A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

Richard Harding Davis - "Adventures and Letters"

H. G. Wells. - "The Door in the Wall And Other Stories"

Louise de la Ramee - "Findelkind"

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol - "Taras Bulba and Other Tales"

The Cruise of the Jasper B.

D >> Don Marquis >> The Cruise of the Jasper B.




From the struggles of Cap'n Abernethy and the crew with the
canvas, which he saw none too clearly through the increasing dusk
from his post at the wheel, Cleggett judged that the wind was
indeed strong enough for his purpose. Yards, sheets and sails
seemed to be acting in the most singular manner. He could not
remember reading of any parallel case in the treatises on
navigation which he had perused. Every now and then the Cap'n or
one of the crew would be jerked clean off his feet by some quick
and unexpected motion of a sail and flung into the water. When
this occurred the person who had been ducked crawled out on the
bank of the canal again and went on board by way of the
gangplank, returning stubbornly to his task.

The booms in particular were possessed of a restless and unstable
spirit. They made sudden swoops, sweeps, and dashes in all
directions. Sometimes as many as three of the crew of the Jasper
B. would be knocked to the deck or into the water by a boom at
the same time. But Cleggett noted with satisfaction that they
were plucky; they stuck valiantly to the job. A doubt assailed
Cleggett as to the competence of Cap'n Abernethy, but he was
loyal and fought it down.

Finally Cap'n Abernethy hit upon a novel and ingenious idea. He
tied stout lines to the ends of the booms. The other ends of
these ropes he ran through the eyes of a couple of spare anchors.
Taking the anchors ashore, he made them fast to the wooden
platform which was alongside the Jasper B. Then he took up the
slack in the lines, pulling them taut and fastening them tightly.

Thus the booms were held fast and stiff in position, and the crew
could get the canvas spread without being endangered by their
strange and unaccountable actions.

This brilliant idea of anchoring the booms to the land would not
have been practicable had it not been for a whimsical cessation
of the wind, a lull such as incident to the coming of spring
storms in these latitudes. While the wind was in abeyance the
men got the sails spread. Then the Captain untied the lines,
brought the spare anchors on board, knocked the gangplank loose
with a few blows of his ax, and waited for the wind to resume.

When the wind did blow again it came in a gust which was
accompanied by a twinkle of lightening over the whole sky and
grumble of thunder. A whirl of dust and fine gravel enveloped
the Jasper B. For a moment it was like a sandstorm. A few large
drops of water fell. The gust was violent; the sails filled with
it and struggled like kites to be free; here and there a strand
of rope snapped; the masts bent and creaked; the booms jumped and
swung round like live things; the whole ship from bowsprit to
rudder shook and trembled with the assault.

Cleggett, watchful at the wheel, prepared to turn her nose away
from the bank, but he was astonished to perceive that in spite of
her quaking and shivering the Jasper B. did not move one inch
forward from her position. He was prepared for a certain
stability on the part of the Jasper B., but not for quite so much
of it.

With the next gust the storm was on them in earnest. This blast
came with zigzag flashes of lightning that showed the heavens
riotous with battalions of charging clouds; it came with
deafening thunder and a torrential discharge of rain. One would
have thought the power of the wind sufficient to set a steel
battleship scudding before it like a wooden shoe. And yet the
extraordinary Jasper B., although she shrieked and groaned and
seemed to stagger with the force of the blow, did not move either
forward or sidewise.

She flinched, but she stood her ground.

Second by second the storm increased in fury; in a moment it was
no longer merely a storm, it was a tempest. Cleggett, alarmed
for the safety of his masts, now ordered his men to take in sail.

But even as he gave the order he realized that it could no longer
be done. A cloudburst, a hurricane, an electrical bombardment,
struck the Jasper B. all at once. One could not hear one's own
voice. In the glare of the lightning Cleggett saw the rigging
tossing in an indescribable confusion of canvas, spars, and
ropes. Both masts and the bowsprit snapped at almost the same
instant. The whole chaotic mass was lifted; it writhed in the
air a moment, and then it came crashing down, partly on the deck
and partly in the seething waters of the canal, where it lay and
whipped ship and water with lashing tentacles of wreckage.

But still the unusual Jasper B. had not moved from her position.

Cleggett's men had had warning enough to save themselves. They
gathered around him to wait for orders. More than one of them
cast anxious glances towards the land. Shouting to them to
attack the debris with axes, and setting the example himself,
Cleggett soon saw the deck clear again, and the Jasper B., to all
intents, the same hulk she had been when he bought her. But such
was the fury of the tempest that even with the big kites gone the
Jasper B. continued to shake and quiver where she lay. Speech
was almost impossible on deck, but Cap'n Abernethy signed to
Cleggett that he had something important to say to him.

