The Shoes of Fortune

“Jist that,” said he, throwing himself on a seat with an easy indifference meant to conceal his vanity. “Jist observation and a knack o’ puttin’ twa and twa thegether. Did ye think the skipper o’ the Seven Sisters was fleein’ over Scotland at the tail o’ your horse?”

“The Greig mole’s weel kent, surely,” said I, astonished and chagrined. “I jalouse it’s notorious through my Uncle Andy?”

Risk laughed at that. “Oh, ay!” said he, “when Andy Greig girned at ye it was ill to miss seein’ his mole. Man, ye might as well wear your name on the front o’ your hat as gae aboot wi’ a mole like that – and – and that pair o’ shoes.”

The blood ran to my face at this further revelation of his astuteness. It seemed, then, I carried my identity head and foot, and it was no wonder a halfeyed man like Risk should so easily discover me. I looked down at my feet, and sure enough, when I thought of it now, it would have been a stupid man who, having seen these kenspeckle shoes once, would ever forget them.

“My uncle seems to have given me good introductions,” said I. “They struck mysel’ as rather dandy for a ship,” broke in the mate, at last coming on something he could understand.

“And did you know Andy Greig, too?” said I. “Andy Greig,” he replied. “Not me!”

“Then, by God, ye hinna sailed muckle aboot the warld!” said the skipper. “I hae seen thae shoes in the four quarters and aye in a good companionship.”

“They appear yet to retain that virtue,” said I, unable to resist the irony. “And, by the way, Captain Risk, now that we have discussed the shoes and my mole, what have we been waiting for at Blackness?”

His face grew black with annoyance.

“What’s that to you?” he cried.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered indifferently. “I thought that now ye had got the best part o’ your passage money ye might hae been thinking to do something for your country again. They tell me it’s a jail in there, and it might suggest itself to you as providing a good opportunity for getting rid of a very indifferent purser.”

It is one thing I can remember to the man’s credit that this innuendo of treachery seemed to make him frantic. He dashed the rum-glass at his feet and struck at me with a fist like a jigot of mutton, and I had barely time to step back and counter. He threw himself at me as he had been a cat; I closed and flung my arms about him with a wrestler’s grip, and bent him back upon the table edge, where I might have broken his spine but for Murchison’s interference. The mate called loudly for assistance; footsteps pounded on the cuddy-stair, and down came Horn. Between them they drew us apart, and while Murchison clung to his captain, and plied him into quietness with a fresh glass of grog, Horn thrust me not unkindly out into the night, and with no unwillingness on my part.

It was the hour of dawn, and the haar was gone.

There was something in that chill grey monotone of sky and sea that filled me with a very passion of melancholy. The wind had risen, and the billows ran frothing from the east; enormous clouds hung over the land behind us, so that it seemed to roll with smoke from the eternal fires. Out from that reeking pit of my remorse – that lost Scotland where now perhaps there still lay lying among the rushes, with the pees-weep’s cry above it, the thing from which I flew, our ship went fast, blown upon the frothy billows, like a ponderous bird, leaving a wake of hissing bubbling brine, flying, as it seemed, to a world of less imminent danger, yet unalluring still.

I looked aloft at the straining spars; they seemed to prick the clouds between the swelling sails; the ropes and shrouds stretched infinitely into a region very grey and chill. Oh, the pallor! oh, the cold and heartless spirit of the sea in that first dawning morn!

“It’s like to be a good day,” said Horn, breaking in upon my silence, and turning to him I saw his face exceeding hollow and wan. The watch lay forward, all but a lad who seemed half-dozing at the helm; Risk and his mate had lapsed to silence in the cuddy.

“You’re no frien’, seemingly, o’ the pair below!” said Horn again, whispering, and with a glance across his shoulder at the helm.

“It did not look as if I were, a minute or two ago,” said I. “Yon’s a scoundrel, and yet I did him an injustice when I thought he meant to sell me.”

“I never sailed with a more cheat-the-widdy crew since I followed the sea,” said Horn, “and whether it’s the one way or the other, sold ye are.”

“Eh?” said I, uncomprehending.

He looked again at the helm, and moved over to a water-breaker further forward, obviously meaning that I should follow. He drew a drink of water for himself, drank slowly, but seemed not to be much in the need for it from the little he took, but he had got out of ear-shot of the man steering.

“You and me’s the gulls this time, Mr. Greig,” said he, whispering. “This is a doomed ship.”

“I thought as much from her rotten spars,” I answered. “So long as she takes me to Nova Scotia I care little what happens to her.”

