CHAPTER IV
CAPTAIN “BULLY” SCOTT AND HIS MATE
CAPTAIN “BULLY” SCOTT sat comfortably on the combing of the after deck house and gazed toward the high mountain ranges of the islands of Kapua. The land had been in sight all day, but the fitful breeze was hardly enough to hold the “Talofa’s” great expanse of canvas out taut against the sheets. Yet even the light breeze drove the schooner faster than the captain wished to travel.
“Bring her up another point,” he directed, in a well modulated, almost cultivated voice.
The helmsman, a Fiji Islander, a strapping bronze skinned native, naked except for the loin cloth of tapa, eased down his helm until the great sails flapped idly.
“Mr. Stump,” the captain called down the hatch.
A middle-sized, wizened man stuck his head up above the deck in answer.
“Mr. Stump, I’ll thank you to invite our passengers down to their staterooms and put the hatch cover on and lock it,” Captain Scott said politely. “It’ll be dark in another half hour, and then we’ll ‘bear up’ and run in to close with the land.”
Benjamin Stump nodded his head in reply and turned on his heel to go forward. This was a daily occurrence. Captain Scott had learned to secure his human cargo at night. A mutiny that came near ending fatally to him had taught him this lesson.
“Oh, Stump!” Captain Scott raised his voice to be heard above the lapping of the water and the noise of shaking canvas. “I hope our disagreement at Suva[11] is all forgotten by now. You can’t afford to fall out with me, Stump,” he added menacingly after the man had returned and lolled against the shrouds of the main rigging. “There’s that little affair at the Ellice Islands and the deal in Tahiti; and besides, Stump, you know that black boy on our last manifest didn’t really fall overboard.”
Stump’s knees shook imperceptibly while his thin claw-like fingers worked convulsively. His uncouth mind had not forgotten the matter. He had remembered it, lived with the remembrance every day of the thirty since leaving the Fijis; and had nursed his desire for revenge against his captain and benefactor.
“Captain Scott, you hadn’t any call to do what you did,” he said doggedly. “Those people were my friends, and righteous people too. They believed the story I told ’em. They gave me human sympathy, and I was downright sorry I wasn’t what I said I was. I was afeared to tell them the truth. They took me to prayer-meetings and prayed for my soul and one of the young ladies begged me to go home to my old parents and be forgiven.”
Captain Scott suddenly leaned back in his seat and roared with uncontrolled laughter.
“You impious rascal!” he exclaimed. “Do you suppose I could permit you to impose upon my friends with any such tales? I picked you up in Shanghai, do you remember? You either had to go with me or to the consular jail for being too light fingered with other people’s money. You told me your parents were dead; and besides, that young lady was getting too sorry for you for both her good and yours.”
Stump’s weasel eyes flashed angrily.
“You might have split on me differently,” he said. “That girl’s accusing eyes hurt me every time I think of it.”
Captain Scott stifled his merriment.
“I’m really sorry, Stump,” he said. “You and I have been together a long time, and sometimes maybe I don’t understand you as I should. Sentiment is new to you. This trip is going to give us a rich haul, and I’m going to give you an extra hundred dollars just to square your injured vanity.”
Captain Scott watched the lean figure as it ambled forward. He saw him herd together the score of black Solomon Islanders, brought to sell into slavery on the plantations of the Kapuan firm. After all had descended into the dark stuffy forehold, Stump, with the help of a couple of the Fiji crew, put on the hatch cover and locked it. The only air for the prisoners was admitted through two small ventilators in the deck.
“Stump’s acting queerly this trip,” Captain Scott said thoughtfully to himself. “Appears to be considering jumping the game. It won’t do,” he exclaimed. “He knows too much about yours truly. Nice gratitude, I call it, after I saved him from a Chinese prison.”
Stump walked aimlessly aft and leaned indolently against the rail. His face wore a frown.
“What in blazes is the matter with you, anyway?” Captain Scott exclaimed. “Your face has been as long this trip as a Fiji widow’s. You know me well enough by this time to understand that sort of grump don’t go with me. If you don’t cultivate a little more pleasantry, I’ll have to dispense with your company, no matter how necessary it has been.”
