The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
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other door that he had seen. Having found it and located the handle, he rapped sharply but not too loudly.
“Well?” demanded a gruff voice from within.
Osmond turned the handle, and, as a stream of light issued from the opening door, he entered hastily and closed it behind him. He found himself in a small cabin lighted by a candle-lamp that swung in gimballs from the bulkhead. One side was occupied by a bunk in which reclined a small, elderly man, who appeared to have been reading, for he held an open volume, which Osmond observed with some surprise to be Applin’s Commentary On the Book of Job. His head was roughly bandaged and he wore his left arm in a primitive sling.
“Well,” he repeated, taking off his spectacles to look at Osmond.
“You are the captain, I presume?” said Osmond.
“Yes. Name of Hartup. Who are you?”
Osmond briefly explained the circumstances of his arrival on board.
“Ah!” said the captain. “I wondered who was boring those holes when I went into the cabin just now. Well, you’ve put your head into a hornet’s nest, young man.”
“Yes,” said Osmond “and I’m going to keep it there until I’m paid to take it out.”
The captain smiled sourly. “You are like my mate, Will Redford; very like him you are to look at, and the same quarrelsome disposition, apparently.”
“Where is the mate now?”
“Overboard,” replied the captain. “He got flourishing a revolver and the second mate stabbed him.”
“Is the second mate’s name Dhoody?”
“Yes. But he’s only a substitute. The proper second mate died up at Sherbro, so I promoted Dhoody from before the mast.”
“I take it that your crew have mutinied?”
“Yes,” said the captain, placidly. “There is over a ton of ivory on board and two hundred ounces of gold dust in that chest that you are sitting on. It was a great temptation. Dhoody began it and Redford made it worse by bullying.”
“Dhoody seems to be a tough customer.”
“Very,” said the captain. “A violent man. A man of wrath. I am surprised that he didn’t make an end of you.”
“So is he, I expect,” Osmond replied with a grin; “and I hope to give him one or two more surprises before we part. What are you going to do?”
The captain sighed. “We are in the hands of Providence,” said he.
“You’ll be in the hands of Davy Jones if you don’t look out,” said Osmond. “They are going to scuttle the ship when they get to Ambriz. Can I get anything to eat?”
“There is corned pork and biscuit in that locker,” said the captain “and water and limes on the cabin table. No intoxicants. This is a temperance ship.”
Osmond smiled grimly as a wild chorus from above burst out as if in commentary on the captain’s statement. But he made no remark. Corned pork was better than discussion just now.
“You seem to have been in the wars,” he remarked, glancing at the skipper’s bandaged head and arm.
“Yes. Fell down the companion; at least, Dhoody shoved me down. I’ll get you to fix a new dressing on my arm when you’ve finished eating. You’ll find some lint and rubber plaster in the medicine chest there.”
“By the way,” said Osmond, as he cracked a biscuit on his knee, “there’s a woman in the next berth. Sounded like quite a ladylike person, too. Who is she?”
The captain shook his head. “Yes,” he groaned, “there’s another complication. She is a Miss Burleigh; daughter of Sir Hector Burleigh, the Administrator or Acting Governor, or something of the sort, of the Gold Coast.”
“But what the deuce is she doing on an old rattle trap of a windjammer like this?”
The captain sat up with a jerk. “I’ll trouble you, young man,” he said, severely, “to express yourself with more decorum. I am the owner of this vessel, and if she is good enough for me she will have to be good enough for you. Nobody asked you to come aboard, you know.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Osmond. “Didn’t mean to give offence. But you’ll admit that she isn’t cut out for the high-class passenger trade.”
“She is not,” Captain Hartup agreed, “and that is what I pointed out to the young woman when she asked for a passage from Axim to Accra. I told her we had no accommodation for females, but she just giggled and said that didn’t matter. She is a very self-willed young woman.”
“But why didn’t she take a passage on a steamer?”
“There was no steamer due for the Leeward Coast. Her father, Sir Hector, tried to put her off; but she would have her own way. Said it would be a bit of an adventure; travelling on a sailing ship.”
“Gad! She was right there,” remarked Osmond.
“She was, indeed. Well, she came aboard and Redford gave her his berth, he moving into the second mate’s berth, as Dhoody remained in the forecastle. And there she is; and I wish she was at Jericho.”
“I expect she does, too. What happened to her when the mutiny broke out?”
“I told her to go to her berth and lock herself in. But no one attempted to molest her.”
“I am glad to hear that,” said Osmond, and as he broke another biscuit, he asked: “Did you secure the companion-hatch?”
“Miss Burleigh did. She fixed the bar across the inside of the doors. But it wasn’t necessary, for they had barricaded the doors outside. They didn’t want to come down to us, they only wanted to prevent us from going up on deck.”
“She was wise to bolt the doors, all the same,” said Osmond; and for a time there was silence in the cabin, broken only by the vigorous mastication of stony biscuit.
CHAPTER IV
The Phantom Mate
When he had finished his rough and hasty meal, Osmond attended to his host’s injuries, securing a pad of lint on the lacerated arm with strips cut from a broad roll of the sticky rubber plaster. Then he went out into the cabin to reconnoitre and take a drink of water, closing the door of the captain’s berth so that the light should not be seen from above.
The hubbub on deck had now subsided into occasional snatches of indistinct melody. The men had had a pretty long bout and were—to judge by the tone of the songs—getting drowsy. Osmond climbed on to the table and began carefully to pick the remainder of the glass out of the skylight frame. The skylight had a fixed top—there being a separate ventilator for the cabin—and, instead of the usual guard-bars, had loose wood shutters for use in bad weather. Hence the present catastrophe; and hence, when Osmond had picked away the remains of the glass, there was a clear opening through which he could, by hoisting himself up, thrust out his head and shoulders. To avoid this fatiguing position, however, he descended and placed on the table a case that he had noticed by daylight on a side-locker; then, mounting, he was able, by standing on this, to look out at his ease, and yet pop down out of sight if necessary.
When he cautiously thrust out his head to look up and down the deck, he was able at first to see very little, though there was now a moderate starlight. Forward, whence drowsy mumblings mingled with snores came from the neighbourhood of the caboose, he could see only a projecting pair of feet; and aft, where a single voice carolled huskily intervals, his view was cut off by the boat—which lay at the side of the deck—and by the hood of the companion-hatch. He craned out farther; and now he could catch a glimpse of the man at the wheel. The fellow was not taking his duties very seriously, for he was seated on the grating unhandily filling his pipe and letting the ship steer herself; which she did well enough, if direction was of no consequence, the light