Chapter X: Mutiny

Patrick Onslow came out of the chart-house with all the armament he could lay hands upon; to wit, three revolvers. He gave one to the Captain and put the others in his own jacket pocket, so that they had a brace apiece. From the other side of the bridge-deck the clamor of the men rose high into the night; and the steamer’s fore-truck began to swing past the stars. Her engines had stopped, the quartermaster had deserted the wheel, and the Gulf Stream was taking her as simple flotsam whither it listed.

There was no starboard ladder to the upper bridge, but Kettle swung himself lightly up by a funnel-stay and a stanchion, and climbed over the canvas dodger. Onslow followed as nimbly. The mate of the watch received them with a frightened sidelong glance, but no words; and then he vanished into the darkness.

Captain Owen Kettle stumped cheerfully across to the port side of the bridge and looked down. Beneath him, massed and moving, was apparently every man of his crew. The electric lamp from inside the head of the companion-way blazed full upon them, dazzling some of the group, and blinding the others with dense black shadow. With folded arms he looked down on them for a full minute, with a silent, sneering laugh, till the upturned faces, which had been quiet in expectation, began to grow clamorous again. Then he waved them to noiselessness, and spoke.

The man’s words were not conciliatory. He addressed his hearers as dogs, and wished to know, in the name of the Pit, why they had dared to leave their duties and their kennel to come to sully his bridge-deck.

The harangue was brief and beautifully to the point. An ordinary seaman stood out into the middle of the circle of light, and made reply: “You gall us togs, und you dreat us as togs, und we’re nod going to schtandt it no longer. This grew temants its rechts!”

“Hallo!” said Kettle, “got a blooming Dutchman to speak for you? Well, you must be a hard-up crowd! See here now, if you do want to talk, have your say, and be done with it. English is the official language on this ship; understand that, and don’t waste my time.”

The German seemed inclined to bluster and hold his ground, but he had no backers.

“If you’re undecided,” suggested Captain Kettle, “you’ve got a nigger amongst you; why not set him on to talk? If you were men, I wouldn’t say it; but he’s as much a man as any of you, and perhaps he’ll throw in a sand-dance to enliven proceedings.”

The negro, from somewhere on the outskirts of the crowd, broke into a loud guffaw, till some one kicked him on the shins, and sent him away yelping _diminuendo_ into the farther darkness. An angry growl went up from the white men at the taunt, and one of them, a whiskered quartermaster in a cardigan jacket, stepped out and spat into the circle of light. He looked round to catch the encouraging glances of his mates, and then lifted up his face towards the upper bridge. “See here, Captain Kettle, you’d better not try us too far. This isn’t a slave ship you’re commanding. It’s a common, low-down, British tramp; and the law looks after the deck-hands and all the rest of us.”

“Now that’s fair speaking,” said Kettle. “I’ve a profound respect for the Merchant Shipping Act and all the rest of the laws. My lad, if you fancy you’ve anything to complain of, a sea-lawyer like you must know the remedy. Get your witnesses and go with them before the British Consul in New Orleans.”

“A fat lot of good that would do,” retorted the man. “What consul ever believed an old sailor against the skipper? No, sir; we’d only get penitentiary for our pains. Besides, what we want—and what we intend to have—is an alteration in things, beginning now.”

“Ah! I see. And what would you like? Shall I have a hold cleared out and fit up with four-post beds for you to make a drawing-room of? Shall I order my steward to hand iced pop round to the gentlemen who are heavin’ coals in the stokehold? Come now, out with it!”

The little captain was deliberately irritating the men, and Onslow marveled at his recklessness. Once let an outbreak start, and he and Kettle stood not one chance in a million of living through it. But Kettle knew his game, and was playing it well.

Only one man laughed, and his laugh closed up again in a moment like the snap of a watch. Some scowled, a few swore; the quartermaster in the cardigan jacket alone remained unmoved. Of Kettle’s outrageous raillery he took no notice whatever, but continued his plaint in a solid monotone, as though he had been reading it from a book.

“In the first instance, it’s the grub we complains of, partic’ly the sugar. It ain’t sugar at all; it’s just a slump of molasses.”

“That,” said Kettle, “is due to your own laziness. The bottom of a sugar barrel’s always that way unless you turn it end for end every day or so. The molasses ’d settle through the Queen’s sugar at Windsor and spoil half of it unless the barrel was looked to. By James!” he continued, with a first show of fury, “is it for this you dogs have turned yourselves into a howling pack of mutineers, and let my ship drift like a hen-coop towards Newfoundland?”

The quartermaster was obviously disconcerted by the attack, so much so, in fact, that he missed the next few counts of his indictment, and came at once to the main head.

“It’s a rise of wages that we insists on principally,” he said. “We take it we’ve been signed on for this run to New Orleans under false pretenses. Nothing was said about the sort of cargo we was to carry, which, naturally, incites them anarchist chaps to vi’lence. We’re suffering undue risks. There’s been one devil machine found already, and as like as not there is others besides. The bloomin’ ole tramp may go up any minute; and because we’re standing that risk, we say we ought to be paid accordin’. The cargo can stand the pull, and if you aren’t willing, the hands here has made up their minds to broach it for themselves.”

Kettle did not answer at once. He seemed to be twisting words over and over in his mouth, and then gulping them down his throat and bringing up others. It was a full minute before the man found speech, but then it came from him in a torrent. “You great fools!” he cried, “this isn’t an ordinary cargo that you can help yourselves out of, and let the underwriters stand treat. You bet the tallyman won’t wink at any yarn about ‘damaged in transit’ over the stuff we’re bringing out. If there’s so much as a miserable half-sovereign missing, the whole crowd here, cook and captain’s dog, stay in a New Orleans calaboose till it’s found, and then come out with their tickets dirtied. Oh! you one-eyed, mutton-headed fools!”

