THE MASTER’S MATE’S YARN.

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BY H. MILNOR KLAPP.

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In the year 18—, just as the U. S. frigate Constitution was about leaving Leghorn on a cruise, a large Italian ship arrived from Genoa, stripped of every thing valuable by a piratical schooner in the Gulf of Spezzia. Two English men-of-war and a Frenchman were lying in port at the time, and obtaining all the information they could from the master and crew of the plundered vessel, all four set sail on the same day in search of the daring marauder. Her usual fortune, however, attended the American frigate, for, on the morning of the fourth day after leaving port, she fell in with the fellow off the northern point of the Island of Sardinia; and after a long chase—in which the schooner was considerably cut up, the wind dying away to a calm—her capture was at last effected by the boats. After removing the remainder of her crew, a breeze sprung up at daylight, and the Constitution and her prize made all sail for the bay of Naples.

The evening after we passed the Straits of Bonifacio, a difficulty occurred between two of the elder midshipmen, which, but for the timely interference of an old master’s mate, a great favorite in the ship, would have inevitably resulted in an exchange of shots on the first convenient occasion. The parties were bosom friends and near relatives, which, of course, made the matter more difficult to adjust; however, the mate was able to effect it, as, from some circumstances attending his own history, he had more influence with them both than any other man on board. In some untoward affair, long before he entered the service, he himself had killed his man, and although he never spoke of the encounter, it was believed by the mess that he bitterly regretted its occurrence. He had been unusually grave and quiet after the capture of the schooner, which was more noticed, for the reason that, in general, he was as ready-witted, frank-spoken a fellow as ever felt salt spray on his cheek. The truth was, he was one of that unfortunate class of seamen who, well-connected and educated with care, have, nevertheless, spent the best of their days alternately in ship’s forecastles and drinking-shops, after having run upon some rock or other in their youth. It is a matter of notoriety that there are too many such men to be found afloat, but the peculiarity in Miller’s case was, that at some period of his wild life he must have mustered resolution enough to overcome his passion for strong drink. To have seen him on the decks of the frigate, or at the mess, you would never have suspected that he had once sunk so low in the scale of creation, had you not been better informed by that sort of malice which is ever ready to hiss on the track of an altered man. As it was, I may mention that he had entered the navy through the hawse-hole and worked his way up to a master’s mate’s berth, where, of course—according to the rigid rules of the service—he stuck. Great confidence was reposed in him by the quarter-deck, and not one of the mids but would have shared the last dollar of his pay, or fought to the last gasp for old Harry, if he had ever needed a friend at a pinch. His fine, off-hand way, and thorough seamanship, made him a great favorite with the men, as was once rather awkwardly shown when some trouble occurred in another frigate, on a former cruise. In fact, there was a degree of kindliness about the man, which, combined with his good looks and weatherly qualities, was well calculated to make him a general favorite—to say nothing of a tinge of romance which, it seemed, neither Neptune nor Bacchus could entirely wash out of him. No officer in the ship had the same dashing way of laying a boat along-side in a rough sea, or was better qualified to take charge of the deck on a sudden emergency; and although you might have heard nothing of him before this cruise, you soon felt compelled to yield the palm of seamanship to him, when you once caught his quick, unembarrassed glance, or heard his deep voice answering the quarter-deck on a dark night, in a squall, with a clear ring in its pitch, which the men used to say was worth a dozen trumpets. With all this, you felt that he ought to have been something more than a mere master’s mate, never doubting by his ways that he had commanded crafts of some sort in his time. The truth was, that he had abused or slighted his opportunities; though having been well brought up, not all the wear and tear of a hard life in every part of the globe, together with the slough which he had waded through, could prevent the thing from shining out. Apart from his seamanship—of that class which embraced all varieties of crafts and services—he possessed a knowledge of books, and a strength of imagination, which made you wonder still more at the subordinate post he held in the ship. As Guy Willful, one of our mess, afterward expressed himself—“though we all knew Harry Miller to be a gentleman, it was not until that blessed night when I knocked little Dick Afterblock into the lee-scuppers, that we found out the pinch of diamond-dust in the mate’s composition.”

On the evening in question, after seeing the two friends shake hands, the party had seated themselves quietly round the mate, who had offered to spin a yarn that should last out the watch, when a voice from the forecastle sung out, that there was a large whale close aboard of the ship. Sure enough, there he was, close under the main chains, sending up a succession of regular old-fashioned spouts, for all the world, the true originals of those which every reflective reader will remember to have once viewed with wonder and awe among the prints of his spelling-book. These were attended by loud respiratory sounds, which were heard fore and aft the deck.

Old Ironsides was jogging along before a lazy wind, which barely kept the sails asleep; and the whale, after again expelling the vitiated air from his blow-holes, having nothing more attractive to engage his attention at the time, from a feeling of fellowship perhaps, kept way with the ship. Some old heads on the forecastle soon hailed him for “a finner,” bound on his travels to the Ionian sea, and forthwith predicted, at the peril of their eyes, that we should see him “down flukes” and off on a wind, before another bell had gone. There was little sea running at the time, and the moon shining fairly on his track gave us some idea of his gigantic proportions, which, to tell the truth, these same veritable Tritons were in nowise disposed to curtail. However, it was agreed among the mids, debating the matter in council with the mate, that from his broad flukes to the small triangular fin on the ridge of his back, and thence, from his spout-holes to the arch of his lower jaw, he ran not less than an hundred feet. It was also estimated that he would outweigh a drove of, at least, two hundred fat oxen. His age, they unanimously declared, was a question to be left to the learned professors. Even the bearded Nestors of the forecastle, wise as mermen in aught appertaining to the sea—albeit they claimed him for an old acquaintance—did not pretend to settle that point. He might have been fourscore-and-ten, or he might have blown brine from his nostrils, coasting undiscovered shores, long before the grand cruise of Columbus.

Mr. Willful, the reefer before referred to, took occasion to indulge in a lofty flight of fancy, as he announced his adherence to the opinion which measured the creature’s days by the scale of centuries.

“And I,” squeaked another, fresh from school, “whatever anguish of spirit it may cost me—‘sink or swim’—I avow myself of the same faith with the honorable gentleman whose eloquence has electrified the ears of these venerable sheet-anchor-men.”

“Come,” said Dick Afterblock, reseating himself on the spars, “keep a small helm, you featherheads, and let’s hear Mr. Miller’s yarn.”

The master’s mate was standing in the moonlight, seeming to watch the freakish light, as it danced far away in the whale’s smooth wake, or wandered among the barnacles on its rough noddle—or peered dubiously into the wide curvature of its nostrils—or showed the living eye on the crest of the weltering wave, twenty feet from where you looked to find it—or rode triumphantly on its flukes, or upon the ridge of its back-fin. You might have seen, then, by the stern, abstracted look of the man’s face, that his mind was busy with something, which you felt it was like groping in the dark to attempt to fathom. Then, as the midshipman spoke, the old weatherly look came back, slowly though, as if it cost him a struggle; and after a thoughtful turn or two on the deck, reseating himself upon the spars, he commenced—

“I was once, gentlemen,” he said, “cruising near Cape Musseldon, in command of an armed grab, in the service of the Sultan of Muscat, when, one squally morning, in a part of the Persian Gulf where the navigation is particularly intricate, we fell in with a large whale-ship, showing American colors. When we first made her out she had one boat down, waiting, apparently, for the whales to come up.

“Those seas were then famous feeding-grounds for the white whale, and although we felt sure there was a shoal close by, some wonder was expressed in the grab, at the boldness of the Yankee skipper, in sending his men off in the face of the fresh squall then rising over the land. However, as we neared her the shoal rose, and they fastened. We could see him lower another boat, which pulled to leeward of the ship, when the squall struck the grab, and we lost sight of them all at once. The weather continued rough for several days, with fog and rain, and although I felt great anxiety for the safety of the ship and her boats, as we were almost embayed by banks and shoals, I heard nothing of their fate, until sometime after my arrival at Muscat.”

Here the mate paused and walked to the rail to take another look at the finner, still close aboard, heading with the proud old frigate, and blowing away, from time to time, or lifting his sharp back half out, as if he had a notion to speak us. You could see the white spray, mingled with condensed air and mucus from his seething nostrils, rising, in two divergent branches, straight up from the shifting gleam of the soft swells, into the clear moonlight, from whence it faded, before you could wink an eyelid, into the greenish mass of foam to leeward of his track, between him and the ship. Two bells struck a moment after, and as the clang died away in the lee rigging, and your ear caught again the natural sounds of the craft, making her way through the water, the mate returned to his place and resumed.

“I was so thoroughly disgusted with the illiberal manner in which the British officers had acted in a late expedition against the pirates of the Gulf, and with the servility of Syed Seeyd bin Sultan, himself, to the agents of the East India Company, that I resigned my commission in his service when the cruise was up, and had already taken passage in a merchant dow, for Zanzibar, when the very whaleman I had seen in the Gulf, came into the cove of Muscat to recruit, and changed my plans in an unexpected way.

