The Mutineers by Charles Boardman Hawes

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"You crawling black nigger, you," he yelled. "Now what'll _you_ give _me_
for a piece of pie?"

Holding the cleaver close at his side, the negro looked up at the fox who
was abusing him, and burst into wild vituperation. Although Kipping only
laughed in reply, there was a savage and intense vindictiveness in the
negro's impassioned jargon that chilled my blood. I remember thinking then
that I should dread being in Kipping's shoes if ever those two met again.

As we cast off, we six in that little boat soon to be left alone in the
wastes of the China Sea, we looked up at the cold, laughing faces on which
the low sun shone with an orange-yellow light, and saw in them neither pity
nor mercy. The hands resting on the bulwark, the hands of our own
shipmates, were turned against us.

The ship was coming back to her course now, and some of us were looking at
the distant island with the cone-shaped peaks, toward which by common
consent we had turned our bow, when the cook, who still stared back at
Kipping, seemed to get a new view of his features. Springing up suddenly,
he yelled in a great voice that must have carried far across the sea:--

"You Kipping, Ah got you--Ah got you--Ah knows who you is--Ah knows who you
is--you crimp's runner, you! You blood-money sucker, you! Ah seen you in
Boston! Ah seen you befo' now! A-a-a-ah!--a-a-a-ah!" And he shook his great
black fist at the mate.

The smile on Kipping's face was swept away by a look of consternation. With
a quick motion he raised his loaded pistol, which he had primed anew, and
fired on us; then, snatching another from one of the crew, he fired again,
and stood with the smoking weapons, one in each hand, and a snarl fixed on
his face.

Captain Falk was staring at the negro in wrath and amazement, and there was
a stir on the deck that aroused my strong curiosity. But the cook was
groaning so loudly that we could hear no word of what was said, so we bent
to the oars with all our strength and rowed out of range toward the distant
island.

Kipping's second ball had grazed the negro's head and had left a deep
furrow from which blood was running freely. But for the thickness of his
skull I believe it would have killed him.

Once again the sails of the Island Princess, as we watched her, filled with
wind and she bore away across the sapphire blue of the sea with all her
canvas spread, as beautiful a sight as I have ever seen. The changing
lights in the sky painted the water with opalescent colors and tinted the
sails gold and crimson and purple, and by and by, when the sun had set and
the stars had come out and the ocean had darkened, we still could make her
out, smaller and ghostlike in the distance, sailing away before light winds
with the money and goods all under her hatches.

Laboring at the oars, we rowed on and on and on. Stars, by which we now
held our course, grew bright overhead, and after a time we again saw dimly
the shores of the island. We dared not stay at sea in a small open boat
without food or water, and the island was our only refuge.

Presently we heard breakers and saw once more the bluff headlands that we
had seen from the deck of the Island Princess. Remembering that there had
been low shores farther south, we rowed on and on, interminably and at
last, faint and weary, felt the keel of the boat grate on a muddy beach.

At all events we had come safely to land.

CHAPTER XVIII

ADVENTURES ASHORE

As we rested on our oars by the strange island, and smelled the warm odor
of the marsh and the fragrance of unseen flowers, and listened to the
_wheekle_ of a night-hawk that circled above us, we talked of one thing and
another, chiefly of the men aboard the Island Princess and how glad we were
to be done with them forever.

"Ay," said Davie Paine sadly, "never again 'll I have the handle before my
name. But what of that? It's a deal sight jollier in the fo'castle than in
the cabin and I ain't the scholar to be an officer." He sighed heavily.

"It warn't so jolly this voyage," Neddie Benson muttered, "what with Bill
Hayden passing on, like he done."

We were silent for a time. For my own part, I was thinking about old Bill's
"little wee girl at Newbury-port" waiting for her stupid old dad to come
back to her, and I have an idea that the others were thinking much the same
thoughts. But soon Blodgett stirred restlessly, and the cook, the cleaver
on his knees, cleared his throat and after a premonitory grunt or two began
to speak.

"Boy, he think Ah ain't got no use foh boys," he chuckled. "Hee-ha ha! Ah
fool 'em. Stew'd, he say, 'Frank, am you with us o' without us?' He say,
'Am you gwine like one ol' lobscozzle idjut git cook's pay all yo' life?'

"'Well,' Ah says, 'what pay you think Ah'm gwine fob to git? Cap'n's pay,
maybe? 0' gin'ral's pay? Yass, sah. Ef Ah'm cook Ah'm gwine git cook's
pay.'

"Den he laff hearty and slap his knee and he say 'Ef you come in with us,
you won't git cook's pay, no' sah. You is gwine git pay like no admiral
don't git if you come in with us. Dah's money 'board dis yeh ol'
ship.'

