In the Sargasso Sea | Page 5

put aboard from the
lighter that left the brig just before I reached her, and the huddle and
confusion showed that the transfer must have been made in a tearing
hurry. Many of the boxes gave no hint of what was inside of them; but
a good deal of the stuff--as the pigs of lead and cans of powder, the
many five-gallon kegs of spirits, the boxes of fixed ammunition, the
cases of arms, and so on--evidently was regular West Coast "trade."
And all of it was jumbled together just as it had been tumbled aboard.
I was surprised by our starting with the brig in such a mess--until it
occurred to me that the captain had no choice in the matter if he wanted
to save the tide. Very likely the tide did enter into his calculations; but I
was led to believe a little later--and all the more because of his scared
look when I hailed him from the boat--that he had run into some tangle
on shore that made him want to get away in a hurry before the
law-officers should bring him up with a round turn.
What put this notion into my head was a matter that occurred when we
were down almost to the Hook, and its conclusion came when we were
fairly outside and the tug had cast us off; otherwise my boxes and I
assuredly would have gone back on the tug to New York--and I with a
flea in my ear, as the saying is, stinging me to more prudence in my
dealings with chance-met mariners and their offers of cheap passages
on strange craft.
When we were nearly across the lower bay, the nose of a steamer
showed in the Narrows; and as she swung out from the land I saw that
she flew the revenue flag. Captain Luke, standing aft by the wheel, no
doubt made her out before I did; for all of a sudden he let drive a volley
of curses at the mates to hurry their stowing below of the stuff with
which our decks were cluttered. At first I did not associate the
appearance of the cutter with this outbreak; but as she came rattling
down the bay in our wake I could not but notice his uneasiness as he
kept turning to look at her and then turning forward again to swear at
the slowness of the men. But she was a long way astern at first, and by

the time that she got close up to us we were fairly outside the Hook and
the tug had cast us off--which made a delay in the stowing, as the men
had to be called away from it to set enough sail to give us steerage way.
Captain Luke barely gave them time to make fast the sheets before he
hurried them back to the hatch again; and by that time the cutter had so
walked up to us that we had her close aboard. I could see that he fully
expected her to hail us; and I could see also that there seemed to be a
feeling of uneasiness among the crew, though they went on briskly with
their work of getting what remained of the boxes and barrels below.
And then, being close under our stern, the cutter quietly shifted her
helm to clear us--and so slid past us, without hailing and with scarcely
a look at us, and stood on out to sea.
That the captain and all hands so manifestly should dread being
overhauled by a government vessel greatly increased my vague doubts
as to the kind of company that I had got into; and at the very moment
that the cutter passed us these doubts were so nearly resolved into bad
certainties that my thoughts shot around from speculation upon Captain
Luke's possible perils into consideration of what seemed to be very real
perils of my own.
With the cutter close aboard of us, and with the captain and both the
mates swearing at them, I suppose that the men at the hatch--who were
swinging the things below with a whip--got rattled a little. At any rate,
some of them rigged the sling so carelessly that a box fell out from it,
and shot down to the main-deck with such a bang that it burst open. It
was a small and strongly made box, that from its shape and evident
weight I had fancied might have arms in it. But when it split to bits that
way--the noise of the crash drawing me to the hatch to see what had
happened--its contents proved to be shackles: and the sight of them,
and the flash of thought which made me realize what they must be there
for, gave me a sudden sick