The Recipe for Diamonds Read online

  CHAPTER VI.

  FORE AND AFT SEAMANSHIP.

  It has been my fate to put to sea in some of the worst-found craft thatever scrambled into port again, but of the lot, that ugly little cutterof Haigh's stands pre-eminent.

  She possessed no single good point in her favour. She had swung inharbour so long that everywhere above the water-line she was as staunchas a herring-net. Her standing rigging, being of wire, was merelyrusted, but her running gear was something too appalling to thinkabout. As for her bottom, if she had been turned up and dried for a day(so Haigh cheerfully averred), there would have been enough bushy coveron it to put down pheasants in. Fittings, even the barest necessaries,were painfully lacking, as the man had been living riotously on themfor over a month and a half. A Chinese pirate could not have picked hermuch cleaner. What he was pleased to term the "superfluities of themain and after cabins" had gone first, fetching fair prices. Afterwardshe had peddled his gear little by little, dining one day off ariding-light, going to a theatre the next on two marline spikes and asister-block, and so on. His ground tackle, long saved up for a_bonne bouche_, had provided funds for that last night in thegambling hell, where we both got cleared out together; and the balancethat was left didn't represent a mosquito's ransom.

  Haigh told me all this as we walked back again down the narrow streetsto the quay, and I suggested that although Mediterranean air was good,we couldn't exactly live on it during the passage across. But hepointed out that as his dinghy was very old and rotten, it would bequite a useless encumbrance on the cruise; and so, dropping me on boardthe cutter, he sculled off again to swap this old wreck for provisions.

  I roused out a weather-thinned mainsail, black with mildew, and bentit; and by the time that was on the spars, he had completed his barter,and had been put on board again by a friend.

  We had a dozen words of conversation, and then got small canvas hoistedand quietly slipped moorings. The night was very black, and thick withdriving rain; and we slid out through the pier-heads unquestioned saveby a passing launch which hailed, and was politely answered ingibberish.

  There was a singular lack of formality about our departure which wasmuch to be regretted. But there was some small trouble about bigaccumulations of harbour dues and such minor items, which would havehad to be settled in return for a clearance _en regle_; and,remembering how history was galloping, we could not afford the time todeal with them. And so, after a narrow squeak of being cut down by abig steamer just outside, we found ourselves close-hauled under allplain sail, making a long leg with a short one to follow.

  "Funds wouldn't run to the luxury of a chart," observed Haigh when Iinquired about this trifle, "but I had a look at a big Mediterraneantrack chart at the place where I bartered the dinghy, and the course toPort Mahon is due south-west, as near as no matter."

  "As near as no matter," groaned I in response.

  "Why, my dear chap, we really can't indulge in the extreme niceties ofnavigation. We've got a compass, which is fairly accurate if you joggleit with your finger occasionally, and we can fix up a lead line when weget in soundings, and I dare say we can make a log. D'you mind having aspell at the pump now? I'm a bit out of condition."

  The leaking decreased as the planking swelled to the wet, but otherunpleasantnesses began to show themselves. One of the greatest, to myway of thinking, was the way we were victualled. To begin with, therewere twenty-three bottles of vermouth, straw-jacketed, and carefullystowed. Then there was a bag of condemned sea-biscuits, which Haighpleasantly alluded to as "perambulators." And the list of solids wascompleted by half a dozen four-pound tins of corned beef, and a hundredand fifty excellent cigars which had not paid duty. There was an irontank full of rusty water which "had to do," as refilling it might haveentailed awkward questions. And, lastly, there had been brought onboard a very small and much-corroded kedge anchor, which, as it was theonly implement of its kind that we possessed, gave much force toHaigh's comment that "it might come in handy."

  To tell the truth, when the cold sea air blew away the glamour ofplotting and planning, and I was able to tot up all these accessorieswith a practical mind, I was beginning very much to wish myself welloff what seemed a certain road to Jones.

