PAGE 6
Salvage
by
They were right. Either for this reason or because of the proximity to English bottom, the steamer ceased her coyness, and her crew watched from the taffrail, while those implacable, purposeful men behind crept up to them. It was slow, laborious work; for the small windlass would not grip the heavy links of the chain, and they must needs climb out a few fathoms, making fast messengers to heave on, while the idle half of them gathered in the slackened links by hand.
On a calm, still night they finally unshipped the windlass-brakes and looked up at the round, black stern of the steamer not fifty feet ahead. They were surrounded by lights of outgoing and incoming craft, and they knew by soundings taken that day, when the steamer had slowed down for the same purpose, that they were within the hundred-fathom curve, close to the mouth of the Channel, but not within the three-mile limit. Rejoicing at the latter fact, they armed themselves to a man with belaying-pins from their still intact pin-rails, and climbed out on the cable, the whole eighteen of them, man following man, in close climbing order.
“Now, look here,” said a portly man with a gilt-bound cap to the leader of the line, as he threw a leg over the taffrail, “what’s the meaning, may I ask, of this unreasonable conduct?”
“You may ask, of course,” said the man,–it was Elisha,–“but we’d like to ask something, too” (he was sparring for time until more should arrive); “we’d like to ask why you drag us across the Atlantic Ocean against our will?”
Another man climbed aboard, and said:
“Yes; we ‘gree to steer you into New York. You’s adrif’ in de trough of de sea, an’ you got no chronometer, an’ you can’t navigate, an’ we come ‘long–under command, mind you–an’ give you our tow-line, an’ tell you de road to port. Wha’ you mean by dis?”
“Tut, tut, my colored friend!” answered the man of gilt. “You were dismasted and helpless, and I gave you a tow. It was on the high seas, and I chose the port, as I had the right.”
Another climbed on board.
“We were not helpless,” rejoined Elisha. “We had a good jury-rig under the bows, and we let it go to assist you. Are you the skipper here?”
“I am.”
Martin’s big fist smote him heavily in the face, and the blow was followed by the crash of Elisha’s belaying-pin on his head. The captain fell, and for a while lay quiet. There were four big, strong men over the rail now, and others coming. Opposing them were a second mate, an engineer, a fireman, coal-passer, watchman, steward, and cook–easy victims to these big-limbed fishermen. The rest of the crew were on duty below decks or at the steering-winch. It was a short, sharp battle; a few pistols exploded, but no one was hurt, and the firearms were captured and their owners well hammered with belaying-pins; then, binding all victims as they overcame them, the whole party raided the steering-winch and engine-room, and the piracy was complete.
But from their standpoint it was not piracy–it was resistance to piracy; and when Amos, the ex-engineer, had stopped the engines and banked the fires, they announced to the captives bound to the rail that, with all due respect for the law, national and international, they would take that distressed steamboat into New York and deliver her to the authorities, with a claim for salvage. The bargain had been made on the American coast, and their log-book not only attested this, but the well-doing of their part of the contract.
When the infuriated English captain, now recovered, had exhausted his stock of adjectives and epithets, he informed them (and he was backed by his steward and engineer) that there was neither food nor coal for the run to New York; to which Elisha replied that, if so, the foolish and destructive waste would be properly entered in the log-book, and might form the basis of a charge of barratry by the underwriters, if it turned out that any underwriters had taken a risk on a craft with such an “all-fired lunatic” for a skipper as this. But they would go back; they might be forced to burn some of the woodwork fittings (her decks were of iron) for fuel, and as for food, though their own supply of groceries was about exhausted, there were several cubic yards of salt codfish in the schooner’s hold, and this they would eat: they were used to it themselves, and science had declared that it was good brain-food–good for feeble-minded Englishmen who couldn’t splice wire nor take care of a chronometer.