Stump gained a measure of confidence in the knowledge of war-ships in the harbor of Ukula, not over twelve miles distant. The very tops of their lofty spars could indistinctly be seen against the dark green background of the island.
“I have been considering cutting out this here kind of life,” he replied. “That girl in Suva made me hanker after going back to my own folks. I haven’t heard of them for nearly ten years.”
A sinister look came into Captain Scott’s cold gray eyes. Stump was not only a useful man, but he shared too many of the schooner’s dark secrets. A way must be found to shake these sentimental longings loose from Stump’s mind.
“Some day,” he returned suavely, “we’ll make a trip with the ‘Talofa’ up to ‘Frisco’ and turn over a new page in our life. You are just down on your luck now, Stump,” he added kindly. “That will all pass away when you get ashore among your old cronies on the beach at Ukula.”
In Stump’s mind a battle was being waged. He was not naturally a bad man, but was weak in character. He had run away from home when he was only a lad, and the years he had spent upon the sea had only brought him lower in the human scale. Hard knocks and brutality had been showered upon him. He was by nature shiftless and lazy. No one had ever taken the trouble to show him the error of his ways. Captain Scott had used him because he could bend him to his will. The many unlawful acts he had committed were at the instigation of his benefactor. Stump was not a coward. He had proved his fearlessness during many fights with the savages of the black islands to the southward where the “Talofa” had gone to steal the inhabitants to sell them in the labor markets of the South Seas. Captain Scott he did fear. He feared his cold, calculating but nevertheless diabolical temper, backed by a physical strength almost superhuman. Ever since leaving Suva, Stump had been brooding over his misdeeds. Now he must finally make up his mind. He wanted to get clear of the life he now hated. He wanted to be free of the fear of being arrested and put behind prison bars. He wanted to part forever from the man he so much feared. He was not entirely ungrateful, nor did he harbor extreme revenge against Captain Scott. Yet if he opposed him, he must, to succeed, betray him into the hands of the law even if by so doing he arrived there himself.
After dark the “Talofa” was put under more canvas and headed upon a compass course set by the captain.
An hour later Captain Scott and his mate, Stump, stood again together near the wheel. There were no lights except a dim lantern set in a deck bucket.
“Stump,” the captain said pleasantly, “how’d you like to be captain of the ‘Talofa’?”
The mate glanced up in surprise.
“You’ll have to be taught navigation,” the captain added. “That’s most all you need. A little chart reading and practice in picking your way among the reefs.”
“I navigated the ‘Pango’ from the Ellice Islands to Strong Island,” Stump reminded him.
“So you did,” Captain Scott replied.
“Well, maybe you’ll do,” he added, after a slight pause. He took the lantern out of the bucket and held it over the chart of the Kapuan Islands. Then he handed the lantern to Stump.
“Hold this,” he directed, “and I’ll give you a lesson in navigating.”
With parallel rulers, dividers and pencil, the captain laid down a line from a position he had made on the chart; then he transferred the line with the parallel rulers to the compass printed on the chart, and read the compass direction of the line.
“There’s where I figured we were at dark,” he said to the attentive Stump. “There’s the entrance to the reef at Saluafata, and that’s our compass course. Southeast, I make it.” Then he stepped off the distance with the dividers. “Fifteen miles it is.” He glanced over the side and then up at the slack canvas. “I guess we’re making about four knots, so about eleven o’clock we should be hearing the surf on the reef.”
Captain Scott took the lantern and again placed it within the bucket.
“I reckon I can navigate,” Stump said to himself. High hopes came into his mind, and if Captain Scott could have read them he would not have been so sure of winning back Stump’s friendship. The mate’s thoughts had at first been upon Suva, and his desire to go back and square himself with the people before whom Captain Scott had humiliated him. Especially, Stump had wanted to tell the young girl who had tried to make him a better man that she had done him some good. Once the captain of the “Talofa,” he could try to be a better man. That in accepting such a position in command of a vessel owned by Captain Scott, he would be unable to cast off his old life, did not occur to him. In fact Stump did not consider as crimes the many acts they had committed, and were committing. To Stump a thing was a crime only when the perpetrator was caught in the act and put in jail. Stump knew that he owed his immunity to Captain Scott. Once in Suva without the captain, Stump thought he could square himself with the girl, and incidentally get even with Captain Scott.
