The Story of Jack Ballister's Fortunes

CHAPTER V
KIDNAPPED

AT THE END of the court the two parted, the Captain going on down to the wharf and Jack up to the Golden Fish. He found the crimp and gave him Hezekiah’s release, and then the redemptioners immediately began to make themselves ready. There was something pitiful in the meagerness of their preparation. One or two of them had nondescript bundles tied up in handkerchiefs, and one had a pair of stockings wrapped up in a piece of dirty paper. Beyond this they had nothing at all to take with them to the new world to which they were bound. But they seemed to borrow very little trouble on that score. They were very restless and turbulent at the near prospect of sailing. They had somehow contrived to obtain some liquor, and two or three of them were more than half drunk.

The crimp brought them out into the court of the inn and arranged them in some sort of order, two by two, by the dim light of the lantern. They jostled and pushed one another, and leered in the lantern light at Jack as he stood looking at them helplessly. “I’ll never be able to take them down to the wharf by myself,” said he.

“Oh, you’ll be able to take us,” said a big, bull-necked fellow; “a baby’d lead us wherever he chose for to go,” and then they all laughed.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the crimp, shaking his head as he looked them over; “like enough I’d better go with you as far as the wharf. I don’t know why he should have sent you to take ‘em, anyhow. Lookee!” said he to the huddled line of servants, in a suddenly-changed voice; “I won’t have none of your tricks, d’ye understand? D’ye see this?” and he fetched a bludgeon out of his pocket and showed it to them. “The first man as tries any of his tricks, I knocks him on the head, d’ye understand?”

“Why, master,” said one of the men, “you wouldn’t hurt us, would you? We be your lambs.”

“Never you mind,” said the crimp, shaking his head. “Don’t you go trying any of your tricks on me. Come along now, march!”

“Hurrah for the Golden Fish and Johnny Waddels!” cried out one of the men.

The others gave a broken and confused cheer as they marched away out of the court, the crimp walking beside the first couple, and Jack coming after to keep a lookout upon them. They marched along for a while, first down one street and then another until they had come to the water-front. The wind was blowing chilly. The bull-necked fellow had begun to sing. They walked along for some little distance and then crossed the street. Here the storehouses stood dark and deserted as they passed by them. At last they came to the wharf, across which the night wind swept without shelter.

“Well,” said the crimp, “I’ll leave you here. ’Tis no use my going any further.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I can manage them very well now by myself, I suppose.”

“I’ll just wait under the lee of the shed here,” said the crimp, “till I see you’re all right.”

“Very well,” said Jack. “Come along,” said he to the men as they stood shivering in their thin, ragged clothes. The bull-necked fellow had ceased his discordant singing. At Jack’s bidding they now marched out along the wharf. There were lights out in the darkness at the end of the wharf, where the sloop lay black and shapeless in the night. When Jack came to where the light was he found two dark figures standing waiting for him on the wharf. One of them was Captain Butts, the other was the man in the knit cap, who now carried a lantern hanging over his arm. There were two or three men, two of them also with lanterns, standing on the deck of the sloop. Jack knew that the boat that had brought the Captain off from the brig was lying in the darkness beyond, for he could hear the sound of voices, and then the sound of the rattle of an oar.

Captain Butts had twisted his handkerchief well up about his throat. “Well,” said he, “I thought you was never coming.”

“I came as soon as I could,” said Jack.

“Just bring the men out to the boat, across the sloop here,” said the Captain; and at Jack’s bidding the men, one after another, jumped down from the wharf to the deck of the sloop below. Jack followed them, and the Captain and the man with the lantern followed him. “Where’s your list?” said the Captain, and then, as Jack gave it to him: “Hold the lantern here, Dyce. That’s it.” He held the list to the dull light, referring to it as he counted the shivering transports who stood in line. “Sixteen – seventeen – eighteen – nineteen – nineteen all told. That’s right. Now, then, look alive, my hearties, and get aboard as quick as you can!”

Jack stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the chill night breeze. The wharf and the sloop, deserted in the night, seemed a singularly dark and lonely background to the dimly moving figures. The water, driven by the wind, splashed and dashed noisily around the end of the wharf. One by one the redemptioners clambered clumsily over the rail of the sloop and down into the boat alongside, stumbling over the thwarts in the darkness and settling themselves amid the growling and swearing of the sailors. “Are you all right?” asked the Captain.