The whole company adjourned to the cabin, and there, shouting to
make himself heard, the Cap'n cried out:

"Her timbers have been strained something terrible, Mr. Cleggett.

She ain't what I would call safe and seaworthy any more. The'
don't seem to be any danger of her sailin' off, but that's no
sign she can't be blowed over onto her beam ends and sunk with
all on board. If you was to ask me, Mr. Cleggett, I'd say the
time had come to leave the Jasper B. "

The anxiety depicted on the faces of the little circle about him
might have communicated itself to a less intrepid nature. The
old Cap'n himself was no coward. Indeed, in owning to his alarm
he had really done a brave thing, since few have the moral
courage to proclaim themselves afraid. But Cleggett was a man of
iron. Although the tempest smote the hulk with blow after blow,
although both earth and water seemed to lie prostrate and
trampled beneath its unappeasable fury, Cleggett had no thought
of yielding.

Unconsciously he drew himself up. It seemed to his crew that he
actually gained in girth and height. The soul, in certain great
moments, seems to have power to expand the body and inform it
with the quality of immortality; Ajax, in his magnificent gesture
of defiance, is all spirit. Cleggett, with his hand on his hip,
uttered these words, not without their sublimity:

"Whether the Jasper B. sinks or swims, her commander will share
her fate. I stay by my ship!"


CHAPTER XV

NIGHT, TEMPEST, LOVE AND BATTLE

And, indeed, if Cleggett had been of a mind to abandon the
vessel, he could scarcely have done so now. For his words were
no more than uttered when the sharp racket of a volley of pistol
shots ripped its way through the low-pitched roaring of the wind.

Loge had chosen the height of the storm to mask his approach. He
attacked with the tempest.

Without a word Cleggett put out the light in the cabin. His men
grasped their weapons and followed him to the deck. A flash of
lightning showed him, through the driving rain, the enemy rushing
towards the Jasper B., pistol in hand. They were scarcely sixty
yards away, and were firing as they came. Loge, a revolver in
one hand, and Cleggett's own sword cane in the other, was leading
the rush. Besides their firearms, each of Loge's men carried a
wicked-looking machete.

"Fire!" shouted Cleggett. "Let them have it, men!" And the
rifles blazed from the deck of the Jasper B. in a crashing
volley. Instantly the world was dark again; it was impossible to
determine whether the fire of the Jasper B. had taken effect.

"To the starboard bulwark," cried Cleggett, "and give them hell
with the next lightning flash!"

It came as he spoke, with its vivid glare showing to Cleggett the
enemy magnified to a portentous bigness against a background of
chaotic night. Two or three of them stood, leaning keenly
forward; several of the others had dropped to one knee; the rifle
discharge had checked the rush, and they also were waiting for
the lightning. Cleggett and his men threw a second volley at
this wavering silhouette of astonishment.

A cartridge jammed in the mechanism of Cleggett's gun. With an
oath he flung the weapon to the deck. A hand thrust another one
into his grasp, and Lady Agatha's voice said in his ear, "Take
this one--it's loaded."

"My God," said Cleggett, "I thought you were in the cabin!"

"Not I!" she cried, "I'm loading!"

Just then the lightning came again and showed her to him plainly.
Drenched, bare-armed, bareheaded, her hair down and rolling
backward in a rich wet mass, she knelt on the deck behind the
bulwark. Her eyes blazed with excitement, and there was a smile
upon her lips. Beside her was the zinc bucket half full of
cartridges. George tossed a rifle to her. She flung him back a
loaded one, and began methodically to fill the empty one with
cartridges.

"Agatha," shouted Cleggett, catching her by the wrist, "go to the
cabin at once--you will get yourself killed!"

"I'll do nothing of the sort!" she shouted.

"I love you!" cried Cleggett, beside himself with fear for her,
and scarcely knowing what his words were. "Do you hear--I love
you, and I won't have you killed!"

A bullet ripped its way through the bulwark, perforated the zinc
bucket, struck the gun which Lady Agatha was loading and knocked
it from her hands.

"Go to the cabin yourself!" she shouted in Cleggett's ear. "As
for me, I like it!"

"I tell you," shouted Cleggett, "I won't have you here--I won't
have you killed!"

He rose to his feet, and attempted to draw her out of danger.
She rose likewise and struggled with him in the dark. She
wrenched herself free, and in doing so flung him back against the
rail; it lightened again, and she screamed. Cleggett turned, and
with the next flash saw that one of the enemy, his face bloody
from the graze of a bullet across his forehead, and evidently
crazed with excitement of fight and storm, was leaping towards
the rail of the vessel.