As he took the lantern from Stump, Scott held it up for an instant and observed his mate’s face. What he saw there did not seem to worry him. “I guess that offer will keep his tongue quiet,” he mused. “With an American war-ship in port, Stump’s apt to meet some friends ashore and say too much.”
“Hold her on this course, Mr. Stump,” the captain said officially. “I’m going to turn in for forty winks. You can call me at ten o’clock, and then get the crew all up on deck.” Stump grunted and leaned over to look at the compass. He saw the lubber’s point was on the course the captain had figured out from the chart. Captain Scott descended the ladder to the cabin.
Stump suddenly took up the lantern and placed it on the covered chart table. With the dividers he measured off a distance on the black line the captain had drawn and then with the rulers he took off a course to another point on the island.
“South by east,” he exclaimed in an undertone. “Twelve miles to Ukula harbor. We could do it in two hours at this speed.” He glanced aloft. The canvas was drawing well, the booms lying about three points on the lee quarter. The wind was at east northeast. The ship was heading southeast, and therefore about two points “free.” South by east would bring the wind one point abaft the weather beam.
Stump, after satisfying himself of the feasibility of his suddenly conceived plan, proceeded to put it into execution. Picking his way across the sleeping forms on the deck, he made his way forward to the galley, where the blacksmith’s forge was lashed. That day he had been at work making a weld of wrought steel to replace a spreader for the topmast backstays. With this bar of steel in his hands, he glanced into the galley. It was empty, but the coffee kettle, still hot, was on the stove. As he poured himself a cup, he ran over in his mind the risk he was taking. His timid soul quailed. Had he the courage to carry through this bold plan of revenge? In the harbor of Ukula Captain Scott had said was a Yankee man-of-war. To bring the notorious “Bully” Scott into the arms of the law, red handed, with black boys and guns for the natives, would be a stroke of diplomacy which would bring fame to the name of Benjamin Stump throughout all the South Sea Islands. A better reward than the command of the “Talofa”! Once Scott was behind the jail bars, convicted of a felony, all his black career would be told by those who would no longer fear to tell the truth. The girl in Suva would hear of it, and would believe her advice had influenced him to bring to justice this sheep in wolf’s clothing, the bold schemer who made others do his evil work.
“Thinks I ain’t on to navigation,” he chuckled. “Wasn’t in an iron war-ship for nothing and helped the navigator to make magnets out of steel bars to fix his compass.
“I don’t owe him anything,” he added, when his conscience troubled him as he remembered how Captain Scott had paid his fine at Shanghai. “He’s gotten his money’s worth out of me, long ago. The score’s on my side now. I’d rather go to jail anyway than to sail with him longer. I swore I’d kill him when I got a chance after he broke my arm with that belaying-pin. He can’t prove nothing against me; that Solomon Islander was accidentally drowned, and the other things he knows of—— Well, I’m sick of being treated like a dog, and that’s the end of it.”
The warm coffee revived his waning courage, and determinedly he started aft to the wheel. He laid his steel bar against the rail and took his stand behind the helmsman.
“There’s a pot of coffee on the galley,” he said to Mata, the half-breed Fijian quartermaster. “I’ll mind the wheel while you get a cup.” He had no fear that the man would refuse.
Mata turned over the wheel to Stump with alacrity, and with a grunt of thanks disappeared forward.
Now was his chance. He was not quite sure that the plan would work. He did not understand the science of magnetic attraction. He was only following blindly what he had seen the American naval officer do some years before.
