Hunting the Skipper: The Cruise of the «Seafowl» Sloop

“Ah, do! Anything about home and the truth would be delicious here. Wish I could have an ice!”

“There you go! I say, can’t you get tired of talking?”

“No, dear boy. I suppose it is my nature to. What is a fellow to do? You won’t.”

“No, I’m too hot. I wish every slaver that sails these muddy seas was hung at the yard-arm of his own nasty rakish schooner.”

“Hee-ah, hee-ah, hee-ah! as we say in Parliament.”

“Parliament! Parler, to talk!” grunted the other. “That’s where you ought to be, Frank, and then you’d be in your element.”

“Oh, I say! I was only politely agreeing with you. That was a splendid wish. The beasts! The wretches! But somehow they don’t get their deserts. Here have we been two months on this station, and I haven’t had so much as a squint of a slaver. I don’t believe there are any. All myths or fancies – bits of imagination.”

“Oh, there are plenty of them, lad, but they know every in and out of these mangrove-infested shores, and I’ll be bound to say they are watching us day by day, and as soon as we are lost in one of these foggy hazes it’s up with their lug sails, and they glide away like – like – like – here, what do they glide away like? I’m not as clever as you. I’m at a loss for words. Give me one – something poetic, Frank.”

“Steam out of a copper.”

“Bah!”

“What, won’t that do?”

“Do? No! There – like a dream.”

“Brayvo! Werry pretty, as Sam Weller said. Oh, here’s Tommy May – Here, Tom, what do you think of the weather?” said the lad, addressing a bluff-looking seaman.

“Weather, sir?” said the man, screwing up his face till it was one maze of wrinkles. “Beg pardon, sir, but did you mean that as one of your jokes, sir, or was it a conundydrum?”

“Oh, don’t ask questions, Tom, but just tell us plainly what you think of the weather.”

“Nothing, sir; it’s too hot to think,” replied the man.

“Quite right, May,” said the other midshipman. “Don’t bother the poor fellow, Murray. Here, May, what do you fellows before the mast think about the slavers?”

“Slippery as the mud of the river banks, sir.”

“Good,” said Murray. “Well spoken, Tom. But do you think there are any about here?”

“Oh yes, sir,” said the man; “no doubt about it. They on’y want catching.”

“No, no,” cried Murray. “That’s just what they don’t want.”

“Right you are, sir; but you know what I mean.”

“I suppose so,” said Murray; “but do you chaps, when you are chewing it all over along with your quids, believe that we shall come upon any of them?”

“Oh yes, sir; but do you see, they sail in those long, low, swift schooners that can come and go where they like, while we in the Seafowl seem to be thinking about it.”

“Poor sluggish sloop of war!” said Roberts.

“Nay, nay, sir,” said the man, “begging your pardon, she’s as smart a vessel as ever I sailed in, with as fine a captain and officers, ’specially the young gentlemen.”

“Now, none of your flattering gammon, Tom.”

“Begging your pardon, gentlemen,” said the man sturdily, “that it arn’t. I says what I says, and I sticks to it, and if we only get these here blackbird catchers on the hop we’ll let ’em see what the Seafowl can do.”

“If!” said Roberts bitterly.

“Yes, sir, if. That’s it, sir, and one of these days we shall drop upon them and make them stare. We shall do it, gentlemen, you see if we shan’t.”

“That’s what we want to see, Tom,” said Murray.

“Course you do, gentlemen, and all we lads forrard are itching for it, that we are – just about half mad.”

“For prize money?” said Roberts sourly.

“Prize money, sir?” replied the man. “Why, of course, sir. It’s a Bri’sh sailor’s nature to like a bit of prize money at the end of a v’y’ge; but, begging your pardon, sir, don’t you make no mistake. There arn’t a messmate o’ mine as wouldn’t give up his prize money for the sake of overhauling a slaver and reskying a load o’ them poor black beggars. It’s horrid; that’s what it just is.”

“Quite right, May,” said Roberts.

“Thankye, sir,” said the man; “and as we was a-saying on’y last night – talking together we was as we lay out on the deck because it was too stuffycatin’ to sleep.”

“So it was, May,” said Roberts.

“Yes, sir; reg’lar stifler. Well, what we all agreed was that what we should like to do was to set the tables upside down.”

“What for?” said Murray, giving his comrade a peculiar glance from the corner of his eye.

“Why, to give the poor niggers a chance to have a pop at some of the slavers’ crews, sir, to drive ’em with the whip and make ’em work in the plantations, sir, like dumb beasts. I should like to see it, sir.”

“Well said, Tom!” cried Murray.

“Thankye, sir. But it’s slow work ketching, sir, for you see it’s their swift craft.”

“Which makes them so crafty, eh, Tom?” cried Murray.

“Yes, sir. I don’t quite understand what you mean, sir, but I suppose it’s all right, and – ”

“Sail on the lee bow!” sang out a voice from the main-top.

Chapter Two.

Bother the Fog

A minute before those words were shouted from the main-top, the low-toned conversation carried on by the two young officers, with an occasional creak or rattle from a swinging sail was all that broke the silence of the drowsy vessel; now from everywhere came the buzz of voices and the hurrying trample of feet.

“It’s just as if some one had thrust a stick into a wasp’s nest,” whispered Frank Murray to his companion, as they saw that the captain and officers had hurried up on deck to follow the two lads’ example of bringing their spy-glasses to bear upon a faintly seen sail upon the horizon, where it was plainly marked for a few minutes – long enough to be made out as a low schooner with raking masts, carrying a heavy spread of canvas, which gradually grew fainter and fainter before it died away in the silvery haze. The time was short, but quite long enough for orders to be sharply given, men to spring up aloft, and the sloop’s course to be altered, when shuddering sails began to fill out, making the Seafowl careen over lightly, and a slight foam formed on either side of the cut-water.

“That’s woke us up, Richard, my son,” said Murray.