  Haigh, on the other hand, seemed supremely contented and happy.Yachting as a general thing, he said, he found slow; but this cruisehad an element of novelty which made it vastly entertaining. He hadnever heard of any one deliberately getting to sea quite under suchcircumstances before. He didn't uphold the wisdom of the proceeding inthe least, for when I grunted something about the world not containingsuch another pair of thorough-paced fools, he agreed with me promptly.In fact, he was in far too jovial a humour to argue about anything, andby degrees I began to fall in with his vein. "Let's split a bottle ofvermouth," said he, "and drink confusion to every one except our twoselves." And we did it.

  The breeze lulled at daybreak, and northed till we had it nearly fair.

  "This is great business," said Haigh. "I'll bet you five hundred poundsthat we make the islands in the next twenty-four hours. I.O.U.'saccepted." He slipped off the after-hatch, and dragged up from thecounter a venerable relic of a spinnaker, which was one vivid mottle ofmildew. The sail was duly mocked and set. The wind was freshening, andour pace increased. The cutter and her parasitical escort kicked upenough wake for a Cardiff ore-steamer.

  "Who says a foul bottom matters now?" said Haigh. "Who will suggestthat she isn't kicking past this scenery at nine knots? Bless the uglylines of her, we mustn't forget her builder's health. Hand up anotherbottle of that vermouth and the dipper."

  We lifted her through it all that morning at a splendid pace, the wakeboiling up astern like a mill-tail. The two booms did certainly makeoccasional plunges which might have jarred timid nerves, but such atrifle did not disturb us.

  "It's the best bit of racing I've ever done," said Haigh. "There's apig of a following sea, and the wind's squally. Just her weather. Ifwe'd only got another craft trying to beat us, the thing would beperfect. We should have some inducement to carry on then."

  Whilst we were eating our mid-day meal (on deck, of course) thatvariegated spinnaker went "pop," splitting neatly from head-cringle tofoot-rope. It was my trick at the tiller, and so I was tied aft. Haighpeered round at the ruin, and returned to his occupation of knockingweevils out of his biscuit. He didn't think it worth while to budge,and so we let the canvas blow into whatever shaped ribands it chose. Ifwe couldn't carry the sail, we didn't want it.

  The wind hardened down as the day went on, and every knot we went thesea got worse. The ugly cutter slid down one wet incline, drove up thenext, and squattered through the hissing crest with a good deal ofgrumbling and plunging and rolling and complaining. But she had a goodgrip of the water, and with decently careful steering she showed butsmall inclination to broach-to or do anything else she wasn't wantedto. She might not be a beauty; she might be sluggish as a haystack in alight breeze; but, as Haigh said, this was just her day, and we werenot too nervous to take advantage of it. Still, considering her smalltonnage, and the fact that all her tackle was so infernally rotten, shetook a tidy bit of looking after. You see, we might be reckless aboutour skins, but at the same time we were very keenly anxious to make theBalearic Islands.

  The thing that I mostly feared was that our old ruin of a mainsailwould take leave of us. If once it started to split, the whole lotwould go like a sheet of tissue-paper. However, whether we liked it ornot, we had to run on now. The wind and sea were both far too heavy todream of an attempt at rounding-to. And, indeed, even if we hadsucceeded in slewing her head to the wind without getting swamped inthe process (the odds on which were about nine hundred to one against),it was distinctly doubtful as to whether she would deign to stay there.Small cutters are not great at staying hove-to in really dirty weather.

  And so we topped the boom well up, hoisted the tack to preventoverrunning the seas, and let her drive; and whilst Haigh clung on tothe tiller and its weather rope, I busied my
self with a bentsail-needle at stitching up any places within reach on the mainsailwhere the seams seemed to be working loose.

  Soon after dark that night--and I never saw much more inky blackness inmy life--we came across a deep-laden brig which very nearly gave us aquietus. She was running sluggishly under lower fore-topsail, wallowinglike a log-raft in a rapid, and doing less than a third of ourknottage. We possessed neither side-lamps nor oil, and showed no light;and as she had not a lantern astern, we got no glimmer of warning tillwe were within a dozen fathoms of her taffrail. Haigh couldn't give thecutter much helm for fear of gibing her and carrying away everything,and consequently we did not clear that brig's low quarter by more thana short fathom. Had we passed her to starboard instead of to port, weshould have fouled our main boom, and--well, we shouldn't have got anyfarther.