Cleggett stooped to pick up a gun, but as he stooped the madman
vaulted over the bulwark and landed upon him, bearing him to the
deck. As he struggled to his feet Lady Agatha, who had grasped a
cutlass, cut the fellow down. The man fell back over the rail
with a cry.

For a long moment there was one continuous electric flash from
horizon to horizon, and Cleggett saw her, with windblown hair and
wide eyes and parted lips, standing poised with the red blade in
her hand beneath the driving clouds, the figure of an antique
goddess.

The next instant all was dark; her arms were around his neck in
the rain. "Oh, Clement," she sobbed, "I've killed a man! I've
killed a man!"


CHAPTER XVI

ROMANCE REGNANT

Cleggett kissed her. . . .


CHAPTER XVII

MISS PRINGLE CALLS ON MR. CLEGGETT

But the rushing onset of events struck them apart. Out of the
night leaped danger, enhancing love and forbidding it. From the
starboard bow Captain Abernethy shrilled a cry of warning, and
the heavy, bellowing voice of Loge shouted an answer of challenge
and ferocity. The wind had fallen, but the lightning played from
the clouds now almost without intermission. Cleggett saw Loge
and his followers, machete in hand, flinging themselves at the
rail. They lifted a hoarse cheer as they came. The fire from
the Jasper B. had checked the assault temporarily; it had not
broken it up; once they found lodgment on the deck the superior
numbers of Loge's crowd must inevitably tell.

Loge was a dozen feet in advance of his men. He had cast aside
the light sword which belonged to Cleggett, and now swung a grim
machete in his hand. Cleggett flung down his gun, grasped a
cutlass, and sprang forward, his one idea to come to close
quarters with that gigantic figure of rage and power.

But before Loge reached the bulwark on one side, and while
Cleggett was bounding toward him on the other, this on-coming
group of Cleggett's foes were suddenly smitten in the rear as if
by a thunderbolt. Out of the night and storm, mad with terror,
screaming like fiends, with distended nostrils and flying manes
and flailing hoofs, there plunged into the midst of the
assaulting party a pair of snow-white horses--astounding,
felling, trampling, scattering, filling them with confusion. A
rocking carriage leaped and bounded behind the furious animals,
and as the horses struck the bulwark and swerved aside, its
weight and bulk, hurled like a missile among Cleggett's staggered
and struggling enemies, completed and confirmed their panic.

No troops on earth can stand the shock of a cavalry charge in the
rear and flank; few can face surprise; the boarding party,
convinced that they had fallen into a trap, melted away. One
moment they were sweeping forward, vicious and formidable,
confident of victory; the next they were floundering weaponless,
scrambling anyhow for safety, multiplying and transforming, with
the quick imagination of panic terror, these two horses into a
troop of mounted men.

This sudden and almost spectral apparition of galloping steeds
and flying carriage, hurled upon the vessel out of the tempest,
flung, a piece of whirling chaos, from the chaotic skies, had
almost as startling an effect upon the defenders. For a moment
they paused, with weapons uplifted, and stared. Where an enemy
had been, there was nothing. So doubtful Greeks or Trojans might
have paused and stared upon the plains of Ilion when some
splenetic and fickle deity burst unannounced and overwhelming
into the central clamor of the battle.

But it is in these seconds of pause and doubt that great
commanders assert themselves; it is these electric seconds from
which the hero gathers his vital lightning and forges his mordant
bolt. Genius claims and rules these instants, and the gods are
on the side of those who boldly grasp loose wisdom and bind it
into sheaves of judgment. Cleggett (whom Homer would have loved)
was the first to recover his poise. He came to his decision
instantaneously. A lesser man might have lost all by rushing
after his retreating enemies; a lesser man, carried away by
excitement, would have pursued. Cleggett did not relax his grasp
upon the situation, he restrained his ardor.

"Stand firm, men! Do not leave the ship," he shouted. "The day
is ours!"

And then, turning to Captain Abernethy, he cried:

"We have routed them!"

"Look at them crazy horses!" screamed the Captain in reply.

The animals were rearing and struggling among the ruins of the
broken gangplank. As the Captain spoke, they plunged aboard the
ship, and the carriage, bounding after them, overturned on the
deck--horses and carriage came down together in a welter of
splintering wheels and broken harness and crashing wood.

A negro driver, whom Cleggett now noticed for the first time,
shot clear of the mass and landed on the deck in a sitting
posture.