“It’s a long way to Halifax,” said he. “I wish I could be sure we were likely even to have Land’s End on our starboard before waur happens. Will ye step this way, Mr. Greig?” and he cautiously led the way forward. There was a look-out humming a stave of song somewhere in the bows, and two men stretched among the chains, otherwise that part of the ship was all our own. We went down the fo’c’sle scuttle quietly, and I found myself among the carpenter’s stores, in darkness, divided by a bulkhead door from the quarters of the sleeping men. Rats were scurrying among the timbers and squealing till Horn stamped lightly with his feet and secured stillness.

“Listen!” said he.

I could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of a seaman within, and the wash of water against the ship’s sides.

“Well?” I queried, wondering.

“Put your lug here,” said he, indicating a beam that was dimly revealed by the light from the lamp swinging in the fo’c’sle. I did so, and heard water running as from a pipe somewhere in the bowels of the vessel.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That’s all,” said he and led me aft again.

The dawn by now had spread over half the heavens; behind us the mouth of the Firth gulped enormous clouds, and the fringe of Fife was as flat as a bannock; before us the sea spread chill, leaden, all unlovely. “My sorrow!” says I, “if this is travelling, give me the high-roads and the hot noon.”

Horn’s face seemed more hollow and dark than ever in the wan morning. I waited his explanation. “I think ye said Halifax, Mr. Greig?” said he. “I signed on, mysel’, for the same port, but you and me’s perhaps the only ones on this ship that ever hoped to get there. God give me grace to get foot on shore and Dan Risk will swing for this!”

Somebody sneezed behind us as Horn thus rashly expressed himself; we both turned suddenly on the rail we had been leaning against, expecting that this was the skipper, and though it was not Risk, it was one whose black visage and gleaming teeth and rolling eyes gave me momentarily something of a turn.

It was the cook Ferdinando. He had come up behind on his bare feet, and out upon the sea he gazed with that odd eerie look of the deaf and dumb, heedless of us, it seemed, as we had been dead portions of the ship’s fabric, seeing but the salt wave, the rim of rising sun, blood-red upon the horizon, communing with an old familiar.

“A cauld momin’, cook,” said Horn, like one who tests a humbug pretending to be dumb, but Ferdinando heard him not.

“It might have been a man wi’ all his faculties,” said the seaman whispering, “and it’s time we werena seen thegether. I’ll tell ye later on.”

With that we separated, he to some trivial duty of his office, I, with a mind all disturbed, back to my berth to lie awake, tossing and speculating on the meaning of Horn’s mystery.

CHAPTER XI

THE SCUTTLED SHIP

When I went on deck next morning there was something great ado. We were out of sight of land, sailing large, as the old phrase went, on a brisk quarter breeze with top-sails atrip, and the sky a vast fine open blue. The crew were gathered at the poop, the pump was clanking in the midst of them, and I saw they were taking spells at the cruellest labour a seaman knows.

At first I was noway troubled at the spectacle; a leak was to be expected in old rotten-beams, and I went forward with the heart of me not a pulse the faster.

Risk was leaning over the poop-rail, humped up and his beard on his hands; Murchison, a little apart, swept the horizon with a prospect-glass, and the pump sent a great spate of bilge-water upon the deck. But for a man at the tiller who kept the ship from yawing in the swell that swung below her counter the Seven Sisters sailed at her sweet will; all the interest of her company was in this stream of stinking water that she retched into the scuppers. And yet I could not but be struck by the half-hearted manner in which the seamen wrought; they were visibly shirking; I saw it in the slack muscles, in the heedless eyes.

Risk rose and looked sourly at me as I went up. “Are ye for a job?” said he. “It’s more in your line perhaps than clerkin’.”

“What, at the pumps? Is the old randy geyzing already?”

“Like a washing-boyne,” said he. “Bear a hand like a good lad! we maun keep her afloat at least till some other vessel heaves in sight.”

In the tone and look of the man there was something extraordinary. His words were meant to suggest imminent peril, and yet his voice was shallow as that of a burgh bellman crying an auction sale, and his eyes had more interest in the horizon that his mate still searched with the prospect-glass than in the spate of bilge that gulped upon the deck.

Bilge did I say? Heavens! it was bilge no more, but the pure sea-green that answered to the clanking pump. It was no time for idle wonder at the complacence of the skipper; I flew to the break and threw my strength into the seaman’s task. “Clank-click, clank-click” – the instrument worked reluctantly as if the sucker moved in slime, and in a little the sweat poured from me.

“How is she now, Campbell?” asked Risk, as the carpenter came on deck.