His frame trembling with nervous eagerness, he eased the helm spoke by spoke. The “Talofa” pitched and rolled more heavily as her bow turned farther from the wind. Then Stump was fearful lest the wind might be shifting and might catch the sails aback and jibe the heavy booms, thus carrying away the sheets. At south by east he steadied. A bright star almost directly ahead was just visible along the line of the two masts. Disregarding the compass he steered for the star, taking a last glance at the compass. It still read south by east. To reach out and secure the bar of steel was accomplished in a second. He put it alongside the binnacle. The compass swung slowly away and came to rest within a point of the old course. He raised the bar and brought it closer against the wooden binnacle. The course was within a few degrees of the one the captain had set. Releasing the helm for an instant he tied the bar securely to the binnacle. The sails shivered and the mainsail gave one loud flap that brought Mata in sudden haste to his side.
“The breeze’s been hauling astern,” Stump said, “and those booms are uneasy.”
Mata took the wheel. Glancing quickly into the compass bowl, he saw the course was correct.
“I’ll ease off the sheets; it’ll make her lie easy,” Stump explained, as he hurried away to carry out his intention. He was filled with joyous apprehension—joyful at the success of his plan, but apprehensive that it would be discovered. He eased off the main fore and jib sheets until the sails were spanking full, giving more speed, then he walked, with apparent unconcern, back to the wheel.
“Getting in near the land, I reckon,” he said. “Wind’s apt to blow different in there.”
Mata seemed puzzled, but his untrained mind could not conceive that everything was else but natural. A sudden change of wind meant to him the approach of a storm, but the sky showed no evidence, nor did the barometer which he had read not an hour ago.
As near as Stump could figure the schooner was now approaching Ukula harbor at a speed of nearly six knots.
An hour passed. Then Stump grew restless. Taking off his shoes he tiptoed down the companion ladder to the cabin. All there was in darkness. He listened. He could hear the captain’s regular breathing. He was asleep. Turning to steal back his foot encountered an obstruction, and he fell heavily on the deck.
“Is that you, Stump?” Captain Scott asked, suddenly awaking. “Is it ten already?”
“’Tain’t much past two bells,” Stump hastened to answer. “Wind’s hauling to northward. I was a-going to tell you if you were awake.”
The captain grunted. Stump waited in silence. No answer. The captain was again asleep. Stump moved, this time more cautiously, up the hatch.
The night was dark. The sky, brilliant with stars, accentuated the shrouded deep. Undefined shadowy shapes above the southern horizon Stump knew to be the high mountain range of the islands of Ukula.
Within an hour’s time lights made their appearance. As time wore on more and more lights sprang up from the sea. Stump, despite the fear of his master’s vengeance, smiled grimly. These lights were in the town of Ukula and on board the anchored war-ships. The “Talofa” was being drawn as by a loadstone to its deserved retribution.
The lights came nearer. Stump glanced anxiously at the clock inside the companion hatch. The hands pointed to quarter past nine o’clock. Now he thought he could hear the thunder of the surf beating upon the reef.
Mata seemed wrapped in characteristic native reserve. If he saw the lights ahead, he considered them not his concern.
“Fishing on the reef at Saluafata,” Stump said finally to relieve the tension on his own nerves.
Mata gazed fixedly at the lights for nearly a minute.
“Ukula,” he exclaimed, nodding his head in that direction. “More better you speak cap’n.”
“It can’t be Ukula,” Stump exclaimed, his voice feigning surprise at the suggestion.
“Big reef, plenty sharks. Cap’n Scott smell the channel, you no can see.” Mata gave his advice in short sentences.
As the “Talofa” approached, Stump’s nerve began to fail him. To wreck the schooner was more than he contemplated, yet if Mata could recognize Ukula, Captain Scott surely would at the first glance and defeat the plan. To call Captain Scott now would end in putting the schooner about and steering out to sea. Stump then would have risked his captain’s anger for no end. The would-be navigator had been confident that he could find the narrow entrance between the reefs, but with the glare of lights in his eyes, his mind was in utter bewilderment. He was in momentary terror of hearing the roar of the surf under the “Talofa’s” bow and the grinding of her keel on the treacherous reef.
“Shark,” Mata exclaimed pointing to a monster black fin, traveling along near at hand to leeward of the schooner.
