Hunting the Skipper: The Cruise of the «Seafowl» Sloop

“Look here, my good fellow,” cried the captain sternly, “I do not want to know anything about your overseer, but I take it that you are a slaver. Answer me that – yes or no.”

“Unwillingly, sir, yes.”

“And you confess to having fired upon his Majesty’s forces?”

“No, sir; no.”

“What, sir!” cried the captain. “Do you deny that your servants – your slaves – have done this thing?”

“Sir,” cried the planter bitterly, “for long enough my chief servant has made himself my master. I, the slave, have fought hard against what has been carried out in my name.”

“Indeed?” said the captain sharply. “But qui facit per alium jacit per se. Eh, Mr Murray? You can render that for this gentleman if he requires an interpreter.”

“I need no rendering of the old Latin proverb, sir,” said the planter sadly, “and I know that I am answerable. I am a sick man, sick to death, sir, of the horrible life I have been forced to lead for the past two years, and I come to you ready to render you every assistance I can give in clearing away this plague spot.”

“Indeed,” said the captain, after exchanging looks with Mr Anderson, “but this plague spot is, I understand, a very prosperous one, and you seem to lead rather a lordly life with your state barge and retinue of slaves.”

“I beg that you will not mock me, sir,” said the planter. “I am indeed sincere in what I say, and I offer to do everything possible to enable you and your men to root out this nest of slavery.”

“Exactly,” said the captain; “now that I have found it out and do not want your help. Yours is rather a late repentance. Upon what terms do you propose this?”

“On very easy terms for you, sir,” replied the planter; “only that you will let a broken man die in peace.”

The captain looked at his visitor searchingly, and then turned to the doctor.

“What is your opinion of this gentleman’s state?” he said.

“Most serious,” replied the doctor, after a very brief examination of the visitor.

“Humph!” ejaculated the captain. “And I understand,” he continued, “that you are ready to give me every assistance I need to root out this plague spot, as you term it?”

“Every help I can,” replied the planter.

“Now that I do not need it, eh?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the planter; “you do need it. You have made your way to my house and plantations without help.”

“Yes; my officers soon made their way there,” said the captain.

“And it will be easy to burn and destroy there; but you will not be able to deal with the slave quarters in different parts of the island, nor with the three well-equipped slaving schooners that voyage to and from the West Coast of Africa and carry on their sickening trade with this depot and the other stations.”

“H’m!” ejaculated the captain. “Perhaps not; but I have no doubt that we shall soon find out all I require.”

The planter shook his head sadly.

“No, sir; the task will prove more difficult than you anticipate. Your officer here has some little experience of one of your opponents.”

“Oh! There is more than one to deal with, then?” said Mr Anderson sharply.

“There are two, sir, who act as heads of the traffic – my overseer Huggins, and his twin brother.”

“Ah! I see,” said the chief officer, smiling. “I am of opinion, then, that we have met the brother yonder upon the West Coast.”

“Most likely, sir,” said the planter feebly. “If you have, you have encountered another of the most cunning, scheming scoundrels that ever walked the earth.”

“And these are your friends that I understand you are ready to betray to justice?” said the captain sternly.

“My friends, sir?” said the planter bitterly. “Say, my tyrants, sir – the men who have taken advantage of my weakness to make me a loathsome object in my own sight. Captain,” cried the trembling man, “I must speak as I do to make you fully realise my position. I am by birth an English gentleman. My father was one of those who came out here like many others to settle upon a plantation. In the past, as you know, ideas were lax upon the question of slavery, and I inherited those ideas; but I can answer for my father, that his great idea was to lead a patriarchal life surrounded by his slaves, who in their way were well treated and happy.”

“As slaves?” said Mr Anderson sternly.

“I will not enter into that, sir,” said the planter sadly, “and I grant that the custom became a terrible abuse – a curse which has exacted its punishments. I own fully that I have been a weak man who has allowed himself to be outwitted by a couple of scheming scoundrels, who led me on and on till they had involved me in debt and hopelessly so. In short, of late years my soul has not seemed to be my own, and by degrees I awoke to the fact that I was nominally the head of a horrible traffic, and the stalking-horse behind whose cover these twin brothers carried on their vile schemes, growing rich as merchant princes and establishing at my cost this – what shall I call it? – emporium of flesh and blood – this home of horror.”

