KIPPING
I thought that Kipping must have abandoned his quest. In the darkness of
the galley the silence seemed hours long. The coals in the stove glowed
redly, and the almost imperceptible light of the starry sky came in here
and there around the door. Otherwise not a thing was visible in the
absolute blackness that shrouded my strange host, who seemed for the moment
to have reverted to the savage craft of his Slave Coast ancestors. Surely
Kipping must have gone away, I thought. He was so mild a man, one could
expect nothing else. Then somewhere I heard the faint sigh of indrawn
breath.
"You blasted nigger, open that door," said the mild, sad voice. "If you
don't, I'm going to kick it in on top of you and cut your heart out right
where you stand."
The silence, heavy and pregnant, was broken by the shuffling of feet.
Evidently Kipping drew off to kick the door a second time. His boot struck
it a terrific blow, but the door, instead of breaking, flew open and
crashed against the pans behind it.
Then the cook, who so carefully had prepared the simple trap, swinging the
carving-knife like a cutlass, sprang with a fierce, guttural grunt full in
Kipping's face. Concealed in the dark galley, I saw it all silhouetted
against the starlit deck. With the quickness of a weasel, Kipping evaded
the black's clutching left hand and threw himself down and forward. Had the
cook really intended to kill Kipping, the weapon scarcely could have failed
to cut flesh in its terrific swing, but he gave it an upward turn that
carried it safely above Kipping's head. When Kipping, however, dived under
Frank's feet, Frank, who had expected him to turn and run, tripped and
fell, dropping the carving-knife, and instantly black man and white
wriggled toward the weapon.
It would have been funny if it hadn't been so dramatic. The two men
sprawled on their bellies like snakes, neither of them daring to take time
to stand, each, in the snap of a finger, striving with every tendon and
muscle to reach something that lay just beyond his finger-tips. I found
myself actually laughing--they looked so like two fish just out of water.
But the fight suddenly had become bitter earnest, Kipping unquestionably
feared for his life, and the cook knew well that the weapon for which they
fought would be turned against him if his antagonist once got possession of
it.
As Kipping closed his fingers on the handle, the cook grabbed the blade.
Then the mate appeared out of the dark.
"Here, what's this?" he demanded, looming on the scene of the struggle.
I saw starlight flash on the knife as it flew over the bulwark, then I
heard it splash. Kipping got away by a quick twist and vanished. The cook
remained alone to face the mate, for you can be very sure that I had every
discreet intention not to reveal my presence in the dark galley.
"Yass, sah," said the cook, "yass, sah. Please to 'scuse me, sah, but Ah
didn't go foh no premeditation of disturbance. It is quite unintelligible,
sah, but one of de men, sah, he come round, sah, and says Ah gotta give him
a pie, sah, and of co'se Ah can't do nothin' like dat, sah. Pies is foh de
officers and gen'lems, sah, and of co'se Ah don't give pie to de men, sah,
not even in dey vittles, sah, even if dey was pie, which dey wa'n't, sah,
fob dis we'y day Mistah Falk he wants pie and stew'd he come, and me and
he, sah, we sho' ransack dis galley, sah, and try like we can, not even two
of us togetheh, sah, can sca' up a piece of pie foh Mistah Falk, sah, and
he--"
Unwilling to listen longer, the mate turned with a grunt of disgust and
walked away.
After he had gone, the cook stood for a time by the galley, looking
pensively at the stars. Long-armed, broad-shouldered, bullet-headed, he
seemed a typical savage. Yet in spite of his thick lips and protruding
chin, his face had a certain thoughtful quality, and not even that deeply
graven scowl could hide the dog-like faithfulness of his dark eyes.
After all, I wondered, was he not like a faithful dog: loyal to the last
breath, equally ready to succor his friend or to fight for him?
