Kitabı oku: «The Adventures of Captain Horn», sayfa 18
CHAPTER XXXV. THE CAPTAIN WRITES A LETTER
On the afternoon of the next day, the Miranda, having taken in water, set sail, and began her long voyage to Rio Janeiro, and thence to France.
Now that his labors were over, and the treasure of the Incas safely stored in the hold of the brig, where it was ignominiously acting as ballast, Captain Horn seated himself comfortably in the shade of a sail and lighted his pipe. He was tired of working, tired of thinking, tired of planning — tired in mind, body, and even soul; and the thought that his work was done, and that he was actually sailing away with his great prize, came to him like a breeze from the sea after a burning day. He was not as happy as he should have been. He knew that he was too tired to be as happy as his circumstances demanded, but after a while he would attend better to that business. Now he was content to smoke his pipe, and wait, and listen to the distant music from all the different kinds of enjoyment which, in thought, were marching toward him. It was true he was only beginning his long voyage to the land where he hoped to turn his gold into available property. It was true that he might be murdered that night, or some other night, and that when the brig, with its golden cargo, reached port, he might not be in command of her. It was true that a hundred things might happen to prevent the advancing enjoyments from ever reaching him. But ill-omened chances threaten everything that man is doing, or ever can do, and he would not let the thought of them disturb him now.
Everybody on board the Miranda was glad to rest and be happy, according to his methods and his powers of anticipation. As to any present advantage from their success, there was none. The stones and sand they had thrown out had ballasted the brig quite as well as did the gold they now carried. This trite reflection forced itself upon the mind of Burke.
“Captain,” said he, “don’t you think it would be a good idea to touch somewhere and lay in a store of fancy groceries and saloon-cabin grog? If we can afford to be as jolly as we please, I don’t see why we shouldn’t begin now.”
But the captain shook his head. “It would be a dangerous thing,” he said, “to put into any port on the west coast of South America with our present cargo on board. We can’t make it look like ballast, as I expected we could, for all that bagging gives it a big bulk, and if the custom-house officers came on board, it would not do any good to tell them we are sailing in ballast, if they happened to want to look below.”
“Well, that may be so,” said Burke. “But what I’d like would be to meet a first-class, double-quick steamer, and buy her, put our treasure on board, and then clap on all steam for France.”
“All right,” said the captain, “but we’ll talk about that when we meet a steamer for sale.”
After a week had passed, and he had begun to feel the advantages of rest and relief from anxiety, Captain Horn regretted nothing so much as that the Miranda was not a steamer, ploughing her swift way over the seas. It must be a long, long time before he could reach those whom he supposed and hoped were waiting for him in France. It had already been a long, long time since they had heard from him. He did not fear that they would suffer because he did not come. He had left them money enough to prevent anything of that sort. He did not know whether or not they were longing to hear from him, but he did know that he wanted them to hear from him. He must yet sail about three thousand miles in the Pacific Ocean, and then about two thousand more in the Atlantic, before he reached Rio Janeiro, the port for which he had cleared. From there it would be nearly five thousand miles to France, and he did not dare to calculate how long it would take the brig to reach her final destination.
This course of thought determined him to send a letter, which would reach Paris long before he could arrive there. If they should know that he was on his way home, all might be well, or, at least, better than if they knew nothing about him. It might be a hazardous thing to touch at a port on this coast, but he believed that, if he managed matters properly, he might get a letter ashore without making it necessary for any meddlesome custom-house officers to come aboard and ask questions. Accordingly, he decided to stop at Valparaiso. He thought it likely that if he did not meet a vessel going into port which would lay to and take his letter, he might find some merchantman, anchored in the roadstead, to which he could send a boat, and on which he was sure to find some one who would willingly post his letter.
He wrote a long letter to Edna — a straightforward, business-like missive, as his letters had always been, in which, in language which she could understand, but would carry no intelligible idea to any unauthorized person who might open the letter, he gave her an account of what he had done, and which was calculated to relieve all apprehensions, should it be yet a long time before he reached her. He promised to write again whenever there was an opportunity of sending her a letter, and wrote in such a friendly and encouraging manner that he felt sure there would be no reason for any disappointment or anxiety regarding him and the treasure.
Burke and Shirley were a little surprised when they found that the captain had determined to stop at Valparaiso, a plan so decidedly opposed to what he had before said on the subject. But when they found it was for the purpose of sending a letter to his wife, and that he intended, if possible, barely to touch and go, they said nothing more, nor did Burke make any further allusions to improvement in their store of provisions.
