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Show The Scuttled Ship In June, 1860, the brig Polly Dame, Captain Job Payson, sailed from Boston for a port in Turkey, laden with cotton goods. She was a new, taut little vessel, with plenty of storage room, and had accommodations for two passengers. The crew consisted of the captain, mate, four sailors, a black cook and a cabin boy. Captain Payson was a conscientious, just man, who treated his crew neither to jokes nor grog, but who lodged and fed them better than would five out of six of the masters sailing from New England ports. "Old Job," the mate, who was from the west, used to say, he was a "a hard man, but one you could tie to, in fair weather or foul." Dan was a farm-boy [farmboy farm boy], who knew nothing of the world beyond the village in which was his mother's church. Shipboard, the sea, Europe, Turkey, here were bewildering ideas to burst at once on his narrow experience, scarcely wider than that of the house dog sleeping at the barn-door [barn door]. "Keep your eyes open and your hands ready, to see the work of the moment and to do it before the moment is over," was his mother's last advice. "For the rest, Daniel, ask the Lord's help. You'll find Him just as near you in Turkey as in your own home here." Dan, in the hurry and excitement of his duties, repeated this advice over and over to himself. It seemed to keep his mother near him. Several days after, while he was carrying the dinner dishes into the cabin, he overheard the mate say, -- "That boy is clipper enough for a raw hand, captain?" "Aye," grunted Captain Payson; "turns out better than I expected. I took him for his mother's sake. Widow. Old friend of mine." "Rather gentlemanly fellow, this passenger?" ventured the mate, finding Captain Payson in an unusually talkative mood. "He is a gentleman, sir! One of the Farnalls, of Springfield. Ill-health. Doctor prescribed a long sea voyage. A gentleman and a scholar Mr. Briggs!" Dan, while waiting on the table at dinner, could not help noticing the passenger. "Some of these days," thought the true-born Yankee lad, "I too, shall be a gentleman and a scholar." Doctor Farnall was a tall, lean man, mustache, but with eyebrows and lashes carefully dressed, with sandy hair and almost white. His eyes, too, were large and pale. They never met the eyes of any other man fairly. Once when Dan happened to look at him, he turned quickly away, and he glanced furtively and suspiciously at the boy, at times, during the rest of the meal. "Don't like him," though Dan. "Looks sneaking and tricky, and not like a gentleman." But Dan, of course, kept his opinions to himself. Even Job, the cook, snubbed the "raw hand," and tolerated no remarks from him. Fortunately, the lad was not sea-sick. He learned his new duties quickly; was alert, neat, and always good natured. In the course of one week, Captain Payson had twice grumbled approval. Dan worked harder than ever, and between times, for recreation, when the passenger was on deck he watched him. Doctor Farnall talked fluently and brilliantly, as even Dan's uncultured mind could perceive. But his talk was leveled far above the heads of either the captain or Mr. Briggs who listened with half comprehending admiration. But there were days when the doctor was absolutely silent, ate nothing, and paced the deck wrapped in a profound gloom, his light eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side. On one of those days, Dan, going down just at twilight to find something he had left in his bunk, saw a tall figure that he could not quite recognize with a candle grouping [groping] about among the chests of the sailors. "Who's there?" he shouted. The man came quickly toward him. The candle threw a yellow glare over his set face and staring eyes. It was the passenger. He caught Dan by the sleeve. "Here, boy - what do they call you?" "Dan." "You're surprised to see me here, Dan?" with a guilty laugh. "Took me for a ghost, eh?" "I beg your pardon, sir; I oughtn't to have called to you. Shouldn't have done it if I'd known it was you. But it took me aback, sir." "Naturally. You need not be surprised at seeing me in any part of the vessel. I'm studying its construction, -- as a scientific man. Captain Payson has been good enough to give me admittance to all parts of the vessel. You needn't should in that disagreeable way again. It startles a nervous man;" and with a vague smile he blew out the candle and went up on deck, leaving Dan staring after him. "It is not all right, or why should he, bein' a gentleman, make such a long-winded explanation to me, bein' the cabin boy?" Dan said at last, shaking his head. That night, Captain Payson was along on the quarter-deck, when Dan presented himself before him and saluted. His voice shook a little, for he was terribly scared. "Old Job" was a bigger man in his eyes than any king or potentate. "Well! What's the matter with you?" growled the captain. "The-the passenger, sir." "What have you to do with the passenger?" "I beg your pardon, sir - but are you sure he isn't a thief, or - or worse?" gasped Dan, forgetting in his terror, the respectful speech he had planned, in which he simply meant to state the fact of Doctor Farnall's visit below deck. The captain seized a rope's end. "Take that for your impudence!" he shouted, aiming a blow at Dan, who dodged it, and then blurted out the whole story. "Searching among the bunks? Dr. Farnall!" muttered the captain in astonishment, dropping his weapon; and then he walked thoughtfully up and down. Suddenly he stopped before Dan. "It is well that you came to me and nobody else with the story," he said. "It is of no account. Dr. Farnall is an