“I had been on the water that morning, in company with an Arab chief of high rank, following in the wake of Muscat Tom, a large finback, which haunted the harbor, coming in regularly at sunrise, and making an offing at night, for fear that the current, which sets in shore at certain seasons, might catch him asleep. He was as tame as a bull of the pastures, and we used to arouse ourselves watching the fishermen paddling after him, to pick up the fish which he killed, as he drove through shoal after shoal—his mouth gaping like the after-hatchway, and the pouch under his jaw as full as a herring-net. Had he lived in the old days, they had certainly set up his shrine and paid adoration to him, as he scared away the sharks from the harbor, and did no mischief, beyond the playful capsizing of a boat when it pressed somewhat too closely on his track. There is no doubt, gentlemen, that the ancients would have made a very respectable sea-god of him.

“It was rather a curious sight to see him lying at rest in the cove, spouting the brine in air, with the sun blazing on his back, while his gray pellucid eye moved sluggishly after you, as your boat shot past the angle of his jaws; or, stranger still, to watch him scooping up the affrighted fish in his bone-net, while the brine poured off of his enormous lips in two seething streams; and once and awhile, if you managed the thing right, you might catch a glimpse of his immense tongue, behind the long hairy slabs of bone, licking his prey down by the scores. It made me feel rather antediluvianish, at times, I confess.

“However, as soon as we made out the starred flag at half-mast, in the offing, we left Tom to follow his game, and Halil, spreading out his turban to catch the breeze, while I plied the oars, we were speedily under her counter—a huge, lumbering ship of eight hundred tons, with six boats at the cranes, and ten short twelves mounted on a side, as a defence against the Toassemes. She was very deep, being full of sperm oil to the grindstone-tub; and although she was, as I hinted before, all in a lump, yet as her skipper had knocked his lubberly tryworks to pieces, set up his rigging, and crossed his lighter spars, besides giving her a fresh lick of tar and paint, she looked, as the Scotch quarter-master said of the fellow we fell in with off the Western Isles, ‘just no that bad, for a tallow-strainer.’

“I offered my services to pilot her in to a berth, and we were civilly received by her skipper, who, to tell the truth, was not exactly the man I expected to find on the weather side of her quarter-deck.

“You must figure to yourselves, gentlemen, a long-sparred, well-built, Spanish-looking personage, dressed in a blue frock-coat, and spotless drilling pantaloons, and a sombrero as big round as the capstan-head, shading his dark face—the strip of crape round his hat fixing your eye at once, in connection with the ensign at half-mast, until you found that, besides losing a boat’s crew on the day we saw her in the Gulf, his wife, who had made the voyage with him, had slipped over the stern one night in a calm, and been drowned, in spite of every effort to save her. The man’s features, though somewhat roughened by continual exposure, and blackened by the sun, were as regular as if cut out of stone by some master hand, from the broad brow and aquiline nose, to the square jaw and finely modelled chin, fringed by a beard as glossy and wavy as our first captain’s of the maintop. Every thing about him contrasted oddly enough with his ragged and slovenly crew, and the patched and greasy canvas over his head, until you would almost have sworn, from his mustache, the eye-glass at his button-hole, and the narrow strip of black ribbon, which fell across the snowy mouth of his watch-fob, that he was some whimsical Monsieur on his travels in the East. There was a courteous ease in his address, and a silver twang in his voice, which indicated, rather unpleasantly, that in spite of the bit of crape and the mourning flag, Captain Catherton had banished black care from his end of the ship. Somehow or other, I felt, after the first ten minutes’ interview, that there was a lurking devil behind his smile, sweet as it was, and, with all his civil chaff, it was precious little he would have done to serve me in my wish to reach home, had he not chanced to want a mate to suit his purposes, in place of the man that was lost in the boat.

“As soon as he discovered that I had commanded the grab, he at once pressed me to take the chief officer’s berth, remarking of the other five, that he would hardly trust them in charge of the deck, with the cargo he had under hatches.

“To tell the truth, I was glad of the chance at the time; for, besides that the place was too hot for a Ghebir—the thermometer standing at midnight at 110° on the forecastle of the grab, then lying off the mouth of the passage between Muscat Island and the main land—I was anxious to leave the coast before a conspiracy, which I knew was forming to dethrone the Sultan, should explode. The cholera, too, was sweeping off the Arabs like flies, and in the very thick of it I had my life twice attempted on shore, for naught that I could conjecture, except that I had peremptorily refused to join the plot. So, as you may suppose, thinking to be on the open seas in a few days, I stepped into the mate’s place at once.

“I found the people at odds with the captain, and all at sixes and sevens about the missing boat, which some of them seemed to think Catherton had lost by design. However, the more words I heard flying up the forecastle scuttle, the more I felt inclined at first to set this down as mere sea-babble, together with some story about Mrs. Catherton’s death, which I could not get hold of for a spell.

“You see, the fellows had been hard at work on the last cruise, cutting in and trying out to their hearts’ content, as the skipper had been very fortunate in finding white whales among the islands of the Gulf, where I have seen immense shoals of them myself going in among the passages to feed upon the eight-armed squids, which the pearl-divers, at some of the fisheries, dread almost as much as the sharks. The Tartar’s boats had been very successful, and now that the ship was full and the anchor down, her crew were resolute to make amends for their precious outlay of labor, regular whaleman fashion, by grumbling at every thing abaft, and getting up an occasional quarrel with the boat-steerers—deeming it otherwise a hardship to turn out to their meals, or to a game of cards on their chest-lids.

“In fact they were altogether—excepting the second mate, the old carpenter, and a few old sea-dogs—as green a set as ever stared at an island of weed; and perfect torture it was, Mr. Afterblock, to see the lubbers crawl out of the forecastle to make a voyage to the scuttle-butt, or a long cruise, like so many tortoises, fore and aft the deck. Two score and more of young, able-bodied men they were, to be sure, strong enough, I dare say, to tow a raft of whales alongside in any latitude. But the mischief of the thing was, that instead of the oil getting into their joints and making them supple, it seemed to have soddened brain and limb, until it fairly went against your stomach to ask them a question, or to call them aft to hoist up a boat to the cranes. Of course I did not expect them to equal our dying top-men, or the nimble Arabs from Darra, of whom my crew were mostly composed in the grab—especially as the mates hardly knew enough to put the ship about. But, after having been twenty months at sea, I did look for them to know one end of the ship from the other; and considering the heat of the weather and the number of desperate wretches roaming in the harbor, it was not too much, you’ll allow, to have them keep anchor-watch, or to wash down decks at daybreak.”

“I wish, Mr. Miller,” said Dicky, “that we had a few of the slowest of ’em here. Green’s nigh to blue; and the higher you mount up in a squall, the sooner you’ve got to come down. Why, the lubbers would have blessed the service to their dying days, for making men of them.”

“Ay,” resumed the master’s mate, “I’ve seen the same thing again and again. However, the captain, who spent most of his time on shore, at the house of an old Parsee merchant, to whom he had letters from some port where he had touched in the Persian Gulf, checked me more than once, intimating that it was best to let them have their own way, until we got into the open seas again, which, he said—although I saw no indications of it—would be in a few days, as soon as he had finished some business which he had with the old Parsee. He had seemed all along to have something deeper in his eye, and, in fact, told me in confidence, the very next evening, that he had been offered a large sum in hand to land at a small port a short distance from Muscat, a beautiful Circassian slave of the Sultan’s, named Zuma, and the departure of the ship was only delayed until the woman could make her escape from the castle. This gave me some uneasiness, as I had heard that Zuma had passed from the old Parsee’s household into that of the Sultan; and apart from the difficulty of baffling the black eunuch who had charge of Syed Seeyd’s harem, I dreaded being involved in the plot I have alluded to, to depose that monarch in favor of his cousin, whose father Seeyd had put to death with his own hand at some castle near Rostak. Moreover, I had good reasons for knowing that my friend, the Arab chief, Halil ben Hamet, who was deeply engaged in the conspiracy, was the favorite lover of Zuma. However, as it was Catherton’s affair, of course I could do nothing but look about me the sharper, and see all ready to go to sea at the shortest warning.”

At this moment some one interrupted the mate by calling out that the whale was off at last.

“Something must have gallied him,” said the man; “yonder he goes, head out, like a channel-packet steaming against wind.”

“It was Darby Rattlesnake’s hanged ugly figure-head,” observed the gruff captain of the forecastle, who was standing within ear-shot of the group—“d—n me, if he be’n’t ugly enough to shear the whole coast of Greenland.”

Having thus seriously hurt the feelings of the honest old tar, who was quietly looking out to windward, the petty officer winked at his fellows, screwing his own mahogany visage, polished as it was by the moonlight, into a miniature maelstrom of wrinkles, which commenced at the caverns of his fierce, pertinacious eyes, and wriggled gradually off at the tail of his beard.

The mate started up just in time to catch a glimpse of the whale’s back, with the flukes in full play, and a long line of white water behind it. He was going at a tremendous pace straight in the wind’s eye, and, while the mate followed him with his eye, suddenly plunged sheer down where the dazzle was brightest; and before the man could draw a second breath, had disappeared. It was impossible to say what had started him; but the old seamen declared that these large solitary whales always steer a course as duly as a ship; and that, having satisfied himself that the frigate was the Old Ironsides, and nothing else, he was now only making up for lost time, in resuming his course. For my part, I thought it possible that, as he wallowed on his side, or raised his head from the hollow of a swell, his eye might have caught a glimpse of the canvas with the moonlight on it, as he was at one time so close to the ship’s side, that a smart harpooner might have darted an iron into his back from the chains. Be that as it may, off he was, and as Miller turned from gazing on his long dim track, and the stir created by his sudden disappearance sank, an unusual degree of quiet seemed to settle down from aloft, over rigging, spars, boats and batteries, and indeed over every spot of light and shade on the frigate’s deck. In the midst of this you could plainly hear the murmur of voices in the tops, and an occasional flap of the lighter duck, as some loftier sail stirred and was at rest again, like a living thing in a dream—while every shadowy port and silent gun on the spar-deck, appeared for the time, by the soft witchery of moonlight, the abode of peaceful repose.

