But while he spoke he wore a preoccupied expression, as if he were more concerned with what was going on at the back of his mind than with what went on in the front.
“Did you ever hear about what happened when the first steamer put to sea in the Gulf of Paria?” he asked, however.
“No, what?” asked Margaret, with an eagerness that even exceeded the necessities of politeness in its falsity.
“She was built on the Clyde, and sailed over. (Nobody thought of using steam for a long ocean voyage in those days.) The Company thought they ought to make a todo — to popularize her, so to speak. So the first time she put to sea under her own power, they invited all the bigwigs on board: all the Members of Assembly in Trinidad, and the Governor and his Staff, and a Bishop. It was the Bishop what did the trick.”
His story died out: he became completely absorbed in watching sidelong the effect of his bravado on the captain.
“Did what?” asked Margaret.
“Ran ’em aground.”
“But what did they let him steer for?” asked Edward. “They might have known he couldn’t!”
“Edward! How dare you talk about a Bishop in that rude way!” admonished Rachel.
“It wasn’t the steamer he ran aground, sonny,” said the mate: “it was a poor innocent little devil of a pirate craft, that was just beating up for the Boca Grande in a northerly breeze.”
“Good for him!” said Edward. “How did he do it?”
“They were all sea-sick, being on a steamer for the first time: the way she rolls, not like a decent sailing-vessel. There wasn’t a man who could stay on deck — except the Bishop, and he just thrived on it. So when the poor little pirate cut under her bows, and seen her coming up in the eye of the wind, no sail set, with a cloud of smoke amidships and an old Bishop bung in the middle of the smoke, and her paddles making as much turmoil as a whale trying to scratch a flea in its ear, he just beached his vessel and took to the woods. Never went to sea again, he didn’t; started growing cocoa-nuts. But there was one poor fish was in such a hurry he broke his leg, and they came ashore and found him. When he saw the Bishop coming for him he started yelling out it was the Devil.”
“O-oh!” gasped Rachel, horror-struck.
“How silly of him,” said Edward.
“I don’t know so much!” said the mate. “He wasn’t too far wrong! Ever since that, they’ve been the death of our profession, Steam and the Church…what with steaming, and what with preaching, and steaming and preaching…. Now that’s a funny thing,” he broke off, suddenly interested by what he was saying: “ Steam and the Church ! What have they got in common, eh? Nothing, you’d say: you’d think they’d fight each other cat-anddog: but no: they’re thick as two thieves…thick as thieves. — Not like in the days of Parson Audain.”
“Who was he?” asked Margaret helpfully.
“He was a right sort of a parson, he was, yn wyr iawn !
He was Rector of Roseau — oh, a long time back.”
“Here! Come and take this wheel while I have a spell!” grunted the captain.
“I couldn’t well say how long back,” continued the mate in a loud, unnatural, and now slightly exultant voice: “forty years or more.”
He began to tell the story of the famous Rector of Roseau: one of the finest pathetic preachers of his age, according to contemporaries; whose appearance was fine, gentle, and venerable, and who supplemented his stipend by owning a small privateer.
“Here! Otto!” called Jonsen.
But the mate had a long recital of the parson’s misfortunes before him: beginning with the capture of his schooner (while smuggling negroes to Guadaloupe) by another privateer, from Nevis; and how the parson went to Nevis, posted his rival’s name on the court-house door, and stood on guard there with loaded pistols for three days in the hope the man would come and challenge him.
“What, to fight a duel ?” asked Harry.
“But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said?” asked Emily.
But duels, it appeared, did not come amiss to this priest. He fought thirteen altogether in his life, the mate told them: and on one occasion, while waiting for the seconds to reload, he went up to his opponent, suggested “just a little something to fill in time, good sir”—and knocked him flat with his fist.
This time, however, his enemy lay low: so he fitted out a second schooner, and took command of her, week-days, himself. His first quarry was an apparently harmless Spanish merchantman: but she suddenly opened fourteen masked gun-ports and it was he who had to surrender. All his crew were massacred but himself and his carpenter, who hid behind a water-cask all night.
“But I don’t understand,” said Margaret: “was he a pirate?”
“Of course he was!” said Otto the mate.
“Then why did you say he was a clergyman?” pursued Emily.
The mate looked as puzzled as she did. “Well, he was Rector of Roseau, wasn’t he? And B.A., B.D.? Anyway, he was Rector until the new Governor listened to some cockand-bull story against him, and made him resign. He was the best preacher they ever had — he’d have been a Bishop one day, if some one hadn’t slandered him to the Governor!”
“Otto!” called the captain in a conciliatory voice. “Come over here, I want to speak to you.”
But the deaf and exulting mate had plenty of his story still to run: how Audain now turned trader, and took a cargo of corn to San Domingo, and settled there: how he challenged two black generals to a duel, and shot them both, and Christophe threatened to hang him if they died. But the parson (having little faith in Domingan doctors) escaped by night in an open boat and went to St. Eustatius. There he found many religions but no ministers; so he recommenced clergyman of every kind: in the morning he celebrated a mass for the Catholics, then a Lutheran service in Dutch, then Church of England matins: in the evening he sang hymns and preached hellfire to the Methodists. Meanwhile his wife, who had more tranquil tastes, lived at Bristoclass="underline" so he now married a Dutch widow, resourcefully conducting the ceremony himself.
“But I don’t understand!” said Emily despairingly: “Was he a real clergyman?”
“Of course he wasn’t,” said Margaret.
“But he couldn’t have married himself himself if he wasn’t,” argued Edward. “Could he?”
The mate heaved a sigh.
“But the English Church aren’t like that nowadays,” he said. “They’re all against us.”
“I should think not, indeed!” pronounced Rachel slowly, in a deep indignant voice. “He was a very wicked man!”
“He was a most respectable person,” replied the mate severely, “and a wonderful pathetic preacher! — You may take it they were chagrined at Roseau, when they heard St. Eustatius had got him!”
Captain Jonsen had lashed the wheel, and came up, his face piteous with distress.
“Otto! Mein Schatz…!” he began, laying his great bear’s-arm round the mate’s neck. Without more ado they went below together, and a sailor came aft unbidden and took the wheel.
Ten minutes later the mate reappeared on deck for a moment, and sought out the children.
“What’s the captain been saying to you?” he asked. “Flashed out at you about something, did he?”
He took their complex, uncomfortable silence for assent.
“Don’t you take too much notice of what he says,” he went on. “He flashes out like that sometimes; but a minute after he could eat himself, fair eat himself!”
The children stared at him in astonishment: what on earth was he trying to say?