The Two Captains

Front matter

[Frontispiece. "CAPTAIN POPE LAY DEAD ON HIS BACK THE TwoCaptains Illustrated by BJRosenmeyer LONDON Sampson Low, Marston & Co LIMITED l897 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS, CONTENTS. CHAPS. PAGE 1 I. Pope and Crystal . 1 II. The Camperdown Public-House .... 18 III. The Burglary 35 IV. The March to the Sea ...... 49 V. The Crew of the " Gypsy " . . . . .66 VI. The Collision 84 VII. The Black Flag 103 VIII. The Earl 119 IX. The "Bellona" 136 X. The Pleasure Crew are Transferred . . . 154 XI. The Earl is Released 170 XII. The Convict 188 XIII. The "Julia Morton" 206 XIV. The "Madre" 225 XV. The " Thetis " West Indiaman . . . .241 XVI. Laura 258 XVII. Pope Falls in Love 270 XVIII. The Passengers are Sent Adrift .... 294 XIX. The Pirates' Demand 310 XX.

The Booty . 326 XXI. The Mails 345 XXII. The Slaver 363 XXIII. Pope's Death 382 XXIV. The Last LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGB "Captain Pope lay dead on his back" . . Frontispiece " I HAVE HEARD IT. PIRACY ! " SAID CAPTAIN CRYSTAL . 6 The capture of the "Thetis" ...... 255 " I am Laura Crystal " . .... . .

Chapter I. Pope And Crystal

far from London Wall, in the City of London, there stood a well-known tavern or hostelry called, we will say, the Mitre. It has long since disappeared. It was a famous house of entertainment in its day, low-pitched, brilliant with as many windows as the old Turf Hotel at Newcastle. The landlord was one Jenkinson, who had made a little fortune by privateering. Strange to hear of a seafaring man, and a pirate in morals and memories, setting up as a tavern keeper ! Could not he have found a better invest ment for his money ? What did this shellback know of the pleasures of the table, and how to charge so as to do well ? Yet, somehow, he managed very handsomely, and because the Mitre was kept by a seafaring heart of oak, grey and gaunt, but liberal in his management, and exquisite in his judgment of liquor, the old inn was deeply fre quented by gentlemen of the jacket, masters and mates.

The citizens also of the neighbourhood loved the old Mitre with its creaming ales, and charming saddles and chops and steaks of a tenderness and juiciness you had to walk far to equal even in a solitary instance. Mr. Jenkinson, as an old seaman, knew7 that sailors, when B they step ashore, love good meat. For months at a spell, masters down to boys are whitening their teeth on cubes of hard and rancid beef and pork. Such men will crowd where they may wrap their bodies in brown, hissing, and melting beef-steaks. Few sailors to London but knew the Mitre, and all who had tasted of its hospitality recommended it. So Jenkinson, grim and gaunt, this man, with the aid of a slender company of waiters, daily ministered to a throng, and did even better than when he went privateering. The writer of this collection of facts was not concerned in the business.

He was a boy in that age, which was before 1820. He knew intimately one of the parties who died an extremely old man ; and he would often sit with him, as Defoe is said to have sat with Dampier, and listen to his recitals, some of which were bloody and terrible. When Mr. Dana's book, 'Two Years before the Mast,' came into this man's hands — I think it was in 1841 — he so prodigiously admired it that it was about the only book he ever afterwards read, and he said to me one day : " Young man," he said, " if ever you should put my yarns into print, let them take the form and character of Mr. Dana's beautiful work." I answered "that I should be very pleased to write a book as good as Mr. Dana's, and that if I dealt with the story it should wear the shape of that incomparable log book." So to heave ahead : it was one Tuesday in the City of London, and the large dining-room of the Mitre tavern was full of hungry men sitting in boxes and giving hoarse notes to their wants.