“All right, sir,” said Dyce.

Suddenly the Captain turned sharply toward Jack. “Now, then,” said he, “you get aboard too!” Jack gaped at him. “You get aboard too!” said Captain Butts again.

“What do you mean?” said Jack.

“I mean that you’re going aboard too,” said the Captain, and as he spoke he reached out and caught Jack by the collar. “That’s why you were sent here,” said he, “and that’s what I’m bound to do. I’m bound to take you to the Americas with me.”

Then Jack saw it all in a flash. He stood for one stunned instant, and then he began struggling fiercely to loosen himself from the Captain’s grasp upon his collar. The next instant he felt himself jerked violently backward and he heard the Captain’s voice saying: “You get into the boat down there! You’ll do as I tell you, if you know what’s good for you!”

Jack twisted and struggled desperately and frantically, but still the Captain held him in a grip like a vise. “Let me go!” gasped Jack. “Let me go!”

“Into the boat, I tell ye!” he heard the Captain’s voice growling in his ear, and at the same time he found himself flung forward violently toward the rail of the sloop. The boats and the dark waters were just below. He saw dimly, his sight blurred with the fury of his struggles, the dark figures of the men in the boat below. He flung out his feet against the rail, bracing himself against the Captain’s hold; at the same time he clutched hold of the stays. “Here, Dyce, loose his hand there,” said the Captain’s voice, panting with his struggles. “The young villain! What d’ye mean, anyhow?”

The man with the knit cap sprang forward at the Captain’s bidding, and, still holding the lantern, began to pluck Jack’s fingers loose from the stays. Then suddenly Jack screamed out, “Help! – Help! – Help!” three times, and at the same time he kicked backward violently against the Captain’s shins.

“You will, will you!” wheezed the Captain. As he spoke he jerked Jack violently backward. Jack had just time to see a whirling flash in the light of the lantern. Then there came a deafening, blinding crash. Ten thousand sparkling stars flew whirling around and around him. He felt a hot stream shoot down across his face, and he knew that it was blood. There was another crash, this time duller and more distant, then a humming that droned away into stillness – then nothing.

“By blood! Captain,” said Dyce, “I believe you’ve killed the boy.”

The Captain thrust the pistol with which he had struck Jack back again into his pocket. “The young villain!” he said, panting with his late efforts. “He’ll kick me, will he? And he’d’a’ had the town down on us if I hadn’t shut his noise.” He lowered down upon Jack’s figure lying deathly still and in a dark heap on the deck. Dyce bent over the senseless form, holding the lantern to the face. Jack’s eyes were upturned. His legs and body twitched; his head was streaming with blood and his face was bloody. Captain Butts stooped over him. “Oh! he’s all right,” said he roughly; “he’ll come to by and by; he’s only stunned a trifle. Get him aboard and be quick about it! There’s somebody coming along the wharf now. Here; here’s his hat. Catch it there.”

CHAPTER VI
ABOARD THE ARUNDEL

FOR a long while Jack was very light-headed and sick. He did not seem to have any strength. It seemed to him that several days passed while he lay in his berth, now partly waking, now partly sleeping. When he was partly awake his mind seemed to wander, and he could not separate the things he now saw from the things he had seen before. Both seemed grotesque and distorted. It seemed to him that his father was nearly always with him. He had a line of Greek to construe, but he could never get the words correctly. He kept trying and trying to get the words in their proper order, but always, when he would get the line nearly correct, it would fall to pieces, and he would have to begin all over again. He felt that his father was very angry with him, and that he was driving him on to complete the line, and he felt that if he could only finish the task he would have rest and be well again. But there were three words that never would fit rightly into the line, and he never could make them fit into it. With these several fancyings there commingled the actual things about him. His father seemed to him to be waiting and waiting for him to complete his task; but at the same time he saw the sloping deck of the vessel and the berths upon the other side, and could feel the brig rising and falling and rolling upon the sea. There was ever present in his ears the sound of creaking and groaning and rattling and sliding, and there were men talking together and smoking their pipes, the pungent smell of the tobacco helping to make him feel very sick. If he could only fit these words together into the line, then his father would go away, and he would be well and could go up on deck. Oh, how his head ached! He wished he could get away from these words that would not fit into the sentence.