"Boy," he said, when he came in, "Ah done fool 'em. Dey ain' gwine believe
no gammon dat yeh Kipping tells 'em--leastwise, no one ain't onless it's
Mistah Falk. Now you go 'long with you and don't you come neah me foh a
week without you act like Ah ain't got no use foh you. And boy," he
whispered, "you jest look out and keep clear of dat Kipping. Foh all he
talk' like he got a mouth full of butter, he's an uncommon fighter, he is,
yass sah, an uncommon fighter."
He paused for a moment, then added in such a way that I remembered it long
afterward, "Ah sho' would like to know whar Ah done see dat Kipping befo'."
I reached the forecastle unobserved, and as I started to climb into my
bunk, I felt very well satisfied with myself indeed. Not even Kipping had
seen me come. But a disagreeable surprise awaited me; my hand encountered a
man lying wrapped in my blankets.
It was Kipping!
He rolled out with a sly smile, looked at me in silence a long time, and
then pretended to shake with silent laughter.
"Well," I whispered, "what's the matter with you?"
"There wasn't any pie," he sighed--so mildly. "How sad that there wasn't
any pie."
He then climbed into his own bunk and almost immediately, I judged, went to
sleep.
If he desired to make me exceedingly uncomfortable, he had accomplished his
purpose. For days I puzzled over his queer behavior. I wondered how much he
knew, how much he had told Mr. Falk; and I recalled, sometimes, the cook's
remark, "Ah sho' would like to know whar Ah done see dat Kipping befo'."
Of one thing I was sure: both Kipping and Mr. Falk heartily disliked me.
Kipping took every occasion to annoy me in petty ways, and sometimes I
discovered Mr. Falk watching me sharply and ill-naturedly. But he always
looked away quickly when he knew that I saw him.
We still lacked several days of having been at sea a month when we sighted
Madeira, bearing west southwest about ten leagues distant. Taking a fresh
departure the next day from latitude 32° 22' North, and longitude 16° 36'
West of London, we laid our course south southwest, and swung far enough
away from the outshouldering curve of the Rio de Oro coast to pass clear of
the Canary Islands.
* * * * *
"Do you know," said Bill Hayden one day, some five weeks later, when we
were aloft side by side, "they don't like you any better than they do me."
It was true; both Kipping and Mr. Falk showed it constantly.
"And there's others that don't like us, too," Bill added. "I told 'em,
though, that if they got funny with me or you, I'd show 'em what was what."
"Who are they?" I asked, suddenly remembering Roger Hamlin's warning.
"Davie Paine is one."
"But I thought he didn't like Kipping or Mr. Falk!"
"He didn't for a while; but there was something happened that turned his
mind about them."
I worked away with the tar-bucket and reflected on this unexpected change
in the attitude of the deep-voiced seaman who, on our first day aboard
ship, had seen Kipping wink at the second mate. It was all so trivial that
I was ready to laugh at myself for thinking of it twice, and yet stupid
old Bill Hayden had noticed it. A new suspicion startled me. "Bill, did
any one say anything to you about any plan or scheme that Kipping is
concerned in?" I asked.
"Why, yes. Didn't they speak to you about it?"
"About what?"
"Why, about a voyage that all the men was to have a venture in. I thought
they talked to every one. I didn't want anything to do with it if Kipping
was to have a finger in the pie. I told 'em 'No!' and they swore at me
something awful, and said that if ever I blabbed I'd never see my little
wee girl at Newburyport again. So I never said nothing." He looked at me
with a frightened expression. "It's funny they never said nothing to you.
Don't you tell 'em I talked. If they thought I'd split, they'd knock me in
the head, that's what they' d do."
"Who's in it besides Kipping and Davie Paine?"
"The two men from Boston and Chips and the steward. Them's all I know, but
there may be others. The men have been talking about it quiet like for a
good while now."
As Mr. Falk came forward on some errand or other, we stopped talking and
worked harder than ever at tarring down the rigging.
Presently Bill repeated without turning his head, "Don't you tell 'em I
said anything, will you, Bennie? Don't you tell 'em."
And I replied, "No."