It was a very long room with a very low ceiling. The ceiling was covered with foliage and flying figures, and Mr. Jenkinson believed it was worth a thousand pounds. It was a rich scene of old world life, when citizens wore tail coats and white cravats, when Ludgate was choked with debtors, and when they were hanging men and women in the crowd-blackened thoroughfare opposite the gaol whose records are hellish. In the pew-like boxes were seated numbers of men, chiefly sailors, of a superior type. The beer-pot foamed at their elbows as they ate with a will. They bore the true aspect of the children of the deep ; you would have known them when they hove in sight a mile off by their clothes and out, and now by their easy swaying motions as they inclined their bodies in eating, and when they cast their heads back to receive the amber drench.

They were up from the Docks, the Pool and the river. They hummed in conversation like the sound of the surf heard afar when it takes the low note of thunder. Jenkinson went about nodding to this man and to that, calling deep-pitched answers in response to friendly greetings. He seemed to know most of his customers. He stopped at a box at whose table sat one figure only, and, leaning upon the end of the table, looked under a mass of grey eyebrow at the man who, lifting his eyes from his plate, saw him and smiled, and asked him to enter and bear him company. Jenkinson sat down. He is a shadow and plays no part in this story, and need not therefore be described. It is different with the other. This was a captain in the merchant service named Pope, a fine, tall man of very noble build. He looked his calling.

He wore his hair curling down his back, and his clothes were a dark blue jacket plentifully braided, and blue cloth trousers which hung from his hips like sacks. He had a merry eye with something careless and cruel in its glance and light : an Irish eye blue and arch. But however merry by nature this man might be, to-day the face that overhung his plate, chewing steadily, with Jenkinson staring at him, was a long one. " Well, Captain," said Jenkinson, keeping his eye on the company and his waiters whilst he conversed, " have you got a ship yet ? " "Don't talk of it," cried Captain Pope with passion. b " The pavements are full of helpless idlers. They wander starving and forlorn. Three men this same day, men who have held good trusts, stopped me in the measure of half a dozen streets, to ask me to lend them money for bread."

Jenkinson smiled sarcastically. " Don't tell me," he said. " There are always plenty of ships, and where there are ships there is demand and room for good men." " Am I not a good man ? " cried Captain Pope. " You are well spoken of. You fought well as a privateersman. You have long used the sea. God knows why they don't give you a ship," said Jenkinson. The other shugged his shoulders and bit his food with anger. Just then a middle-sized man came to the entrance of the box, and Jenkinson stood up. " How d'ye do, Captain Crystal ? What are your com mands ? " Crystal named his joint, and seated himself opposite Captain Pope, and Jenkinson went away. This Crystal was a very rugged-looking man of about forty-five years of age. He showed a cutlass scar over his nose, and it fixed the expression of a surly frown upon his face.

He had a very heavy mouth, and dark, irregular teeth, and the skin of his face was like a crocodile's with the wear of the weather, and the tear of the passions. He was very broad, as powerfully built as Pope, dressed in sailor's worn clothes : but as in Pope, so in this man, there was wickedness in his looks. He moved his head with a slowness that made his motions uncommon even in a merchant seaman who primarily lacks the essential nimbleness he will strangely enough acquire after he has served for a little while on board a man-of-war. " I'd be pleased to have the value of that ceiling in my pocket," said he, laying his head back to look aloft. " Jen kinson has made good headway. From a privateer's forecastle to all this property is noble sailing. Damn the man as a sailor ! he should have been unable to keep his money.

I tell you what, Pope, I'm cust poor and shall want coin for a meal in a few days if something don't turn up. I've been disappointed in one week in two sterling promises — ships of eight hundred and one thousand tons ; but they shall hang me before they drive me before the mast." Here a waiter entered the box, and put Captain Crystal's dinner of mutton, as good as venison, and a tankard of ale upon the table. Captain Pope closed his knife and fork aud watched the other for some minutes in silence. He eyed his old clothes ; his blue eyes reposed thoughtfully upon his desperate face. He got up and looked over into the box on either hand, then sat a little closer opposite Crystal, and said, " This is the advertisement I was telling you about." Putting his hand into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a copy of the Sun newspaper of recent date, and after over hauling its columns read in a low voice as follows : "Brig Gypsy. — This beautiful and admirable clipper ship having been condemned by the Admiralty, has been purchased by a private gentleman who has laid out a considerable sum of money in com pleting her equipment.