When, at last, the captain found himself off Valparaiso, it was on a dark, cloudy evening and nothing could be done until the next morning, and they dropped anchor to wait until dawn.
As soon as it was light, the captain saw that a British steamer was anchored about a mile from the Miranda, and he immediately sent a boat, with Shirley and two of the negroes, to ask the officer on duty to post his letter when he sent on shore. In a little more than an hour Shirley returned, with the report that the first mate of the steamer knew Captain Horn and would gladly take charge of his letter.
The boat was quickly hauled to the davits, and all hands were called to weigh anchor and set sail. But all hands did not respond to the call. One of the negroes, a big, good-natured fellow, who, on account of his unpronounceable African name, had been dubbed “Inkspot,” was not to be found. This was a very depressing thing, under the circumstances, and it, almost counterbalanced the pleasure the captain felt in having started a letter on its way to his party in France.
It seemed strange that Inkspot should have deserted the vessel, for it was a long way to the shore, and, besides, what possible reason could he have for leaving his fellow-Africans and taking up his lot among absolute strangers? The crew had all worked together so earnestly and faithfully that the captain had come to believe in them and trust them to an extent to which he had never before trusted seamen.
The officers held a consultation as to what was to be done, and they very quickly arrived at a decision. To remain at anchor, to send a boat on shore to look for the missing negro, would be dangerous and useless. Inquiries about the deserter would provoke inquiries about the brig, and if Inkspot really wished to run away from the vessel, it would take a long time to find him and bring him back. The right course was quite plain to every one. Having finished the business which brought them there, they must up anchor and sail away as soon as possible. As for the loss of the man, they must bear that as well as they could. Whether he had been drowned, eaten by a shark, or had safely reached the shore, he was certainly lost to them.
At the best, their crew had been small enough, but six men had sailed a brig, and six men could do it again.
So the anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and before a northeast wind the Miranda went out to sea as gayly as the nature of her build permitted, which is not saying much. It was a good wind, however, and when the log had been thrown, the captain remarked that the brig was making better time than she had made since they left Acapulco.
CHAPTER XXXVI. A HORSE-DEALER APPEARS ON THE SCENE
When the brig Miranda was lying at anchor in the Rackbirds’ cove, and Mr. George Burke had silently left her in order to go on shore and pursue some investigations in which he was interested, his departure from the brig had not been, as he supposed, unnoticed. The big, good-natured African, known as Inkspot, had been on watch, and, being himself so very black that he was not generally noticeable in the dark, was standing on a part of the deck from which, without being noticed himself, he saw a person get over the taffrail and slip into the water. He knew this person to be the second mate, and having a high respect and some fear of his superiors, he did not consider it his business to interfere with him. He saw a head above the water, moving toward the shore, but it soon disappeared in the darkness. Toward the end of his watch, he had seen Mr. Burke climb up the vessel’s side as silently as he had gone down it, and disappear below.
When Inkspot went to his hammock, which he did very shortly afterwards, he reflected to the best of his ability upon what he had seen. Why did Mr. Burke slip away from the ship so silently, and come back in the same way? He must have gone ashore, and why did he want no one to know that he had gone? He must have gone to do something he ought not to do, and Inkspot could think of nothing wrong that Mr. Burke would like to do, except to drink whiskey. Captain Horn was very particular about using spirits on board, and perhaps Mr. Burke liked whiskey, and could not get it. Inkspot knew about the storehouse of the Rackbirds, but he did not know what it had contained, or what had been left there. Maka had said something about the whiskey having been poured out on the sand, but that might have been said just to keep people away from the place. If there were no whiskey there, why did Mr. Burke go on shore?
Now, it so happened that Inkspot knew a good deal about whiskey. Before he had gone into the service of the Rackbirds, he had, at different times, been drunk, and he had the liveliest and most pleasant recollections of these experiences. It had been a long time since he had had enough whiskey to make him feel happy. This had probably been the case with Mr. Burke, and he had gone on shore, and most likely had had some very happy hours, and had come back without any one knowing where he had gone. The consequence of this train of thought was that Inkspot determined that he would go on shore, the next night, and hunt for whiskey. He could do it quite as well as Mr. Burke had done it, perhaps even better. But the Miranda did not remain in the cove the next night, and poor Inkspot looked with longing eyes upon the slowly departing spot on the sands where he knew the Rackbirds’ storehouse was located.