We then had passed the Canaries and the Cape Verdes, and had crossed the
Line; from the most western curve of Africa we had weathered the narrows of
the Atlantic almost to Pernambuco, and thence, driven by fair winds, we had
swept east again in a long arc, past Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha,
and on south of the Cape of Good Hope.
The routine of a sailor's life is full of hard work and petty detail. Week
follows week, each like every other. The men complain about their duties
and their food and the officers grow irritable. There are few stories worth
telling in the drudgery of life at sea, but now and then in a long, long
time fate and coincidence conspire to unite in a single voyage, such as
that which I am chronicling, enough plots and crimes and untoward incidents
to season a dozen ordinary lifetimes spent before the mast.
I could not, of course, even begin as yet to comprehend the magnitude that
the tiny whirlpool of discontented and lawless schemers would attain. But
boy though I was, in those first months of the voyage I had learned
enough about the different members of the crew to realize that serious
consequences might grow from such a clique.
Kipping, whom I had thought at first a mild, harmless man, had proved
himself a vengeful bully, cowardly in a sense, yet apparently courageous
enough so far as physical combat was concerned. Also, he had disclosed an
unexpected subtlety, a cat-like craft in eavesdropping and underhanded
contrivances. The steward I believed a mercenary soul, tricky so far as his
own comfort and gain were concerned, who, according to common report, had
ingratiated himself with the second mate by sympathizing with him on every
occasion because he had not been given the chief mate's berth. The two men
from Boston I cared even less for; they were slipshod workmen and
ill-tempered, and their bearing convinced me that, from the point of view
of our officers and of the owners of the ship, they were a most undesirable
addition to such a coterie as Kipping seemed to be forming. Davie Paine and
the carpenter prided themselves on being always affable, and each, although
slow to make up his mind, would throw himself heart and body into whatever
course of action he finally decided on. But significant above all else was
Kipping's familiarity with Mr. Falk.
The question now was, how to communicate my suspicions secretly to Roger
Hamlin. After thinking the matter over in all its details, I wrote a few
letters on a piece of white paper, and found opportunity to take counsel
with my friend the cook, when I, as the youngest in the crew, was left in
the galley to bring the kids forward to the men in the forecastle.
"Doctor," I said, "if I wanted to get a note to Mr. Hamlin without
anybody's knowing,--particularly the steward or Mr. Falk,--how should I go
about it?"
The perpetually frowning black heaped salt beef on the kids. "Dah's enough
grub foh a hun'erd o'nary men. Dey's enough meat dah to feed a whole
regiment of Sigambeezel cavalry--yass, sah, ho'ses and all. And yet Ah'll
bet you foh dollahs right out of mah pay, doze pesky cable-scrapers fo'ward
'll eat all dat meat and cuss me in good shape 'cause it ain't mo', and
den, mah golly, dey'll sot up all night, Ah'll bet you, yass, sah,
a-kicking dey heads off 'cause dey ain't fed f'om de cabin table. Boy, if
you was to set beefsteak and bake' 'taters and ham and eggs down befo' dem
fool men ev'y mo'ning foh breakfas', dey'd come heah hollerin' and cussin'
and tellin' me dey wah n't gwine have dey innards spiled on all dat yeh
truck jest 'cause dem aft can't eat it."
Turning his ferocious scowl full upon me, the savage-looking darky handed
me the kids. "Dah! you take doze straight along fo'ward." Then, dropping
his voice to a whisper, he said, "Gimme yo' note."
Knowing now that the cook approached every important matter by an
extraordinarily indirect route, I had expected some such conclusion, and I
held the note ready.
"Go long," he said, when I had slipped it into his huge black hand. "Ah'll
do it right."
So I departed with all confidence that my message would go secretly and
safely to its destination. Even if it should fall into other hands than
those for which it was intended, I felt that I had not committed myself
dangerously. I had written only one word: "News."
[Illustration]
II
IN WHICH WE ENCOUNTER AN ARAB SHIP
[Illustration]