Travel Scholarships. Jules Verne
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one among them who was naturally designated for this task was Ranyah Cogh. He lit a lantern, searched the kitchen, then the storeroom, situated under the wardroom, to which there was access through a hatch. The hold was heavily stocked in view of the round-trip voyage and would be enough even if the Alert went as far as the Pacific waters.
Ranyah Cogh found everything that was needed to satisfy the hunger of his companions, and their thirst as well: there was no shortage of brandy, whisky, and gin.
That done, Harry Markel, who had eaten his share of the meal, gave John Carpenter and the others the order to go put on the clothes owned by the sailors whose bodies were lying on the bridge. Then, they would go to sleep in some corner, while waiting to be awakened if there was reason to hoist the sails and weigh anchor.
As for Harry Markel, he was not thinking about resting at all. What seemed urgent to him was to consult the navigational charts from which he would no doubt be able to gather certain pieces of information. He entered the captain’s cabin, lit a lamp, opened the drawers with the keys taken from the pockets of poor Captain Paxton and then, after having removed certain papers, he sat behind the table, all the while maintaining his sangfroid, which had been put to the test so many times before during his life of adventure.
Ranyah Cogh inspected the storeroom.
Understandably, the various papers were in order, since the casting off was supposed to take place the next day. By consulting the crew assignment sheet, Harry Markel was able to confirm that all the sailors were present when the ship had been taken over. There was then no reason to fear that some of them, on supply duty or on leave in Queens-town, would come back on board. The crew had been massacred down to the last man.
Harry Markel, checking the cargo manifest, noticed as well that the ship was stocked with enough preserved meats, dry vegetables, hard tack, salted meats and fish, flour, etc., to allow for at least three months of navigation. As for the sum of money that the cabin’s safe contained, it came to six hundred pounds.2
Now, Harry Markel thought that he had better know about Captain Paxton’s past voyages on the Alert. In the course of their future travels, it would be important for the ship not to go back to any ports in which it had already stopped over or where its commander may be known.
With his habit of trying to foresee all eventualities, Harry Markel was not a man to shy away from the most extreme caution.
An examination of the ship’s log provided him with information he needed.
The Alert was three years old, built in Birkenhead in the yards of Simpson and Company. It had only made two voyages to India, to Bombay, Ceylon, and Calcutta, and then had returned directly to Liverpool, its port of registry. Since it had never been to the South Pacific, Harry Markel could be entirely reassured on this point. If need be, he could even pass for Captain Paxton.
Further, the captain’s previous voyages as recounted in the ship’s log also indicated that he had never made any trips to the Antilles—French, English, Dutch, Danish, or Spanish. If he had been chosen by Mrs. Seymour to take the Antillean School students to this destination and if the Alert had just been chartered for this voyage, it was uniquely upon the recommendation of a correspondent in Liverpool who answered for both the ship and the captain.
At half past midnight, Harry Markel, leaving the cabin, went up to the poop deck, where he met John Carpenter.
“Still dead calm?” he asked.
“Still,” answered the boatswain, “and no sign that the weather may change!”
Indeed, the same foggy mist was gently falling from the low clouds, stationary from one side of the horizon to the other, the same darkness on the surface of the bay, and also, the same silence that the slight sound of waves did not break. They were at riptide, not very strong at this time of the year. So the swell moved slowly across the harbor toward Cork and only came up two miles into the Lee River.
Tonight, the tide was supposed to be slack at around three o’clock in the morning, and it is then that the ebb tide would begin to be felt.
John Carpenter had good reason, of course, to curse their bad luck. With the falling tide, even if the smallest breeze had been present, and from whichever side it might blow, the Alert could have set sail, contoured the headland of Farmar Cove, reached the narrows—even if it did risk scraping a few sandbanks—and would have found itself outside Cork Harbor before sunrise. No! It was there, anchored, immobile like a buoy or a dead body, and there was no reason to expect that it could soon cast off under these conditions!
Therefore, they had no choice but to wait and continue champing at the bit, without much hope that the situation would change when the sun rose high above Farmar Cove!
Two hours passed. Neither Harry Markel nor John Carpenter nor Corty had thought to take one moment to sleep, while their companions were sleeping for the most part, stretched out at the bow along the ship’s rails. The sky’s outline was unchanging. The clouds were motionless. If at times a slight wind blew in from the sea, it stopped almost as quickly, and nothing indicated that the breeze was going to start back up again soon, either from the sea or from the shore.3
At three twenty-seven, as some luster of daylight was beginning to lighten the horizon to the east, the rowboat, driven by the ebb tide tight at the end of its rope, came to strike against the hull of the Alert, which soon began to swing on its anchor and turn its stern to the open sea.
Perhaps one could hope that the falling tide would bring a little wind from the northwest, which would have allowed the ship to leave its anchorage in order to reach Saint George’s Channel; but that hope soon dissipated. The night would end without it being possible to weigh anchor.
They took the longboat to the other side of the headland.
It was now a question of getting rid of the corpses. Previously, John Carpenter had wanted to be sure that a swirl would not group them in the middle of Farmar Cove. He and Corty descended into the rowboat and noticed that the current was running toward the headland that separated the cove from the narrows, since the ebb tide was pulling the waters in that direction.
The rowboat came back, drew alongside, across from the mainmast, and, one after the other, the bodies were placed into it.
Then, as an extra precaution, they took the rowboat to the other side of the headland, on the banks against which the current might have cast them.
John Carpenter and Corty then threw them one after the other into the tranquil water; their splashing was barely heard. The cadavers sank at first, then came back to the surface, and, caught by the ebb tide, disappeared out into the depths of the open sea.
7 The Three-Masted Schooner Alert
The Alert, a three-masted small schooner weighing four hundred and fifty tons, built, as has been stated, in the boatyards of Birkenhead, sheathed and pegged in copper, marked number 1 at the Bureau Veritas and sailing under the British flag, was getting ready to embark upon its third voyage.
After having crossed the Atlantic, passed the tip of Africa, and navigated the Indian Ocean during its first two voyages, this time it was going to head directly southwest to the Antilles, at Mrs. Seymour’s expense.
The Alert was a smooth vessel, held its sails well, possessed the remarkable qualities of fast clippers in every way. It would not take more than three weeks to travel the distance that separates Ireland from the Antilles, if the lack of wind did not cause any delays.
From its very first voyage, the Alert had as commander Captain Paxton, as mate Lieutenant Davis, as crew nine men—enough personnel to maneuver a sailboat of this tonnage. At the time of the second crossing, from Liverpool to Calcutta, the personnel had