Then the night would come, and he would be partly asleep. Sometimes he would lie half dreaming for an hour or more, and in the darkness the things of his fancy were very real.

Very soon after he had been brought aboard he had a dim, distorted vision of Dyce, the mate, coming with a lantern to where he lay, bringing somebody along with him. It seemed to him that the two men had leaned over him talking about him while a number of other people had stood near. The man who had come with the mate must have been Sim Tucker, a thin, little man, with a long, lean chin, who was a barber-leech. Jack had felt some one trim his hair, and then do something that had hurt him very much. It seemed to be a grotesque nightmare that the barber-leech had sewed up his head. Afterward a bandage was tied around his head, and then he felt more comfortable.

Jack knew very well that it had all been a dream, and he was always surprised to wake up and find the bandage around his head.

Now and then Sim Tucker would come and speak to him. “How d’ye feel now?” he would maybe say.

“Why,” said Jack, “I would be all well if my father would only go away. But I can’t construe that sentence.”

“You can’t what!”

“I can’t get those Greek words right, and my father won’t go away.”

“Why, your father says they’re all right.”

“Does he?”

“Aye.”

“But there are those four words. They won’t fit.”

“Why, yes, they fit all right. Don’t you see?” Then it seemed to Jack that they did fit into the sentence, and for a little while he was more easy in his mind.

After a while he began to get better, and his head got clearer. Then one day he was so well that he was able to crawl up to the deck. He had not eaten anything at all and was very weak. He climbed up the companion-way and stood with his head just above the scuttle. He looked aft almost along the level of the deck. In the distance was the rise of the poop-deck, with a man at the wheel just under the over-hang. The first mate, Dyce, still wearing his knit cap pulled down half over his ears, was walking up and down the poop-deck, smoking. With the rise and fall of the vessel, Jack could catch every now and then a glimpse of the wide, troubled ocean, moving and heaving with ceaselessly restless, crawling waves, cut keenly and blackly at the sharp rim of the horizon against the gray sky. Every now and then there was a great rush of air from the vast hollow sails overhead, that swept back and forth, back and forth across the wide, windy sky. The sailors looked at him as he stood there with the bandage wrapped around his head. He began to feel very sick and dizzy with the motion of the vessel, and presently he crept down below, back to his berth again.

“Be you feeling better?” said one of the men, coming to him.

“Yes, I think I am,” said Jack, “only it makes me sick and faint-like to stand up.”

“Well, you’ve been pretty sick,” said the man, “and that’s the sacred truth. I thought the Captain had killed you for sure when I saw him hit you that second crack with the pistol. I thought he’d smashed your head in.”

Several of the other men had gathered about his berth and stood looking down at him. Jack wished they would go away. He lay quite still, with his eyes shut, and by and by they did leave him.

He felt very lonely and deserted. A great lump rose in his throat when he thought of all that had happened to him. “I have not a friend in the world,” he said to himself, and then the hot tears forced themselves out from under his eyelids.

When next he opened his eyes he saw that Sim Tucker was standing over him. “How d’ye feel now?” said the barber-leech.

“Oh, I feel better,” said Jack irritably. “I wish you’d go away and let me alone.”

“Let me look at your head,” said the leecher. He unwound the bandage deftly with his long, lean fingers. “Aye,” said he, “ye’re getting along well now. To-morrow I’ll take out them stitches. He must have hit ye with the cock of the pistol to make a great, big, nasty cut like that.”

CHAPTER VII
ACROSS THE OCEAN

THE next morning Jack was up on deck again for a while, feeling very much better and stronger than the day before. In the afternoon Mr. Dyce came down into the steerage and told him that the Captain wanted to see him.