The days and nights went on, and in the course of time the Miranda anchored in the harbor of Valparaiso; and, when this happened, Inkspot determined that now would be his chance to go on shore and get a good drink of whiskey — he had money enough for that. He could see the lights of El Puerto, or the Old Town, glittering and beckoning, and they did not appear to be very far off. It would be nothing for him to swim as far as that.
Inkspot went off his watch at midnight, and he went into the water at fifty minutes to one. He wore nothing but a dark-gray shirt and a pair of thin trousers, and if any one had seen his head and shoulders, it is not likely, unless a good light had been turned on them, that they would have been supposed to be portions of a human form.
Inkspot was very much at home in the water, and he could swim like a dog or a deer. But it was a long, long swim to those glittering and beckoning lights. At last, however, he reached a pier, and having rested himself on the timbers under it, he cautiously climbed to the top. The pier was deserted, and he walked to the end of it, and entered the town. He knew nothing of Valparaiso, except that it was a large city where sailors went, and he was quite sure he could find a shop where they sold whiskey. Then he would have a glass — perhaps two — perhaps three — after which he would return to the brig, as Mr. Burke had done. Of course, he would have to do much more swimming than had been necessary for the second mate, but then, he believed himself to be a better swimmer than that gentleman, and he expected to get back a great deal easier than he came, because the whiskey would make him strong and happy, and he could play with the waves.
Inkspot did find a shop, and a dirty one it was — but they sold whiskey inside, and that was enough for him. With the exception of Maka, he was the most intelligent negro among the captain’s crew, and he had picked up some words of English and some of Spanish. But it was difficult for him to express an idea with these words. Among these words, however, was one which he pronounced better than any of the others, and which had always been understood whenever he used it, — whether in English or Spanish, no matter what the nationality might be of the person addressed, — and that word was “whiskey.”
Inkspot had one glass, and then another, a third, and a fourth, and then his money gave out — at least, the man who kept the shop insisted, in words that any one could understand, that the silver the big negro had fished out of his dripping pockets would pay for no more drinks. But Inkspot had had enough to make him happy. His heart was warm, and his clothes were getting drier. He went out into the glorious night. It was dark and windy, and the sky was cloudy, but to him all things were glorious. He sat down on the pavement in the cosey corner of two walls, and there he slept luxuriously until a policeman came along and arrested him for being drunk in the street.
It was two days before Inkspot got out of the hands of the police. Then he was discharged because the authorities did not desire to further trouble themselves with a stupid fellow who could give no account of himself, and had probably wandered from a vessel in port. The first thing he did was to go out to the water’s edge and look out over the harbor, but although he saw many ships, his sharp eyes told him that not one of them was the brig he had left.
After an hour or two of wandering up and down the waterside, he became sure that there was no vessel in that harbor waiting for him to swim to her. Then he became equally certain that he was very hungry. It was not long, however, before a good, strong negro like Inkspot found employment. It was not necessary for him to speak very much Spanish, or any other language, to get a job at carrying things up a gang-plank, and, in pay for this labor, he willingly took whatever was given him.
That night, with very little money in his pocket, Inkspot entered a tavern, a low place, but not so low as the one he had patronized on his arrival in Valparaiso. He had had a meagre supper, and now possessed but money enough to pay for one glass of whiskey, and having procured this, he seated himself on a stool in a corner, determined to protract his enjoyment as long as possible. Where he would sleep that night he knew not, but it was not yet bedtime, and he did not concern himself with the question.
Near by, at a table, were seated four men, drinking, smoking, and talking. Two of these were sailors. Another, a tall, dark man with a large nose, thin at the bridge and somewhat crooked below, was dressed in very decent shore clothes, but had a maritime air about him, notwithstanding. The fourth man, as would have been evident to any one who understood Spanish, was a horse-dealer, and the conversation, when Inkspot entered the place, was entirely about horses. But Inkspot did not know this, as he understood so few of the words that he heard, and he would not have been interested if he had understood them. The horse-dealer was the principal spokesman, but he would have been a poor representative of the shrewdness of his class, had he been trying to sell horses to sailors. He was endeavoring to do nothing of the kind. These men were his friends, and he was speaking to them, not of the good qualities of his animals, but of the credulous natures of his customers. To illustrate this, he drew from his pocket a small object which he had received a few days before for some horses which might possibly be worth their keep, although he would not be willing to guarantee this to any one at the table. The little object which he placed on the table was a piece of gold about two inches long, and shaped like an irregular prism.
