THE MERCHANTMAN AND THE PIRATE

[Salty Dog]

THE MERCHANTMAN AND THE PIRATE

From "Hard Cash," BY CHARLES READE

North Latitude 23 1/2, Longitude East 113; the time March of this same year;
the wind southerly; the port Whampoa in the Canton River. Ships at anchor
reared their tall masts, here and there; and the broad stream was enlivened and
colored by junks and boats of all sizes and vivid hues, propelled on the screw
principle by a great scull at the stern, with projecting handles for the crew to
work; and at times a gorgeous mandarin boat, with two great glaring eyes set in
the bows, came flying, rowed with forty paddles by an armed crew, whose
shields hung on the gunwale and flashed fire in the sunbeams; the mandarin, in
conical and buttoned hat, sitting on the top of his cabin calmly smoking
Paradise, alias opium, while his gong boomed and his boat flew fourteen miles
an hour, and all things scuttled out of his celestial way. And there, looking
majestically down on all these water ants, the huge Agra, cynosure of so many
loving eyes and loving hearts in England, lay at her moorings; homeward bound.

[Salty Dog]

Her tea not being yet on board, the ship's hull floated high as a castle, and to
the subtle, intellectual, doll-faced, bolus-eyed people, that sculled to and fro,
busy as bees, though looking forked mushrooms, she sounded like a vast musical
shell: for a lusty harmony of many mellow voices vibrated in her great cavities,
and made the air ring cheerily around her. The vocalists were the Cyclops, to
judge by the tremendous thumps that kept clean time to their sturdy tune. Yet it
was but human labor, so heavy and so knowing, that it had called in music to
help. It was the third mate and his gang completing his floor to receive the
coming tea chests. Yesterday he had stowed his dunnage, many hundred bundles
of light flexible canes from Sumatra and Malacca; on these he had laid tons of
rough saltpetre, in 200 lb. gunny-bags: and was now mashing it to music, bags
and all. His gang of fifteen, naked to the waist, stood in line, with huge wooden
beetles, called commanders, and lifted them high and brought them down on the
nitre in cadence with true nautical power and unison, singing as follows, with
ponderous bump on the last note in each bar

[Salty Dog]

And so up to fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill "Spell, oh!"
and the gang relieved streaming with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well
mashed, they rolled ton waterbutts on it, till the floor was like a billiard table. A
fleet of chop boats then began to arrive, so many per day, with the tea chests. Mr.
Grey proceeded to lay the first tier on his saltpetre floor, and then built the
chests, tier upon tier, beginning at the sides, and leaving in the middle a lane
somewhat narrower than a tea chest. Then he applied a screw jack to the chests
on both sides, and so enlarged his central aperture, and forced the remaining tea
chests in; and behold the enormous cargo packed as tight as ever shopkeeper
packed a box—19,806 chests, 60 half chests, 50 quarter chests.

While Mr. Grey was contemplating his work with singular satisfaction, a
small boat from Canton came alongside, and Mr. Tickell, midshipman, ran up
the side, skipped on the quarter-deck, saluted it first, and then the first mate; and
gave him a line from the captain, desiring him to take the ship down to Second
Bar—for her water—at the turn of the tide.

[Salty Dog]

Two hours after receipt of this order the ship swung to the ebb. Instantly Mr.
Sharpe unmoored, and the Agra began her famous voyage, with her head at right
angles to her course; for the wind being foul, all Sharpe could do was to set his
topsails, driver, and jib, and keep her in the tide way, and clear of the numerous
craft, by backing or filling as the case required; which he did with considerable
dexterity, making the sails steer the helm for the nonce: he crossed the Bar at
sunset, and brought to with the best bower anchor in five fathoms and a half.
Here they began to take in their water, and on the fifth day the six-oared gig was
ordered up to Canton for the captain. The next afternoon he passed the ship in
her, going down the river, to Lin Tin, to board the Chinese admiral for his chop,
or permission to leave China. All night the Agra showed three lights at her
mizzen peak for him, and kept a sharp lookout. But he did not come: he was
having a very serious talk with the Chinese admiral; at daybreak, however, the
gig was reported in sight: Sharpe told one of the midshipmen to call the
boatswain and man the side. Soon the gig ran alongside; two of the ship's boys
jumped like monkeys over the bulwarks, lighting, one on the main channels, the
other on the mid-ship port, and put the side ropes assiduously in the captain's
hands; he bestowed a slight paternal smile on them, the first the imps had ever
received from an officer, and went lightly up the sides. The moment his foot
touched the deck, the boatswain gave a frightful shrill whistle; the men at the
sides uncovered, the captain saluted the quarter-deck, and all the officers saluted
him, which he returned, and stepping for a moment to the weather side of his
deck, gave the loud command, "All hands heave anchor." He then directed Mr.
Sharpe to get what sail he could on the ship, the wind being now westerly, and
dived into his cabin.

