“And she goes well, too, under sail,” continued the quartermaster; “close to the wind, and she’s easily steered. Now that ship is going to the polar seas, or my name is not Cornhill. And then, see there! Do you notice that large helm-port over the head of her rudder?”
“That’s so,” said some of the sailors; “but what does that prove?”
“That proves, my men,” replied the quartermaster with a scornful smile, “that you can neither see nor think; it proves that they wanted to leave the head of the rudder free, so that it might be unshipped and shipped again easily. Don’t you know that’s what they have to do very often in the ice?”
“You are right,” answered the sailors of the Nautilus.
“And besides,” said one, “the lading of the brig goes to prove what Mr. Cornhill has said. I heard it from Clifton, who has shipped on her. The Forward carries provisions for five or six years, and coal in proportion. Coal and provisions are all she carries, and a quantity of woollen and sealskin clothing.”
“Well,” said Mr. Cornhill, “there’s no doubt about it. But, my friend, since you know Clifton, hasn’t he told you where she’s bound?”
“He couldn’t tell me, for he didn’t know; the whole crew was shipped in that way. Where is he going? He won’t know till he gets there.”
“Nor yet if they are going to Davy Jones’s locker,” said one scoffer, “as it seems to me they are.”
“But then, their pay,” continued the friend of Clifton enthusiastically—“their pay! it’s five times what a sailor usually gets. If it had not been for that, Richard Shandon would not have got a man. A strangely shaped boat, going no one knows where, and as if it never intended coming back! As for me, I should not have cared to ship in her.”
“Whether you would or not,” answered Mr. Cornhill, “you could never have shipped in the Forward.”
“Why not?”
“Because you would not have answered the conditions. I heard that married men were not taken. Now you belong to that class. So you need not say what you would or would not do, since it’s all breath thrown away.”
The sailor who was thus snubbed burst out laughing, as did his companions, showing in this way that Mr. Cornhill’s remarks were true.
“There’s nothing but boldness about the ship,” continued Cornhill, well pleased with himself. “The Forward—forward to what? Without saying that nobody knows who her captain is.”
“Oh, yes, they do!” said a young sailor, evidently a green-hand.
“What! They do know?”
“Of course.”
“My young friend,” said Cornhill, “do you think Shandon is the captain of the Forward?”
“Why—” answered the boy.
“Shandon is only the mate, nothing else; he’s a good and brave sailor, an old whaler, a good fellow, able to take command, but he’s not the captain; he’s no more captain than you or I. And who, under God, is going to have charge of the ship, he does not know in the least. At the proper time the captain will come aboard, I don’t know how, and I don’t know where; for Richard Shandon didn’t tell me, nor has he leave to tell me in what direction he was first to sail.”
“Still, Mr. Cornhill,” said the young sailor, “I can tell you that there’s someone on board, someone who was spoken of in the letter in which Mr. Shandon was offered the place of mate.”
“What!” answered Cornhill, “do you mean to tell me that the Forward has a captain on board?”
“Yes, Mr. Cornhill.”
“You tell me that?”
“Certainly, for I heard it from Johnson, the boatswain.”
“Boatswain Johnson?”
“Yes, he told me himself.”
“Johnson told you?”
“Not only did he tell me, but he showed him to me.”
“He showed him to you!” answered Cornhill in amazement.
“He showed him to me.”
“And you saw him?”
“I saw him with my own eyes.”
“And who is it?”
“It’s a dog.”
“A dog?”
“A four-footed dog?”
“Yes.”
The surprise of the sailors of the Nautilus was great. Under any other circumstances they would have burst out laughing. A dog captain of a one hundred and seventy ton brig! It was certainly amusing enough. But the Forward was such an extraordinary ship, that one thought twice before laughing, and before contradicting it. Besides, Quartermaster Cornhill showed no signs of laughing.
“And Johnson showed you that new sort of captain, a dog?” he said to the young sailor. “And you saw him?”
“As plainly as I see you, with all respect.”
“Well, what do you think of that?” asked the sailors, turning to Cornhill.
“I don’t think anything,” he answered curtly, “except that the Forward is a ship of the Devil, or of fools fit for Bedlam.”
Without saying more, the sailors continued to gaze at the Forward, which was now almost ready to depart; and there was no one of them who presumed to say that Johnson, the boatswain, had been making fun of the young sailor.
This story of the dog had already spread through the city, and in the crowd of sightseers there were many looking for the captain-dog, who were inclined to believe that he was some supernatural animal.
Besides, for many months the Forward had been attracting the public attention; the singularity of its build, the mystery which enshrouded it, the incognito maintained by the captain, the manner in which Richard Shandon received the proposition of superintending its outfit, the careful selection of the crew, its unknown destination, scarcely conjectured by any—all combined to give this brig a reputation of something more than strangeness.
For a thoughtful, dreamy mind, for a philosopher, there is hardly anything more touching than the departure of a ship; the imagination is ready to follow her in her struggles with the waves, her contests with the winds, in her perilous course, which does not always end in port; and if only there is something unusual about her, the ship appears like something