“Do I understand you to say that in this island there is a kind of centre of the slave-trade?”

“In this island and those near at hand, sir,” said the planter. “In addition there are depots on the mainland which the slavers visit at regular intervals, and from which the plantations are supplied.”

“And you are ready to give information such as will enable me to root out a great deal of this and to capture the vessels which carry on the vile trade?”

“I can and will do all this, sir,” replied the planter feebly. “I thought I had explained as much.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the captain impatiently, “but I want to know more about the bargain you wish to make.”

“What can I say more, sir?” replied the planter. “Your protection, so that I may die in peace, trying to make some amends for the past.”

“H’m!” ejaculated the captain thoughtfully.

The planter smiled.

“You are thinking, sir,” he said, “that you cannot trust me, and that you will be able to root out this accursed trade without my help.”

“Perhaps so,” said the captain drily.

“Let me tell you, then, that you are setting yourself to cleanse an Augean stable. You are pitting yourself against men who have made these swampy forests, these nets of intertwining water-ways, a perfect maze of strongholds in which your little force of sailors would be involved in a desperate fight with Nature at her worst. Your officers and men here have had some slight experience of what they will have to deal with, but a mere nothing. I tell you, sir, that you have no idea of the difficulties that await you. I am speaking the plain truth. You cannot grasp what strong powers you would have to contend with. Ah, you, doctor, you should know. Tell your captain. You must have some knowledge of what Nature can do here in the way of fever.”

“Humph! Yes,” said the gentleman addressed. “You are a proof positive.”

“Yes,” said the planter sadly; “I am one of her victims, and an example of what a strong man can become whose fate has fixed him in these swampy shades.”

“I’ll trust you, sir,” said the captain suddenly. “I must warn you, though, that at the slightest suspicion you arouse of playing any treacherous trick upon me, your life will be the forfeit.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Then tell me this first; how am I to lay hands upon this overseer of yours? He is away somewhere in hiding, I suppose, on that lugger?”

“Oh no; that lugger is under the command of one of his men, a mulatto. He has gone off in a canoe, as I expect, to bring round one of his schooners.”

“What for? Not to attack us here?”

“I expect so; but I can soon tell.”

“Ah, how?” asked the captain eagerly.

“By sending a couple of men whom I can trust, to find out.”

The captain rubbed his ear and stood looking at the planter thoughtfully, and then turning to the first lieutenant, he took his arm and led him right aft, speaking to him hurriedly for a few minutes before they returned to where the doctor stood evidently looking upon their visitor in the light of a new patient.

“Now, Mr – Mr Allen,” said the captain sharply, “I have been consulting my chief officer, and he agrees with me that it will be wise to accept your offer; so tell me what you propose first.”

“To return to my little house.”

“How can that help us?” exclaimed Mr Anderson sharply. “How are we to communicate with you right away in that swampy forest?”

“You misunderstand me,” said the planter. “I mean I shall return to the place I have by the side of the bay here;” and he pointed across the water.

“I do not see where you mean.”

“Not from here. It is up one of the little rivers quite hidden amongst the trees.”

“Everything seems to be hidden amongst the trees,” said the lieutenant.

“Exactly,” replied the planter, smiling; “that is what I wish you to understand. You must trust me, sir.”

“Well,” said the captain, “I will trust you, but you understand that you are offering to serve me at the peril of your life?”

“It is at the peril of my life I am offering to help you, sir. Ezekiel Huggins will not scruple about shooting me like a dog as soon as he finds that I am actively helping you.”

“Then I must place you under my protection.”

“If you please,” said the planter gravely. “Your officer here will give me the credit of being upon your side from the first.”

“Yes,” said Mr Anderson; “I do that.”

“Then I will go back home at once,” said the planter, “and I shall look to you as a friend. It would be best if you sent a boat and men to lie up in the little river. When will you land?”

“At once,” said the captain, and he walked slowly to the gangway with his visitor, saw him into his boat, where, in quite man-o’-war fashion, the black crew sat with oars erect, ready to lower them with a splash and row off for a few dozen yards, and then rest while the first cutter was lowered again with a well-armed crew, including a couple of marines.

