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In the King's Name: The Cruise of the "Kestrel", a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 8. Lieutenant Lipscombe Lays Down The Law |
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_ CHAPTER EIGHT. LIEUTENANT LIPSCOMBE LAYS DOWN THE LAW "Say, lads, I'm getting tired of this here," said Tom Tully, bringing himself to an anchor on a patch of sand; "I'm as hot as I am dry. Where's our orsifer?" "I d'no," said another. "Ahoy! Billy Waters, ahoy-y-y!" "Ahoy!" came from amongst the rocks; and the gunner plodded up wiping his face, and another of the little party came at the same time from the other direction. "Where's Muster Leigh?" said Tom Tully. "Isn't he along of you?" said Waters. "No, I ar'n't seen him for ever so long." Notes were compared, as the hailing brought the rest of the party together, and it was agreed on all sides that Hilary had gone in amongst the rocks close by where they were standing. "I know how it is," growled Tom Tully, "he's having a caulk under the lee of one of these here stones while we do all the hunting about; and I can't walk half so well as I used, after being shut up aboard that there little cutter." "Oh, no, he wouldn't go to sleep," said the gunner. "He's close here somewhere. I hope he's had better luck than we, for I ar'n't found nothing; have you?" "No, no," arose on all sides. "Why, there ain't nothin' to find," growled Tom Tully. "I wish I was aboard. You're chief orsifer when he ar'n't here, Billy Waters. Give the order and let's go back." "What, without Mr Leigh?" said the gunner; "that's a likely tale, that is. Here, come on lads, and let's find him. Ahoy!" "Ahoy!" came back from the rocks. "There he is," said one of the men. "No, my lads, that's only the ecker," said Billy Waters. "Hark ye-- Ahoy!" "Ahoy!" came back directly. "Hoy--hoy--hoy-y-y!" shouted the gunner again. "Hoy--hoy-y-y!" came back. "Mis' Leigh, ahoy!" roared the gunner. "Leigh--hoy!" was the response. "Told you so, my lads; he ar'n't about here. Let's go further on. Now then, Tom Tully, we must have off some o' that there tail if it's so heavy it keeps you anchored down. Get up, will you?" The sailor got up unwillingly, and in obedience to the gunner's orders they began now, in place of searching for traces of the smugglers, to look for their missing officer, scattering along, as fate had it, farther and farther from the spot where he had disappeared, no one seeing a face watching them intently through the thin wiry strands of a tuft of grass growing close up under the cliff. The heat was now intense, for the sun seemed to be reflected back from the face of the rocks, and the men were regularly fagged. They shouted and waited, and shouted again, but the only answer they got was from the echoes; and at last they stood together in a knot, with Billy Waters scratching his head with all his might, and they were a good half mile now from where Hilary had made his discovery and stepped into a trap. "Well, this here _is_ a rummy go," exclaimed the gunner, after looking from face to face for the counsel that there was not. "Let's see, my lads; it was just about here as he went forrard, warn't it?" "No," growled Tom Tully; "it were a good two-score fathom more to the east'ard." "Nay, nay, lad; it were a couple o' cables' length doo west," said another. "I think it were 'bout here," said Tom Tully; "but I can't find that there track o' the boat's keel now. What's going to be done?" "Let's go aboard again," growled Tom Tully. "I'm 'bout sick o' this here, mates." "But I tell yer we can't go aboard without our orsifer," cried the gunner. "'Taint likely." "He'd go aboard without one of us," growled Tom Tully, "so where's the difference?" "There's lots o' difference, my lad. We can't go aboard without him. But where is he?" "Having a caulk somewhere," said Tully gruffly; "and I on'y wish I were doing of that same myself. If we stop here much longer we shall be cooked like herrings. It's as hot as hot." "I tell you he wouldn't desert us and go to sleep," said the gunner stubbornly. "Mr Leigh's a lad as would stick to his men like pitch to a ball o' oakum." "Then why don't he?" growled Tom Tully in an ill-used tone. "What does he go and sail away from conwoy for?" "He couldn't have got up the cliffs," mused the gunner; "'cause there don't seem to be no way, and he couldn't have gone more to west'ard, 'cause we must have seen him. There ain't been no boats along shore, and he can't have gone back to the cutter. I say, my lads, we've been and gone and got ourselves into a reg'lar mess. What's the skipper going to say when he sees us? You see we can't tell him as the youngster's fell overboard." "No," growled Tom Tully; "'cause there ar'n't no overboard for him to fall. I'm right, I know; he's having a caulk." "Tell yer he ain't," roared Waters fiercely; "and if any one says again as my young orsifer's doing such a thing as to leave his men in the lurch and go to sleep on a hot day like this, he'll get my fist in his mouth." "Sail ho!" cried one of the men; and looking in the indicated direction, there was the cutter afloat once more, and sailing towards them, quite a couple of miles away, and as they looked there was a little puff of white smoke from her side, and a few seconds after a dull report. "Look at that now;" cried Billy Waters, "there's the skipper got some one meddling with my guns. That's that Jack Brown, that is; and he knows no more about firing a gun than he do 'bout Dutch. There was a dirty sort of a shot." "That's a signal, that is, for us to come aboard," growled Tom Tully. "Well, nobody said it warn't, did they?" cried Waters, who was regularly out of temper now. "No," growled Tom Tully, "on'y wishes I was aboard, I do." "Then you ain't going till you've found your orsifer, my lad." "Hah!" said Tom Tully, oracularly. "Shouldn't wonder if he ar'n't desarted 'cause the skipper give him such a setting down this morning." "Now just hark at this here chap," cried the gunner, appealing to the others. "He'd just go and do such a dirty thing hisself, and so he thinks every one else would do the same. Tom Tully, I'm 'bout ashamed o' you. I shouldn't ha' thought as a fellow with such a pigtail as you've got to your headpiece would say such a thing of his orsifer." "Then what call's he got to go and desart us for like this here, messmet?" growled Tom Tully. "I don't want to say no hard things o' nobody, but