"'Yass, sah,' says I, suspicionin' su'thin' was like what it didn't had
ought to be. 'But dat's owner's money.'

"Den stew'd, he say, 'Listen! You come in with me and Cap'n Falk and Mistah
Kipping, and we's gwine split dat yeh money all up'twix' one another. Yass,
sah! But you all gotta have nothin' to do with dat yeh Mistah Hamlin and
dat yeh cocky li'le Ben Lathrop.'

"'Oh no,' Ah says inside, so stew'd he don't heah me. 'Guess you all don't
know me and dat yeh Ben Lathrop is friends.'

"Den Ah stop sudden. 'Mah golly,' Ah think, 'dey's a conspiration a-foot,
yass, sah, and if dis yeh ol' nigger don't look out dey gwine hu't de boy.'
If Ah gits into dat yeh conspiration, den Ah guess Ah'll snoop roun' and
learn what Ah didn't had ought to, and when time come, den mah golly, Ah'll
took good keer of dat boy. So Ah done like Ah'm sayin' now, and Ah says to
stew'd, 'Yass, sah, yass, sah,' and Ah don't let boy come neah de galley
and Ah don't give him no pie nor cake, but when time come Ah take good keer
of him, and Ah's tellin' you, Ah knows a lot 'bout what dem crawlin'
critters yonder on ship think dey gwine foh to do."

With a glance toward me in the darkness that I verily believe expressed as
much genuine affection as so villainous a black countenance could show,
Frank got out his rank pipe and began packing it full of tobacco.

Here was further evidence of what we so long had suspected. But as I
reflected on it, with forgiveness in my heart for every snub the faithful,
crafty old darky had given me and with amusement at the simple way he had
tricked the steward and Falk and Kipping, I recalled his parting remarks to
our worthy mate.

"What was that you said to Mr. Kipping just as we gave way this afternoon?"
I asked.

"Hey, what dat?" Frank growled.

"When had you seen Kipping before?"

There was a long silence, then Frank spoke quietly and yet with obvious
feeling. "Ah got a bone to pick with Kipping," he said, "but dat yeh's a
matter 'twix' him and me."

All this time Roger had watched and listened with a kindly smile.

"Well, men," he now said, "we've had a chance to rest and get our wind.
It's time we set to work. What do you say, hadn't we better haul the boat
out?"

Although we tacitly had accepted Roger as commander of our expedition, he
spoke always with a certain deference to the greater age and experience of
Blodgett and Davie Paine, which won them so completely that they would have
followed him anywhere.

They both looked at the sky and at the darkly rolling sea on which there
now rested a low incoming mist; but Davie left the burden of reply to old
Blodgett, who spoke nervously in his thin, windy voice.

"Ay, sir, that we had. There's not much wind, nor is there, I think, likely
to be much; but if we was to haul up into some bushes like those yonder,
there won't be a thousand savages scouring the coast, come daylight,
a-hunting for the men that came in the boat."

That was sound common sense.

We got out and, standing three on a side, hauled the boat by great effort
clean out of water. Then we bent ropes to each end of three thwarts, and
thrust an oar through the bights of each pair of ropes. Thus, with one of
us at each end of an oar, holding it in the crooks of his elbows, we made
out to lift the boat and drag it along till we got it safely hidden in the
bushes with the oars tucked away under it. We then smoothed out our tracks
and restored the branches as well as we could, and held a counsel in which
every man had an equal voice.

That it would be folly to remain on the beach until daylight, we were all
agreed. Immediately beyond the muddy shore there was, so far as we could
tell, only a salt marsh overgrown with rank grass and scattered clumps of
vegetation, which might conceal us after a fashion if we were willing to
lie all day long in mud that probably swarmed with reptile life, but which
would afford us no real security and would give us no opportunity to forage
for fresh water and food.

Blodgett, wide-eyed and restless, urged that we set out inland and travel
as far as possible before daybreak. "You can't tell about a country like
this," he said. "Might be we'd stumble on a temple with a lot of heathen
idols full of gold and precious stones to make our everlasting fortunes, or
a nigger or two with a bag of rubies tied round his neck with a string."