  As we tore past, the white water squirming and hissing between thevessels' sides, a man leaned over the bulwark, with his face lookinglike a red devil's in the glare of the port light, and shook a fist andscreamed a frightened venomous curse. Our only reply was a wild roar oflaughter. As we drove off into the mist of scud ahead, I looked backand saw the man staring after us with dropped jaw and eyes fairlygoggling. He must have thought us mad. Indeed, I believe we had takenleave of some of our senses then.

  "Vermouth's cheapening," said Haigh. "Pass up another bottle. If we dohappen to go to Jones, it 'ud be a thousand pities to take the liquordown with us undecanted."

  Don't get the idea that we were drunk all through that wild cruise,because we were not. But one thing and another combined to make theexcitement so vivid, that with the liquor handy it did not take muchinducement to make us tipple pretty heavily. We were vilely fed,bitterly exposed, heavily overworked, unable even to smoke--and--thevermouth was very, very good.

  As the seas swept her the ugly cutter's planking swelled, but beforeshe became staunch a fearful amount of water had passed into her.Haigh, who was in no sort of condition, got utterly spun out by afive-minutes' spell at the pump, and consequently it had been my taskto restore the incoming Mediterranean to its proper place again. It wasa job that wearied every nerve in my body. The constant and monotonousheaving up and down of a pump-handle is probably the most exhaustingwork existent; and soon after passing that deeply-laden brig I pumpedher dry for (what seemed) the ten thousandth time, and toppled on thedeck dead beat.

  "Look here," said Haigh, "you get below and turn in. I'm quite equal tokeeping awake until further notice. I'm never much of a hand atsleeping at the best of times; and just now I'm well wound up for aweek's watch on end. If you're wanted, I'll call you. Go."

  I slipped down without argument, dropped into a bare and clammy bunk,and slept.

  * * * * *

  Haigh never roused me. I woke of my own accord, and found daylightstruggling in through the dusty skylight in the after-cabin roof. Afteryawning there a minute or so, I conquered laziness and returned to thedeck.

  Those who think the Inland Sea is always calm ultramarine, under a skyto match, should have seen it then. The colouring was all of grays andwhites, with here and there a slab of cold clear green, where a bigwave heaved up sheer. It was awfully wild. The sea was running higherthan ever, and the gale had not slackened one bit. The brine-smoke washissing through our cross-trees in dense white clouds.

  Haigh greeted me with a nod and a grin. His hat had gone, and the dankwisps of his hair were being fluttered about like black rags; hisnarrow slits of eyes were heavily bloodshot; his face was grimy andpale, his hands grimy and red; his clothing was a wreck. He looked veryunpleasant, but he was undoubtedly very broad awake. He resigned thetiller and rope, and began gingerly to stretch his cramped limbs,talking the while.

  "D'ye see that steamer, broadish on the weather-bow?"

  I looked, and saw on the gray horizon a thin streak of a differentgray.

  "I rose her a quarter of an hour ago," he went on, "and bore away acouple of points so as to cut her off. I'm thinking it wouldn't be abad idea to speak her if it could be managed, and find out where weare. As we haven't been able to rig a log-ship and line, and as thesteering has been, to say the least of it, erratic, our dead reckoninghas been some of the roughest. Personally, I wouldn't bet upon ourwhereabouts to quite a hundred miles. Ta-ta."

  He went below to smoke, leaving me fully occupied with the steering. Werose the steamer pretty fast, and in half an hour could see herwater-line when she lifted. She was a fine screw boat of three thousandtons, racing along at eighteen knots, and rolling with the beam sea upto her rails, in spite of the fore and aft canvas they had set tosteady her.

  Haigh came back to deck, blinking like an owl at the growing day. "Lookat the gray-backs chivying her," said he. "Aren't the passengers justsorry for themselves now? And won't they have some fine yarns to pitchwhen they get ashore about the hardest gale the captain ever knew, andtheir own heroic efforts (down below), and all the rest of it? I'velistened to those tales of desperate adventure by the hour together.Passengers by Dover-Calais packets are great at 'em."