“You will take command, Mr Murray,” said the captain, “and take note of everything, being well on your guard. I trust to your discretion.”

Murray listened, conscious the while that Roberts was looking on scowling blackly.

“In four hours you will be relieved.”

“That means you’re to take my place,” said the middy, telegraphing with his eyes, greatly to the improvement of his brother middy’s aspect.

“Off with you!” was the next command, and as the sailors lowered their oars, the black crew waiting received their orders to start, leading off in the direction from which they had come, the cutter following closely, while her young commander kept a sharp lookout for the mouth of the little river, which remained invisible, hidden away as it was by the dense foliage which on all hands came right down to the calm, smooth water of the great crater-like bay.

Chapter Thirty Two.

On Duty

“I didn’t expect this,” said Murray to himself, as after sweeping the shore of the bay he once more fixed his eyes upon the well-manned boat in front; and then he started in wonder, for Tom May, who sat close to him astern, said in a low voice —

“I didn’t expect that the captain would send us off again directly, Mr Murray, sir.”

“Neither did I, Tom; and, what is more, I did not expect to hear you say that you were thinking just the same as I did.”

“Was you, sir?”

“Yes. You didn’t want to come, I suppose, after going through so much?”

“Not want to come, sir? I just did! But what sort of a game is this going to be?”

“I don’t know, Tom,” replied Murray gruffly, “only that we’ve got to watch this Mr Allen.”

“Don’t mean no games, do he, sir?”

“I think not; but I look to you to keep your eyes open.”

“Which I just will, sir. But I say, look at that.”

“Look at what, Tom?”

“That there little creek opening out, sir. Seems to me as if they’ve got little rivers all round the bay ready for going up or coming out on. It’s just as if they shut ’em up and no one could see ’em afterwards.”

Some little time later the planter’s boat, which was only a short distance ahead, turned off at right angles in obedience to a pull at the starboard line, and seemed to disappear through a beautiful screen of tropic growth, and as the cutter was steered in after her it was to pass along a soft green tunnel, flecked with golden sunlight, into a smooth lake, at one side of which, standing back a short distance from the silver sandy shore, with its open windows, green shading jalousies, sheltering trees, and scarlet creepers, was as perfect a little Eden of a home as mortal eye ever looked upon. There was nothing to suggest slavery, sorrow, or suffering in any shape, but everywhere Nature decked the place with her richest beauties, and as the middy sprang up involuntarily, a low murmur of admiration ran through the crew. Then, as if ashamed of the habit in which he was indulging, Tom May doffed his straw hat, placed it upon his knees, thrust his crooked index finger into his capacious mouth, and hooked out from his left cheek a disgusting-looking quid of well-chewed tobacco, which dropped into the crown of the hat and was quickly tossed out, to fall plop into the deep still water of the lake. The next moment a golden-scaled fish made a rush for what suggested itself to its ignorance as a delicacy, which it took, delivered a couple of strokes with its tail which sent it to the surface, flying out and falling back again with a heavy splash, and then disappeared beneath the glittering rings which began to open out and widen more and more towards the borders of the little mirrorlike lake.

“And sarve you jolly well right too,” growled the big sailor, as if talking to himself. “What call had you to meddle with luxuries as is on’y sootable for eddicated people?”

Murray suppressed a smile and looked as serious as he could, giving orders to the men to pull a few strokes with their oars, sufficient to send the cutter into the place that had been occupied by the planter’s boat, which was now gliding away from the great bamboo piles driven in by the rustic steps and platform upon which their guide had landed, while he now stood resting upon a rail beneath the verandah, which offered ample shade for the cutter and her crew.

Murray gave a few further orders, sprang out and stepped to the planter’s side as the feeble invalid signed to him to come.

“I heard the commands given to you, sir,” he said, “and you will, I hope, forgive me if I do not seem hospitable.”

“I know you are ill, sir,” said Murray coldly, “so you need not trouble at all about me and my men.”

“I thank you,” said the planter, “and of course I know enough of the Navy and its discipline not to proffer drink to your men.”

“Certainly not,” said Murray stiffly.