For a moment, there he sat, and did nothing more. The pole broke
loose from the carriage, the traces parted, and the two big white
horses, still kicking and plunging, struggled to their feet and
free from the wreckage. Still side by side they leaped the port
bulwark, splashed into the canal, and swam straight across it, as
if animated with the instinct of going straight ahead in that
fashion to the end of the world. Cleggett never saw or heard of
them again.

"Bring a lantern," said Cleggett to Abernethy. "Let's see if this
man is badly hurt."

But the negro was not injured. He rose to his feet as the
Captain brought the light--the storm was now subsiding, and the
lightning was less frequent--and stood revealed as a person of
surprising size and unusual blackness. He was, in fact, so black
that it was no wonder that Cleggett had not seen him on the seat
of the carriage, for unless one turned a light full upon him his
face could not be seen at all after dark. He was in a blue
livery, and his high, cockaded coachman's hat had stayed on his
head in spite of everything.

Even sitting down on the deck he had possessed an air of
patience. When he arose and the Captain flashed the light upon
his face, it revealed a countenance full of dignified good humor.

"Where did you come from?" asked Cleggett.

The negro removed the hat with the cockade before answering. He
did it politely. Even ceremoniously. But he did not do it
hastily. He had the air of one who was never inclined to do
things hastily.

"From Newahk, sah," he said. "Newahk, New Jehsey, sah."

"But who are you?" said Cleggett. "How did you get here?"

The negro was gazing reflectively at the broken carriage.

"Ah yo' Mistah Cleggett, sah? Mistah Clement J. Cleggett, sah,
the ownah of dis hyeah boat?"

"Yes."

The negro fumbled in an inner pocket and produced a card. He
gave it to Cleggett with a deferential bow, and then announced
sonorously:

"Miss Genevieve Pringle, sah--in de cah-age, sah--a callin' on
Mistah Clement J. Cleggett."

He completed the announcement with a dignified and courtly
gesture, which seemed to indicate that he was presenting the
ruined carriage itself to Cleggett.

"You don't mean in that carriage?" cried Cleggett.

"Yes, sah," said the negro. "Leas'ways, she was, sah, some time
back. Mah time an' mah 'tention done been so tooken up wif dem
incompatible hosses fo' some moments past, sah, dat I cain't say
fo' suah ef she adheahed, or ef she didn't adheah."

He glanced speculatively at the carriage again. Cleggett sprang
towards the broken vehicle, expecting to find someone seriously
injured at the very least. But, from the ruin, a precise and
high-pitched feminine voice piped out:

"Jefferson! Kindly assist me to disentangle myself!"

"Yassum," said the negro, moving forward in a leisurely and
dignified manner, "comin', ma'am. I hopes an' trusts, Miss
Pringle, ma'am, yo' ain't suffered none in yo' anatomy an'
phlebotomy from dis hyeah runaway."

With which cheerful wish Jefferson lifted respectfully, and with
a certain calm detachment, the figure of a woman from the debris.

"Thank you, Jefferson," she said. "I fear I am very much bruised
and shaken, but I have been feeling all my bones while lying
there, and I believe that I have sustained no fractures."

Miss Pringle was a woman of about fifty, small and prim. Prim
with an unconquerable primness that neither storm nor battle nor
accident could shake. If she had been killed in the runaway she
would have looked prim in death while awaiting the undertaker.
She must have been wet almost to those unfractured bones which
she had been feeling; her black silk dress, with its white
ruching about the neck, was torn and bedraggled; her black hat,
with its jet ornaments, was crushed and hung askew over one ear;
nevertheless, Miss Pringle conveyed at once and definitely an
impression of unassailable respectability and strong character.

"Which of you is Mr. Cleggett?" she asked, looking about her, in
the lantern light, at the crew of the Jasper B., as she leaned
upon the arm of Jefferson, her mannerly and deliberate servitor.

"I am Mr. Cleggett."

"Ah!" Miss Pringle inspected him with an eye which gleamed with
a hint of latent possibilities of belligerency. "Mr. Cleggett,"
she continued, pursing her lips, "I have sought an interview to
warn you that you are harboring an impostor on your ship."

At that moment Lady Agatha joined the group. As the light fell
upon her Miss Pringle stepped forward and thrust an accusing, a
denunciatory finger at the Englishwoman.

"You," she said, "call yourself Lady Agatha Fairhaven!"

"I do," said Lady Agatha.

"Woman!" cried Miss Pringle, shaking with the stress of her moral
wrath. "Where are my plum preserves?"

And with this cryptic utterance the little lady, having come to
the end of her strength, primly fainted.