The fact was, the breeze was gradually failing from aloft, and we were going to have a flat calm, as was easy to see from the hazy look of the sky where the land lay, and the sluggish heaves of the sea, growing shorter and shorter, as if to put us in mind of the far-famed bay to which we were bound; while, as you thought of this, something of the “dolce far niente” came over you, and walking across the deck to glance at the pirate schooner to leeward, it became difficult to connect the view with the stirring scenes of the chase, until the eye, aided by the night-glass, distinguished the ragged white streaks in the side of the prize, and turning round again, you saw the sentry at the dark hatchway, listening, as he shifted arms, to the groans which rose, as it seemed, from the very depths of the ship.

“There were only a few antique-looking dows,” continued the mate, “the grab-brig and one Arab man-of-war moored in the gap where we lay, which, in my opinion—melted out of me, as I may say—is the hottest place in the round world in the same parallel of latitude; being shut in by a wall of glaring granite—two hundred feet high—on one hand, and a rampart of rough rocks—rising high above the Tartar’s royal truck—on the other. You hardly felt a breath of air come on deck when you might; and it really seemed to grow hotter and hotter, as the disease spread in the town; the sky, all the time, like glowing steel by day, and so clear and close at night, that you turned away from the stars and the sickening light of the moon, longing, as you panted for breath, for the least mutter of thunder.

“However, it was some comfort that as yet the disease had not boarded the craft.

“The Tartar was on old ship, as rickety as a county bridge of our grandsires’ times, though having been a regular tea-wagon in her best days, she had known little crowding and banging. There was still a deal of wear and tear in her leewardly black hull, though I couldn’t say much for its model, which was as near like one of those large Pennsylvania wagons as might be, considering that one was rigged for crossing the seas, and the other the mountains. She had a respectable look, however, if it were only for her size, with her ten gun-ports on a side, her high rails, and a whale-boat on each bow, waist and quarter, except the larboard one, where the mate’s had hung. She was well sparred, her standing rigging being entirely new that voyage, and her ground-tackle of the very best. I noticed this from the first, not dreaming at the moment, that I should have greater cause to remember it afterward. She had two cabins between decks, both of which, as I understood, had been occupied by the captain and his deceased wife—the mates sleeping in the house under the poop, while the boat-steerers, as is the custom in these ships, messed in the steerage. The mulatto steward, who had been several voyages with the captain, slung his hammock in the sail-room. Since the unfortunate death of the lady, the after-cabin had been closed, the doors being locked, and the keys, as I was told, in the steward’s possession. The long cabin in which we dined, and which was separated from the steerage by an unusually strong bulk-head partition, had two small sleeping-berths in it, and over each of which was a star of pistols. A number of boarding-pikes and ship’s cutlasses were ranged round the mast, and a double stand of short muskets gave the midship bulk-head—set off as it was with a few krungars^[4] and Malayan kreeses—a very warlike appearance. In the sail-room, which was partitioned off from the for’ard cabin, were ranged in order, in their sheaths, the instruments used in capturing and cutting up the whale, consisting of harpoons, long steel-headed lances, fluke-spades, two-edged boarding-knives, and heavy cutting-spades, all kept in excellent order. In showing these implements to me, the second-mate remarked that, as their legitimate work was done for that voyage, it was well enough to have them under his eye, particularly as there were several desperate characters in the ship.

“This second mate was an active, stirring young fellow, certainly an exception to the others. From him and the old Kennebunk carpenter, I afterward learned many particulars of the cruise, which were not set down in the log. The former, at first, appeared to regard me with some dislike, which was natural enough; coming unexpectedly, as I did—it was hard to tell from where—between him and the chief officer’s berth, to which, of course, on the mate’s death, he felt himself entitled. It was just as these jealous notions had worn off, and we were beginning to feel fair and above board toward each other, that the captain sent the steward up one evening, after supper, to say that he wished to see me below.

“ ‘Mr. Miller,’ said he, in a low voice, as soon as I followed the mulatto down; ‘there is a friend of yours in the after-cabin, who wishes to see you on particular business.’

“He pointed to the door as he spoke, and observing that it was open, and a light shining within, I entered at once; when, to my surprise, I found my friend, the Arab chief, Halil Ben Hamet, disguised as a fisherman, seated before a table covered with papers; his scimetar and a brace of pistols lying within reach of his hand. He saluted me after the Arab fashion, by taking my hand and placing it on his head; and perceiving that Captain Catherton had followed me in, I stood in silence, awaiting an explanation, which, to say the truth, I dreaded. However, his business with me after all was not exactly what I expected, knowing him to be one of the conspirators.

“It seemed that Halil had already reason to fear spies on his track, and anticipating some treachery which might involve the life of Zuma the Circassian, had made arrangements to remove her from the harem to the ship, on the night fixed for the rise. It was useless to gainsay him in this, as he had already settled the thing with the captain, and I knew that he was strongly attached to the female, for whose sake he had run repeated risks under the very eyes of the eunuch. Moreover, he had saved my life when I was beset by assassins near the old Portugese chapel; and I had been his confidant in his intrigue with Zuma, having more than once kept guard at the foot of the castle-wall, while one of the Sultan’s household, who was in Halil’s interest, had admitted him within a secret gate. Accordingly, as soon as he had opened his plans to me, I readily agreed to be at the small rift of sand under the castle an hour after midnight, on Saturday evening—this being Thursday—for the purpose of bringing off the woman; Halil having, by the help of some of his friends on shore, already arranged matters, so that—even if the plot should fail—the search for Zuma would be diverted in an entirely different direction.

“ ‘But, gentlemen,’ said I, in Arabic, looking at Captain Catherton, who understood something of the language, ‘we must look sharp. That black villain is as cunning as the old serpent himself, where women are concerned. He’ll have the ship searched from truck to kelson, if it were only for the chance of getting me in a scrape—depend upon it.’

“ ‘Well,’ answered the captain in English, while his dark face grew a shade paler by the lamp, ‘it’s worth some risk, and I am determined to run it. I’d go after the lady myself, only I think you can manage the thing better, knowing every nook of the cove and the ground about the castle as well as you do. Besides,’ he added, in a way which made me glance round the cabin—where, by the way, I had never been before—‘it’s a true love-affair; and by the rules of blue-water, you know, we’re bound to help them out.’

“ ‘I am ready,’ I replied, ‘to risk my life twice over for the chief, and to circumvent that accursed eunuch; but I don’t like involving the Tartar.’

“ ‘I shall sail on Sunday evening,’ interrupted he, with something of the manner in which he lorded it over the other mates. ‘The English frigate goes to sea to-morrow, as one of her lieutenants told me in the Bazaar this morning; we’ll take her berth as soon as she weighs, and the next day but one, we’ll be off with the land-winds.’

“ ‘Very good, sir,’ I answered, turning round to return to the for’ard cabin, while he went on to explain what had passed to the chief.

“How the latter came on board unperceived, even in his disguise, was a mystery to me, accustomed as I was, by this time, to the ways of the country. I had been on deck nearly all day, with my eyes pretty much about me, and the crew had strict orders to prevent any strangers coming into the ship without my consent, on account of the disease prevailing on shore. However, he might have been smuggled into the Tartar at night, and been on board more or less, for a week, for aught that I knew to the contrary, as I had not seen or heard of him myself, since he made his last attempt to induce me to join the conspiracy, the very day on which the whale-ship came in. In fact, I remembered the moment I had leisure to think, that the canoe in which Captain Catherton usually paddled himself on shore, had been missed from the mizzen-chains for some hours a few nights before. I had been apprehensive that the chief would renew his solicitations for me to take part in the plot, as he seemed to set an unnecessary store upon it, having all along ascribed the late attempt upon my life as having originated with the Sultan; who, he said, had taken umbrage at my leaving his service in the hasty manner which I did. I knew this to be a mistake, for reasons which it is immaterial to mention; and, believing Syed Ben Seeyd, apart from his toadyism to the English, to be a wise and just prince, as the customs of the east go.

“I had always refused to have any concern in the business. I had now good cause for fearing that the scheme was about to explode on the heads of those who devised it, especially after the captain beckoned me back, and I found that Halil was to meet the ship at a point on the Arabian coast, where a brother of his commanded a fort.

“It was impossible to resist his appeal to assist him, with the scimetar, as it were, hanging over both their heads; accordingly, I pledged my faith to bring her off to the ship, provided she could get safely out of the castle, the captain undertaking to secrete her on board, in spite, as he said, of devil or eunuch. I could not help, however, renewing my caution to Halil, whom, Catherton said, he could conceal at the same time, if the conspiracy should be discovered.