Onslow stared at the man curiously. His truculent tone had left him completely. His hands had quitted the pistol-butts and were gripped on the bridge rail. His elbows were beating nervously against his ribs.

From some mouth in the blacker shadow came a deep, derisive laugh; and then a voice (presumably from the laugher) said: “Who wants to go to New Orleans? Who wants to go nearer than the next key, or reef, or sandbank, or whatever it may be? Let’s pile up the blazing old tramp on that, and then boat-cruise across to Cuba. There’s nice, snug bays in Cuba, where the _guardacostas_ don’t ask questions; or, if they did, a bit of yellow ballast out of the boats would stop their jaws quick enough.”

The voice laughed again and ceased.

“Who spoke there?” Captain Kettle demanded.

Out rolled into the bright circle the massive body of the donkeyman.

“You!”

The donkeyman knuckled his greasy cap in assent.

“I’m your man, Capt’n,” he said, “but I’d be pleaseder to help ye carrying out the crew’s wishes than going agin them. You’ll be dealt by honustly, Capt’n—liberally—yes, better than ye ever have been in this world yet, or ever will be again—an’ the steamer will be lost at say. Blowed to rivuts an’ ould iron by a conspirathor’s bomb. It’s a most natural ending for her.”

Kettle stared at the donkeyman with his mouth agape, and the eyes standing out of his head. His face was thrust out at full neck’s length; his fingers beat a vague tattoo on the white iron rail of the bridge.

Then the crew’s original spokesman lifted up his unlucky voice for the second time: “Ach, vriends, we’re vasting minutes. We haf made up our mindts. Why should we not go und tivide ter cold mitout furder pother? Cood Ole Man! come and sgramble for a share like ter rest of us.”

Slowly Captain Kettle stiffened. His eyes lost their stare and glinted unpleasant fire in their more proper orbits; his lower jaw closed up with a snap; his fists slid to his jacket pockets and gripped there.

“You painted Dutchman!”

The crew rustled uneasily.

“Do I live to hear a set of dogs like you dictating to me? Does any man here think he’s going to have an inch of his own way aboard of me?”

“Come, Captain Kettle,” said the quartermaster, who had talked before, “don’t be unreasonable. The Dutchman means well, though he didn’t put it Bristol fashion. And besides, we’ve made up our minds to share in that gold, and you’d better chip in and share too, without a dust. It’ll be a deal comfortabler for all hands, and besides, it’s got to be done, anyway. We’re all determined, and we’re too many for you, even if Mr. Onslow does stand in on your side.”

Kettle’s face lit up with the joy of battle. “Are you, by James!” he snapped. “We’ll see about that. I’d handle twice your number to my own cheek any day. I done it before, on a dashed sight uglier lot than you, and came out top side; and I’m going to do it again now. Mr. Onslow’s with me, too, this time, and we’ve got twenty bullets amongst us that’ll all go home in somebody’s ribs before any of you get at hand-grips with us. Now just play on that, you scum. There’s not a one of you got a pistol.”

“Oh! haven’t we?” commented a nasal voice on the outskirts of the crowd, “I guess you’re out there, mister. I’m heeled for one.”

_Crack!_

The man shrieked and fell in a limp heap on the deck. His weapon clattered down beside him. Kettle kept his smoking pistol-muzzle raised steady as an iron wrist could hold it.

The others instinctively drew at first away from the fallen man; but one ordinary seaman, younger and more plucky than the rest, darted forward to regain the fallen revolver. As his fingers closed over it, his eyes instinctively sought the bridge. Onslow had his revolver sighted over the crook of an elbow; Kettle his at arm’s length. Both were covering him.

“Fling that thing overboard, or you’ll be dead before you can wink!”

The crew’s only revolver span through the air, and hit the water with a tinkling splash.

“Now stand forward the two fools who have been your spokesmen.”

The crowd stood like men petrified.

“Quick, or I’ll make practise into the brown of you!”

The quartermaster in the cardigan jacket stepped out of his own accord, undefiant now, and white. The German was hustled to his side.

“Have you got a coin, quartermaster?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you—sausage?”

“Yes, _herr_.”

“Then spin it up, and do you, quartermaster, call to him. And mind you call right, because I’m going to shoot the loser, and perhaps you are the least useless of the two. Spin, confound you! Spin, sausage, or by James I’ll shoot you where you stand, and settle it that way!”

The German put something between his dished palms and shook it violently; then clinched one hand, and thrust it out into the full blaze of the lamplight.

The quartermaster cried “head.” The other unwrapped his grimy fingers with slow jerks, and showed. The coin was a halfpenny, Britannia uppermost. The quartermaster buttoned his cardigan jacket, and drew himself up to face the upper bridge.

“Hold up your hand!”

It shot up to the full length, fingers splayed out. Then _crack!_ and a bullet ripped through the middle of the palm. The fellow let out a short yelp of surprise, and clapped the wounded member tightly under his armpit. The men around him, utterly cowed, stood in frozen silence; and Captain Owen Kettle from the bridge waved slow patterns over them with a revolver muzzle.

Then he crammed both weapons into his jacket pockets again, and gave orders—sharply, crisply, and with decision.

“Watch below, get forward, and turn in. Watch on duty, go to your posts. Quartermaster of the watch, tumble up here. Sou’-west and by sou’.”

A quartermaster ran briskly up the bridge ladder.

“S’-west and by sou’ it is, sir,” he replied. It was the only comment any of the crew made to Captain Kettle on his method.