“Three feet in the hold,” said Campbell airily, like one that had an easy conscience.

“Good lord, a foot already!” cried Risk, and then in a tone of sarcasm, “Hearty, lads, hearty there! A little more Renfrewshire beef into it, Mr. Greig, if you please.”

At that I ceased my exertion, stood back straight and looked at the faces about me. There was only one man in the company who did not seem to be amused at me, and that was Horn, who stood with folded arms, moodily eying the open sea.

“You seem mighty joco about it,” I said to Risk, and I wonder to this day at my blindness that never read the whole tale in these hurried events.

“I can afford to be,” he said quickly; “if I gang I gang wi’ clean hands,” and he spat into the seawater streaming from the pump where the port-watch now were working with as much listlessness as the men they superseded.

To the taunt I made no reply, but moved after Horn who had gone forward with his hands in his pockets.

“What does this mean, Horn?” I asked him. “Is the vessel in great danger?”

“I suppose she is,” said he bitterly, “but I have had nae experience o’ scuttled ships afore.”

“Scuttled!” cried I, astounded, only half grasping his meaning.

“Jist that,” said he. “The job’s begun. It began last night in the run of the vessel as I showed ye when ye put your ear to the beam. After I left ye, I foun’ half a dizen cords fastened to the pump stanchels; ane of them I pulled and got a plug at the end of it; the ithers hae been comin’ oot since as it suited Dan Risk best, and the Seven Ststers is doomed to die o’ a dropsy this very day. Wasn’t I the cursed idiot that ever lipped drink in Clerihew’s coffin-room!”

“If it was that,” said I, “why did you not cut the cords and spoil the plot?”

“Cut the cords! Ye mean cut my ain throat; that’s what wad happen if the skipper guessed my knowledge o’ his deevilry. And dae ye think a gallows job o’ this kind depends a’thegither on twa or three bits o’ twine? Na, na, this is a very business-like transaction, Mr. Greig, and I’ll warrant there has been naethin’ left to chance. I wondered at them bein’ sae pernicketty about the sma’ boats afore we sailed when the timbers o’ the ship hersel’ were fair ganting. That big new boat and sails frae Kirkcaldy was a gey odd thing in itsel’ if I had been sober enough to think o’t. I suppose ye paid your passage, Mr. Greig? I can fancy a purser on the Seven Sisters upon nae ither footin’ and that made me dubious o’ ye when I first learned o’ this hell’s caper for Jamieson o’ the Grange. If ye hadna fought wi’ the skipper I would hae coonted ye in wi’ the rest.”

“He has two pounds of my money,” I answered; “at least I’ve saved the other two if we fail to reach Halifax.”

At that he laughed softly again.

“It might be as well wi’ Risk as wi’ the conger,” said he, meaningly. “I’m no’ sae sure that you and me’s meant to come oot o’ this; that’s what I might tak’ frae their leaving only the twa o’ us aft when they were puttin’ the cargo aff there back at Blackness.”

“The cargo!” I repeated.

“Of course,” said Horn. “Ye fancied they were goin’ to get rid o’ ye there, did ye? I’ll alloo I thought that but a pretence on your pairt, and no’ very neatly done at that. Well, the smallest pairt but the maist valuable o’ the cargo shipped at Borrowstouness is still in Scotland; and the underwriters ‘ll be to pay through the nose for what has never run sea risks.”

At that a great light came to me. This was the reason for the masked cuddy skylights, the utter darkness of the Seven Sisters while her boats were plying to the shore; for this was I so closely kept at her ridiculous manifest; the lists of lace and plate I had been fatuously copying were lists of stuff no longer on the ship at all, but back in the possession of the owner of the brigantine.

“You are an experienced seaman – ?”

“I have had a vessel of my own,” broke in Horn, some vanity as well as shame upon his countenance.

“Well, you are the more likely to know the best way out of this trap we are in,” I went on. “For a certain reason I am not at all keen on it to go back to Scotland, but I would sooner risk that than run in leash with a scoundrel like this who’s sinking his command, not to speak of hazarding my unworthy life with a villainous gang. Is there any way out of it, Horn?”

The seaman pondered, a dark frown upon his tanned forehead, where the veins stood out in knots, betraying his perturbation. The wind whistled faintly in the tops, the Seven Sisters plainly went by the head; she had a slow response to her helm, and moved sluggishly. Still the pump was clanking and we could hear the water streaming through the scupper holes. Risk had joined his mate and was casting anxious eyes over the waters.

“If we play the safty here, Mr. Greig,” said Horn, “there’s a chance o’ a thwart for us when the Seven Ststers comes to her labour. That’s oor only prospect. At least they daurna murder us.”

