The children stared at him in astonishment: what on earth was he trying to say?
But he seemed to think he had explained his mission fully: turned, and once more went below.
For hours a merry but rather tedious hubble-bubble, suggesting liquor, was heard ascending from the cabin skylight. As evening drew on, the breeze having dropped away almost to a calm, the steersman reported that both Jonsen and Otto were now fast asleep, their heads on each other’s shoulders across the cabin table. As he had long forgotten what the course was, but had been simply steering by the wind, and there was now no wind to steer by, he (the steersman) concluded the wheel could get on very well without him.
The reconciliation of the captain and the mate deserved to be celebrated by all hands with a blind.
A rum-cask was broached: and the common sailors were soon as unconscious as their betters.
Altogether this was one of the unpleasantest days the children had spent in their lives.
When dawn came, everyone was still pretty incapable, and the neglected vessel drooped uncertainly. Jonsen, still rather unsteady on his feet, his head aching and his mind Napoleonic but muddled, came on deck and looked about him. The sun had come up like a searchlight: but it was about all there was to be seen. No land was anywhere in sight, and the sea and sky seemed very uncertain as to the most becoming place to locate their mutual firmament. It was not till he had looked round and round a fair number of times that he perceived a vessel, up in what by all appearances must be sky, yet not very far distant.
For some little while he could not remember what it is a pirate captain does when he sees a sail; and he felt in no mood to overtax his brain by trying to. But after a time it came back unbidden—one gives chase.
“Give chase!” he ordered solemnly to the morning air: and then went below again and roused the mate, who roused the crew.
No one had the least idea where they were, or what kind of a craft this quarry might be: but such considerations were altogether too complicated for the moment. As the sun parted further from his reflection a breeze sprang up: so the sails were trimmed after a fashion, and chase was duly given.
In an hour or two, as the air grew clearer, it was plain their quarry was a merchant brig, not too heavily laden, and making a fair pace: a pace, indeed, which in their incompetently trimmed condition they were finding it pretty difficult to equal. Jonsen shuffled rapidly up and down the deck like a shuttle, passing his woof backwards and forwards through the real business of the ship. He was hugging himself with excitement, trying to evolve some crafty scheme of capture. The chase went on: but noon passed, the distance between the two vessels was barely, if at all, lessened. Jonsen, however, was much too optimistic to realise this.
It used to be a common device of pirates when in chase of a vessel to tow behind them a spare topmast, or some other bulky object. This would act as a drogue, or brake: and the pursued, seeing them with all sail set apparently doing their utmost, would underestimate their powers of speed. Then when night fell the pirate would haul the spar on board, overtake the other vessel rapidly, and catch it unprepared.
There were several reasons why this device was unsuitable to the present occasion. First and most obviously, it was doubtful whether, in their present condition, they were capable of overtaking the brig at all, leaving such handicaps altogether out of consideration. A second was that the brig showed no signs of alarm. She was proceeding on her voyage at her natural pace, quite unaware of the honour they were doing her.
However, Captain Jonsen was nothing if not a crafty man; and during the afternoon he gave orders for a spare spar to be towed behind as I have described. The result was that the schooner lost ground rapidly: and when night fell they were at least a couple of miles further from the brig than they had been at dawn. When night fell, of course, they hauled the spar on board and prepared for the last act. They followed the brig by compass through the hours of darkness, without catching sight of her. When morning came, all hands crowded expectantly at the rail.
But the brig was vanished. The sea was as bare as an egg.
If they were lost before, now they were double-lost. Jonsen did not know where he might be within two hundred miles; and being no sextant-man, but an incurable dead-reckoner, he had no means of finding out. This did not worry him very greatly, however, because sooner or later one of two things might happen: he might catch sight of some bit of land he recognised, or he might capture some vessel better informed than himself. Meanwhile, since he had no particular destination, one bit of sea was much the same to him as another.
The piece he was wandering in, however, was evidently out of the main track of shipping; for days went by, and weeks, without his coming even so near to effecting a capture as he had been in the case of the brig.
But Captain Jonsen was not sorry to be out of the public eye for a while. Before he had left Santa Lucia, news had reached him of the Clorinda putting into Havana; and of the fantastic tale Marpole was telling. The “twelve masked gun-ports” had amused him hugely, since he was altogether without artillery: but when he heard Marpole accused him of murdering the children—Marpole, that least reputable of skunks—his anger had broken out in one of its sudden explosions. For it was unthinkable—during those first