Jefferson picked her up and carried her, in a serene and stately
manner, to the cabin.


CHAPTER XVIII

THE MAN IN THE BLUE PAJAMAS

The rain had ceased almost as Miss Pringle was removed to the
cabin. The storm had passed. Low down on the edges of the world
there were still a few dark clouds, there was still an occasional
glimmer of lightning; but overhead the mists were fleecy, light
and broken. A few stars were visible here and there.

And then in a moment more a full moon rose high and serene above
the world. The May moon is often very brilliant in these
latitudes, as sailors who are familiar with the coasts of Long
Island can testify. This moon was unusually brilliant, even for
the season of the year and the quarter of the globe. It lighted
up earth and sky so that it was (in the familiar phrase) almost
possible to read by it. Only a few moments had elapsed since the
rout of Logan Black's ruffians, but in the vicinity of this
remarkable island such sudden meteorological changes are anything
but rare, geographers and travelers know.

Lady Agatha had gone into the cabin to resuscitate Miss Pringle
and, as she said, "have it out with her." Cleggett, gazing from
the deck towards Morris's, in the strong moonlight, wondered when
the attack would be renewed. He thought, on the whole, that it
was improbable that Loge would return to the assault while this
brightness continued.

Suddenly three figures appeared within his range of vision. They
were running. But running slowly, painfully, lamely. In the
lead were the two men whom he had first seen hazed up and down
the bank of the canal by Wilton Barnstable, and whom he had seen
the second time chained in the great detective's boat.

They were shackled wrist to wrist now. To the left leg of one of
them was attached a heavy ball. A similar ball was attached to
the right leg of the other. They had picked these balls up and
were struggling along under their weight at a gait which was more
like a staggering walk than a trot.

They were pursued by the man whom Cleggett had seen attempt to
escape from Morris's. This man still wore his suit of baby blue
pajamas.

He wore nothing else. He was stiff. He moved as if the ground
hurt his bare feet.

He especially favored, as Cleggett noticed, the foot on which
there was a bunion. He was lame. He crept rather than ran. But
he seemed bitterly intent upon reaching the two men in irons who
labored along twenty or thirty feet ahead of him. And they, on
their part, casting now and then backward glances over their
shoulders at their pursuer.

Cleggett divined that the men in irons had escaped from the
Annabel Lee, and that the man in the baby blue pajamas was loose
from Morris's. But why the man in the pajamas pursued and the
others fled he could not guess.

They passed within fifty yards of the Jasper B. But the men in
irons were so intent upon their own troubles, and the pursuer was
so keen on vengeance, that none of them noticed the vessel. As
they limped along, splashing through the pools the rain had left,
the pursuer would occasionally pause to fling stones and sticks
and even cakes of mud at the fugitives, who were whimpering as
they tottered forward.

The man in the baby blue pajamas was cursing in a high-pitched,
nasal, querulous voice. Cleggett noticed with astonishment that
a single-barreled eyeglass was screwed into one of his eyes.
Occasionally it dropped to the ground, and he would stop and
fumble for it and wipe it on his wet sleeve and replace it. Had
it not been for these stops he would have overtaken the men in
irons.

"Clement!" Lady Agatha laid her hand upon his arm. "Miss Pringle
wants to see you in the cabin."

"Well--imposter!" laughed Cleggett. "Is she able to talk to you
yet? And what on earth did she mean by her plum preserves?"

"That is what she wants to tell, evidently," said Lady Agatha.
And she went aft with him.

Miss Pringle, who had been rubbed dry by Lady Agatha, and was now
dressed in some articles of that lady's clothing, which were much
too large for her, sat on the edge of the bed in Lady Agatha's
stateroom and awaited them. Her appearance was scarcely
conventional, and she seemed to feel it; nevertheless, she had a
duty to perform, and her innate propriety still triumphed over
her situation and habiliments.

"Mr. Cleggett," she said, pointing to the box which contained the
evidence against Logan Black, which was exactly similar to the
box of Reginald Maltravers, and which had been placed in this
inner room for safe-keeping, "what does that box contain?"

Cleggett was startled. He and Lady Agatha exchanged glances.

"What do you think it contains?" he asked.

"That box," she said, "was shipped to me from Flatbush, and was
claimed in my name--in the name of Genevieve Pringle--at the
freight depot at Newark, New Jersey, by this lady here. Deny it
if you can!"

"I do deny it, Miss Pringle," said Lady Agatha, accompanying her
words with a winsome smile. But Miss Pringle was not to be won
over so easily as all that; she met the smile with a look of
steady reprobation. And then she turned to Cleggett again.

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.