The forecastle hatch was open, though it slid back and forth with the unenthusiastic pitching of the vessel. Adam wetted his lips.
"Ahoy down there!"
There was no answer.
I croak like a tarnation frog, he told himself.
He looked around. Everything was still. Holding the rapier point low, his hand sticky with sweat now, he stepped into the hatch and started down the ladder.
Not much sunlight, and none of it direct, got into the forecastle. He had a hard time even seeing the bulkheads, at first.
There were six bunks. Allowing that there was room for two men to sleep on the deck between the rows of bunks, and allowing, too, for two watches, that could mean a crew of sixteen.
Four of the bunks he could see clearly, once his eyes got used to the gloom. They were utterly empty—no bedding, nothing.
He had started toward the two darker bunks, which were located far up in the bows, one on either side—when the slide was slammed over the hatch.
It was as if a lamp had been blown out. The forecastle was thrown into utter darkness.
Adam scrabbled up the ladder, hurled himself against the slide. He might have been screaming. He'd lost all control of himself.
The slide went back, and once again he was bathed in sunshine.
The slide opened, closed, opened again, as the brig lolled in a warm and friendly sea. Aboard of the Goodwill they saw him again, and waved.
He exhaled, sobbing, exasperated. He wiped his face, sheathed his sword. If it had been possible to march down a perpendicular ladder he would have marched back into that forecastle; but anyway he did go back there, and searched every inch of it.
And he found nothing. There wasn't so much as a shred of clothing, a grain of tobacco, a candle stub.
Going aft, the cargo hatch was next, amidships; but though it was not battened down, it was in place, and too heavy for one man to move, so he passed it by and went to the cabin.
This hatch was small and opened like a door, for a foot or so of the cabin was above the level of the deck. The hatch was not fastened, but it was stuck. It came free at last with a clack.
It was not until then that he realized what had happened.
His nose told him, and then his stomach, which wambled. There was no smoke to see, yet the cabin reeked of smoke. There was no flame, but it smelled of burnt wood. The air that came out was hot, angry, and it caused him to cough, and stung his eyes.
He did not go down, being afraid that he might keel over, but he did hold his breath and stick his head in. The cabin was not so dark as the forecastle, and being square it was easier to scan. It was black—black from smoke, probably, rather than from fire, though there had been a fire. The only objects were a table, which being fastened to the deck couldn't be moved, and some charred corners of mattresses.
Adam withdrew his head and gratefully breathed real air. It was, he reflected somberly, like coming up out of Hell. He closed the hatch. Let air circulate in there and the fire might yet break out again. It should be thoroughly wetted down first.
Well, it was plain what had happened. Coasters had caught this brig off Cuba, as a few months ago they had almost caught Goodwill. They had butchered everyone aboard and tossed the bodies overside. They had stripped the vessel of everything movable, except, inexplicably, that one jib. They had set fire to a pile of bedding in the cabin and had departed for their own shore, confident that the flames would eat all traces of their crime.
The jib, gallantly if not speedily, had carried the brig away from the shore at the same time that their oars had pushed the coasters in. When no flames showed, the coasters must have deduced what had happened: the hatch had been rocked shut by the motion of the vessel, had got stuck there, and had kept air from the cabin, so that the fire smudged itself out, choked. By the time they learned this it had been too late for the coasters to do anything about it. It had probably been night then, and the brig had been standing well out to sea; while the coasters, already gorged with loot, and possibly not liking the looks of the weather, did not care to venture too far from their beach.
"Are— Are you all right, sir?"
Adam went to the gunwale and looked down at the honest anxious face of Abel Rellison. It touched him to see the boy there. He swallowed.
"I'm all right," he muttered. He nodded toward the schooner. "Tell 'em we've catched a prize. And fetch 'em, one by one. And fetch writing materials, too.
"What happened to the crew, sir?"
"It's best not to think about that."
The man from London saw his skipper come up, strapping on a sword, and he swallowed in nervousness. He was a lonely little man, this Willis Beach. Slum streets had been his hearth, his parents pickpockets, and he'd begged and stolen—and run away from things—as long as he could remember. He was good at escaping, at wriggling out of trouble. He'd sneaked out of the English Navy itself, by God! And now if they napped him he wouldn't be lucky enough to get off with a hanging. When you're hanged, you die. Beach, who had never found life a song, was not afraid to die. What he was afraid of was the cat. He had taken twenty-four once—he could still feel the welts when he wriggled in his hammock—and he was damned if he'd take any more. Never again would he let them rip the shirt off his back and drag him to a grating, while marines stood wooden-faced, and the officers in their fancy uniforms looked solemn on the poop, and your messmates and the boys and like enough everybody else aboardship stood around watching you and making bets on which stroke would start you screaming. He wasn't going to have the quartermasters seize him up, so that he hung from his wrists; or look in horror over a shoulder to see some monstrous muscular bosun's mate take the cat out of a red baize bag and run it through his fingers, caressing each of the slugs that soon would be all sticky with blood and shreds of skin. No. He would kill himself first. He meant that.
A natural fugitive, Willis Beach was not a man to look far ahead or behind, being concerned always with an immediate dilemma. When he saw Captain Long coming toward him, he began to wonder whether he had done right in trusting himself aboard this colonial hooker.
It was the sword. Beach had liked this Yankee skipper when he met him in Kingston; and that he was alive now, indeed, he owed, beyond all doubt, to Captain Long. But now the skipper had taken to wearing a sword, and Beach didn't like that. A man with a sword was an officer, and an officer was somebody to avoid—to defy if it seemed safe, to buck, to bewilder, or betray—but best of all to avoid. Beach looked upon a man with a sword as his medieval ancestors had looked upon a man on a horse, or the naked savages of America had looked at first upon the plate-armored conquistadores. These were creatures of a different species, and it was but the part of wisdom to whine before them as it was to disobey and if possible to hamstring them when their backs were turned. There could be no friendship with a man who wore a sword. Make no alliance udth him, even for an hour! You could no more understand him than he could understand you, and it was better not to try.
Beach touched his cap. The skipper nodded. He looked at the compass. He scanned the sea. For three days and nights they had towed the Quatre Moulins brig, an axe being right here beside the helmsman to enable him to cut the cable in case of trouble. And hour ago, now that they were off the north coast of Jamaica, and after leaving the mate and the boy, together wdth some spare spars and canvas, aboard of the brig, they had cast her off. The Quatre Moulins was to proceed around to Kingston and report herself a prize, while those aboard the schooner were to conduct—well, some other business.
The skipper turned suddenly. He drew. Willis Beach swallowed, shifting his feet. He glanced over the taffrail at the wake, God knows why: they were a good twelve miles from shore and he couldn't swim anyway.