The Island Treasure | Page 2

deck, first one and then another crawling up
the hatchway with lingering feet, in that half-hearted, dilatory,
aggravating way that sailors--and some shore people, too for that
matter--know well how to put on when setting to a task that runs
against their grain and which they do not relish; though they can be
spry enough, and with ten times the smartness of any landsmen, when
cheerfully disposed for the work they have in hand, or in the face of
some real emergency or imminent peril, forgetting then their past
grievances, and buckling to the job right manfully, in true `shellback'
fashion, as if many-handed, like Briareus, with every hand a dozen
fingers on it, and each finger a hook!
So it could be seen now.
The Denver City, a ship-rigged vessel of about thirteen hundred tons
burthen, bound from Liverpool to San Francisco with a general cargo,
had been two days out from the Mersey, battling against bad weather
all the way from the start, with a foul wind, that shifted from the west
to south-west and back again to the west, dead in her teeth, as she
essayed to shape her course down Saint George's Channel to the
Atlantic.
First, beating to the westward with the ebb tide, so as to give Great
Orme's Head a wide berth, and then making a short board south when
she had cleared Anglesey; what with the currents and the thick fog,
accompanied with driving rain, that she met on nearing the Welsh coast,
she nearly came to grief on the Skerries, the water shoaling rapidly on
the lead being hove, shortly before the bright fixed light showing above
the red on the Platters rocks loomed close in on the starboard bow. This
made it a case of 'bout ship at once, Captain Snaggs thenceforth
hugging the Irish side of the channel way and keeping it well on board
on the port tack; and so on this second morning after leaving Liverpool,
the ship was some six miles south of the Tuskar Light, with a
forty-fathom bottom under her and the wind still to the southward and
westward, right ahead of her true course, but shifting and veering from
one point to another, and with a sudden sharp squall coming every now

and then, by way of a change, to increase the labour of the men, already
pretty well worn out by forty-eight hours tacking to and fro in the
captain's endeavours to beat to windward in the face of the foul
weather.
As the Denver City, too, reached the more open seaway, the water got
rougher, a northern stream setting up the Irish Sea from Scilly meeting
the incoming tide round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping
sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and
lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach--as leaden, indeed, as the
heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter
wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the
horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides
acting as the avant courier of a fresh squall--the wind just then tearing
and shrieking through the rigging in short angry gusts and then sighing
as it wailed away to leeward, like the spirit of some lost mariner
chaunting the requiem of those drowned in the remorseless deep!
When the port watch had gone below at `eight bells,' as mentioned
before, to have their dinner, the weather had looked a little brighter, a
small patch of blue sky, not quite as big as the Dutchman's proverbial
pair of breeches, showing right overhead at the zenith as the ship's bell
struck the midday hour, giving a slight promise of better things to come;
and so, as Captain Snaggs had been trying to `carry on' all he could
from the time the vessel left the Mersey, working the hands to death, as
they imagined, unnecessarily in tacking and beating about in his
attempt to make a fair wind out of a foul one, instead of waiting more
sensibly for a more favourable breeze, such as might reasonably be
expected in another day or two at most--judging by those signs sailors
know so well, as do farmers, but which are inexplainable according to
any natural meteorological laws--the hands now thought, on being so
suddenly summoned again on deck, and forced to leave their untasted
meal just as they were in the very act, so to speak, of putting it into
their mouths, and with its tantalising taste and smell vexing them all the
more, that the `old man' only roused them out again from sheer malice
and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, with the object
of `hazing' or driving them, as only slaves and