She is now for sale, and may be had a very great bargain. Parties disposed to purchase her will find her lying off Deptford, and they will receive a permit to go on board and view her by applying to Mr. Staunton in the Minories." " What's it about ? " said Captain Crystal, letting fall the tankard from his lips, and wiping away the foam with an old red silk pocket-handkerchief. " It's the strangest matter that ever I heard of," said Captain Pope, speaking with a cautious face. " A man had a father who left him a brig and a trifle in cash. This man was master of a ship. I met him at Teneriff e, a devilish handsome young fellow, but wrong on one side of his head." " I heard something of what you're going to say when I was at Lisbon," said Captain Crystal. " Waiter, some cheese, and fill this tankard."

" I got the full yarn from old Sinclair at Greenwich," continued Captain Pope. " Jackman was his name. He got command, but it was plain the sea didn't satisfy him. Every compass course showed the flying jibboom heading straight for the workhouse. He came ashore with a bag of fifteen hundred pounds, and pretended to have been knocked down and robbed. There is no doubt he stole the money. The owners did not seem able to prove anything, and Sinclair told me that the next traverse this man Jackman set out to work, was the painting and equipping of his brig, and the preparing her for sea as a — what d'yer say ? " " I heard it. Piracy ! " said Captain Crystal. " He fitted this vessel as a brig and stowed the spare rig of a schooner aboard her. Got men under the pretence that he was bound out on some liberal undertaking — it was a story of treasure I fancy — and went away down Channel.

His game was suspected, and he was followed out of one of the reaches by a Government cutter. They exchanged shots, and the pirate brought the cutter's mast down," said Captain Pope, with great appreciation of this point. " Jackman, in the Channel, brings his men aft and tells them the truth. He is going for a pirate, he says. A single plate ship from Portugal or Spain will set him up as a gentleman for life. The men heard him. In time they came abreast of some caves which Jackman had purchased down on the extreme west coast, and he and his father-in-law, a navy man who had been carried away under highly romantic circumstances, and Mrs. Jackman, a very beautiful woman with the pluck of a tigress, a noble sweetheart for a piratic seaman " — here Captain Pope looked a little complacently clown upon the dinner-cloth — " went ashore.

When Jackman returned to his ship, the men seized him, swearing they were not going to be hanged for pirates, and they locked this Jackman up in his cabin, and carried the brig to the Thames, and handed her over. Jackman sprang through the cabin window and was drowned. He did well. He was a ruined man and a felon." IPage 6. *'I HEARD IT. PIRACY!" SAID CAPTAIN CRYSTAL. " The biggest fool," said Captain Crystal, " that ever took charge of men. Only think of shipping a crew on representations of honesty, to tell them before they were out of sight of Execution Dock, that the brig's colours were the black flag." Captain Pope sat for a little looking at the advertisement in the Sun, and musing deeply with a gathered brow. " Have you done eating ? " he said presently. The other nodded. " What does this man ask for his brig ?

" said Captain Pope. " What would be the good of finding out ? " exclaimed Crystal, beckoning to a waiter. " Come with me to the Minories and we'll ask the ques tion," says Pope. Here the waiter came in to be paid. Crystal pulled out a guinea. Pope drew forth a tolerably well-filled purse of leather and bade his old shipmate put his money up, which Captain Crystal cheerfully did. Pope then paid for both, and they left the tavern and walked towards the Minories. Pope looked a fine figure of *a man, as he took the arm that crooked from Crystal's square shape. Both showed as likely and able seamen ; but this happened to be hard times for the merchant sailor ; seven or eight years of peace had not provided such demand under the red flag as corre sponded with the numbers of men — a great many of them masters and mates — who sought employment.

