BILL HAYDEN COMES TO THE END OF HIS VOYAGE
I was ejected from the galley as abruptly and strangely as I had been drawn
into it. The candle went out at a breath from the great round lips; the big
hand again closed on my shoulder and lifted me bodily from my chair. The
door opened and shut, and there was I, dazed by my strange experience and
bewildered by the story I had heard, outside on the identical spot from
which I had been snatched ten minutes before.
In my ears the negro's parting message still sounded, "Dis nigger wouldn't
tell a boy one word, no sah, not dis nigger. If he was to tell a boy jest
one leetle word, dat boy, he might lay hisself out ready foh a fight. Yass,
sah."
For a long time I puzzled over the whole extraordinary experience. It was
so like a dream, that only the numbness of my arm where the negro's great
fist had gripped it convinced me that the happenings of the night were
real. But as I pondered, I found more and more significance in the cook's
incoherent remarks, and became more and more convinced that their
incoherence was entirely artful. Obviously, first of all, he was trying to
pacify his conscience, which troubled him for breaking the promise of
secrecy that he probably had given the steward, from whom he must have
learned the things at which he had hinted. Also he had established for
himself an alibi of a kind, if ever he should be accused of tattling about
affairs in the cabin.
That Captain Falk had promised to divide the money among the crew, I long
had suspected; consequently that part of the cook's revelations did not
surprise me. But the picture he gave of affairs in the cabin, disconnected
though it was, caused me grave concern. After all, what could Roger do to
preserve the owners' property or to carry out their orders? Captain Falk
had all the men on his side, except me and perhaps poor old Bill Hayden.
Indeed, I feared for Roger's own safety if he had detected that rascally
pair in falsifying the log; he then would be a dangerous man when we all
went back to Salem together. I stopped as if struck: what assurance had I
that we should go back to Salem together--or singly, for that matter? There
was no assurance whatever, that all, or any one of us, would ever go back
to Salem. If they wished to make way with Roger, and with me too, for that
matter, the green tropical seas would keep the secret until the end of
time.
I am not ashamed that I frankly was white with fear of what the future
might bring. You can forgive in a boy weaknesses of which a man grown might
have been guilty. But as I watched the phosphorescent sea and the stars
from which I tried to read our course, I gradually overcame the terror that
had seized me. I think that remembering my father and mother, and my
sister, for whom I suspected that Roger cared more than I, perhaps, could
fully realize, helped to compose me; and I am sure that the thought of the
Roger I had known so long,--cool, bold, resourceful, with that twinkle in
his steady eyes--did much to renew my courage. When eight bells struck and
some one called down the hatch, "Larbowlines ahoy," and the dim figures of
the new watch appeared on deck, and we of the old watch went below, I was
fairly ready to face whatever the next hours might bring.
"Roger and I against them all," I thought, feeling very much a martyr,
"unless," I mentally added, "Bill Hayden joins us." At that I actually
laughed, so that Blodgett, prowling restlessly in the darkness, asked me
crossly what was the matter. I should have been amazed and incredulous if
anyone had told me that poor Bill Hayden was to play the deciding part in
our affairs.
He lay now in his bunk, tossing restlessly and muttering once in a while to
himself. When I went over and asked if there was anything that I could do
for him, he raised himself on his elbow and stared at me more stupidly than
ever. It seemed to come to him slowly who I was. After a while he made out
my face by the light of the dim, swinging lantern, and thanked me, and said
if I would be so good as to give him a drink of water--He never completed
the sentence; but I brought him a drink carefully, and when he had finished
it, he thanked me again and leaned wearily back.
His face seemed dark by the lantern-light, and I judged that it was still
flushed. Muttering something about a "pain in his innards," he apparently
went to sleep, and I climbed into my own bunk. The lantern swung more and
more irregularly, and Bill tossed with ever-increasing uneasiness. When at
last I dozed off, my own sleep was fitful, and shortly I woke with a start.
Others, too, had waked, and I heard questions flung back and forth:--
"Who was that yelled?"
"Did you hear that? Tell me, did you hear it?"
Some one spoke of ghosts,--none of us laughed,--and Neddie Benson whimpered
something about the lady who told fortunes. "She said the light man and the
dark man would make no end o' trouble," he cried; "and he--"
"Keep still," another voice exclaimed angrily. "It was Bill Hayden," the
voice continued. "He hollered."