“And what about the crew?” I asked. “Do you tell me there is not enough honesty among them all to prevent a blackguardly scheme like this?”

“We’re the only twa on this ship this morning wi’ oor necks ootside tow, for they’re all men o’ the free trade, and broken men at that,” said Horn resolutely, and even in the midst of this looming disaster my private horror rose within me.

“Ah!” said I, helpless to check the revelation, “speak for yourself, Mr. Horn; it’s the hangman I’m here fleeing from.”

He looked at me with quite a new countenance, clearly losing relish for his company.

“Anything by-ordinar dirty?” he asked, and in my humility I did not have the spirit to resent what that tone and query implied.

“Dirty enough,” said I, “the man’s dead,” and Horn’s face cleared.

“Oh, faith! is that all?” quo’ he, “I was thinkin’ it might be coinin’ – beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Greig, or somethin’ in the fancy way. But a gentleman’s quarrel ower the cartes or a wench – that’s a different tale. I hate homicide mysel’ to tell the truth, but whiles I’ve had it in my heart, and in a way o’ speakin* Dan Risk this meenute has my gully-knife in his ribs.”

As he spoke the vessel, mishandled, or a traitor to her helm, now that she was all awash internally with water, yawed and staggered in the wind. The sails shivered, the yards swung violently, appalling noises came from the hold. At once the pumping ceased, and Risk’s voice roared in the confusion, ordering the launch of the Kirkcaldy boat.

CHAPTER XII

MAKES PLAIN THE DEEPEST VILLAINY OF RISK AND SETS ME ON A FRENCHMAN

When I come to write these affairs down after the lapse of years, I find my memory but poorly retains the details of that terrific period between the cry of Risk and the moment when Horn and I, abandoned on the doomed vessel, watched the evening fall upon the long Kirkcaldy boat, her mast stepped, but her sails down, hovering near us for the guarantee of our eternal silence regarding the crime the men on her were there and then committing. There is a space – it must have been brief, but I lived a lifetime in it – whose impressions rest with me, blurred, but with the general hue of agony. I can see the sun again sailing overhead in the arching sky of blue; the enormous ocean, cruel, cold, spread out to the line of the horizon; the flapping sails and drumming reef-points, the streaming halliards and clew-garnets, the spray buffeting upon our hull and spitting in our faces like an enemy; I hear the tumult of the seamen hurrying vulgarly to save their wretched lives, the gluck of waters in the bowels of the ship, the thud of cargo loose and drifting under decks.

But I see and hear it all as in a dream or play, and myself someway standing only a spectator.

It seemed that Risk and his men put all their dependence on the long-boat out of Kirkcaldy. She was partly decked at the bows like a Ballantrae herring-skiff, beamy and commodious. They clustered round her like ants; swung her out, and over she went, and the whole hellish plot lay revealed in the fact that she was all found with equipment and provisions.

Horn and I made an effort to assist at her preparation; we were shoved aside with frantic curses; we were beaten back by her oars when we sought to enter her, and when she pushed off from the side of the Seven Sisters, Dan Risk was so much the monster that he could jeer at our perplexity. He sat at the tiller of her without a hat, his long hair, that was turning lyart, blown by the wind about his black and mocking eyes.

“Head her for Halifax, Horn,” said he, “and ye’ll get there by-and-by.”

“Did I ever do ye any harm, skipper?” cried the poor seaman, standing on the gunwale, hanging to the shrouds, and his aspect hungry for life.

“Ye never got the chance, Port Glesca,” cried back Risk, hugging the tiller of the Kirkcaldy boat under his arm. “I’ll gie ye a guess —

Come-a-riddle, come-a-riddle, come-a-rote-tote-tote —

Oh to bleezes! I canna put a rhyme till’t, but this is the sense o’t – a darkie’s never deaf and dumb till he’s deid. Eh! Antonio, ye rascal!”

He looked forward as he spoke and exchanged a villainous laugh with the cook, his instrument, who had overheard us and betrayed.

“Ye would mak’ me swing for it, would ye, John Horn, when ye get ashore? That’s what I would expect frae a keelie oot o’ Clyde.”