All was quiet in the navy ; the Burmese War was yet to be begun. Some extraordinary struggles were indeed to be heard of, such as the capture by Captain Wallcott of that abominable scoundrel Cayatane Aragonez, one of the most desperate and frightful pirates ever heard of. But this sort of thing was of no use to men like Pope and Crystal ; they wanted command, and the money of command ; and here they were ashore with their lockers very alarmingly low, and nothing to flourish upon but unfulfilled promises. " What's the good of finding out what the man asks for his brig ? " said Crystal. " I have my reasons," answered Pope. " I suppose you know that although I am a sailor I am a gentleman ; and gentlemen cannot starve. That was Jackman's plea, but he was warped and his brilliant idea miscarried."

Captain Crystal began to stare at Captain Pope. " I have a mind to view this brig," continued Pope. " We require a permit from the owner, and that is one reason why I am calling on him. Come with me and view the brig, Crystal." " Right," said the square-shaped seaman ; " and if you have the cash for the purchase of her stowed away in some old stocking in an inshore chimney, I'm your man as first mate." " I have no ideas of any sort yet," said Captain Pope, " only this, that I am an Irishman and a gentleman, and, like the unhappy Captain Jackman, do not intend to starve. But on the contrary, I have some nebulous dream of embarking in an extraordinary venture, which, I tell you frankly, must be measured in the shadow of the gibbet." They entered the shop of a nautical instrument maker. Mr. Staunton, the owner of the brig, dwelt over this shop.

He called himself a private individual ; he was also a money-lender. A shopman conducted the two captains upstairs, and Mr. Staunton, a yellow-faced person, started in a lean, rusty, grinning and bowing shape from his chair when the mariners entered. " Your wants, gentlemen ? " said he. " There are seats." " This is your notice, I suppose ? " said Captain Pope, pulling out the paper, and putting his hand upon the advertisement. " If you want a beautiful ship, the greatest bargain afloat in the waters of the Thames," answered Mr. Staunton, taking his chair at the table and picking up a quill pen, " you'll find her in the Gypsy lying off Deptford." " What's your price ? " demanded Captain Pope, whilst Mr. Staunton, with several swift and cunning rolls of his eye, examined his visitors. " Not a penny less than six hundred pounds," replied the money-lender.

" Have you seen her ? " " No," answered Pope, with a gloomy grin ; " we're here to ask for leave to look at her." Mr. Staunton quickly and eagerly began to write, talking meanwhile. His writing was soon ended. His speech flowed on ; he praised the brig with the knowledge of a sailor, and told the two captains the romantic story of Captain Jackman. They listened, Crystal with an expression of grim wonder at Pope's meaning and the whole business ; and Pope a little blandly, with something of a look of surprise, as though he heard the tale of Jackman for the first time." " Show this, gentlemen," said Mr. Staunton, " to my shipkeeper, iand I hope you'll lose no time in taking the vessel off my hands. I cannot afford to keep a large sum of money locked up in an idle ship, and I will not trade because I cannot afford to be plundered !

" He showed two or three yellow fangs, and his long, lean face was convulsed with creases. " We'll view her," said Pope, pocketing the permit ; " but allow me to say," he added rising, " that six hundred pounds is a tall sum for a brig that lies rotting." " Not a farthing less," said the money-lender with a hard face, " though it should come to my sinking her at her buoy. When may I hope to hear from you ? " " In good time," replied Captain Pope, putting on his round hat, and Captain Crystal followed him out of the room. They went towards London Bridge. It was about two o'clock on a long summer day, and after some walking they brought the scene of the river before them. It was a picturesque age of shipping, that. The Indiaman floated like a castle from her flashing quarter-galleries to the gay ornamentation of her low-sunk head.

