A High Wind in Jamaica

Chp. 10

  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 Bristol: 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?

  But he seemed to think he had explained his mission fully: turned, and once more went below.

  For hours a merry but rather tedious hubble-bubble, suggesting liquor, was heard ascending from the cabin skylight. As evening drew on, the breeze having dropped away almost to a calm, the steersman reported that both Jonsen and Otto were now fast asleep, their heads on each other’s shoulders across the cabin table. As he had long forgotten what the course was, but had been simply steering by the wind, and there was now no wind to steer by, he (the steersman) concluded the wheel could get on very well without him.

  The reconciliation of the captain and the mate deserved to be celebrated by all hands with a blind.

  A rum-cask was broached: and the common sailors were soon as unconscious as their betters.

  Altogether this was one of the unpleasantest days the children had spent in their lives.

  When dawn came, every one was still pretty incapable, and the neglected vessel drooped uncertainly. Jonsen, still rather unsteady on his feet, his head aching and his mind Napoleonic but muddled, came on deck and looked about him. The sun had come up like a searchlight: but it was about all there was to be seen. No land was anywhere in sight, and the sea and sky seemed very uncertain as to the most becoming place to locate their mutual firmament. It was not till he had looked round and round a fair number of times that he perceived a vessel, up in what by all appearances must be sky, yet not very far distant.ﾠ