“However, the chief appeared to be pretty confident, and our plans being settled, after drinking a glass or two of Muscadene, I made my salaam and went on deck. The night was as hot as usual, the land-wind blowing like a fire-blast, or as the captain—who had been in the Brazils, and who soon followed me up—said, like the breath of an engenho, during crop-time. In fact, in the silence of the harbor, the dim wall of rocks on either side of the passage seemed glowing with heat, until one almost fancied that he saw the very lights on shore dancing in the tremulous motion of the air, just as he had seemed to see the stones and bushes at noon; while every now and then, a bat, as large as a pigeon, wheeled past your ear, and some sort of sand-piper, common on that coast, sent up its whistle, in two mellow, plaintive notes, as if it were too hot for even the birds to sleep. Whether it was fancy or not, the place seemed to smell like a vast charnel-house, still as it was at that hour—the disease still spreading in the town, and having even boarded one or two of the Arab craft, as I knew. However, Catherton, I must say, appeared to stand it easily enough, sitting under the awning on the poop, with his broad breast bare, and a sheroot in his teeth. Boats were passing from the English frigate to the town, which was out of sight from where we lay, and after some remarks about her going to sea the next day, Catherton quietly asked me, if I had ever heard an opinion expressed on shore, respecting the beauty of Zuma, the Circassian.

“ ‘She is uncommonly handsome, I suppose,’ said he, seeing that I hesitated to answer his question.

“ ‘So report says,’ I replied; ‘though, as you may suppose, few can boast of having seen her face.’

“ ‘They say,’ continued he, pursuing the subject, ‘that she cost the sultan a round sum; for she is not his wife, as I understand from the old Parsee, but only his favorite slave. It is natural enough for her to hate him, as they say he has four wives already.’

“ ‘Why,’ said I, getting into a gossiping strain myself, to relieve my mind of more serious thoughts, as it were, ‘Syed Ben Seeyd is too strong-minded, and has too keen a sense of his own interests, to suffer any fair face of them all to make a fool of him. His last wife, the daughter of the Shah of Persia, he married, of course, purely from policy, though it is well known that he has no issue by any of the rest.’

“ ‘However,’ said Catherton, ‘he is likely to make short work with Zuma, if she should be caught in flagrante delicto, as the lawyers say; the sack, or the bowstring, or the scimetar, I suppose. But, do you your part in bringing her off, and I’ll hide her from the eunuch, even if his eyes were sharp as the wise old Greek’s, when he found out Achilles beneath his petticoats.’

“I was not surprised at language like this; for I had already discovered that Catherton had been educated above his present condition; it was rather something in his manner that struck me, quiet as it was, as if under an air of confidence—which the chief’s business naturally created between us—he wished to get at something uppermost in his mind, without my suspecting aught.

“He said little more worthy of repetition, and after a while, I turned in, leaving him still smoking on the poop.

“The next morning he went on shore, as usual, after giving me orders on what he wished to have done in the ship. At daylight we commenced breaking out a portion of the cargo, to get at a leak—the ship having touched on a reef on the late cruise. The carpenter was lucky enough to find this, and after stopping it, the cooper and his mates were driving some of the old casks, when a difficulty occurred between a boat-steerer and some of the people. In putting an end to this, I found the fellows were determined to see the sort of man they had to deal with, some of them using mutinous expressions, and finally making a rush for the poop to rescue a rascally Portuguese, whom the mates had placed in irons. Driven for’ard of the mainmast, three or four of the worst of the scoundrels attempted to turn a gun inboard, when the second mate and I, well seconded by the rest, and the five harpooners, dashed in among them with the capstan bars, and after cracking a few crowns in true merchantman’s style, drove the rest pell-mell down the scuttle. We then secured a few more of the ringleaders, and turned all hands to again, not a man daring to refuse work in a full ship, which, as the second mate remarked, showed that they had some dim glimmering of their own interests, after all. The English frigate went to sea with the first of the land-wind, and we began to weigh as soon as I saw that her anchor was a-peak. According to orders, I warped close to the mouth of the passage, anchoring, with the stream, a little astern of the Englishman’s old berth, and carrying a hawser to the rocks. This brought us ahead of the grab and the Arab corvette, and so near to the entrance as to prevent any craft which might come in from taking a berth so as to crowd us should we wish to tow out suddenly; nevertheless, we were still lying within the shadow of either shore, with an eye to the secret business which the captain had on hand.

“After we were all snug, I examined our stock of water, and found enough to last us to the Cape of Good Hope, or to St. Helena, as Catherton had said something of touching there. There was a strong prejudice in the ship against using the water from the wells of Muscat, and, accordingly, the captain had resolved, if the quantity was sufficient to reach a half-way port, to go to sea with the stock on hand.

“After dinner, while smoking our sheroots on the poop, the second mate, for the first time, spoke in very decided terms of the detention of the ship, dropping at the same time certain mysterious hints, which I determined that he should at once unravel.

“ ‘But, Mr. Parker,’ said I, accordingly, in answer to one of those dubious remarks, ‘Captain Catherton keeps matters pretty close, and to my notion, he is not exactly the man to answer a straight-forward question, even if you had made up your mind to ask it.’

“ ‘You may swear to that, sir,’ answered he, coming near the point at once—‘that is, to his having cause to keep things close. To tell the plain truth, sir, I’ve had my doubts of him, more or less, the whole v’y’ge; especially,’ continued he, sinking his voice, ‘since we lost the mate in the way we did—and since his wife’s spirit has haunted the ship.’

“I scarce knew what to think of this, as the man spoke quite seriously, glancing warily round the poop, and dropping his voice to a whisper, which had something of genuine awe in its cadence.

“ ‘Come, come, Mr. Parker,’ said I, ‘no ghosts, if you please. We will leave them to the old carpenter and his crony. I should like to hear, though, how you lost that boat’s crew.’

“ ‘Well, sir,’ he replied, doggedly, ‘as you please—but as for the spirit—’

“ ‘Pooh, pooh, man!—never mind that!—tell me how you came to lose the boat. We will have the spirit after supper, if you insist on it.’

“ ‘Why,’ said he, with a sort of sigh, dropping the ghost with evident reluctance, ‘I had to cut my line in that same squall, for it was in running down to pick up my boat that the ship lost sight of the mate.

“ ‘You see, sir,’ continued he, after a pause, during which he looked me full in the face in a half shrewd, half wistful way, as I thought, ‘it is best to begin at the right end of a tangled yarn, if you want to unravel it. Some of the boat’s crew-watch heard a splash under the counter one moonlight night in the Gulf, and when the rest opened their eyes and went aft, the poop was empty, and the lady not to be found in the ship. One fellow saw her standing by the head of the after-cabin stairs, when he went aft to strike the bell a moment before—another heard the splash—but when the boats were dropped, nothing was to be seen on the long, dazzling swell of the sea but the back-fin of a large blue shark, veering slowly round between the boats and the ship, as if he had missed his prey—except it were a gull asleep, with its head under its wing—or the fresh branches of a tree, drifting toward the mouth of the Gulf, on the current of the dry monsoon. As she was not to be found in the ship, it was almost certain that she had been leaning over the counter, watching the shark, perhaps, and losing her balance, had perished before she had time to utter a single cry—at least so the captain professed to think. However, it was the next day but one after that, just as the lookouts were going aloft at daybreak, we raised a large shoal of half-grown whales, crossing the ship’s wake, about two miles off, between Gigot and the low island of Ippoo. It was a likely place to meet with whales coming down the Ippoo passage at this season, and as soon as the captain got a look at the spouts from aloft, we wore round at once. The sea was too rough to make them out from deck before they peaked flukes^[5]; and as the ship was under single-reefed topsails at the time, he must have noticed the fresh squall rising over the land before he sent away the boats. To be sure, two forty-barrel bulls would have filled us up. And after the accident to the lady, every soul in the ship, as you may suppose, was anxious to see the tryworks hove in the sea, and sail made for home. Be that as it may, when the word was given to back the main-yard, instead of the captain sliding down a backstay, in his hurry to be first, Mr. Jinney, the mate, came slowly down the rigging, and kicking off his shoes, without a word, got into his boat. He steered to windward about a mile, allowing for the Tartar’s drift, and then peaked his oars, paddling from time to time, to keep his place, head to sea—the wind fresh’ning all the while, and the clouds rolling together over the land, while the swells got up so fast between the high bluff of Gentoo on the larboard hand, and Divers’ Bank on the other, that we could only see the mate and his harpooner, standing up on the lookout, when the boat rose on the top of a sea. I was looking every minute for the order to hoist the recall signal—as we use no ‘waifs’ in this ship—when the infernal whales rose close to the boat, and almost as soon as we knew they were up, the male was fast. The shoal ‘squandered’^[6]—some running toward Gentoo, and some coming down toward the ship. I was so eager to head off these last, when the captain sung out to me from the crosstrees to lower away, that I forgot all about the weather, thinking only of the fish, as you may easily understand, if you have any notion of the heat into which things of this sort put a whaleman. However, it was not until I had my whale spouting his last to leeward of the ship, that the squall came down on us sharp as a knife—cutting off the heads of the seas before it, and nearly swamping the boat, as we labored to keep her close under the whale’s lee. After he turned up we kept head to sea, until the ship came driving down in the thick of it, with her three topsail-yards on the caps, and luffing up to the gust, brought us close under her lee, so that we managed to hook on and scramble inboard, just as the rain came down in a solid sheet.’