[Salty Dog]

The boatswain piped three shrill pipes, and "All hands up anchor" was thrice
repeated forward, followed by private admonitions, "Rouse and bitt!" "Show a
leg!" etc., and up tumbled the crew with "homeward bound" written on their
tanned faces.

(Pipe.) "Up all hammocks!"

In ten minutes the ninety and odd hammocks were all stowed neatly in the
netting, and covered with a snowy hammock cloth; and the hands were active,
unbitting the cable, shipping the capstan bars, etc.

"All ready below, sir," cried a voice.

"Man the bars," returned Mr. Sharpe from the quarter-deck. "Play up, fifer.
Heave away!"

Out broke the merry fife with a rhythmical tune, and tramp, tramp, tramp
went a hundred and twenty feet round and round, and, with brawny chests
pressed tight against the capstan bars, sixty fine fellows walked the ship up to
her anchor, drowning the fife at intervals with their sturdy song, as pat to their
feet as an echo:

Heave with a will ye jolly boys,
Heave around:
We're off from Chainee, jolly boys,
Homeward bound.

"Short stay apeak, sir," roars the boatswain from forward.

"Unship the bars. Way aloft. Loose sails. Let fall!"

[Salty Dog]

The ship being now over her anchor, and the topsails set, the capstan bars
were shipped again, the men all heaved with a will, the messenger grinned, the
anchor was torn out of China with a mighty heave, and then run up with a luff
tackle and secured; the ship's head cast to port:

"Up with a jib! man the topsail halyards! all hands make sail!" Round she
came slow and majestically; the sails filled, and the good ship bore away for
England.

She made the Bogue forts in three or four tacks, and there she had to come to
again for another chop, China being a place as hard to get into as Heaven, and to
get out of as—Chancery. At three P. M. she was at Macao, and hove to four
miles from the land, to take in her passengers.

A gun was fired from the forecastle. No boats came off. Sharpe began to fret:
for the wind, though light, had now got to the N.W., and they were wasting it.
After a while the captain came on deck, and ordered all the carronades to be
scaled. The eight heavy reports bellowed the great ship's impatience across the
water, and out pulled two boats with the passengers. While they were coming,
Dodd sent and ordered the gunner to load the carronades with shot, and secure
and apron them.…

The Agra had already shown great sailing qualities: the log was hove at
sundown and gave eleven knots; so that with a good breeze abaft few fore-andaft-
rigged pirates could overhaul her. And this wind carried her swiftly past one
nest of them at all events; the Ladrone Isles. At nine P. M. all the lights were
ordered out. Mrs. Beresford had brought a novel on board, and refused to
comply; the master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of
the Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of the British realm. The
master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in argument, doused the glim—pitiable
resource of a weak disputant—then basely fled the rhetorical consequences.

[Salty Dog]

The northerly breeze died out, and light variable winds baffled the ship. It
was the 6th April ere she passed the Macclesfield Bank in latitude 16. And now
they sailed for many days out of sight of land; Dodd's chest expanded: his main
anxiety at this part of the voyage lay in the state cabin; of all the perils of the sea
none shakes a sailor like fire. He set a watch day and night on that spoiled child.

On the 1st of May they passed the great Nantuna, and got among the Bornese
and Malay Islands: at which the captain's glass began to sweep the horizon
again: and night and day at the dizzy foretop-gallant-masthead he perched an
eye.

They crossed the line in longitude 107, with a slight breeze, but soon fell into
the Dolddrums. A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time.…

After lying a week like a dead log on the calm but heaving waters came a few
light puffs in the upper air and inflated the topsails only: the ship crawled
southward, the crew whistling for wind.
At last, one afternoon, it began to rain, and after the rain came a gale from the
eastward. The watchful skipper saw it purple the water to windward, and ordered
the topsails to be reefed and the lee ports closed. This last order seemed an
excess of precaution; but Dodd was not yet thoroughly acquainted with his ship's
qualities: and the hard cash round his neck made him cautious. The lee ports
were closed, all but one, and that was lowered. Mr. Grey was working a problem
in his cabin, and wanted a little light and a little air, so he just dropped his port;
but, not to deviate from the spirit of his captain's instructions, he fastened a
tackle to it; that he might have mechanical force to close it with should the ship
lie over.