  All this while we were closing up. The steamer's decks were tenantlesssave for a couple of lookouts forward in oilskins, bright varnished bythe spin-drift, and a couple of officers crouched behind the canvasdodgers of the bridge, and holding fast on to the stanchions. I wasclearing my throat to hail these last, when Haigh turned and told me Imight save my wind.

  "Never mind," he said; "I know her well. She's the _EugenePerrier_, a Transatlantique Company's boat, one of the quick lineout of Algiers for Marseille. Look at your compass, and note the courseshe's steering--N.N.E. and by E. That's from Cape Bajoli straight forMarseille. They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca withouttouching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, nothaving made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltarwithout sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time upcomes a _dea ex machina_ in the guise of the _Eugene Perrier_to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if wewon't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event ina way at once highly becoming and original."

  We made a landfall that afternoon off some of the high ground inNorth-east Mallorca, and Haigh gave over champing his cold cigar-butt,and delivered himself of an idea.

  "Isn't there another harbour in Minorca besides Port Mahon?"

  I said I believed there were some half-dozen small ones.

  "Any this west side?"

  "Ciudadella, about in the middle."

  "Know anything about it?"

  "Nothing, except the fact of its existence; and as we have no vestigeof chart, I don't exactly see how we are to learn anything more."

  "Precisely. Then, my dear chap, to finish this cruise consistently,Ciudadella must now become our objective. It would take us another dayto run round under the lee of the island to Port Mahon, and days arevaluable. The cutter's only drawing five foot five, and with our luckat its present premium you'll see we'll worry in somehow without pilingher up. Perhaps we may get some misguided person to come out and conus. Of course we'll take him if any one does offer, and owe him thepilotage; but I'd just as soon we navigated her on our own impudenthook. It's no use having a big credit on the Universal Luck Bank if youdon't draw on it heavily. The concern may bust up any day."

  Luckily for us the gale had eased, or we should never have been able toput the cutter on the wind. But as it was, with a four-reefed mainsailand a bit of a pocket-handkerchief jib, she lay the course like aCowes-built racing forty; and if she did ship it green occasionally,there was no rail to hold the water in board. We didn't spare her anounce. We kept her slap on her course, neither luffing up nor bearingaway for anything. That was the sort of weather when the ugliness ofthe old cutter's lines was forgotten, and one saw only beauties inthem. She might send the spindrift squirting through her cross-trees,but with the chap at the helm keeping her well a-going, she'd smokethrough bad dirt like a steamer.

  We rose the low cliffs of Eastern
Minorca about half-way across; butrain came on directly afterwards, and in the thickness we lost themagain. In that odd way in which things one has glanced through in abook recur to one when they are wanted, I had managed to recallsomething I had once conned over in a Sailing Directions aboutCiudadella. The harbour entrance was narrow--scarcely a cable's lengthacross--and it was marked by a lighthouse on the northern side, and acastle or tower or something of that kind on the other bank. The townbehind, with its heavy walls and white houses, was plainly visible fromseaward, and the spire of the principal church was somehow used as aleading mark. But whether one had to keep it on the lighthouse or thecastle, I could not recollect. Neither could I call to mind whetherthere was a bar. In fact, I could not remember a single thing elseabout the place; and as Haigh remarked, what little I did recall(without being in any way certain about its accuracy) was of singularlylittle practical use. But this ignorance did not deter us from holdingon towards the coast in the very least. We might pile up the cutter onsome outlying reef, but we were both cocksure that our stupendous luckwas going to set us safe ashore somehow. _Et apres_--the Recipe.

  We held on sturdily, lifting slant-wise over the heavy green rollerstill we were within half a mile of the land, and could see the surfcreaming to the heads of the low cliffs, and could hear the moaning andbooming as it broke on rocky outliers; and then easing off sheetsagain, we put up helm and ran down parallel with the coast. Beingblissfully ignorant of anything beyond a general idea of Minorca'soutlines, we had to keep a very wary lookout; for a heavy rain hadstarted to drive down with the gale, and looking to windward was likepeering through a dirty cambric pocket-handkerchief. Indeed, we madetwo several attempts at knocking the island out of the water, eachsufficiently distinct to have made any ordinary sailorman in his sanesenses get snugly to sea without further humbugging. And the afternoonwore on without our seeing either the lighthouse, the castle, or thetown we were looking for; and just upon dusk the coast turned sharplyoff to the eastward.