“ ‘You saw no more of the mate, then?’ I asked, as he stopped short, jerking the stump of his sheroot into the scum which floated round the rudder, and staring at the birds which darted after it, and then at the Arab cruiser, in an earnest, yet vacant way, which showed that his mind, being full of his tale, or something at the bottom of it, took no more note of the craft, at the moment, than if she had been up the Ganges.

“ ‘No, sir,’ he answered slowly, ‘for it was thick and squally for a day or two afterward, and we had nearly lost the ship the same day, on a coral-reef. There was a grab-brig in sight to windward at the time, and we had hopes that she might have picked up the mate’s boat, only that Captain Catherton swore that he saw the whale run it under before the squall shut them in; which, as the third mate, who was aloft at the time, afterwards said, showed that his glass must have had devilish sharp eyes.’

“ ‘Well,’ said I, as he stopped short again, with a world of meaning in his sharp face, ‘I commanded that grab, and I must say your ship was handled well to have steered clear that time. We saw no more of you after the squall struck us, and really it seems to me that Captain Catherton did the best he could under the circumstances; since if he had kept his luff, instead of bearing away before it, it’s more than probable he would have lost two boats’ crews, in place of one.’

“ ‘Very true,’ said he, in a negative sort of a way; ‘but then, I doubt the truth of the captain’s report that the whale took the boat under. The third mate was on the topgallant-crosstrees, with his glass fixed on the boat, when they put their helm up in the ship, and he says that the fish never sounded at all. No man in his senses would have sent away a boat in such weather; and it was the very first time on the v’y’ge that the starboard quarter-boat—the captain’s own—hung at the cranes, and the main-yard aback for a shoal of whales within half a mile of the ship.’

“ ‘He was fond of the sport, then?’ said I.

“ ‘Ay,’ he answered, ‘he is famous for making short v’y’ges, and a bolder whaleman never went over a ship’s side—though he wasn’t bred to the work, either. He never let the chance slip before of having the first dash at a shoal, setting great store on a trick of his own, of pitchpoling a lance, that was very certain. He has killed two whales to the mate’s one, for the v’y’ge—though his boat was oftener under the carpenter’s hands—as he had a slap-dash way of laying on to a whale, which suited no other harpooner in the ship, but the wild islander who steers him.’

“ ‘He believed in the South-Sea-slogan,’ said I, ‘a dead whale, or a stove boat.’

“ ‘Just so,’ he replied, apparently beguiled of deeper thoughts, for an instant, by a natural interest in his profession; ‘and his boat’s crew were all pretty much of the same creed. Two of the fellows we had in irons below belong to it; and more troublesome rascals are not to be found in the ship. However, the difference between the captain and the mate in their boats, was this: the one was too headstrong, the other too cautious. Once within dart of a shoal, the captain would have three or four fish spouting blood, before the mate could clear away his lance; though Jinney was always more sure to get on to a single whale—an old schoolmaster, for instance—if you only gave him time; and he rarely had his boat struck. However,’ continued he, recurring to the point which, I could see, troubled him most, ‘I never dreamed that Jinney, cunning as he was, would have died in the strange way he did.’

“ ‘Why, Mr. Parker,’ said I, glad to find him falling back to his starting-point, ‘I have heard nothing, so far, to justify your suspicions of the captain. The ghost is out of the question, and as Catherton got along very well with his mate for two successive voyages as you say, I cannot see his motive for wishing Jinney out of the ship in the damnable way you point at.’

“ ‘Ay,’ said he solemnly, ‘but there was a motive—and a black one. Nothing will ever convince me to the contrary, but that the poor lady had foul play between the three of them—I mean her husband, the mate, and the mulatto steward.’

“ ‘The devil!’ I broke out, staring him full in the face, with a confused remembrance of some strange thoughts of my own in my mind. ‘What on earth put that horrid notion in your head?’

“The lines deepened on the second mate’s shrewd face, and a doubtful look wrinkled his narrow brows, as his eyes watched mine, as if to fathom how far he might trust me in such a matter. It would not do, however, and I saw that he felt compelled to speak, at all risks, like a frank fellow, as he was, who had strong doubts of dark deeds done in the craft—he could not tell exactly how—and was taking the first good chance that turned up, of easing his mind. There was a look of honest trouble about his twinkling blue eyes, and beardless swarthy cheek, which, combined with his Yankee shrewdness—setting aside the stuff about the ghost—made me repeat the question in a sharper tone, as my mind again reverted to something I had heard before.

“ ‘The truth is, sir,’ said he, ‘I was convinced from the first, that Mrs. Catherton came on board against her will. Something seemed wrong between them from the start; for I remember, just after she was getting over her sea-sickness, I began to observe the traces of tears on her face, as she often came hurriedly up on the poop, when he was in the after cabin. It was even a matter of talk for’ard, before the blacksmith’s forge was off deck,^[7] that he treated her ill; and as this belief gradually worked aft, from that end of the ship, before we had harpooned a single whale, you may swear that it was true. I heard him, myself, from the sail-room, one morning when he made sure I was asleep in the house on deck, twitting her with her want of faith toward him, and telling her how smoothly she had carried it on for years, while he was at sea—she praying and moaning all the time, and calling on God to witness her innocence; while the very sound of her voice—to say nothing of her tears and her prayers—was enough to move the heart of a Turk to believe her. She could not abide the sight of the mate; and the worst of it was, he seemed to know well enough in his heart what it was for—in short, sir, I had sailed with Jinney before, and had ought to know him. As sure as every man’s conscience is an inward comforter or a scourge of scorpions in this life, according as he listens to its voice or not, so sure that man hated himself as he went about the decks. It was noticed by all hands that he never spoke to her, nor she to him, although she used to sit, for hours at a time, on the poop, with a book on her knees, watching, as we drove along, something you could not see in the wake of the ship, or it might be a gull, hovering over the track of foam; or a Mother Carey’s chicken walking the sprays. All this time we were taking whales, and as the captain showed nothing of the tyrant in his usage of the crew, and the Tartar was a better found ship than I ever had the luck to have been in before, the people had nothing to grumble about, except the matters aft, which, to be sure, was no concern of theirs. Either Captain Catherton, or Jinney, or the mulatto, were always watching the poor lady on the sly, so that it must have been when the boats were off, and the steward at the braces with the shipkeepers, that she managed to stow away the letter that I found in my pea-jacket pocket nearly a week after she disappeared. It was addressed to some friend of hers on shore, and she must have watched until she discovered where the jacket hung, and risked the chances; for the letter was wrapped up in the blank leaf of a book, with a few words in pencil-mark on the margin, begging me to deliver it to the address, if ever I had an opportunity to do so. She was lost a week before I found the letter, and though it looks something like it,’ continued he, while his blue eyes glistened, ‘I’ll never believe that she drowned herself, as she never complained aloud; but just grew thinner and thinner, day by day, until it was plain to the dullest head in the ship, that she was pining to death. It’s my settled belief that she had other reasons for thinking her end was near, and that the spirit that haunts the ship is hers. But be that as it may,’ said he solemnly, ‘if Jim Parker ever lives to see the States again, he will travel to the ends of the earth to deliver the letter. Now, if there’s trouble ahead, Mister Miller, thank God, I’m ready to meet it with a clear conscience.’

“ ‘Mr. Parker,’ I said, still believing the story to be an exaggeration, in spite of the horrible twist he had given it; ‘your counsel is safe with me; but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll say nothing more of the captain’s wife, or the mate, until the voyage is up. If there has been foul play, depend upon it, it will come out.’

“ ‘Just so,’ said he, ‘and if you had not been the kind of man I take you for, I should not have broached a word to you, seeing that you are a stranger to me, and seem to have met with Captain Catherton before.’

“ ‘The truth is,’ I answered, ‘I have been haunted with such a notion, ever since I boarded the ship in the offing; but as I have repeatedly racked my memory in vain to account for the impression, I begin to think that we must have met in a dream, or that my mind has been misled by a fancied resemblance to some one else, whom I have forgotten. However,’ said I, by way of a finale, ‘if he has murdered his wife and the boat’s crew in the way in which you suspect, depend upon it, he is as certain to swing in the wind, as a ship to her anchor, in a tide-way. In the meantime, it is best to say as little about the matter as possible—and you may as well turn the people too, and have the head-sails unbent.’

“ ‘Very good, sir,’ answered Parker, and down the poop-stairs he went, while I dove into the sail-room.

“While the crew were sending up new sails in place of the old top-sails and courses—worn as thin as sere leaves, blackened with the sooty smoke of the try-works, and marked in fifty places, from the yard-arms down, with gurry—the captain came off, with the old Parsee in company. I, immediately, made my report to him of the difficulty which had occurred in the morning, which he seemed disposed to treat lightly, informing me in turn, that Halil Ben Hamet had gone ashore before daylight, and had arranged every thing for the escape of Zuma on Saturday night.

“ ‘The blow is to be struck,’ he whispered, ‘at midnight, and on Sunday evening we weigh.’