Getting out of my bunk, I crossed the forecastle. "Bill," I said, "are you
all right?"
He started up wildly. "Don't hit me!" he cried. "That wasn't what I said--
it--I don't remember _just_ what I said, because I ain't good at
remembering, but it wasn't that--don't-oh! oh!--I _know_ it wasn't that."
Two of the men joined me, moving cautiously for the ship was pitching now
in short, heavy seas.
"What's that he's saying?" one of them asked.
Before I could answer, Bill seemed suddenly to get control of himself.
"Oh," he moaned. "I've got such a pain in my innards! I've got a rolling,
howling old pain in my innards."
There was little that we could do, so we smoothed his blankets and went
back to our own. The Island Princess was pitching more fiercely than ever
now, and while I watched the lantern swing and toss before I went to sleep,
I heard old Blodgett saying something about squalls and cross seas. There
was not much rest for us that night. No sooner had I hauled the blankets to
my chin and closed my eyes, than a shout came faintly down to us,
"All-hands--on deck!"
Some one called, "Ay, ay," and we rolled out again wearily--all except Bill
Hayden whose fitful tossing seemed to have settled at last into deep sleep.
Coming on deck, we found the ship scudding under close-reefed maintopsail
and reefed foresail, with the wind on her larboard quarter. A heavy sea
having blown up, all signs indicated that a bad night was before us; and
just as we emerged from the hatch, she came about suddenly, which brought
the wind on the starboard quarter and laid all aback.
In the darkness and rain and wind, we sprang to the ropes. Mr. Kipping was
forward at his post on the forecastle and Captain Falk was on the
quarter-deck. As the man at the wheel put the helm hard-a-starboard, we
raised the fore tack and sheet, filled the foresail and shivered the
mainsail, thus bringing the wind aft again, where we met her with the helm
and trimmed the yards for her course. For the moment we were safe, but
already it was blowing a gale, and shortly we lay to, close-reefed, under
what sails we were carrying.
In a lull I heard Blodgett, who was pulling at the ropes by my side, say to
a man just beyond him, "Ay, it's a good thing for _us_ that Captain Falk
got command. We'd never make our bloody fortunes under the old officers."
As the wind came again and drowned whatever else may have been said, I
thought to myself that they never would have. Plainly, Captain Falk and
Kipping had won over the simple-minded crew, which was ready to follow them
with never a thought of the chance that that precious pair might run off
with the spoils themselves and leave the others in the lurch.
But now Kipping's indescribably disagreeable voice, which we all by this
time knew so well, asked, "Has anybody seen that sojering old lubber,
Hayden?"
"Ay, ay, sir," Blodgett replied. "He's below sick."
"Sick?" said the mild voice. "Sick is he? Supposing Blodgett, you go below
and bring him on deck. He ain't sick, he's sojering."
"But, sir,--" Blodgett began.
"But what?" roared Kipping. His mildness changed to fierceness. "_You go_!"
He snapped out the words, and Blodgett went.
Poor stupid old Bill!
When he appeared, Blodgett had him by the arm to help him.
"You sojering, bloody fool," Kipping cried; "do you think I'm so blind I
can't see through such tricks as yours?"
A murmur of remonstrance came from the men, but Kipping paid no attention
to it.
"You think, do you, that I ain't on to your slick tricks? Take that."
Bill never flinched.
"So!" Kipping muttered. "So! Bring him aft."
Though heavy seas had blown up, the squalls had subsided, and some of the
men, for the moment unoccupied, trailed at a cautious distance after the
luckless Bill. We could not hear what those on the quarterdeck said; but
Blodgett, who stood beside me and stared into the darkness with eyes that I
was convinced could see by night, cried suddenly, "He's fallen!"
Then Captain Falk called, "Come here, two or three of you, and take this
man below."
Old Bill was moaning when we got there. "Sure," he groaned, "I've got a
rolling--howling--old Barney's bull of a pain in my innards." But when we
laid him in his bunk, he began to laugh queerly, and he seemed to pretend
that he was talking to his little wee girl; for we heard him saying that
her old father had come to her and that he was never going to leave her
again.
To me--only a boy, you must remember--it was a horrible experience, even
though I did not completely understand all that was happening; and to the
others old Bill's rambling talk seemed to bring an unnamed terror.