“Still,” continued the planter, “in this hot climate the shelter will be acceptable. There is a spring of excellent water in the rockery behind the house, of which I beg you will make every use you desire. I am going to lie down in the room to the left. You have only to ring, and my slaves – well, servants,” said the planter, smiling sadly as he saw the lad’s brow knit – “my servants will attend to your summons directly, and bring fruit – oranges, and what your men will no doubt appreciate, fresh green cocoanuts. They will make you fresh coffee and bring anything else you desire, sir.”

“I am much obliged,” said Murray, rather distantly, “but you must recollect that I am on duty.”

“I do not forget that, sir,” replied the planter, smiling; “but you will not find your duty a very hard one – to guard a poor feeble creature such as I. There, sir, you and your superiors are masters here, and I am, I know, only a prisoner.”

“I shall make your position as little irksome as I can, sir,” said Murray; and then, feeling a certain amount of pity for the wretched man, he added, “Not a very terrible-looking prison, this.”

“No,” replied the planter, “and when you begin to go amongst the slave-huts, you will, as a stranger, begin to wonder at their aspect, for the simplest shelter made with a few bamboos is soon turned by Nature into a home of beauty.”

“But all the same it is a slave’s prison,” replied Murray.

“We had better not discuss that question, young gentleman,” said the planter bitterly, “for I am sure that I could not convince you that I have tried for years past to render the slaves’ lot more bearable.”

“Nothing could make it more bearable,” said Murray sternly.

“Certainly not,” said the other sadly, “as matters are here.”

He raised his broad-brimmed Panama hat and turned to leave the bamboo platform, but, misjudging his strength, he reeled and would have fallen headlong into the placid water if it had not been for Murray’s prompt action. For, starting forward, he flung his arm round the sick man’s waist, and supported him to the doorway that had been pointed out beneath the broad verandah.

“Thank you! Thank you!” panted the sick man; and with a painful smile he continued, “Ah, it is a great thing to be young and strong, with the world before you and nothing to repent. – If you please, through that door to the left.”

They were standing now in a simply but handsomely furnished hall, whose principal decorations caught the lad’s eyes at once, being, as they were, sporting and defensive weapons of all kinds, and of the best manufacture, hung about the walls; but for the moment Murray had no opportunity for inspecting these objects of interest, his attention being taken up by the planter, who availed himself of his guardian’s help to pass through the door upon their left, where he sank upon a couch at one side of the room and closed his eyes.

“Would you like to see our doctor, sir?” asked Murray.

“No, no; thank you, no; it is only weakness,” was the reply. “I have often been like this, and it will soon pass off. I shall go off to sleep before many minutes have passed, and wake up rested and refreshed.”

“Then you would like me to leave you for a while?” asked Murray.

“I should be most grateful, sir,” was the reply, “and I shall sleep in peace now, feeling safe in the knowledge that I have the protection of a guard.”

The planter had opened his eyes to speak, and now closed them tightly, leaving his guardian to glance round the room, which had but the one door, that by which they had entered; while the window was open save that one widely arranged green jalousie shut out some of the sunshine and subdued the light that floated in.

Murray stepped out, after noticing that an oblong, shallow, brass-bound box lay upon a side-table – a box whose configuration had but one meaning for the lad, and that was of a warlike or self-protective character, an idea which was strengthened by the fact that an ordinary military sword was hung above the mantelpiece.

“Sword and pistols,” thought the lad. “What does he want with so many weapons? I should have considered that there were enough in the hall without these.”

He noticed that there was a hand-bell upon the side-table, a fact which suggested that a servant was within reach, and as the lad stood in the hall once more he looked about him, and then, feeling that he had entered upon a special charge, he crossed to the next door, that facing the one he had just left, and upon thrusting it open found himself in what was evidently used as a dining-room, being about double the size of the other, and having two windows whose lath-like shutters half darkened the room.

“I don’t want to play spy all over the house,” said Murray to himself, “but I am in charge of this planter fellow, and I ought to know who is about the place. But I don’t know,” he muttered; “it isn’t the duty of a naval officer.”

Frowning slightly, he stepped out on to the bamboo platform again and signed to the big sailor to follow him back to the door.

“Here, Tom,” he said, and glancing down at the man’s bare feet, he added, in a low tone, “You have no shoes on, so just go quietly through the bottom of the building and see what rooms there are and what black servants are about.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” said the man softly.