“He then went below, and in a few minutes afterward, as I stood in the gangway, overlooking the preparations for sea, the two came up on the raised deck, for the sake of the current of air, which was felt or fancied under the awning of the poop. They were both in high spirits; the captain laughing and making the best use of his Arabic, with an occasional fragment of Persian, which he had picked up in his cruises; while the grave, ghostly Parsee—whose thin, bloodless face, and attenuated figure, seemed to set the boiling-point at defiance—sat under the awning, cosily ensconced in a bamboo arm-chair, his back at a luxurious angle, his slippered feet nestling in a sort of carved stool, which wheeled from beneath, and the bowl of his crooked pipe resting on the hot, white deck. He had exchanged his high, purple cap, embroidered with white flowers, for another of lighter make and smaller dimensions, the peak of which overhung and contrasted oddly with his orange cheek; and as the men swaying on the buntlines, squinted oft at his collarless white tunic, and calm, passionless face, with the scented smoke curling up in blue wreaths from the thin mustache, to the gurgle of his hookah, you’d’ve almost thought the fellows took the old Tartar’s poop for some odd corner of the eastern paradise.

“I was dreaming of some such thing myself, when I was suddenly startled by a half-smothered shriek from aft, coming, as it seemed to me, from the cabin under the raised deck. The mulatto steward, who happened to be passing along to the galley, dropped his basket of dishes with a crash, while Catherton himself, grew pale as death, sitting still on the poop, as it appeared, without the power to move a limb. The steward, however, without waiting to count the fragments of his dinner-plates, ran precipitately down the cabin stairs, while the second mate, who was standing near the break of the deck, speaking to the men on the mizzen-topsail-yard, slued half-round, turning as white as the canvas. Catching my eye, he stood fast again, continuing his orders; though both he and the men aloft, who heard the cry distinctly enough, were sufficiently startled to show what they thought of it. One great, clumsy fellow, slipping off the foot-ropes in his fright, when, doubtless he would have made a ghost of himself, had not a boat-steerer caught him by the breast of his duck-frock, and jerked him up on the yard again. For my part, seeing the superstitious fears of the rest, and noticing the change on the captain’s face, a strong contrast to his look a moment before, when he was carrying it off so pleasantly, I did not know what to make of it, thinking one instant of Catherton’s deceased wife, and the next of the Circassian Zuma, who, it flashed upon me, might have been brought on board without my knowledge. In a few moments, however, the steward came up on the poop with the monkey clinging to him, and told the captain, that one of the mutinous rascals whom we had confined below, had worked off his irons, and breaking open a small slide between the steerage and the store-room, had frightened master Jocko into hystericks. I caught the second mate’s eye seeking mine again at this; and Catherton called out from where he sat, to release the men, and turn them to with the rest.

“This was done, and nothing more said of the occurrence at the time, for a breeze suddenly sprung up, bringing in another of the sultan’s cruisers, which had been in sight in the offing all day, with a fleet of dows in convoy. She was a heavy frigate, with an English name, which I have forgotten. She came to anchor on the flood, abreast of the palace at the bottom of the cove, while the great, clumsy dows, moored in the passage astern of the grab-brig.

“The Parsee merchant went on shore just after dark; and being engaged on deck until late in the evening, I had no particular conversation with the captain that night. Awaking from an uneasy sleep about midnight, I went on deck.

“The harbor was still as death. The hot breath of the land-wind had failed. Not a cloud was to be seen on the sky, where the moon and the stars shone with resplendent beauty. The heat was excessive, the least exertion causing the perspiration to stream from the pores. All at once, as I leaned over the quarter, listening to a stir which sprung up on board of my old brig, which had been dismantled and turned into a floating hospital, it struck me that I heard a low murmur of voices, proceeding from the galley of the Tartar. My curiosity being sharpened by the shriek, which had so confused Captain Catherton and the steward, and set Parker and I off on opposite tacks—he thinking of a ghost, and I of the Circassian—I walked slowly for’ard on the larboard side of the deck, anxious to know what was going on.

“I soon discovered that the two steerage cronies, the carpenter and the cooper, with the sable master of the coppers himself, were engaged in a solemn conclave. The two whites were great friends; though no two men could appear more unlike in person and character. The carpenter, a Kennebunk man, was short and thickset, as slow and heavy in his motions as an elephant, with a broad, solemn face, as beardless and bare of expression as a plain of sand, with the nose like a ruined obelisk, rising out of it; while the hooper of staves, as straight and thin as a lath, with sharp features, restless, ferrety eyes, and a nose like a cockatoo’s upper mandible, was the very impersonification of an old blue presbyter, on a cruise. These two fellows were the chief manufacturers of the legends set afloat in the ship; nothing escaping the cooper’s eyes and ears, which was deemed worthy of being poured into the carpenter’s brain, from whence, by the slow process of infiltration, it was given in its strength, drop by drop, as it were, to the crew. This I had learned from the second mate; and as the slide of the galley door was partly open on the side facing Muscat Island, as if to let out the smoke of their pipes, and of some mess the cook was coddling in his stew-pan, I could not resist the temptation of turning eaves-dropper for once, and accordingly, sat quietly down on the spars to listen.

“The man of chips was speaking, with the slow gravity of an oracle, and as his dull, dogged voice met my ear, I could not but think it fortunate that I chanced to light upon the party at the very moment I did.

“ ‘You think now, my lads,’ said he, ‘that you have made a prime v’y’ge, with forty-five hundred b’rr’ls sparm ile in the ship, and the tryworks down—you, Bungs, with a good lay^[8] and no finger in the slop-chist—and the doctor, with his ten b’rr’ls of slush extra, besides his perquisites for washing the mate’s clothes for twenty odd months—wait till the anchor’s down in Bedford Bay, before you crow, my lads. For my part, unless some lucky chance, as you knows nothin’ of now, turns up, I no more looks to see home in this ship than I looks for to see the new mate to turn missionary, or the skipper to kneel down to the sun with the old Parshee—and eyther aire a long way from my thoughts, I kin tell you. Isn’t the ship haunted in the cabins; and ar’n’t there two Jonases, at least, on board—and another that I knows of—not to speak of him that’s gone to his reckonin’, with murder on his soul, as sartin as we three be settin’ here, as helpless as so many gonies with fish-hooks in their beaks.’

“ ‘What kin a man do, Chips?’ answered the cooper, apparently much moved with this pleasant prospect of his crony’s. ‘If we stir tack or sheet, in the way you seem to pint, it’s mutiny—and we all know what that leads to. If we makes a complaint to this here bashaw, or sultan, or whatsoever he calls hisself, ten staves to a whitlin’, that the skipper, or the old yaller nabob with the Teneriffe-cap—as they say kin do a great deal here in his way—turns it all into gammon. If you, old head, can see through this traverse, why don’t you say so at once—all among friends—instead of bullragin’ a feller about a matter as he kin no more work out of than a suckin’ whale kin stem a strong current?’

“Here I could hear him whiffing his pipe in high dudgeon, while the other, lowering his voice to a true sea-croak, answered him all the cooler; feeling his way, as I thought, to some plan of his own, which I was doubly anxious to get at, as both men, from their stations in the ship, had considerable influence with the crew.

“ ‘Thar be some things so dark, d’ye mind,’ said the oracle, ‘that no man kin see through ’em till the Lord’s own time—and some as no man—not even them as is concarned the deepest—kin give a reason for, no more than you kin tell me why a whale always dies with his head toward the sun. As I takes it, this matter about the mate and the skipper’s wife be of this sort.

“ ‘Hows’iver, this much be sartin—eyther we must git rid o’ the two Jonases, which is left, or the old Tartar are a doomed craft—ship and cargo. Now, for the steward—t’other one once out of the way—his hash is soon settled. I’d think no more of fetchin’ him a clip with my adze than of strikin’ a shirk with a head-spade. I mistrusted the villain iver since I fust sot eyes on the yaller frontispiece of ’im, with his two gray toplights shinin’ like a cat’s in the dark. He’s as deep in as t’other, and without his reason, it may be—hows’iver, to the pint—look ye, I says there’s only one man in the ship which can manhandle the bloody skipper, if he’s once put to the stumps.’

“ ‘Dat be Frank, de man-o’-war-man, I reckon,’ observed the cook.

“ ‘Or the Portagee,’ said the cooper, ‘or, if I’m to have a second guess, nearer the mark, the Kanacker, John Kapooley.’

“ ‘John Kapooley be d—d! and the rest, too,’ said old Kennebunk, scornfully. ‘I see it’s all lost time, as the students say at Cambridge, to teach a nigger a logic, or a bung-driver to sarcumvent any thing but hoops, heads and staves,’ he muttered, pushing the galley door farther open to empty his mouth, though, luckily, he did not see me, as I sat close abaft.

“ ‘I say, mates, there’s but one man which kin help us in this quandary—and that’s the new mate.’

“ ‘Why, Chips,’ said the cooper, ‘Lord love you, he’s hand and glove with him you knows of. ’Taint no manner of use of countin’ on him. He’d no more listen to our story than the old Turk at the paliss yonder. Besides, he’s used to sailin’ in other sort of crafts altogether, and sticks up his nose at us whalemen. He’s jist the same sort as the Jonas hisself, and they two is bound to stick togither this cruise—blow high, blow low—till wind and wave parts ’em.’