  "That looks like a bay," said Haigh, squinting at the land that wasrising and falling over our weather quarter. "If we hold on as we aregoing, we ought to pick up the other horn of it." So we stuck to thecourse for three hours, and then came to the conclusion that the pointwe had seen must have been the extremity of the island, and that wewere at present heading for a continent named Africa, then distant sometwo hundred nautical miles.

  The discovery cast a gloom over the ship's company. Our nerves were ina condition then for taking strong impressions. For myself, alllightheartedness flitted away. The ugly cutter's good deeds wereforgotten, and she appeared nothing more nor less than an ill-formedcockle-shell. The gale was terrific. I was bone-weary; also the mostparticularly damned fool on the globe's surface.

  What Haigh's personal conclusions were I do not know. He said nothing,but stood propped against the weather runner, mumbling over an unlitcigar and peering into the mist.

  After a while he turned. "Here, give me the helm, Cospatric, and do youget your strong fists on the main-sheet. We'll put her on the windagain, as close-hauled as she'll look at it. It's no use ratching up towindward again hunting for Ciudadella, as ten to one we'd miss it asecond time. We'll just run along the lee coast here for Port Mahon.There, now she's heading up for it like a steamer."

  There was silence for a while, and we listened to the swish of the seasand the rattle of the wind through the rigging. Then Haigh deliveredhimself of further wisdom.

  "It's a queer gamble this, take it through and back, and it'sremarkably like roulette in being a game where a system doesn't pay. Aslong as we worked haphazard we did wonders. As soon as we tried to do arational thing, and make that harbour at Ciudadella, we got euchred.Well, I dare say we both know how to take a whipping without howlingover it. So for the present let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we maydrown. Knock me a biscuit out of the weevils, old chappie, and give melikewise vermouth and corned horse."

  Had the wind remained in its old quarter, we could have made one boardof it all up the southern flank of the island; but, as if to accentuatethe fact that we had already drawn more than our share of good fortune,the gale veered round to the east, and settled down to blow again inreal hard earnest, bringing up with it a heavy sea. It was tack andtack all through the night, and we were always hard put to it to keepthe ugly cutter afloat. Indeed, when some of the heavier squallssnorted down on to us, we simply had to heave-to. It was just a choicebetween that and being blown bodily under water.

  The dawn was gray and wretched, but from the moment we sighted the lastpoint the weather began to improve. The air cleared up, the gale beganto ease, and when we ran in under Fort Isabelle just as the sunrise gunwas fired, we saw that the day was going to turn out a fine one.

  The long snug harbour of Mahon, which was in the days of canvas wingsalmost always filled with craft refuging, is now in this era of steamusually tenantless. So it was a bit of a surprise to us to find theEnglish Channel Fleet lying there at anchor. The big war steamers weregetting their matutinal scrub, and were alive with blue-and-white-clothedmen. They looked very strong, very trim, very seaworthy, and the bittercontrast between them and our tattered selves made me curse them withsailor's point and fluency. Not so Haigh. He didn't mind a bit; ratherenjoyed the _rencontre_, in fact; and producing a frayed _Royal I_----blue ensign, ran it up to the peak and dipped it in salute. If Iremember right it was the _Immortalite_ we met first, and down went the_St. George's_ flag from her poop staff three times in answeringsalutation, whilst every pair of eyes on her decks was glued on theugly cutter, their owners wondering where she had popped up from. Andso we passed her particularly Britannic Majesty's ships _Anson_,_Rodney_, _Camperdown_, _Curlew_, and _Howe_, and dropped our kedgeoverboard (at the end of the main halliards) close inside thetorpedo-catcher _Speedwell_.

  The strain was over. We staggered below and dropped into a dead sleep.Had there been a ton of diamonds waiting on the cliff road beside us,with half Mahon rushing to loot them, we could not have been induced tobudge.