eccentric man. If he wishes to examine the ship in any part, he is not to be watched and spied upon. So keep your eyes to yourself; and your tongue too. If you go blabbing this story about, I'll flog you." Dan crept off to his work feeling as if he had had a sound drubbing. Tears of rage and mortification stood in his eyes. "Mother's rules do very well on land, but they don't wear on shipboard," he muttered. "But there's something that needs watching in that man, and I'll watch him." Nothing of moment happened, however, for a week. Then Dan observed that the passenger's days of fasting and depression grew more frequent. There were whole nights when he paced the deck until morning. The crew joked together about him. One declared that he was a murderer; another, that he had escaped from a lunatic asylum; but the common opinion was that he had run away from a termagent wife. "D'ye mind," said Irish Jem, "how he eyes every ship we hail, as though she might be aboard?" Dan, alone, never joined in the gossip below decks about the mystery. One day, a little incident occurred which suddenly strengthened his suspicions. Just before nightfall, when passing the after batchway, in the covering of which was a slide that could be opened and closed at will, Dan met Dr. Farnall coming up, covered with direct and dust. There was an unsteady glare in his eyes. He seized Dan by the shoulders. "Do you know where I have been," he said hoarsely. "In the lower hold, sir; among the boxes." "What d'ye think is down there, boy, -- for you and all of us? Death! Death! But tell nobody - nobody" He dropped his hold and staggered on. "Mad as a March hare!" muttered Dan. But half an hour later, Dr. Farnall was seated at the supper table, gay, self possessed, keeping the captain in a roar with his good stories. About the middle of the second watch that night, Dan turned our of his bunk. The boy was really too anxious to sleep. "Death in the hold" he repeated to himself. He did not dare to go to the captain or crew with his story. Yet he was sure that some peril was at hand. He sat shivering for awhile, then pulled on his clothes. "If Death is in the hold, I'll find him," he said. He groped his way to the after batchway unquestioned; for the mate, who had charge of the deck, was reclining listlessly against the rail farther aft where the batchway was hid from view by the cabin. The slide was open. His heart beat quick with excitement., but noiseless as a cat, Dan crept down to the lower deck, and then groped for the hatchway that opened into the lower hold. He was so certain that danger was afoot that he was not startled when he saw a faint, reddish light, and found the lower hatchway open. The hold was not so closely stowed but what one could move about in it quite freely, and lowering himself carefully, Dan saw that the light came from a lantern, and that it cast a glare directly on the face of the passenger, who was kneeling and working at something on the floor. "So that's the way Death looks, heh?" thought Dan. "He couldn't well look worse;" and he eyed the haggard ghastly face. "What grating noise is that?" he asked himself; and in the same instant he sprang forward with a cry of horror. The passenger held an auger in his hands and a saw lay beside him. He had bored a hold through the side of the vessel, below the water-line, and the water was already coming through. The boy clutched Farnall and shook him like a wild beast. "You are sinking the ship. Help! Help!" The madman turned on him quietly and nodded. "Yes, we'll all go down together. Don't make that outcry. Nobody can hear you." He had caught the boy's wrists, and held him with the unnatural strength of the insane. Nobody could hear him. Dan remembered that, and became suddenly silent. Horror and fear only made thought more vivid. Death was just at hand. There was nobody to drive it back but himself, and he was in this madman's hold. He stared into the fierce glassy eyes with an agony of hesitation. Farnall laughed back at him. "I thought of burning, but this is quietest. I want to go calming into the great hereafter. We shall all go together - in a few minutes," glancing at the stream of water gushing out of the opening. "O, mother, mother!" cried the shivering boy. "We'll all go together. Kings among the ancients went across the Styx attended by the slaves slain on their burial. I will be followed by the Yankee captain and his crew." A sudden flash lightened Dan's eye. "Not by the captain," he said. His own voice startled him, it was so calm, and in a tone so different from any in which he had spoken before, "The captain and Mr. Briggs will escape!" he cried. "Why, what do you mean?" cried Farnall. "Escape? How can they escape?" "Because they are not in the hold. They will take to the boats." "I never thought of the boats!" Dan felt a chill run over him. He tried to speak, but his voice failed. He had but one chance, and he must try it. "I will go and bring the captain and Mr. Briggs down, if you like. Then they can't get away." "Ha, ha! Pretty good joke! Well, go bring them, and be quick!" loosening his hold and pushing Dan away. Dan walked slowly to the ladder, then he made one wild spring up. "To the hold! To the hold! A leak!" he shrieked, and fell gasping to the deck. Within an hour the madman was in irons, the leak had been stopped, and the water poured[?] out of the hold. The danger was past and all snug and taut. The crew made a hero of Dan. Even Captain Payson spoke out his hearty praise: "The lad saw what was to be done, and did it. He had the courage, and what is better, good sense. Who taught you to use your wits, my boy?" "My mother, sir," said Dan. -- Companion. |