This, he said, he had received in trade from a man in Santiago, who had recently come down from Lima. The man had bought it from a jeweller, who had others, and who said he understood they had come from California. The jeweller had owed the man money, and the latter had taken this, not as a curiosity, for it was not much of a curiosity, as they could all see, but because the jeweller told him exactly how much it was worth, and because it was safer than money to carry, and could be changed into current coin in any part of the world. The point of the horse-dealer’s remarks was, however, the fact that not only had he sold his horses to the man from Lima for very much more than they were worth, but he had made him believe that this lump of gold was not worth as much as he had been led to suppose, that the jeweller bad cheated him, and that Californian gold was not easily disposed of in Chili or Peru, for it was of a very inferior quality to the gold of South America. So he had made his trade, and also a profit, not only on the animals he delivered, but on the pay he received. He had had the little lump weighed and tested, and knew exactly how much it was worth.
When the horse-dealer had finished this pleasant tale, he laughed loudly, and the three other men laughed also because they had keen wits and appreciated a good story of real life. But their laughter was changed to astonishment — almost fright — when a big black negro bounded out of a dark corner and stood by the table, one outstretched ebony finger pointing to the piece of gold. Instantly the horse dealer snatched his treasure and thrust it into his pocket, and almost at the same moment each man sprung to his feet and put his hand on his favorite weapon. But the negro made no attempt to snatch the gold, nor did there seem to be any reason to apprehend an attack from him. He stood slapping his thighs with his hands, his mouth in a wide grin, and his eyes sparkling in apparent delight.
“What is the matter with you?” shouted the horse-dealer. “What do you want?”
Inkspot did not understand what had been said to him, nor could he have told what he wanted, for he did not know. At that moment he knew nothing, he comprehended nothing, but he felt as a stranger in a foreign land would feel should he hear some words in his native tongue. The sight of that piece of gold had given to Inkspot, by one quick flash, a view of his negro friends and companions, of Captain Horn and his two white men, of the brig he had left, of the hammock in which he had slept — of all, in fact, that he now cared for on earth.
He had seen pieces of gold like that. Before all the treasure had been carried from the caves to the Miranda, the supply of coffee-bags had given out, and during the last days of the loading it had been necessary to tie up the gold in pieces of sail-cloth, after the fashion of a wayfarer’s bundle. Before these had been put on board, their fastening had been carefully examined, and some of them had been opened and retied. Thus all the negroes had seen the little bars, for, as they knew the bags contained gold, there was no need of concealing from them the shape and size of the contents.
So, when, sitting in his gloomy corner, his spirits slowly rising under the influence of his refreshment, which he had just finished, he saw before him an object which recalled to him the life and friends of which he had bereft himself, Inkspot’s nature took entire possession of him, and he bounded to the table in ecstatic recognition of the bit of metal.
The men now swore at Inkspot, but as they saw he was unarmed, and not inclined to violence, they were not afraid of him, but they wondered at him. The horse-dealer took the piece of gold out of his pocket and held it in his hand.
“Did you ever see anything like that before?” he asked. He was a shrewd man, the horse-dealer, and really wanted to know what was the matter with the negro.
Inkspot did not answer, but jabbered in African.
“Try him in English,” suggested the thin-nosed man, and this the horse-dealer did.
Many of the English words Inkspot understood. He had seen things like that. Yes, yes! Great heaps! Heaps! Bags! Bags! He carried them! Throwing an imaginary package over his shoulder, he staggered under it across the floor. Heaps! Piles! Bags! Days and days and days he carried many bags! Then, in a state of exalted mental action, produced by his recollections and his whiskey, he suddenly conceived a scorn for a man who prized so highly just one of these lumps, and who was nearly frightened out of his wits if a person merely pointed to it. He shrugged his shoulders, he spread out the palms of his hands toward the piece of gold, he turned away his head and walked off sniffing. Then he came back and pointed to it, and, saying “One!” he laughed, and then he said “One!” and laughed again. Suddenly he became possessed with a new idea. His contemptuous manner dropped from him, and in eager excitement he leaned forward and exclaimed:
“Cap’ ‘Or?”
The four men looked at each other and at him in wonder, and asked what, in the name of his satanic majesty, the fellow was driving at. This apparent question, now repeated over and over again in turn to each of them, they did not understand at all. But they could comprehend that the negro had carried bags of lumps like that. This was very interesting.