Jack, although he was now out of his bunk, was still very weak, and not yet accustomed to the rolling heave and pitch of the vessel at sea. He followed the mate along the deck in the direction of the round-house, balancing himself upon the slanting, unsteady plane, now and then catching at the rail or at the shrouds or stays to steady himself. Everything was still very fresh and new to him, so that, even though his mind was heavy with leaden apprehension concerning the coming interview with Captain Butts – the thought which weighed down his spirit with dull imaginings – even though his mind was full of this, the freshness and newness of everything was yet strong in his consciousness – the tumultuous noise of the sea, the sun shining bright and clear, the salt wind blowing strong and cold. Every now and then a cresting wave would flash out a vivid whitecap in the sunlight against the profound green of the limitless ocean; the sky was full of clouds, and purpling shadows dappled the wide stretch of ever-moving waters. The brig, plowing its way aslant to leeward, plunged every now and then with a thunderous clap of white foam into the oncoming wave, and the broad shadows of sail and rigging swept back across the sunlit deck with the backward and forward sweep of the masts against the sky high overhead. Of all these things Jack was strongly conscious as he walked along the deck, wondering, with that dull and heavy apprehension, what Captain Butts was going to say to him.

Two men on the poop-deck were heaving the log, one of them keeping tally with a slate; a third, with a red bandana handkerchief knotted about his head, stood gripping the wheel, holding the yawing vessel steadily to its course. The man with the slate looked at Jack as he came along the deck, clinging to the rail for support.

Captain Butts was waiting in the round-house, leaning with elbows upon the table. A bottle of rum and a half-emptied tumbler stood on the table at his elbow, and the cabin was full of the strong, pungent odor of the liquor. A chart, blackened and dirty as with long use, lay spread out on the table. Part way across it stretched a black line which the Captain had drawn – probably the supposed course of the vessel – for Captain Butts sailed by dead reckoning. He looked up from under his brows as Jack entered, frowning until his partly bald forehead swelled with knotted veins, but he did not immediately say anything. Jack had come forward and stood at the end of the table. The mate, who lingered close to the door, had taken out his pipe and was filling it with tobacco. Jack did not know how pale and thin he was, how sick he looked; he was conscious only of the weakness that seemed not only to make him unsteady upon his legs, but to unnerve him of all strength of spirit. As he stood there now, facing the Captain, he felt an hysterical choking in his throat, and he swallowed and swallowed upon the hard, dry lump that seemed to be there.

“Well, my hearty,” said the Captain, breaking the silence at last with his hoarse, rattling voice, “well, my hearty, you got your dose that time, or else I’m mistook. By Blood!” he continued with sudden savageness, “I’ll teach you to play with Benny Butts, I will, and to kick at his shins. By Blood! When you’re dealing with me, you’re not dealing with your poor old uncle as ye can bully and blatherskite as you please. By Blood! I’ll break your back if you go trying any of your airs with me, I will.” And as his anger rose with his own words, he opened his eyes wide and glared upon his victim. Jack did not dare to reply. He stood looking down, holding tight to the edge of the table and striving to balance himself to the lurching of the ship.

“Your uncle told me all about you, he did,” said Captain Butts, beginning again; “how you threatened him with the law and tried to make mischief atwixt him and your t’other folks. He told me how you stole his money away from him for to – ”

“I never stole a farthing in my life,” said Jack hoarsely.

“D’ye give me back talk?” roared the Captain, smiting his palm upon the table. “By Blood! if ye answer me any of your back talk, I’ll clap ye in irons as quick as look at ye. I say ye did steal money from your uncle.” Again he glared at Jack as though defying him to reply, and Jack, conscious of his utter powerlessness, did not venture to answer. “I say ye did steal money from your uncle,” repeated the Captain, “and that again and again. He might have sent ye to jail had he been so minded, and maybe he would ha’ done so only for the shame o’ the thing. Now I tell ye what you’re going to do. You ‘re going to the Americas to be put to work under a master who’ll keep you out o’ mischief for five years. That’s what you’re going to do. After you’ve served out your five years in the Americas under a master, why, then, maybe, you’ll know how to behave yourself arter you get back home again.”

The brig gave a sudden heaving lurch that sent the bottle and glass sliding across the table. The Captain caught them with a quick sweep of his hand, while Jack, losing his balance, partly fell, partly sat abruptly down upon the seat beside him. He was up again almost instantly and stood once more holding by the side of the table.

“Now, you listen to what I say. You behave yourself decent while you’re aboard this here brig, and you’ll be treated decent, but you go a makin’ any trouble for me, and by Blood! I’ll clap you in irons, I will, and I’ll lay ye down in the hold, and there ye’ll stay till we drop anchor in Yorktown. D’ye hear that?”

