Rough Passage to London(115)

They stopped to catch their breath and Morgan yelled out again, “Stop or I will fire! There is nowhere for you to run!”

Suddenly out of the darkness came a scream. A black figure ran toward them. Morgan fired and then fired again. The others shouted in confusion. The figure continued hurtling toward them. He was carrying something like a spear extended out in front of him. He was screaming like a madman. Morgan prepared for the end when the unknown assailant fell to the ground with a crash.

“I got his foot, Cap’n!” yelled Lowery.

The man was growling and struggling like a wild animal caught in a trap as Whipple held the lantern up high and put a knife to the intruder’s throat. Morgan put his pistols away and rolled the man over so he could see his face.

“Who are you? What are you doing on my ship?”

Whipple brought the light closer so they could now see who it was. The man’s eyes were deeply sunk into his hollow, gaunt face. His hair was wild and ragged. Whiskers sprouted from his chin like bristles on a hog’s back.

Morgan was shocked as he suddenly realized who he was looking at.

“Do you recognize him, Cap’n?” asked Whipple, who hadn’t removed his knife from the man’s throat.

“It’s John Taylor,” gasped Morgan as he looked intently at the fearful eyes now staring back at him. He turned to his stewards and told them to tie him up with some of the hawse lines that were scattered around the bilge area.

Whipple began swinging his lantern in a circle until he found the man’s weapon.

“Here’s what he was trying to kill you with, Cap’n. Looks to be an augur, a big one at that.” Whipple held out a large unwieldy tool into the light with a nearly two-foot-long metal drilling bit some two inches in diameter. Morgan had an awful feeling as he tried to imagine what Taylor would be doing in the bottom of his ship with a deadly weapon.

“What were you doing here, Taylor?”

Morgan reached for the man’s throat.

“Tell me!”

Morgan wasn’t waiting for an answer.

“Quick Whipple, check the area he was in. I think he must have been trying to scuttle us.”

The old ship’s carpenter ran back to the center of the bilge near the keel area and began crawling around on all fours, keeping the lantern on the planking.

“There are about a dozen two-inch-wide holes in the thick outer planking of the ship about eight feet from the keel, Cap’n.”

“Is water coming in?”

“There is some weeping, but I don’t see no leaks.”

“Check them through and through, Whipple.”

“Looks like he may have gotten close, Cap’n, but he didn’t get all the way through the copper sheathing.”

Morgan told the two stewards to take the man up above into the lower cargo area. He then examined the holes closely. It looked as if Taylor had drilled a hole all the way through the outer planking and pricked the copper sheathing. With that little protection, the first heavy beating they encountered during the Atlantic crossing would have caused the ship to spring several major leaks.

“He was trying to sink us, Cap’n,” Whipple said matter-of-factly.

“Plug up the holes with trenails and caulking, Mr. Whipple. I will be asking our visitor some questions.”

Morgan found Taylor tied up in a chair, a lantern swinging over his head. He ran a critical eye over the man. Taylor was a pitiful sight. His thin, pointed face, covered with sweat and grime from the bilge, was unshaven and his hair was dirty. His eyes were sunk into their sockets with dark shadow underneath them. His mouth and teeth were black from smoking an opium pipe. Taylor looked up at him with dull, dead eyes.

Brandishing the augur in his hand, Morgan asked, “Why did you do this?”

“I ain’t talking. He’ll kill me if I say anything.”

“Who?”

“No matter what you do to me, I got nothing to tell you.”

Morgan turned to Lowery.

“Mr. Junkett, I am sure Scuttles has some rancid slush in his bucket in the galley. Bring that. I hear tell Mr. Taylor has a love of rats.”

Taylor’s eyes bulged out with horror and fear. Morgan then turned to Lowery.

“Blindfold him, gag him with a cloth, and get me a hog-bristle brush.”

An hour later, Morgan watched as Lowery and Junkett coated Taylor’s face and body with a thick coat of the slobbery mess. The man was squirming and struggling in his chair as the two stewards spread thick gobs over his face and hair. The smell of rancid grease filled the cargo hold, and it wasn’t long before the rustle and scurrying of small feet could be heard in the dark corners of the hold. Along with that came the high-pitched squeals of hungry rats.