[Salty Dog]

Down came the gale with a whoo, and made all crack. The ship lay over
pretty much, and the sea poured in at Mr. Grey's port. He applied his purchase to
close it. But though his tackle gave him the force of a dozen hands, he might as
well have tried to move a mountain: on the contrary, the tremendous sea rushed
in and burst the port wide open. Grey, after a vain struggle with its might,
shrieked for help; down tumbled the nearest hands, and hauled on the tackle in
vain. Destruction was rushing on the ship, and on them first. But meantime the
captain, with a shrewd guess at the general nature of the danger he could not see,
had roared out, "Slack the main sheet!" The ship righted, and the port came
flying to, and terror-stricken men breathed hard, up to their waists in water and
floating boxes. Grey barred the unlucky port, and went aft, drenched in body,
and wrecked in mind, to report his own fault. He found the captain looking grim
as death. He told him, almost crying, what he had done, and how he had
miscalculated the power of the water.

Dodd looked and saw his distress. "Let it be a lesson sir," said he, sternly.
"How many ships have been lost by this in fair weather, and not a man saved to
tell how the craft was fooled away?"

"Captain, bid me fling myself over the side, and I'll do it."

"Humph! I'm afraid I can't afford to lose a good officer for a fault he—will—
never—repeat."

[Salty Dog]

It blew hard all night and till twelve the next day. The Agra showed her weak
point: she rolled abominably. A dirty night came on. At eight bells Mr. Grey
touched by Dodd's clemency, and brimful of zeal, reported a light in Mrs.
Beresford's cabin. It had been put out as usual by the master-at-arms; but the
refractory one had relighted it.

"Go and take it away," said Dodd.

Soon screams were heard from the cabin. "Oh! mercy! mercy! I will not be
drowned in the dark."

Dodd, who had kept clear of her so long, went down and tried to reassure her.

"Oh, the tempest! the tempest!" she cried. "AND TO BE DROWNED IN
THE DARK!"

"Tempest? It is blowing half a gale of wind; that is all."

"Half a gale! Ah, that is the way you always talk to us ladies. Oh, pray give
me my light, and send me a clergyman!"

Dodd took pity, and let her have her light, with a midshipman to watch it. He
even made her a hypocritical promise that, should there be one grain of danger,
he would lie to; but said he must not make a foul wind of a fair one for a few
lurches. The Agra broke plenty of glass and crockery though with her fair wind
and her lee lurches.

[Salty Dog]

Wind down at noon next day, and a dead calm.

At two P.M. the weather cleared; the sun came out high in heaven's centre;
and a balmy breeze from the west.

At six twenty-five, the grand orb set calm and red, and the sea was gorgeous
with miles and miles of great ruby dimples: it was the first glowing smile of
southern latitude. The night stole on so soft, so clear, so balmy, all were loth to
close their eyes on it: the passengers lingered long on deck, watching the Great
Bear dip, and the Southern Cross rise, and overhead a whole heaven of glorious
stars most of us have never seen, and never shall see in this world. No belching
smoke obscured, no plunging paddles deafened; all was musical; the soft air
sighing among the sails; the phosphorescent water bubbling from the ship's
bows; the murmurs from little knots of men on deck subdued by the great calm:
home seemed near, all danger far; Peace ruled the sea, the sky, the heart: the
ship, making a track of white fire on the deep, glided gently yet swiftly
homeward, urged by snowy sails piled up like alabaster towers against a violet
sky, out of which looked a thousand eyes of holy tranquil fire. So melted the
sweet night away.

[Salty Dog]

Now carmine streaks tinged the eastern sky at the water's edge: and that water
blushed; now the streaks turned orange, and the waves below them sparkled.
Thence splashes of living gold flew and settled on the ship's white sails, the
deck, and the faces; and with no more prologue, being so near the line, up came
majestically a huge, fiery, golden sun, and set the sea flaming liquid topaz.

Instantly the lookout at the foretop-gallant-masthead hailed the deck below.

"STRANGE SAIL! RIGHT AHEAD!"

The strange sail was reported to Captain Dodd, then dressing in his cabin. He
came soon after on deck and hailed the lookout: "Which way is she standing?"

"Can't say, sir. Can't see her move any."

Dodd ordered the boatswain to pipe to breakfast; and taking his deck glass
went lightly up to the foretop-gallant-mast-crosstrees. Thence, through the light
haze of a glorious morning, he espied a long low schooner, lateen-rigged, lying
close under Point Leat, a small island about nine miles distant on the weather
bow; and nearly in the Agra's course then approaching the Straits of Gaspar, 4
Latitude S.