“Go quietly,” added Murray; “the owner is ill and has dropped asleep.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” replied the sailor, and in regular able-seaman swing upon the points of his toes he stepped out of the hall-like central room of the place, taking in the little armoury the while, and left his officer alone, the door closing behind him as silently as he stepped.

“How still it all is,” thought the middy, and he went cautiously back to the little room which he looked upon as the planter’s study, pressed the door slightly open, and peered in, to see that the occupant had not stirred, while his deep breathing now sounded plainly, till Murray let the door fall to and went back towards that through which Tom May had passed upon his mission.

As the middy approached, it was drawn open again.

“Hallo, Tom!” said the lad. “Back already?”

“Ay, ay, sir! There’s on’y two cabins to look at there, and one’s a cook’s galley, and t’other’s stooard’s pantry.”

“Did you see the black servants?”

“No, sir, and there ain’t no white uns neither.”

“Sort of summer-house,” thought Murray; and then in connection with his duty he told the sailor to go up-stairs and examine the bedrooms.

“Which way does the cabin ladder lie, sir?” asked the man.

“I don’t know, Tom,” was the reply. “Try that door.”

He pointed to one that was on the far side of the hall and had struck him at first as a movable panel to close up a fire-place; but upon the light cane frame being drawn out it revealed a perpendicular flight of steps, up which the sailor drew himself lightly and lowered himself down again.

“Well?”

“Arn’t no rooms there, sir,” whispered the man, with rather an uneasy look in his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just the ship’s hold, sir, turned upside down like. Sort o’ cock loft of bamboo spars jyned together at the top – rafters, don’t they call ’em, sir?”

“Yes, of course.”

“That’s right, then, sir, and they’re all thatched and caulked with palm leaves.”

“Not a bedroom at all, then, Tom.”

“No, sir, but it’s a sort o’ sleeping accommodation all the same, ’cause there’s a couple o’ netting sort o’ hammocks slung all ready; but I shouldn’t like to have my quarters there,” continued the man uneasily.

“Why not? It must be cool and pleasant.”

“Cool, sir, but not kinder pleasant.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, sir, it’s so plaguey dark.”

“What of that? So’s the sloop’s hold.”

“Yes, sir, but this here’s so unked dark.”

“Well, you don’t mind the dark?”

“No, sir, I dunno as I do so long as I’ve got my messmates nigh at hand.”

“Look here, Tom, I don’t understand you,” said Murray. “You’re keeping something back. Why are you hesitating? You don’t mind the dark.”

“No, sir; it’s the rustling sounds as I don’t like.”

“Pooh! Rats,” said Murray.

“Nay, nay, sir. I knows what a rat can do in a ship’s hold as well as any one who has been to sea. What I heered arn’t no rats.”

“Birds, then.”

“Tchah, sir! That arn’t no birds.”

“What is it, May, since you seem to know?”

“Some’at oncanny, sir.”

“Uncanny? What can it be uncanny?”

“I dunno, sir. Some’at as arn’t real.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno, sir, and I ’spects – ”

“Suspect what? Why, Tom, you don’t mean to tell me that a great strong sailor like you fancies that the place is haunted?”

“Oh no, sir, I don’t go so far as to say that,” said the man.

“Then what do you mean?”

“That’s what I can’t exackly tell you, sir. All I knows is that as soon as I got my head and shoulders well up among them bamboos there was a roosh as if half-a-dozen people was a-comin’ at me, and then some one whispered something to the others, and they whispered back. It was jest for all the world, sir, as if some one said ‘Hist! It ain’t him,’ and t’others whispered back and that settled ’em into going on talking together oneasy like; and then I come down.”

“Without making out what it was, Tom,” said Murray, laughing softly.

“Nay, sir; I seemed to know right enough; and it arn’t nothing to laugh at.”

“What is it, then, Tom?”

“Why, sir, I don’t go for to say as it is, but it sounded to me like oneasy slaves as had met their ends aboard some o’ they slaving craft, and couldn’t rest.”

“Tom May!” said the middy; and he would have burst out laughing, but for the thought that he might awaken the sick man in the room where he had lain down to rest. “Come out here.”