Stump was seized with a sudden wild panic. His motor nerves became paralyzed. The confusion of lights and the ever increasing roar of the surf caused his knees to tremble and his heart to almost stop beating. A voice behind him, which a few minutes earlier would have brought terror to his soul, now fell like sweet music upon his ear.
“What’s the meaning of this, Mr. Stump?” Captain Scott’s tone, though quiet, betrayed great concern. “Shorten sail, sir!” he shouted. “We must be nearly on the reef.” Then of a sudden the situation dawned upon Captain Scott. Stump was energetically kicking the sleeping sailors to wakefulness, bawling out his orders to “let go the gear” and “man the down-hauls.”
“Great guns!” the captain cried aghast. “It’s Ukula.”
Mata grunted an affirmative.
“Bear a hand there.” Captain Scott’s voice could be heard above the thunder of flapping canvas. “Douse everything. Get this speed off her.” He glanced anxiously into the compass; the schooner was on her course.
“Compass gone plumb crazy,” he exclaimed. “You’ve got a jack-knife on!” He turned savagely upon the helmsman, feeling for the knife usually carried on a lanyard about the waist, but Mata was not guilty of this great nautical misdemeanor.
In but a few minutes the nimble crew had gotten all sail off the schooner, yet the fresh breeze still carried her toward the harbor.
“Mr. Stump, out on the bowsprit with you,” the captain ordered. He himself had gone to the forecastle, directing in his clear, far-reaching voice the helmsman at the wheel aft.
A white, specter-like line suddenly appeared close aboard, ahead and to starboard.
Captain Scott was now full master of the situation. To the left of the line of breakers was deep water.
“Starboard your helm,” he cried. Then, “Steady so.” The “Talofa’s” bow was heading between two long lines of surf, while ahead were the lights of a large vessel, and between her and the schooner, Captain Scott could see, was deep water.
As they drew nearer the vessel took shape out of the darkness.
“Ship ahoy,” a hoarse voice hailed the “Talofa.”
Captain Scott purposely waited a repetition of the challenge. He was thinking deeply. The silhouette of the war-ship bore nearly abeam. If he gave the schooner’s right name he would stand a better chance of weathering the visit from the war-ship which would be made when he anchored. Subterfuge would only lessen his chances. It had been too late when he had come on deck to put the vessel about and seek safety. The reef was too close aboard. Now, once inside the harbor, to turn and head out to sea would put his vessel under suspicion, and a search-light in combination with a few shells would bring him back.
“The ‘Talofa’ schooner from Fiji, Captain Scott in command,” he answered, loud and distinctly. “What ship is that?”
“The United States Cruiser ‘Sitka,’” came the answering hail.
The shrill notes of a boatswain’s pipe on board the war-ship, followed by a deep throated call and a hurry of shod feet, came distinctly across the water.
The “Talofa” forged slowly ahead. Her bow was swung to port as she nosed her way into the inner harbor.
“Let go the anchor,” Captain Scott cried out disgustedly, and as the chain rattled out, he quietly walked forward and directed the sailor tending it to “haul to and secure.” Then he called in Stump, still sitting inert on the bowsprit end.
“A nice mess you’ve made of it,” he said through shut jaws. Stump crawled in slowly, stopping just out of arm’s reach. As agile as a cat, Captain Scott suddenly cleared the distance and his strong hand seized the shrinking mate by the scruff of the neck. He shook him until his bones rattled.
“Out with it,” he exclaimed. His voice to Stump had the tone of rusty files. “How did it happen? What did you do to the compass?”
Stump saw no avenue of escape. The uncanniness of Captain Scott’s intuition awed him to his resolve for truthfulness.
“A boat’s alongside,” Stump sputtered as his shifting and terrified gaze caught sight of a shadowy form in the water making the side of the schooner. The diversion was timely for the trembling Stump. Captain Scott released his hold, but the guilty mate, off his guard, received the full force of Captain Scott’s iron fist squarely under the jaws. His body bent limply backward and fell heavily upon the deck, where it lay motionless, while Captain Scott strolled unconcernedly aft to receive his visitors.