“Hallo there! one o’ you, tumble up and light the cabin lamp, and send that boy aft to the captain—sharp!”
“Now then, do you hear, youngster? the captain wants you. Look alive,” said Bloody Bill, raising his huge frame from the locker on which he had been asleep for the last two hours. He sprang up the ladder and I instantly followed him, and, going aft, was shown into the cabin by one of the men, who closed the door after me.
A small silver lamp which hung from a beam threw a dim soft light over the cabin, which was a small apartment, and comfortably but plainly finished. Seated on a campstool at the table, and busily engaged in examining a chart of the Pacific, was the captain, who looked up as I entered, and, in a quiet voice, bade me be seated, while he threw down his pencil, and, rising from the table, stretched himself on a sofa at the upper end of the cabin.
“Boy,” said he, looking me full in the face, “what is your name?”
“Ralph Rover,” I replied.
“Where did you come from, and how came you to be on that island? How many companions had you on it? Answer me, now, and mind you tell no lies.”
“I never tell lies,” said I, firmly.
The captain received this reply with a cold sarcastic smile, and bade me answer his questions.
I then told him the history of myself and my companions from the time we sailed till the day of his visit to the island, taking care, however, to make no mention of the Diamond Cave. After I had concluded, he was silent for a few minutes; then, looking up, he said—“Boy, I believe you.”
I was surprised at this remark, for I could not imagine why he should not believe me. However, I made no reply.
“And what,” continued the captain, “makes you think that this schooner is a pirate?”
“The black flag,” said I, “showed me what you are; and if any further proof were wanting I have had it in the brutal treatment I have received at your hands.”
The captain frowned as I spoke, but subduing his anger he continued—“Boy, you are too bold. I admit that we treated you roughly, but that was because you made us lose time and gave us a good deal of trouble. As to the black flag, that is merely a joke that my fellows play off upon people sometimes in order to frighten them. It is their humour, and does no harm. I am no pirate, boy, but a lawful trader—a rough one, I grant you, but one can’t help that in these seas, where there are so many pirates on the water and such murderous blackguards on the land. I carry on a trade in sandalwood with the Fiji Islands; and if you choose, Ralph, to behave yourself and be a good boy, I’ll take you along with me and give you a good share of the profits. You see I’m in want of an honest boy like you, to look after the cabin and keep the log, and superintend the traffic on shore sometimes. What say you, Ralph, would you like to become a sandalwood trader?”
I was much surprised by this explanation, and a good deal relieved to find that the vessel, after all, was not a pirate; but instead of replying I said, “If it be as you state, then why did you take me from my island, and why do you not now take me back?”
The captain smiled as he replied, “I took you off in anger, boy, and I’m sorry for it. I would even now take you back, but we are too far away from it. See, there it is,” he added, laying his finger on the chart, “and we are now here—fifty miles at least. It would not be fair to my men to put about now, for they have all an interest in the trade.”
I could make no reply to this; so, after a little more conversation, I agreed to become one of the crew, at least until we could reach some civilized island where I might be put ashore. The captain assented to this proposition, and after thanking him for the promise, I left the cabin and went on deck with feelings that ought to have been lighter, but which were, I could not tell why, marvellously heavy and uncomfortable still.
XXIII
Bloody Bill—Dark surmises—A strange sail, and a strange crew, and a still stranger cargo—New reasons for favouring missionaries—A murderous massacre, and thoughts thereon.
Three weeks after the conversation narrated in the last chapter, I was standing on the quarterdeck of the schooner watching the gambols of a shoal of porpoises that swam round us. It was a dead calm. One of those still, hot, sweltering days, so common in the Pacific, when Nature seems to have gone to sleep, and the only thing in water or in air that proves her still alive, is her long, deep breathing, in the swell of the mighty sea. No cloud floated in the deep blue above; no ripple broke the reflected blue below. The sun shone fiercely in the sky, and a ball of fire blazed, with almost equal power, from out the bosom of the water. So intensely still was it, and so perfectly transparent was the surface of the deep, that had it not been for the long swell already alluded to, we might have believed the surrounding universe to be a huge blue liquid ball, and our little ship the one solitary material speck in all creation, floating in the midst of it.
No sound broke on our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts, as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of