"Yeah!" the cook grunted, irritated by Blodgett's free use of the word
"nigger," "and Ah's tellin' you he'll have a Malay kris what'll slit yo'
vitals and chop off yo' head; and nex' time when you gwine come to say
howdy, you'll find yo' ol' skull a-setting in de temple, chockfull of dem
rubies and grinnin' like he was glad to see you back again. Ah ain't gwine
on no such promulgation, no sah! What Ah wants is a good, cool drink and a
piece of pie. Yass, sah,"

"Now that's like I feel," said Neddie Benson. "I never thought when the
lady was tellin' me about trouble in store, that there warn't goin' to be
enough victuals to go round--"

"Ah, you make me tired," Blodgett snapped out. "Food, food, food! And
here's a chance to find a nice little temple an' better our fortunes. Of
course it ain't like India, but if these here slant-eyed pirates have stole
any gold at all, it'll be in the temples."

"What I'd like"--it was Davie Paine's heavy, slow voice--"is just a drink
of water and some ship's bread."

"Well," said Roger, "we'll find neither bread nor rubies lying on the
beach, and since we're agreed that it's best to get out of sight, let's set
off."

He was about to plunge blindly into the marsh, when Blodgett, who had been
ranging restlessly while we talked, cried, "Here's a road! As I'm alive
here's a road!"

We trooped over to where he stood, and saw, sure enough, an opening in the
brush and grass where the ground was beaten hard as if by the passing of
many feet.

"Well, let's be on our way," said Blodgett, starting forward.

"No, sah, dat ain't no way foh to go!" the cook exclaimed. He stood there,
head thrown forward, chin out-thrust, the cleaver, which he had carried all
the time since we left the ship, hanging at his side.

"Why not?" asked Roger.

"'Cause, sah, whar dey's a road dey's humans and humans heahbouts on dese
yeh islands is liable to be drefful free with strangers. Yass, sah, if we
go a-walkin' along dat yeh road, fust thing we know we's gwine walk into a
whole mob of dem yeh heathens. Den whar'll we be?" In answer to his
question, the negro thrust out his left hand and, grasping an imaginary
opponent by the throat, raised the cleaver, and swept it through the air
with a slicing motion. Looking keenly at us to be sure that we grasped the
significance of his pantomime he remarked, "Ah want mah ol' head to stay
put."

"There ain't going to be no village till we come to trees," said Davie
Paine slowly. "If there is, we can see it anyhow, and if there isn't, this
road'll take us across the marsh. Once we're on the other side, we can
leave the road and take to the hills."

"There's an idea," Roger cried. "How about it, Bennie?"

I nodded.

Blodgett eagerly went first and the cook, apparently fearing that he was on
his way to be served as a particularly choice tidbit at somebody else's
banquet, came last. The rest of us just jostled along together. But Davie
Paine, I noticed, held his head higher than I ever had seen it before; for
Roger's appreciation of his sound common sense had pleased him beyond
measure and had done wonders to restore his self-confidence.

First there were interwoven bushes and vines beside the road, and then tall
reeds and marsh grasses; now there was sand underfoot, now mud. But it was
a better path by far than any we could have beaten out for ourselves, and
we all--except the cook--were well pleased that we had taken it.

The bushes and tall grasses, which shut us in, prevented our seeing the
ocean behind us or the hills ahead, and the miasmic mist that we had
noticed some time since billowed around our knees. But the stars were very
bright above us, and phosphorescent creatures like fire-flies fluttered
here and there, and, all things considered, we made excellent progress.

As it had been Blodgett in his eternal peering and prowling who had found
the path, so now it was Blodgett, bending low as he hurried at the head of
our irregular line, who twice stopped suddenly and said that he had heard
hoarse, distant calls.

Each time, when the rest of us came up to him and listened, they had died
away, but Blodgett now had lost his confident air. He bent lower as he
walked and he peered ahead in a way that seemed to me more prowling and
catlike than ever. As we advanced his uneasiness grew on him, until
presently he turned and raised his hand. The five of us crowded close
together behind him and listened intently.

For a while, as before, we heard nothing; then suddenly a new, strange
noise came to our ears. It was an indistinct sound of trampling, and it
certainly was approaching.

The cook grasped my arm. "'Fo' de good Lo'd!" he muttered, "dey's voices!"

Now I, too, and all the others heard occasional grunts and gutturals. We
dared not flee back to the beach, for there or in the open marshy land we
could not escape observation, and since it had taken us a good half hour to
carry our boat to its hiding-place, it would be utter folly to try to
launch it and put out to sea.

Not knowing which way to turn, the six of us stood huddled together like
frightened sheep, in the starlight, in the centre of that great marsh, with
the white mist sweeping up around the bushes, and waited for we knew not
what.

As the noise of tramping and the guttural voices grew louder, Blodgett
gasped, "Look! In heaven's name, look there!"

Where the path wound over a gentle rise, which was blurred to our eyes by
the mist, there appeared a moving black mass above which swayed and rose
and fell what seemed to our excited vision the points of a great number of
spears.