“ ‘Dat bin ’xactly my notion, too,’ said the black, ‘him too much an out-an-out sailor to go agin de captin.’

“ ‘Well, Bungs,’ answered the carpenter, ‘it’s many a long day since you’ve been to sea afore this cruise, and you speak accordin’ to your lights, I dare say. As to the doctor, why I can’t expect much better of him, seein’ that he’s not long out of the bonds o’ iniquity. (The cook was a runaway slave.) But, you see, I’ve talked the whole matter over with Browning, and Shadduck, and Frank, the man-o’-war’s-man, as stands for the whole o’ the starboard-watch—and says I to them, says I, what’s to come o’ it, my lads, s’posin’ we does get the ship out o’ this blessed mess—a ghost aft, the cholery, the Turks and the tiffoons—and the bloody skipper runs away with her, craft and cargo, after all—and leaves us in some foreign port to go to grass with the greenhorns.’

“ ‘Why, where on airth could he run her to, I want to know?” said the cooper. “If her invoice were drugs and spices, now—or teas and silks, as in her old days, you might talk; but, as I take it, old head, it would be hard to find a market in any quarter of the world, barrin’ Europe and the States, for sich a cargo of sparm ile as we’ve under hatches.’

“ ‘So you think, my lad,’ retorted the carpenter, coolly, ‘ ’cause, old as you are, you ar’n’t up to half the deviltry afloat now-a-days.’

“ ‘Mayhap, now, you ha’n’t forgot that old nob, with the powdered head and the long cue, which were as thick as three in a berth, with the skipper, at Pernambuke?’

“ ‘Lord love you, no, Charley,’ answered his crony. ‘I remembers him well enough, by reason of the half-doubloon which he give the boat’s crew for pickin’ up three of his niggers, when wild Frank capsized their canoe in the harbor.’

“ ‘Well, then,’ continued Charley, ‘Don Josey Maria were his name, and the richest senor he were, they said, between the Recife and the Rio.’

“ ‘Well, Chips, what then?’ asked the cooper.

“ ‘Why,’ answered the other, as coolly as before, ‘it’s my belief, growin’ in me, the whull v’y’ge, out of things as has turned up, one arter another, that ship and cargo were as good as sold to that aire old Portagee, afore we left the bloody Brazil coast behind.’

“ ‘Why, Charley, man,’ said the cooper, in a startled voice, ‘sure, you don’t mean to say that now, and you niver broached a thought of it afore.’

“ ‘Why, you see, my hearties, I were watchin’ all along to see how the cat jumped, seein’ that the skipper be nyther one to be skeared out of his course by a trifle, nor fathomed with a bit o’ dry yarn like a pump-well. I’m cock-sure of it now—but, hark’e in your ears—one word from me, when we gits up with the Cape, will block his game, deep as he is, and sot that aire manhandlin’, pirate-huntin’ Mister Miller—as he calls hisself—at t’other one’s throat like a Bingal tiger.

“ ‘Hows’iver, jist travel aft, Bungs, an’ strike the bell, whiles the doctor hands out the grog and the prog—I reckon by that aire screechin’, which aire none o’ the pleasantest, that the cholery’s set his claws on more o’ the heathen.’

“I kept my seat while the man went aft and struck the bell, the dismal echoes of the rocks drowning, for a moment, the faint cries to which the carpenter had alluded. Just as the man came back three or four heads were thrust in succession up the forecastle ladder, and as many of the larboard watch clustered round the opposite door of the galley. The fellow who had broken into the cabin was among them, and recognizing the others as old hands, I sat close for a few moments longer, although almost despairing now of learning the magical word by which old Charley was to set the captain and I by the ears.

“However, little of moment was said at first—the talk turning chiefly on the heat, and the cholera, and the prospect of getting to sea. One fellow was beginning a story about the fever on the African coast, when suddenly the carpenter asked the captain’s stroke-oars-man, about the ghost he had seen in the cabin.

“ ‘You see, mate,’ said Kennebunk, ‘the story they made up aft about the jackanapes be all in my eye; and if Frank, here, be of a mind, he can give us the rights of it.’

“ ‘That be blowed!’ said the man-of-war’s man in his wild way. ‘If it weren’t the monkey, with a table-cloth round him, as the steward said, it might have been a ghost, or the devil hisself, for all I care. Pass the pannakin this way—here’s sweethearts and wives, any how!—and no malice to the new mate, for the clout on the sconce with the capstan-bar.’

“ ‘Ay, ay,’ rejoined the carpenter, ‘you men-of-war’s men are all of one mark; you know one another, meet where you may, jist as a shoal o’ whales comes togither, arter a squanderin’.’

“ ‘B—t me!’ said Frank, ‘if ever I sot eyes on him afore he joined this ship, howsomever it may be with you, Chips.’

“Why,’ said Charley again, ‘may be I have, and may be I haven’t—I’m not goin’ for to say now. Only so much, d’ ye see—he’s the very man to take the old craft home, in case of any thing had happenin’ to the skipper. If we do go to sea on Sunday, as is give out in the ship—what I want you lads of the larboard watch to do, is to keep a small helm till we once gits in the Cape latitudes. If the skipper lays her course for the Brazil coast, then—leave the rest to Charley Toppin.’

“ ‘Well,’ answered Frank, ‘we’re all of one mind, Chips; and if the soft-sawderin’, murderin’, buccaneerin’ thief tries his hand at that game, more than half t’other watch’ll jine with us. You see, lads, fair play’s a jewel, and I did promise the steward to say nothin’ about what I seed in the after-cabin to-day—hows’iver, as all hands is concarned—and you all heerd the screach—why, sink me, if it’s a man’s part to keep back the truth:—Either the ship’s haunted by the captain’s wife’s ghost—or else he’s got a live missus stowed away in the cabins.’

“There was a regular burst of top-gallant oaths and exclamations at this, until the carpenter took the word in a sort of triumph.

“ ‘I knowed it—I knowed it—I told you all the same thing—and who was most ready to laugh at the spurrit but Frank—and now you hear him.’

“ ‘I only tell what I saw, shipmates,’ rejoined the man-of-war’s man; you may believe what you like.’

“ ‘But let’s hear the rights of it, Frank,’ said the cooper.

“ ‘Well, then, you see,’ said Frank, after a pause, ‘when I slipped off my irons and got into the pantry, looking for something to eat—for the rum dying in me made me as ravenous as a wolf—the thought comed into my head, somehow, to have a look at the Bluebeard-chamber, as we calls the after-cabin all along. I knowed the mates were busy on deck, and the skipper ashore—and I heers the steward go up with his dishes, afore I slipped back the slide—so, mates, I walks like a cat in a game-preserve, past the skipper’s berth, through the for’ard cabin—and lays my hand on the nob of the door between. Sure enough it were locked fast, and I outs sheath-knife to pry back the bolt—and blessed if that very minute the lock doesn’t turn from the inside. This here you see, sets me all in a tremble, and I stands still for a second, doubtin’ what to do, and more nor half a mind to go back, as the thought of this here ghost of the carpenter’s comes over me strong. Hows’iver, ‘here’s venture,’ thinks I—and in I bolts. What with the deadlights down, and something over the bulls-eyes, it were as dark as a dungeon at fust; but, as I feels my way in, somebody moves on the poop—the light shoots down in a stream—and I sees the wheel cabin pretty well, with a rack full bottles and glasses between the doors, and the two ship models we made on the fust cruise, standing on their ways, safe enough on the transom. I steps up to see what sort o’ stuff might be inside the bottles, and never sees sign of monkey, nor nothing else, ’till I give a look in a big looking-glass, when blessed if I doesn’t see the door of the starboard aftermost state-room open, and a woman in white standin’ inside, lookin’ straight at me. I slues round at this, and she gives the scream as some on you heerd—and vanishes in a jiffy. Well, mates, while I stands dumbfoundered at this, shakin’ worse nor afore, the steward comes down the companion-way like a hot shot, and shoves me back into the pantry—and away he drives agin like mad. In less than a minute he comes back, quiet enough, with a tumbler of grog in his fist—and ‘Here,’ says he, ‘take this down, and say nothin’ to nobody about a ghost at all—and I’ll lay it on the monkey.’ I nods and swallows the stuff, and makes sail back to the steerage, where the third mate comes down a minute arter, and takes off the other chap’s bracelets, and tells us all to turn to.’

“ ‘And now, mates,’ said he, ‘it’s all Bible truth, jist as it took place; and whether it be a ghost or no, it looked wonderful white and thin—and as much like the poor lady, as if it were her picter, full size, and done by some great painter—you know.’

“ ‘The Lord have mercy on us!’ exclaimed the cooper; ‘the likes of that I niver ’spected to hear in this ship. But murder will out—and haunt the cabins and the poop it’s sartain to do, as long as there’s a Jonas left aboard.’

“ ‘Why,’ said another, ‘I’ve a notion to cut and run from this here cussed craft to-morrow.’

“ ‘And lose your ile?’ suggested one fellow.