Jack nodded his head.

“Well, then, if ye hear me, why don’t ye answer me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack.

“Very well, then, you go and remember what I’ve said.”

Jack, so dismissed, went out of the round-house and into the wide, bright sunlight again. Nor was it until he had returned half way back across the slanting deck that anything like a full realization of his fate came upon him. Then suddenly it did seize upon him, gripping him almost like a physical pang. He stopped short and caught at the foremast stays under that sudden grip of despair, and bent leaning over the rail of the ship. Then, in an instant the sky and the ocean blurred together and were lost in the blinding flood, and hot tears went raining down his face in streams. He stood there for a long time facing the ocean and crying. No one knew what he was doing, and he was as much alone as though he stood all by himself in the midst of the empty universe, instead of aboard a brig with footsteps passing around him and the grumbling growl of men’s voices as they talked together sounding in his ears.

It had seemed to Jack at that time, when he stood there crying out into the face of the sea and the sky, as though life had no hope and no joy, and as though he never could be happy again. It was not so, however, and it never is so. We grow used to every sorrow and trouble that comes to us. Even by the next day he had begun to grow accustomed to the thought of his fate. He awoke to an immediate consciousness of it, and all day it stood there, a big, looming background to the passing events of his life, while he helped the other redemptioners wash down the decks, pattering about in the wet with his bare feet in the slushing slop of water; all the while he stood leaning over the rail, dumbly joying in the consciousness of the sweep and rush of wind and water – looking out astern of the vessel at the wake that spread away behind, over which hovered and dipped and skimmed the little black Mother Carey’s chickens. In all the things of his life it was thus present with him, but he did not again suffer a despair so poignant and so bitter as had struck him down that time he had stood there crying out toward the sky and the ocean with his back to the ship’s company. So it is that time so quickly wears away the sharp edges of trouble, until it grows so dull and blunted that it no longer hurts.

The crew had come somehow to know something of Jack’s history. The first day he was out on deck after a spell of stormy weather into which the Arundel sailed, Tom Roberts, the carpenter, asked him if he had not an uncle as was a lord. “He’s a baronet,” said Jack, and Roberts said he knowed he was summat of the kind. The same day, as Jack was standing in line with the others waiting for his dinner to be served out to him, the carpenter passed close to him with a wink. “You come over along o’ we,” he said, “and you shall have a taste o’ grog with your victuals,” and Jack, after a hesitating moment, had, with a feeling of gratification and pleasure, followed him over to the forecastle scuttle, where a part of the crew sat eating in the sunshine that shone aslant under the foresail. After that he nearly always messed with the crew, and by the end of the voyage it had become a regularly established thing for him to do so.

Some of the crew had either lived in the Colonies, or had sailed from one to the other in coasting vessels, and Jack learned much about his future home from them. Roberts himself had lived for two years as ship-carpenter in Boston, in the province of Massachusetts, and one of the men, named Dred – Christian Dred – had lived for a while in North Carolina with Blackbeard, the famous pirate. He had been one of the pirate’s men, and had sailed with the renowned freebooter in his famous ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

During the voyage Jack became better acquainted with Dred than with any one aboard the Arundel, and before they had reached Virginia the two had become very intimate. Dred was a silent, taciturn man, speaking but rarely to any one and saying what he had to say in as few words as possible. But he seemed pleased with Jack’s friendship. He questioned Jack much as to his former life, and in return told a good deal about himself. He said he had left Blackbeard the year before and had surrendered upon the King’s Proclamation of Pardon. He always carried his pardon about with him rolled up in oil-skin and hung about his neck by a bit of string, and he showed it to Jack one day, unrolling the oil-skin very carefully and gingerly, and then rolling it up again with just as particular care as he had opened it. He told Jack that after he had surrendered to the Pardon, Blackbeard and others of the pirates had also surrendered. He said that Blackbeard was now living on a farm down at Bath Town, in North Carolina, and had married a fine young “gell” of sixteen or thereabouts. He once told Jack that he had begun his “h – cruising,” as he called it, when he had sailed from New York in a “Red Sea Trader” in ‘95, and that ever since then he had “smelled brimstone.”