here's the skin off one o' my heels, and my tongue's baked; and what I says is, where is he if he ar'n't gone?" That was a poser; and as after another short search there was a second gun fired from the cutter, and a boat was seen to put off and come towards them, there was nothing for them but to go down to the water and get into the boat, after Billy Waters had taken bearings, as he called it, of the place where the young officer had left them, setting up stones for marks,--which, however, through the deceptive nature and similarity of the coast in one part to another, were above half a mile from the true spot,--and suffer themselves to be rowed aboard. "The skipper's in a fine temper," said one of the crew. "Where's Muster Leigh?" "Ah! that's just what I want to know," said Waters, ruefully. "He'll be down upon me for losing on him--just as if I took him ashore like a dog tied to a string. How did you get the cutter off?" "Easy as a glove," was the reply. "We just took out the little anchor and dropped it over, and when the tide come up hauled on it a bit, and she rode out as easy as a duck. But he's been going on savage because Muster Leigh didn't come back. Has he desarted?" The gunner turned upon him so fierce a look, and made so menacing a movement, that the man shrank away, and catching what is called a crab upset the rower behind him, the crew for the moment being thrown into confusion, just as the lieutenant had raised his spyglass to his eye and was watching the coming off of the boat. "What call had you got to do that, Billy?" cried the man, rubbing his elbows. "There'll be a row about that. Here, give way, my lads, and let's get aboard." The men made the stout ashen blades bend as they forced the boat through the water, and at the end of a few minutes the oars were turned up, laid neatly over the thwarts, and the bowman held on with the boathook while the search party tumbled on board, the sides of the cutter being at no great height above the water. The lieutenant was there, with his glass under his arm, his head tied up so that one eye was covered, and his cocked hat was rightly named in a double sense, being cocked almost off his head. "Disgraceful, Mr Leigh!" he exclaimed furiously. "You deserve to be court-martialled, sir! Never saw a boat worse manned and rowed, sir. I never saw from the most beggarly crew of a wretched merchantman worse time kept. Why, the men were catching crabs, sir, from the moment they left the shore till the moment they came alongside. Bless my commission, sir! were you all drunk?" He had one eye shut by the old accident, as we have intimated, and the injury of the previous night had so affected the other that he saw anything but clearly, as he kept stamping up and down the deck. "Do you hear, sir? I say were you all drunk?" roared the lieutenant. "Please your honour," said the gunner, "we never see a drop of anything except seawater since we went ashore." "Silence, sir! How dare you speak?" roared the lieutenant. "Insubordination and mutiny. Did I speak to you, sir? I say, did I speak to you?" "No, your honour, but--" "If you say another word I'll clap you in irons, you dog!" cried the lieutenant. "A pretty state of affairs, indeed, when men are to answer their officers. Do you hear, there, you mutinous dogs! If another man among you dares to speak I'll clap him in irons." The men exchanged glances, and there was a general hitching up of trousers along the little line in which the men were drawn up. "Now then, sir. Have the goodness to explain why you have been so long, and why all my signals for recall have been disregarded. Silence, sir! don't speak till I've done," he continued, as one of the men, who had let a little tobacco juice get too near the swallowing point, gave a sort of snorting cough. There was dead silence on board, save a slight creaking noise made by the crutch of the big boom as it swung gently and rubbed the mast. "I call upon you, Mr Leigh, sir, for an explanation," continued the lieutenant. "Silence, sir! Not yet. I sent you ashore to make a search, expecting that your good sense would lead you to make it brief, and to get back in time to assist in hauling off the cutter which you had run ashore. Instead of doing this, sir, you race off with the men like a pack of schoolboys, sir, larking about among the rocks, and utterly refusing to notice my signals, sir, though they have been flying, sir, for hours; and here have I been obliged to waste his majesty's powder, sir, and foul his majesty's guns, sir." Here, as the lieutenant's back was turned, Billy Waters shook his great fist at Jack Brown, the boatswain, going through sundry pantomimic motions to show how he, Billy Waters, would like to punch Jack Brown, the boatswain's head. To which, waiting until the lieutenant had turned and had his back to him, Jack Brown responded by taking his leg in his two hands just above the knee and shaking it in a very decisive manner at the gunner. "And what is more, sir," continued the lieutenant, "you had my gunner with you." Billy Waters, who had drawn back his fist level with his armpit in the act of striking an imaginary blow at the boatswain, stopped short as he heard himself mentioned, and the lieutenant continued his trot up and down like an angry wild beast in a narrow cage and went on: "And, sir, I had to intrust the firing of that gun to a bungling, thick-headed, stupid idiot of a fellow, who don't know muzzle from vent; and the wonder is that he didn't blow one of his majesty's liege subjects into smithereens." The lieutenant's back was now turned to Billy Waters, who as he saw Jack Brown's jaw drop placed his hands to his sides, and lifting up first one leg and then the other, as if in an agony of spasmodic delight, bent over first to starboard and then to larboard, and laughed silently till the tears ran down his cheeks. "I say, sir--I say," continued the lieutenant, pushing up his bandage a little, "that such conduct is disgraceful, sir; and what is more, I say--" The lieutenant did not finish the sentence then, for in him angry excitement he had continued his blind walk, extending it more and more till he had approached close to where the carpenter had sawn out several of the ragged planks torn by the previous night's explosion, and as he lifted his leg for another step it was right over the yawning opening into the men's quarters in the forecastle below. _ |
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