“ ‘And die of the cholery, among rig’lar heathens,’ said the carpenter. ‘No, no, Jack; I’ll teach you a better way nor that. Ye see, lads, while the spurrit sticks to her end of the ship—’

“Here the ship’s bell struck one, and I went aft at once. Not a soul was to be seen, though I walked up on the raised deck, and then straight down to the wheel, above which the clapper of the bell hung, without the least motion that I could perceive. I was puzzled myself, and as for the fellows in the galley, they never stirred for the ten minutes which I stood there, by the watch in the binnacle. At length, one of the boldest made shift to get as far as the mainmast, when, seeing me in my shirt-sleeves, he took fright and ran for’ard again. I then went below, more than half-inclined to leave the ship myself, from what I heard; but determined, nevertheless, to search the cabins myself, on the very first occasion before we went to sea.

“The next morning we went on bending new sails fore and aft, the captain going on shore in the canoe after breakfast.

“He had not been gone an hour, when a barge came off to the ship, with the Sultan himself, the Ouale^[9] of Muscat, and a few officers of his household—among the rest my sable friend, Hadji Hemet, looking blacker than a fetisheer, under a new Syrian turban, with a jeweled krungar hanging at his girdle, and pearls of price in his ears. Though they took us by surprise, I had the sides manned, and the ship’s guns fired, and after showing Syed Ben Seeyd down into the cabin, where, to my annoyance, the steward was not to be found, at the request of the sultan—after apologizing for the absence of the captain—I showed him and his officers through the ship. He seemed particularly interested in the examination of the instruments used in capturing the whale, and paid great attention to the construction of the boats, asking many questions through the interpreter, most of which I left the second mate to answer. When we returned to the long cabin, the steward had the doors of the after one thrown open, the decks swept, and the dead-lights up. After partaking slightly of the refreshments prepared, and making some inquiry into the amount of capital invested in the whaling interests in the United States, the party went into the after-cabin, where their attention was immediately fixed on the two ship-models on the transom. While they were examining these, I tried the doors of the state-rooms. That on the starboard aftermost side was locked, the captain, as the steward said, having the key in his possession.

“I said nothing more at the time, knowing it to be the one which Mrs. Catherton had formerly occupied, and the mulatto, by his manner, seemed quite as well satisfied to be rid of the subject. In a few moments more, the sultan and his attendants went up on the poop, when I found the ship decked out in all the flags she could muster, and the crew rigged in regular liberty trim. We gave his mightiness nine cheers and a salute of twenty guns when he left: the last sight which I saw through the smoke, being the eunuch’s black face, looming, like a fiend’s, out of the barge, from under his checked turban.

“As soon as the men shifted and turned to again, I went down into the cabins, when, lo! the doors of the after one were closed and locked as before. I thought this a good chance to fall regularly foul of the steward, when the fellow closed my mouth at once, by saying in a submissive way, that it was Captain Catherton’s orders, after his wife’s death, that the doors should be kept closed. Of course, I could say no more.

“We went on with our work aloft, and being strong-handed, after taking in a few sheep and goats, were ready to go to sea by meridian, when in the very noon-day glare and piercing heat of the sun, the Soliman Shah, the Arab corvette, changed her berth also, finding the little strait too hot for her at last, with ten deaths on board of her the night previous, and as many more new cases in her sick bay.

“However, new life seemed to have inspired our men. They worked with a will, notwithstanding that the terrific rays of the sun beaming upon the awnings, or reflected from a thousand points of the rugged rocks, made the gap like a gigantic oven. The land-wind was rising when the captain came off, and the men, in running up the boats for the night, broke out into a hearty song, the chorus of which opened the Arab’s eyes and did one’s soul good to hear, as if the prospect of getting to sea at last made them set the blue cholera itself, and all other evils which menaced the ship, at defiance. There was another meaning in this, in connection with what I had overheard the night before, which caused me to look narrowly at the face of old Charley who started the song, and those of one or two of the others, to see how far they were to be trusted, or feared at a pinch; when suddenly averting my eyes I saw that Catherton, who stood on the poop, was watching me narrowly, though he turned away the moment his eyes met mine, gazing, with a frown on his brow, from the ship to the frigate, as if something in the clamorous notes of the men displeased him. It struck me that, whatever his plans were, carrying it off in this way must seem natural enough to the Arabs, accustomed as they were to the ways of English seamen. He said nothing, however, even after listening attentively to my report of the Sultan’s visit, turning the conversation upon the plan for bringing Zuma off to the ship.

“I did not doubt but that I should be able to bring her on board, but I feared that she could not be concealed should suspicion be directed to the vessel. I had watched the faces of the sultan and his attendants as closely as I could, and remarked nothing to alarm me. Syeed’s demeanor was as mild and gracious as usual; nevertheless, knowing something of the policy in the East, I could not divest myself of the thought that we were watched. Hadji’s black face, with the wiry mustache and the checked turban over it, seemed to haunt every dark corner of the ship as the day waned. Catherton, also, could not entirely conceal his anxiety. He had been taking his grog freer than usual for the last two days, and as he was by no means what is termed a hard drinking man, this tended, as I thought, to unhinge his faculties in some degree, and give his cheek an ashy hue foreign to its natural deep bronze. He smoked incessantly, the sheroot being never out of his mouth, and his frequent change of position, when every one else felt indisposed to stir after the decks were cleared, showed a degree of restlessness which, under other circumstances, would have been hard to account for. I thought it my duty, notwithstanding, to give him another hint of the danger he was running the ship into, and choosing my opportunity, accordingly spoke out pretty plainly.

“ ‘I tell you, Captain Catherton,’ said I, ‘you can have no idea of the means which that accursed eunuch has of obtaining information. He has spies every where—perhaps in this very ship, and I know him too well not to feel certain that, should any of the ship’s company be found in any way implicated in the plot, you and I in less than an hour afterward would be tenants of the same dungeon, with a fair prospect of being kept prisoners for life, or perhaps put to death in some diabolical way.’

“ ‘Mr. Miller,’ he answered quietly, ‘I command this ship. Do you bring the woman off safely, and I’ll stake my neck on the rest.’

“And without another word he walked down into the cabin. This was decided enough, so I remained standing by the mizzen-rigging, endeavoring to forget my presentiments of evil by watching the motions of Muscat Tom, who had been cruising in the cove all day. By this time, though the sun was behind the mountains, it wanted still an hour and more of dark, when the second mate called my attention to the large flocks of birds flying confusedly in from the offing and disappearing among the rocks. A dirty, yellowish cloud suddenly obscured the air, making it still more oppressive, if possible, and causing you to wonder if the day was not nearer its end than you had deemed. The atmosphere was insufferably hot and oppressive, the little air astir coming from the land, like the breath of a furnace; you could see through the stifling gloom that the thin strips of haze were melting away from the peaks and small watch-towers in sight from our present berth: a swell, too, was getting up with the tide, and, presently, we could hear from seaward a low, indistinct, appalling sound—which every seaman knows full well—rising, stealthily, as it were, over the hum of living voices in the harbor. It was the moan of the Arabian Sea awakening from its long sleep, and the swell was the forerunner of the heavy surf which it sometimes sends in on the rocky coast, before a severe squall. All at once, as we were noting these ominous signs, the whale, with a flap of his flukes that was loudly reverberated by the rocks, threw half his length clear, and then setting his stem-propeller and side-paddles in play, commenced making an offing, slowly at first, but gradually increasing his speed, until, before he was out of sight, the water was all in a foam behind him. A moment after the gloom suddenly deepened, till Parker’s face at my elbow seemed dusky as an Indian’s—a few large drops fell upon the awning, and looking aloft we saw again, over our heads and to the north, the glaring, vivid blue sky with nothing between, as if the demon of the storm had flapped his wings at our mast-head, and then sailed swiftly away, to wreak his wrath on more defenseless heads. The land-wind, more like the breath of a flame than a current of air, coming as it did from the sandy plains of the interior, was less strong than usual; while the swell continued to rise with the tide, the water lapping with a dull splash against the whaleman’s bends, and the low, aweing, ominous sound still falling upon the ear at regular intervals.

“When the captain came on deck, while the steward was setting the table in the cabin, we got our heavy anchors all ready to let go at a moment’s warning, and secured our boats inboard, though the Arab frigate did not appear to take the alarm. In fact, Captain Catherton did not think it advisable, under circumstances, to send down his upper spars, while the heavy frigate rode to a single anchor, with boats towing astern, and royal yards across. As for the corvette, she was hidden in her present berth by Muscat Island.

“After supper, the land-wind died entirely away; the stars came shimmering through the blue ether; the haze settled about the granite peaks again, and, with the exception of the low, murmuring sound to seaward, and the almost imperceptible rise of the swell, the night bid fair to be as calm as the last.

“About nine in the evening I went below to get, if possible, a wink of sleep. I had strong doubts of the weather, it being now near the time for the setting in of the dry monsoon, although I thought it probable that a day or two might pass before it took a decided change, having seen the same signs prove false tokens before in this very harbor, the land-wind sometimes filling the atmosphere with minute particles of dust, and the whale regularly making a stretch to sea at sundown for fear of the currents, which here, of all coasts in the world, are the most shining and treacherous. The dust-cloud, too, might have driven the birds to cover sooner than usual, and, in fact, the only sign to be relied on was the distant moan of the sea, reaching the ear it was hard to tell how, as there was not the least flutter of a breeze to be felt. The tide, too, which rises here about six feet, was higher than usual, and what with thinking of this, and of the stories I had heard about the captain, to say nothing of the heat and the adventure before me that night, it was long before I fell asleep.