With one accord we turned and plunged from the path straight into the marsh
and ran with all our might and main. The cook, who hitherto had brought up
the rear, now forged to the front, springing ahead with long jumps.
Occasionally, as he leaped even higher to clear a bush or a stump, I could
see his kinky round head against the sky, and catch the flash of starlight
on his cleaver, which he still carried. Close behind him ran Neddie Benson,
who saw in the adventures of the night a more terrible fulfillment of the
plump lady's prophecies than ever he had dreamed of; then came Roger and I,
and at my shoulder I heard Davie's heavy breathing and Blodgett's hard
gasps.

To snakes or other reptiles that may have inhabited the warm pools through
which we splashed, we gave no thought. Somewhere ahead of us there was high
land--had we not rowed close enough to the promontory to hear breakers?
When Davie and Blodgett fairly panted to us to stop for breath, the cook
and Neddie Benson with one voice urged us on to the hills where we could
find rocks or trees for a shelter from which to stand off whatever savages
might pursue us.

Though we tried to make as little noise as possible, our splashing and
crashing as we raced now in single file, now six abreast, now as
irregularly as half a dozen sheep, must have been audible to keen ears a
mile away. When we came at last to woods and drier ground, we settled down
to a steady jog, which was much less noisy, but even then we stumbled and
fell and clattered and thrashed as we labored on.

At first we had heard in the night behind us, repeated over and over again,
those hoarse, unintelligible calls and certain raucous blasts, which we
imagined came from some crude native trumpet; but as we climbed, the rising
mist floated about us, and hearing less of the calling and the blasts, we
slowed down to a hard walk and went on up, up, up, through trees and over
rocks, with the mist in our faces and obscuring the way until we could not
see three feet in front of us, but had to keep together by calling
cautiously now and then.

Blodgett, coming first to a ridge of rock, stopped high above us like a
shadow cast by the moonlight on the mist.

"Here's the place to make a stand," he cried in his thin voice. "A nat'ral
fort to lay behind. Come, lads, over we go!"

Up on the rock we scrambled, all of us ready to jump down on the other
side, when Neddie Benson called on us to stop, and with a queer cry let
himself fall back the way he had come. Fearing that he was injured, we
paused reluctantly.

"Don't go over that rock," he cried.

"Why not?" Roger asked.

"It gives me a sick feeling inside."

"Stuff!" exclaimed Blodgett. "Behind that rock we'll be safe from all the
heathen in the Chinese Sea."

"The lady she said there'd be trouble," Neddie wailed insistently, "and I
ain't going over that rock. No, sir, not when I feel squeamish like I do
now."

With an angry snort Blodgett hesitated on the very summit of the ledge.
"Come on, come on," he said.

"Listen dah!" the cook whispered.

I thought of savage yells and trampling feet when, crouching on hands and
knees, I listened; but I heard none of them. The sound that came to my ears
was the faint, distant rumble of surf breaking on rocks.

Now Roger spoke sharply: "Steady, men, go slow."

"The sea's somewhere beyond us," I said.

"Come, come," Blodgett repeated tiresomely in his thin windy voice, "over
these rocks and we'll be safe." He was so confident and eager that we were
on the very point of following him. I actually leaned out over the edge
ready to leap down. Never did a man's strange delusion come nearer to
leading his comrades to disaster!

The cook raised his hand. "Look--look dah!"

He was staring past Blodgett's feet, past my hands, down at the rocks
whither we were about to drop. The mist was opening slowly. There was
nothing for more than six feet below us--for more than twelve feet. Now the
mist eddied up to the rock again; now it curled away and opened out until
we could look down to the ghostly, phosphorescent whiteness of waves
breaking on rough stones almost directly under us. Blodgett, with a queer,
frightened expression, crawled back to Neddie Benson.

We were sitting at the brink of a sheer precipice, which fell away more
than two hundred feet to a mass of jagged rock on which the sea was booming
with a hollow sound like the voice of a great bell.

"Well, here we'll have to make our stand if they follow us," said Davie.

Although the rest were white with horror at the death we so narrowly had
avoided, old Davie did not even breathe more quickly. The man had no more
imagination than a porpoise.

Gathering in the lee of the rocky ridge, we took stock of our weapons and
recovered our self-possession. The cook again ran his thumb-nail along the
edge of the cleaver; Roger examined the lock of his pistol--I saw a queer
expression on his face at the time, but he said nothing; Blodgett sharpened
his knife on his calloused palm and the rest of us found clubs and stones.
We could flee no farther. Here, if we were pursued, we must fight. But
although we waited a long time, no one came. The mist gradually passed off;
the stars again shone brightly, and the moon presently peeped out from
between the cone-shaped mountains on our eastern horizon.