Ships still carried the massive appearance of the vessels of the vanished century. The tops were heavy and round. The giant bowsprit and jibbooms shot high in the air and filled the fore part with complicated rigging. Many ships were at rest in the Pool. Business was dull. The flags drooped at the mastheads, and the tide seemed to run sluggishly in sympathy. A hoy was proceeding from London Bridge down the river, and the two captains took her for Deptford. Hoys were sloop-rigged vessels that carried passengers in days before the steamboat blackened the air. Their destination was chiefly Margate, and this that Pope and Crystal stepped aboard of was a Margate hoy of the type that has been immortalised by Lamb, and amusingly described by Keats. She was nearly as broad as she was long. She had a little companion-hatch down which you descended into a snuff brown cabin, where you could sit and eat of the food you yourself brought, whilst you got drink from the captain, whose face was humorous with liquor.

The old hoy has irre parably perished. One would not willingly occupy (often) two days in going from London to Margate ; but as a feature of the marine past, the hoy deserves to live in affectionate memory as she ghost-like passes, fat and swelling, with many old-fashioned figures moving upon her deck ; the air round about her echoes a noise of fiddles, the sound of laughter shakes over her bulwarks into the trembling surface as she moves slowly. The sun blazed upon the waters, and the colours of the nations were bright in the light. The Pool was crowded, and Crystal scowled at the lines of portly ships. Pope gazed, deep in thought, at tlie slowly moving land over the hoy's rail. " What's in your mind ? " said Crystal, bringing his eyes from the shipping to his friend. " Are you hatching a cutting-out job ?

" " I'd do it to-morrow if I had the men I could trust," answered Pope in a low voice, and a glance at the people about him. " It is only letting slip a buoy-rope on a black night, with just a quiet mast-heading of the topsails, and there you are." " Ah," muttered Crystal, in a ridiculing voice, " and there you are next day in tow of some cust little frigate or other. Now I'll tell you what, Pope, the yardarm of the smallest square rigger afloat is too lofty for my neck. Damn risks ! " — here his face took on an uncommonly rugged expression — " I'm for certainties." " Certainties ! " exclaimed Pope with great sarcasm, and a hint of the melody of his country's accent in his speech. " Certainty means the dry rot. You wait to make sure, and whilst you wait the clothes perish into rags upon your bones, and the wind whistles where the marrow ought to lie hot.

Had Nelson waited for certainties that shore yonder would be peopled by Frenchmen, and the damned tricolour would be flying over the lion." " What's all about ? " said Captain Crystal. " What's in your mind ? " " A jelly-fish of a fancy. Stop ! we'll sup together to-night," answered Captain Pope with an arch look at his companion's grim face. The two men were landed at Deptford, and they took oars, as the expression then was, for a brig with the topgallant masts housed, lying in the stream within a convenient pull. A short seaman with a wall-eye and fur cap sulkily overhung the rail. He guessed that the captains were coming on a visit to the brig, and he eyed them coldly without interest. "Is this the Gypsy?" sung out Captain Pope alongside. " Ah ! " answered the wall-eyed man. " We're coming aboard of you."

"Got your leave?" called down the wall-eyed man, stepping into the little gangway to block it. Pope flourished his permit, and the two captains sprang over the side. The wall-eyed man gnawed upon a piece of tobacco whilst he held Mr. Staunton's sheet of paper upside down to his defective vision. He then said, " This is all right. You can overhaul the ship, gents." Both Pope and Crystal were busy with their eyes. They went apart from the wall-eyed man and talked, standing beside the main hatchway. " She has fine lines," said Crystal. " She rounds hand somely into the bows. I don't know but that this vessel may be a fast sailer, though from the glance I caught she shows too much buttock." " She appears in very good condition," said Pope, directing searching looks about him, and letting his eyes rest aloft.

" But she'll make no schooner. This beam wants all that squareness of yard, Crystal. I'll give her royal stun'sails, and by the saints, there shall be nothing afloat she shan't be able to overhaul." " Oh, ho ! " muttered Crystal. " So that's the lay." He looked at Pope and burst into a hoarse laugh. " 'Tis a pity, though," says he, " that there should be a difficulty of six hundred pounds in the way." Pope said nothing but walked straight into the bows and hung over them. Crystal followed him, and the wall-eyed man, standing in the gangway, seemed to pursue them with his regard with a certain posture of suspicion. Presently Pope turned his back, and, leaning against the fok'sle rail, folded his arms, and gazed shrewdly and thoughtfully at the whole bulk and knotted fabric of brig. She was comely, even in that age of beam and broadside.

