Volume II Part 13 (1/2)

'Well, and what'll you do now?' cried Captain Bunting.

'Do? Whoy, chuck myself overboard!' shouted Jacob, apparently quickened into his old vitality by the anguish of sudden realization.

Here Abraham slowly looked round, and then turned and lay against the rail, eyeing us lifelessly.

CHAPTER VI.

CAPTAIN JOPPA BUNTING.

There were four or five coloured seamen standing near, looking on.

Though I could not have been sure, I guessed them to be Malays by the somewhat Chinese cast of their features. I had seen such faces once before, discolouring a huddle of white countenances of European seamen looking over the side of a s.h.i.+p, anch.o.r.ed in our bay, at the lifeboat I was in charge of for an hour or two of practice. I also caught the fierce lemon-coloured creature at the wheel following the Captain, as he moved about, with his stealthy dusky eyes; but more than this I had not time to take notice of.

'Abraham,' I exclaimed, approaching him, 'this is a bad business.'

'Ay,' he muttered, drying his lips upon his knuckles. 'There's nothen to do now but to get home again. I laid out fifteen pound for myself on this here job, an it's gone, and gone's, too, the money we was to take up. Oh, Jacob, matey! how came it about? how came it about?' he cried, in a voice of bitter grief that was without the least hint of temper or reproach.

'Ye've heard, Abraham,' answered the other, speaking brokenly. 'Gord He knows how it happened. I'd ha' given ten toimes ower the money we was to airn that this here mucking job had been yourn instead o' mine, that I might feel as sorry for ye, Abey, as ye are for me, mate.'

'Is she clean gone?' cried Captain Bunting, looking over the quarter.

'Yes, clean. Nothing but her boat floating, and a few spars. It is spilt milk, and not to be recovered by tears. You two men will have to go along with us till we can send the four of you home. Mr. Jones, fill on your topsail, if you please. Hi! you Pallunappach.e.l.ly, swab up that wet there, d'ye hear? Now Moona, now Yong Soon Wat, and you, Shayoo Saibo--maintopsail-brace, and bear a hand!'

While the topsail-yard was in the act of swinging I observed that Abraham's countenance suddenly changed. A fit of temper, resembling his outbreak when the Hamburger had pa.s.sed us, darkened his face. He rolled his eyes fiercely, then, plucking off his cap, flung it savagely down upon the deck, and, while he tumbled and sprawled about in a sort of mad dance, he bawled at the top of his voice:

'I says it _can't_ be true! What I says is, it's a dream--a blooming, measly dream! The _Airly Marn_ foundered!' Here he gave his cap a kick that sent it flying the length of the p.o.o.p. 'It's a loie, I says. It was to ha' been seventy-foive pound a man, and there was two gone, whose shares would ha' been ourn. And where's moy fifteen pound vorth o'

goods? Cuss the hour, I says, that ever we fell in with this barque!'

He raved in this fas.h.i.+on for some minutes, the Captain meanwhile eyeing him with his head on one side, as though striving to find out whether he was drunk or mad. He then rushed to the side with an impetuosity that made me fear he meant to spring overboard, and, looking down for a moment, he bellowed forth, shaking his clenched fist at the sea:

'Yes, then she _is_ gone, and 'tain't a dream!'

He fetched his thigh a mighty slap, and, wheeling round, stared at us in the manner of one temporarily bereft of his senses by the apparition of something he finds horrible.

'These Deal boatmen have excitable natures!' said Captain Joppa Bunting, addressing me, fixedly smiling, and pa.s.sing his fingers through a whisker as he spoke.

'I trust you will bear with the poor fellows,' said I: 'it is a heavy loss to the men, and a death-blow to big expectations.'

'Temper is excusable occasionally at sea,' observed the Captain; 'but language I never permit. Yet that unhappy Christian soul ought to be borne with, as you say, seeing that he is a poor ignorant man very sorely tried. Abraham Vise, come here!' he called.

'His name is Wise,' said I.

'Wise, come here!' he shouted.

Abraham approached us with a slow, rolling gait, and a face in which temper was now somewhat clouded by bewilderment.

'Abraham,' said the Captain, looking from him to Jacob, who leaned, wet through, against the rail with a dogged face and his eyes rooted upon the deck, 'you have met with one of those severe reverses which happen entirely for the good of the sufferer, however he may object to take that view. Depend upon it, my man, that the loss of your lugger is for some wise purpose.'

Abraham looked at him with an eye whose gaze delivered the word _d.a.m.n_ as articulately as ever his lips could have uttered the oath.