[Illustration]

V

IN WHICH THE TIDE TURNS

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIX

IN LAST RESORT

"They're not on our heels at all events," said Roger, when we had sat
silent and motionless until we were cramped from head to foot. Of our
little band, he was by far the least perturbed. "If we should set an anchor
watch, we could sleep, turn and turn about. What do you say to that?"

He had a way with him, partly the quiet humor that twinkled in his eyes,
partly his courteous manner toward all of us, particularly the older men,
that already had endeared him to every member of our company, and a general
murmur of assent answered him.

"Blodgett, Neddie, and I'll stand first watch, then. We'll make the watches
three hours on deck and three below, if you say so. You others had best
hunt out an easy place to sleep, but let every man keep his knife or club
where he can snatch it up in case of attack."

Remembering his comfortable quarters in the steerage of the Island
Princess, the cook groaned; but we found a spot where there was some
sun-baked earth, which we covered with such moss as we could lay our hands
on, threw ourselves down, and fell asleep forthwith.

We were so stiff when the other three waked us that we scarcely could stand
without help; but we gradually worked new life into our sore muscles and
took our stations with as much good-will as we could muster. Roger gave us
his watch to tell the time by, and we agreed on separate posts from which
to guard against surprise--the cook a little way down the hill to the
right, Davie Paine farther to the left, and I on the summit of the rocks
whence I could see in all directions.

The wild view from that rock would have been a rare sight for old and
experienced voyagers, and to me, a boy in years and in travels, it was
fascinating both for its uncommon beauty and for the thousand perils that
it might conceal. Who could say what savages were sleeping or prowling
about under the dark branches of yonder shadowy woods? What wild creatures
lurked in their depths? What pirate prows were steering their course by
yonder cone-shaped peaks or by those same bright stars that twinkled
overhead?

I studied the outline of the island, with its miles of flat marshland deep
in grass and tangled vines, its palms and dense forests, its romantic
mountains, and its jagged northern cliffs; I watched the moonbeams
sparkling on the water; I watched a single light shining far out at sea. By
and by I saw inland, on the side of one of the hills, a light shining in
the jungle, and stared at it with a sort of unwilling fascination.

A light in the jungle could mean so many things!

Startled by a sound down in our own camp, I quickly turned and saw old
Blodgett scrambling up to where I sat.

"It ain't no use," he said in an undertone. "I can't sleep." He twisted his
back and writhed like a cat that wants to scratch itself against a
doorpost. "What an island for temples! Ah, Benny, here's our chance to make
our everlasting fortunes."

I touched him and pointed at the distant light shining out of the darkness.

Sitting down beside me, he watched it intently. "I tell ye, Benny," he
murmured thoughtfully, "either me and you and the rest of us is going to
make our everlasting fortunes out o' these here natives, or we're going to
lay out under these here trees until the trumpet blows for Judgment."

After a time he spoke again. "Ah, but it's a night to be stirring! I'll
stake all my pay for this unlucky voyage that there's not a native on the
island who hasn't a bag of rubies tied round his neck with a string, or
maybe emeralds--there's a stone for you! Emeralds are green as the sea by a
sandy shore and bright as a cat's eyes in the dark."

Morning came quickly. Pink and gold tinted the cone-shaped peaks, the sky
brightened from the color of steel to a clear cobalt, and all at once the
world lay before us in the cool morning air, which the sun was soon to warm
to a vapid heat. As we gathered at the summit of the cliff over which
Blodgett nearly had let us into eternity, we could see below, flying in and
out, birds of the variety, as I afterwards learned, that make edible nests.

It now was apparent that the light I had seen at sea was that of a ship's
lantern, for to our amazement the Island Princess lay in the offing.
Landward unbroken verdure extended from the slope at our feet to the base
of the cone-shaped peaks, and of the armed force that had frightened us so
badly the evening before we saw no sign; but when we looked at the marsh we
rubbed our eyes and stared anew.

There was the rough hillside that we had climbed in terror; there was the
marsh with its still pools, its lush herbage, and the "road" that wound
from the muddy beach to the forest on our left. But in the marsh, scattered
here and there--! The truth dawned on us slowly. All at once Blodgett
slapped his thin legs and leaned back and laughed until tears started from
his faded eyes; Neddie Benson stared at him stupidly, then poured out a
flood of silly oaths. The cook burst into a hoarse guffaw, and Roger and
Davie Paine chuckled softly. We stopped and looked at each other and then
laughed together until we had to sit down on the ground and hold our aching
sides.

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