Staunton had caused her to be re-painted. She was a pale green inside the bulwarks, and her caboose and fittings were of this colour. Her lower masts were white, her tops black, round and heavy. A company of sailors and their girls could have danced in those tops. She was pierced for four guns of a side, and she also carried a bow and stern chaser, but her artillery was dismounted, and her decks ran naked in the scuppers. " This is the ship for me," said Pope, letting fall his arms. " To get her ! " " Where are your guns ? " shouted Crystal to the wall eyed man. " In the hold," he answered. " Would you like to sec 'em ? " " We'll see everything," said Pope. They entered the cabin and the wall-eyed man followed. He seemed a little doubtful of them, and when they praised the interior, he said for his part he didn't think much of the vessel.

" Sticking to her 's a light job. You'll not recommend her," said Pope with a loud laugh, but a stare at the wall eyed man that rather belied his merriment. " What do you get a week for tending her ? " " That's my affair," answered the man ; " ask me questions about the brig and I'll tell you what I know." " Do she leak ? " said Crystal, putting his rugged working face close into the wall-eyed man's. " What's her best speed of going, ha ? A plague on such devils ! Do they give you money to lie ? " " I tell no lies," exclaimed the man with a fiery face. " You're sailor men, I allow, and can judge for yourselves. I'm not here to recommend this brig. Why didn't the Admirality keep her if , she wor good for anything ? They sold her out for two hundred pound. Did you know that ? " " Two hundred was it ?

" exclaimed Captain Pope. " Does he pretend to have spent four hundred upon her ? " " He's a money-lender," said Crystal. " She's not a ship I could recommend a seafaring party to buy. If she don't leak she ought to it ; she groans as she swings, and there ain't no life in her," said the wall eyed man. " But you're used to shipping, gents ; judge of her for yourselves." " Have you got a ship of your own that you want to sell ? " said Captain Pope glaring at him. " Nary ship," said the wall-eyed man. " But I could put you in the way of a trimmer brig than this." " You're a rascal," said Captain Pope, and with that he and Crystal peeped into the cabins, and the ship-keeper went on deck, dropping curses and looking behind him. The two captains found the accommodation excellent. The cabin, out of whose window — a large stern window — the unfortunate Captain Jackman had thrown himself into the sea, was big for a craft of one hundred and eighty tons.

" How am I to get this ship ? " said Captain Pope, standing on stretched legs in the middle of this sea-room. He spoke in soliloquy. His companion seemed not to heed, merely eyed him askant, and then after whistling softly for a bit whilst he reflected, he said : " I never heard of a ship stolen out of the River Thames in my life." " There was the Dorothy," said Pope swiftly ; " and there was the Arethusa, a small West Indiaman ; in each case a company of men entered, gagged and pinioned the ship keeper, softly let go the fasts and slipped away on the stream without a hail from shore or water. Both those vessels were lost to their owners ; what became of them I don't know." " It was a midnight job," said Crystal. " Black midnight," answered Pope. " It is to be done, but the preparations must stop the project, and this ship, I fear, must be got honestly."

Captain Crystal shook his head with an ugly face, and then both men went on deck and, watched by the wall-eyed man, in silence entered the forecastle, examined the caboose, lifted the main hatch and looked at the guns in the hold ; next, hailing their boat, Captain Pope threw a shilling to the wall-eyed man, and the two captains went ashore. Pope had asked Crystal to sup with him, and the rugged seaman had consented. It was nearly seven o'clock, with plenty of brassy brightness trembling overhead, when they reached Golden Lane, iu a street leading out of which thoroughfare Captain Pope occupied a lodging. It was a dismal street. The blinds in the windows of the houses were yellow and spotted. The fly-blown and hungry aspect of the whole was still further degraded by a number of dirty children skipping and tumbling on the pavement opposite Pope's lodging.