It is hard to credit that man could be so vile as this, but of such stuff was Daniel Risk. He was a fiend in the glory of his revenge upon the seaman who had threatened him with the gallows; uplifted like a madman’s, his face, that was naturally sallow, burned lamp-red at his high cheek-bones, his hale eye gloated, his free hand flourished as in an exultation. His mate sat silent beside him on the stern-thwart, clearing the sheets: the crew, who had out the sweeps to keep the boat’s bows in the wind, made an effort to laugh at his jocosities, but clearly longed to be away from this tragedy. And all the time, I think, I stood beside the weather bulwark, surrendered to the certainty of a speedy death, with the lines of a ballad coming back again and again to my mind:

An’ he shall lie in fathoms deep,

The star-fish ower his een shall creep.

An’ an auld grey wife shall sit an’ weep

In the hall o’ Monaltrie.

I thrust that ungodly rhyme from me each time that it arose, but in spite of me at last it kept time to the lap of a wave of encroaching sea that beat about my feet.

My silence – my seeming indifference – would seem to have touched the heart that could not be affected by the entreaties of the seaman Horn. At least Risk ceased his taunts at last, and cast a more friendly eye on me.

“I’m saying, Greig,” he cried, “noo that I think o’t, your Uncle Andy was no bad hand at makin’ a story. Ye’ve an ill tongue, but I’ll thole that – astern, lads, and tak’ the purser aboard.”

The seamen set the boat about willingly enough, and she crept in to pick me off the doomed ship.

At that my senses cleared like hill-well water. It was for but a second – praise God! my instincts joyed in my reprieve; my hand never released the cleat by which I steadied myself. I looked at Horn still upon the lower shrouds and saw hope upon his countenance.

“Of course this man comes with me, Captain Risk?” said I.

“Not if he offered a thousand pounds,” cried Risk, “in ye come!” and Murchison clawed at the shrouds with a boat-hook. Horn made to jump among them and, with an oath, the mate thrust at him with the hook as with a spear, striking him under the chin. He fell back upon the deck, bleeding profusely and half insensible.

“You are a foul dog!” I cried to his assailant. “And I’ll settle with you for that!”

“Jump, ye fool, ye, jump!” cried Risk impatient.

“Let us look oot for oorselves, that’s whit I say,” cried Murchison angry at my threat, and prepared cheerfully to see me perish. “What for should we risk oor necks with either o’ them?” and he pushed off slightly with his boat-hook.

The skipper turned, struck down the hook, and snarled upon him. “Shut up, Murchison!” he cried. “I’m still the captain, if ye please, and I ken as much about the clerk here as will keep his gab shut on any trifle we hae dune.”

I looked upon the clean sea, and then at that huddle of scoundrels in the Kirkcaldy boat, and then upon the seaman Horn coming back again to the full consciousness of his impending fate. He gazed upon me with eyes alarmed and pitiful, and at that I formed my resolution.

“I stick by Horn,” said I. “If he gets too, I’ll go; if not I’ll bide and be drowned with an honest man.”

“Bide and be damned then! Ye’ve had your chance,” shouted Risk, letting his boat fall off. “It’s time we werena here.” And the halliards of his main-sail were running in the blocks as soon as he said it. The boat swept away rapidly, but not before I gave him a final touch of my irony. From my pocket I took out my purse and threw it upon his lap.

“There’s the ither twa, Risk,” I cried; “it’s no’ like the thing at all to murder a harmless lad for less than what ye bargained for.”

He bawled back some reply I could not hear, and I turned about, to see Horn making for the small boat on the starboard chocks. I followed with a hope again wakened, only to share his lamentation when he found that two of her planks had been wantonly sprung from their clinkers, rendering her utterly useless. The two other boats were in a similar condition; Risk and his confederates had been determined that no chance should be left of our escape from the Seven Sisters.

It was late in the afternoon. The wind had softened somewhat; in the west there were rising billowy clouds of silver and red, and half a mile away the Kirkcaldy boat, impatient doubtless for the end of us, that final assurance of safety, plied to windward with only her foresail set. We had gone below in a despairing mind on the chance that the leakage might be checked, but the holes were under water in the after peak, and in other parts we could not come near. An inch-and-a-half auger, and a large bung-borer, a gouge and chisel in the captain’s private locker, told us how the crime had been committed whereof we were the victims.

We had come on deck again, the pair of us, without the vaguest notion of what was next to do, and – speaking for myself – convinced that nothing could avert our hurrying fate. Horn told me later that he proposed full half a score of plans for at least a prolongation of our time, but that I paid no heed to them. That may be, for I know the ballad stanza went in my head like a dirge, as I sat on a hatch with the last few days of my history rolling out before my eyes. The dusk began to fall like a veil, the wind declined still further. Horn feverishly hammered and caulked at the largest of the boats, now and then throwing the tools from him as in momentary realisations of the hopelessness of his toil that finally left him in despair.