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The Wigwag Message
by
Johnson had been aloft, but there was murder in his dark eyes when he came down at supper-time. Yet he knew its futility, and while bandaging the broken arm earnestly explained, as Breen’s groans would allow, that if he killed one the other two would kill him, and nothing would be gained. “For they’ve brass knuckles in their pockets, sir,” he said, “and pistols under their pillows. We haven’t even sheath-knives, and the crew wouldn’t help.”
Whereupon, an inspired Russian Finn of the watch remarked: “If a man know his work an’ do his work, an’ gif no back lip to te mates, he get no trupple mit te mates. In my country ships—-” The dissertation was not finished. Johnson silently knocked him down, and the incident closed.
But they found work which the crippled man could do, after a short “lying up.” With the steward’s washboard, he could wash the captain’s soiled linen, which the steward would afterward wring out and hang up. He refused at first, but was duly persuaded, and went to work in the lee scuppers amidships. Johnson made a detour on his way to the main-rigging, and muttered: “Say the word, sir, and I ‘ll chance it. No jury’d convict.”
“No, no; go aloft, Johnson. I’m all right,” answered Breen, as he bent over the distasteful task.
Johnson climbed the rigging to the main-royalyard, which he was to scrape for reoiling, and had no sooner reached it than he sang out:
“Sail oh! Dead ahead, sir. Looks like an armored cruiser o’ the first class.”
“Armored cruiser o’ the first class?” muttered the captain, as he carried his binoculars to the weather rail and looked ahead. “More ‘n I can make out with the glasses.”
If three funnels, two masts, two bridges, and two sets of fighting-tops indicate an armored cruiser of the first class, Johnson was right. These the oncoming craft showed plainly even at seven miles’ distance. Fifteen minutes later she was storming by, a half-mile to windward; a beautiful picture, long and white, with an incurving ram-bow, with buff-colored turrets and superstructure, and black guns bristling from all parts of her. The Stars and Stripes flew from the flagstaff at the stern; white-clad men swarmed about her decks, and one of them, on the forward bridge, close to a group of officers, was waving by its staff a small red-and-white flag. Captain Bacon brought out the American ensign, and with his own hands hoisted it to the monkey-gaff on the mizzen, dipped it three times in respectful salute, and left it at the gaff-end. Then he looked at the cruiser, as every man on board was doing except the man washing clothes in the lee scuppers. His business was to wash clothes, not to cross a broad deck and climb a high rail to look at passing craft; but, as he washed away, he looked furtively aloft, with eyes that sparkled, at the man on the mainroyalyard. Johnson was standing erect on the small spar, holding on with his left hand to the royal-pole,–certainly the most conspicuous detail of the whole ship to the eyes of those on board the cruiser,–and with his right hand he was waving his cap to the right and left, and up and down. There was method in his motions, for when he would cease, the small red-and-white flag on the cruiser’s bridge would answer, waving to the right and left, and up and down.
A secondary gun spoke from a midship sponson, and Captain Bacon exclaimed enthusiastically, “Salutin’ the flag,” and again dipped his ensign. Then, after an interval, during which it became apparent that the cruiser had altered her course to cross the ship’s stern, there was seen another tongue of flame and cloud of smoke, and something seemed to rush through the air ahead of the ship. But it was a splash of water far off on the lee bow which really apprised them that the gun was shotted. At the same time a string of small flags arose to the signal-yard, and when Captain Bacon had found this combination in his code-book, he read with amazement: “Heave to or take the consequences.” By this time the cruiser was squarely across his wake, most certainly rounding to for an interview.