that swam round us. It was a dead calm—one of those still, hot, sweltering days so common in the Pacific, when nature seems to have gone to sleep, and the only thing in water or in air that proves her still alive is her long, deep breathing in the swell of the mighty sea. No cloud floated in the deep blue above, no ripple broke the reflected blue below. The sun shone fiercely in the sky, and a ball of fire blazed with almost equal power from out the bosom of the water. So intensely still was it, and so perfectly transparent was the surface of the deep, that had it not been for the long swell already alluded to, we might have believed the surrounding universe to be a huge, blue, liquid ball, and our little ship the one solitary material speck in all creation floating in the midst of it.
No sound broke on our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat. Bloody Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at the tiller; but his post for the present was a sinecure, and he whiled away the time by alternately gazing in dreamy abstraction at the compass in the binnacle and by walking to the taffrail in order to spit into the sea. In one of these turns he came near to where I was standing, and leaning over the side, looked long and earnestly down into the blue wave.
This man, although he was always taciturn and often surly, was the only human being on board with whom I had the slightest desire to become better acquainted. The other men, seeing that I did not relish their company, and knowing that I was a protégé of the captain, treated me with total indifference. Bloody Bill, it is true, did the same; but as this was his conduct to every one else, it was not peculiar in reference to me. Once or twice I tried to draw him into conversation, but he always turned away after a few cold monosyllables. As he now leaned over the taffrail, close beside me, I said to him:
“Bill, why is it that you are so gloomy? Why do you never speak to any one?”
Bill smiled slightly as he replied, “Why, I s’pose it’s because I hain’t got nothin’ to say!”
“That’s strange,” said I musingly. “You look like a man that could think, and such men can usually speak.”
“So they can, youngster,” rejoined Bill somewhat sternly; “and I could speak too if I had a mind to, but what’s the use o’ speakin’ here? The men only open their mouths to curse and swear, and they seem to find it entertainin’; but I don’t, so I hold my tongue.”
“Well, Bill, that’s true, and I would rather not hear you speak at all than hear you speak like the other men. But I don’t swear, Bill; so you might talk to me sometimes, I think. Besides, I’m weary of spending day after day in this way, without a single soul to say a pleasant word to. I’ve been used to friendly conversation, Bill, and I really would take it kind if you would talk with me a little now and then.”
Bill looked at me in surprise, and I thought I observed a sad expression pass across his sunburned face.
“An’ where have you been used to friendly conversation?” said Bill, looking down again into the sea. “Not on that Coral Island, I take it?”
“Yes, indeed,” said I energetically. “I have spent many of the happiest months in my life on that Coral Island;” and without waiting to be further questioned, I launched out into a glowing account of the happy life that Jack and Peterkin and I had spent together, and related minutely every circumstance that befell us while on the island.
“Boy, boy,” said Bill in a voice so deep that it startled me, “this is no place for you!”
“That’s true,” said I. “I am of little use on board, and I don’t like my comrades; but I can’t help it, and at any rate I hope to be free again soon.”
“Free?” said Bill, looking at me in surprise.
“Yes, free,” returned I. “The captain said he would put me ashore after this trip was over.”
“This trip! Hark’ee, boy,” said Bill, lowering his voice, “what said the captain to you the day you came aboard?”
“He said that he was a trader in sandal-wood, and no pirate, and told me that if I would join him for this trip he would give me a good share of the profits, or put me on shore in some civilised island if I chose.”
Bill’s brows lowered savagely as he muttered, “Ay, he said truth when he told you he was a sandal-wood trader, but he lied when—”
“Sail ho!” shouted the lookout at the masthead.
“Where away?” cried Bill, springing to the tiller; while the men, startled by the sudden cry, jumped up and gazed round the horizon.
“On the starboard quarter, hull down, sir,” answered the lookout.
At this moment the captain came on deck, and mounting into the rigging, surveyed the sail through the glass. Then sweeping his eye round the horizon, he gazed steadily at the particular point.
“Take in topsails!” shouted the captain, swinging himself down on the deck by the main-back stay.
“Take in topsails!” roared the first mate.
“Ay, ay, sir–r–r!” answered the men as they sprang into the rigging and went aloft like
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