(The Red Sea Traders, it may be explained, were those who carried supplies of stores, chiefly of rum and gunpowder, to the pirates who then so infested the west coast of Africa, exchanging their commodities for plunder captured by those freebooters.)

Dred told Jack that he was only eighteen years old when he had sailed in the Red Sea trade. “Not much older than you be now,” he added.

Once, when Dred was overhauling his gunny-bag, he brought out a string of a dozen or so jingling coins hung on a bit of silver wire. He held the trinket out at arm’s length. “D’ye see this here string o’ money?” said he; “I gave that to a Spanish gell once down in Port Royal, Jamaicy, and what’s more, I took it off of her neck again arter she had died of yellow fever, and no one else’ld go nigh her.”

Jack grew to like Dred very heartily. He did not think of him as being a red-handed and wicked pirate. It did not seem to him that his new friend was, after all, very different from other men – excepting that he had had very wonderful adventures happen to him.

And yet Dred was indeed a red-handed pirate.

It was toward the latter part of the voyage that he told Jack the story of the taking of the English ship that Blackbeard afterward used as the flag-ship of his pirate fleet, and which became so famous under the name of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Dred’s was almost the most important part in that tragedy. He told the story almost naïvely, and did not at all seem to appreciate the significance of what he had done.

They – the pirates – had, he said, been cruising in the West Indies. Then they sailed northward until they came to Charleston. (Here he told incidentally how they had blockaded the town for over a week, stopping and searching all incoming and outgoing vessels, and how they had even gone up boldly into the town in search of a chest of medicine.) After they had left Charleston, they had, he said, cruised away off shore with two sloops and a bark which they had taken. They “made no purchase,” as he phrased it, until one morning they sighted a sail, which proved to be an armed ship of some six or seven hundred tons burden, bound apparently for the Chesapeake Capes.

When they had come to within hailing distance of the vessel they ordered her to heave to. But she would not, and there was some exchange of shots before she would finally surrender. The ship had only one passenger aboard, a young Virginia gentleman, Mr. Edward Parker, who had been to college in England and who was now returning home, having finished his education. Dred said that the supercargo, on being threatened by Blackbeard, told the pirates that the young gentleman had in his charge a valuable chest of money and of goldsmiths’ bills of exchange. On hearing this Blackbeard and two or three of the pirates ran aft to the cabin, only to find that the young gentleman had locked himself in and refused to come out.

After some parleying the pirates tried to break in the door, but it was braced from within, and the young gentleman at once began firing at them through the panels. Two of the pirates were shot. “One on ‘em,” said Dred, “was Abraham Dolling, and he was shot that bad through the neck that we had to hale him off by the legs, and he died a little bit after just at the bottom of the poop ladder.”

His own part in the tragedy that followed Dred told somewhat thus:

“Seein’ as how we was makin’ nothing of it at all by the way we was doing, I climbs up on the poop-deck, thinking maybe to get a sight of my young gentleman through the sky-light. But no; he had blocked up the sky-light with mattresses from the captain’s berth. So then I went across the poop-deck to the stern falls. The boat had been shot away from the lee davit by our fire, and the lines hung loose from the falls over the stern. I lashed two on ‘em together and let myself down from the davits with one hand, holding my pistol with t’ other. I eased myself to one side until I was low enough, and then I peeped in at the stern window. There I could see my young gentleman off beyond in the captain’s cabin standing close by the door, and I can see him now as plain as I can see this here hand o’ mine. He had pulled a couple of sea chists to the door, and he had a plank from the captain’s berth set agin ‘em and propped agin the braces of the table. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he had a pistol in each hand. The captain o’ the ship was a’ talkin’ to him from t’ other side of the door, telling him he’d better gin up and surrender the money, and I could hear my young gentleman swearing by all that was holy that he would never gin up the money. He had his head turned to one side, and he didn’t see me, so I crawled in through the window. But I’d no more ‘n set foot on deck than all on a sudden he wheels around like a flash, and afore I knowed what he was at – Bang! – he fires his pistol fair for my head. I felt the wind of the ball and it smashed into a chiny closet just behind me. Then, seeing he had missed me, he ups with t’ other pistol and arter that ’twas either him or me. So I let fly, and down he went all of a heap acrost the chist afore the door.”