"She is hove to," said Dodd, very gravely.

[Salty Dog]

At eight o'clock, the stranger lay about two miles to windward; and still hove
to.

By this time all eyes were turned upon her, and half a dozen glasses.
Everybody, except the captain, delivered an opinion. She was a Greek lying to
for water: she was a Malay coming north with canes, and short of hands: she was
a pirate watching the Straits.

The captain leaned silent and sombre with his arms on the bulwarks, and
watched the suspected craft.

Mr. Fullalove joined the group, and levelled a powerful glass, of his own
construction. His inspection was long and minute, and, while the glass was at his
eye, Sharpe asked him half in a whisper, could he make out anything?

"Wal," said he, "the varmint looks considerably snaky." Then, without
moving his glass, he let drop a word at a time, as if the facts were trickling into
his telescope at the lens, and out at the sight. "One—two—four—seven, false
ports."

There was a momentary murmur among the officers all round. But British
sailors are undemonstrative: Colonel Kenealy, strolling the deck with a cigar,
saw they were watching another ship with maritime curiosity, and making
comments; but he discerned no particular emotion nor anxiety in what they said,
nor in the grave low tones they said it in. Perhaps a brother seaman would
though.

[Salty Dog]

The next observation that trickled out of Fullalove's tube was this: "I judge
there are too few hands on deck, and too many—white—eyeballs—glittering at
the portholes."

"Confound it!" muttered Bayliss, uneasily; "how can you see that?"

Fullalove replied only by quietly handing his glass to Dodd. The captain, thus
appealed to, glued his eye to the tube.

"Well, sir; see the false ports, and the white eyebrows?" asked Sharpe,
ironically.

"I see this is the best glass I ever looked through," said Dodd doggedly,
without interrupting his inspection.

"I think he is a Malay pirate," said Mr. Grey.

Sharpe took him up very quickly, and, indeed, angrily: "Nonsense! And if he
is, he won't venture on a craft of this size."

"Says the whale to the swordfish," suggested Fullalove, with a little guttural
laugh.

[Salty Dog]

The captain, with the American glass at his eye, turned half round to the man
at the wheel: "Starboard!"

"Starboard it is."


"Steer South South East."
"Ay, ay, sir." And the ship's course was thus altered two points.
This order lowered Dodd fifty per cent in Mr. Sharpe's estimation. He held
his tongue as long as he could: but at last his surprise and dissatisfaction burst
out of him, "Won't that bring him out on us?"

"Very likely, sir," replied Dodd.

"Begging your pardon, captain, would it not be wiser to keep our course, and
show the blackguard we don't fear him?"

"When we do? Sharpe, he has made up his mind an hour ago whether to lie
still, or bite; my changing my course two points won't change his mind; but it
may make him declare it; and I must know what he does intend, before I run the
ship into the narrows ahead."

"Oh, I see," said Sharpe, half convinced.

The alteration in the Agra's course produced no movement on the part of the
mysterious schooner. She lay to under the land still, and with only a few hands
on deck, while the Agra edged away from her and entered the straits between
Long Island and Point Leat, leaving the schooner about two miles and a half
distant to the N.W.

[Salty Dog]

Ah! The stranger's deck swarms black with men.

His sham ports fell as if by magic, his guns grinned through the gaps like
black teeth; his huge foresail rose and filled, and out he came in chase.
The breeze was a kiss from Heaven, the sky a vaulted sapphire, the sea a
million dimples of liquid, lucid, gold.…

The way the pirate dropped the mask, showed his black teeth, and bore up in
chase, was terrible: so dilates and bounds the sudden tiger on his unwary prey.
There were stout hearts among the officers of the peaceful Agra; but danger in a
new form shakes the brave; and this was their first pirate: their dismay broke out
in ejaculations not loud but deep.…

"Sharpe," said Dodd, in a tone that conveyed no suspicion of the newcomer,
"set the royals, and flying jib.—Port!"

"Port it is," cried the man at the helm.

"Steer due South!" And, with these words in his mouth, Dodd dived to the
gun deck.

By this time elastic Sharpe had recovered the first shock; and the order to
crowd sail on the ship galled his pride and his manhood; he muttered,
indignantly, "The white feather!" This eased his mind, and he obeyed orders
briskly as ever. While he and his hands were setting every rag the ship could
carry on that tack, the other officers, having unluckily no orders to execute,
stood gloomy and helpless, with their eyes glued, by a sort of sombre
fascination, on that coming fate.…