All night he restlessly tossed, though he soon ceased his wild talking and
slept lightly and fitfully. The men watching him were wakeful, too, and as
I lay trying to sleep and trying not to see the swaying lantern and the
fantastic shadows, I heard at intervals snatches of their low conversation.
"They hadn't ought to 'a' called him out. It warn't human. A sick man has
got _some_ rights," one of the men from Boston repeated interminably. He
seemed unable to hold more than one idea at a time.
Then Blodgett would say, "Ay, it don't seem right. But we've all got to
stand by the skipper. That's how we'll serve our ends best. It don't do to
get too much excited."
I imagined that Blodgett's voice did not sound as if he were fully
convinced of the doctrine he was preaching.
"Ay," the other would return, "but they hadn't ought to 'a' called him out.
It warn't human. A sick man has got _some_ rights, and he was allers
quiet."
They talked on endlessly, while I tried in vain to sleep and while poor
Bill tossed away, getting no good from the troubled slumber that the Lord
sent him.
No sooner, it seemed to me, did I actually close my eyes than I woke and
heard him moaning, "Water--a--drink--of--water."
The others by then had left him, so I got up and fetched water, and he
muttered something more about the "pain in his innards." Then my watch was
called and I went on deck with the rest.
For the most part it was a day of coarse weather. Now intermittent squalls
from the southwest swept upon us with lightning and thunder, driving before
them rain in solid sheets; now the ship danced in choppy waves, with barely
enough wind to give her steerage-way and with a warm, gentle drizzle that
wet us to the skin and penetrated into the forecastle, where blankets and
clothing soon became soggy and uncomfortable. But the greater part of the
time we lurched along in a gale of wind, with an occasional dash of rain,
which we accepted as a compromise between those two worse alternatives, the
cloudbursts that accompanied the squalls, and the enervating warm drizzle.
That Bill Hayden did not stand watch with the others, no one, apparently,
noticed. The men were glad enough to forget him, I think, and the officers
let his absence pass, except Davie Paine, who found opportunity to inquire
of me secretly about him and sadly shook his gray head at the tidings I
gave.
Below we could not forget him. I heard the larboard watch talking of it
when they relieved us; and no sooner had we gone below in turn than
Blodgett cried, "Look at old Bill! His face is all of a sweat."
He was up on his elbow when we came down, staring as if he had expected
some one; and when he saw who it was, he kept his eyes on the hatch as if
waiting for still another to come. Presently he fell back in his bunk. "Oh,
I've got such a pain in my innards," he moaned.
By and by he began to talk again, but he seemed to have forgotten his pain
completely, for he talked about doughnuts and duff, and Sundays ashore when
he was a little shaver, and going to church, and about the tiny wee girl on
the bank of the Merrimac who would be looking for her dad to come home, and
lots of things that no one would have thought he knew. He seemed so natural
now and so cheerful that I was much relieved about him, and I whispered to
Blodgett that I thought Bill was better. But Blodgett shook his head so
gravely that I was frightened in spite of my hopes, and we lay there, some
of us awake, some asleep, while Bill rambled cheerily on and the lantern
swung with the motion of the ship.
To-day I remember those watches below at
that time in the voyage as a succession of short unrestful snatches of
sleep broken by vivid pictures of the most trivial things--the swinging
lantern, the distorted shadows the muttered comments of the men, Bill
leaning on his elbow at the edge of his bunk and staring toward the hatch
as if some one long expected were just about to come. I do not pretend to
understand the reason, but in my experience it is the trifling unimportant
things that after a time of stress or tragedy are most clearly remembered.
When next I woke I heard the bell--_clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang,
clang_--faint and far off. Then I saw that Blodgett was sitting on the edge
of his bunk, counting the strokes on his fingers. When he had finished he
gravely shook his head and nodded toward Bill who was breathing harder now.
"He's far gone," Blodgett whispered. "He ain't going to share in no
split-up at Manila. He ain't going to put back again to India when we've
got rid of the cargo. His time's come."
I didn't believe a word that Blodgett said then, but I sat beside him as
still as the grave while the forecastle lantern nodded and swung as
casually as if old Bill were not, for all we knew, dying. By and by we
heard the bell again, and some one called from the hatch, "Eight bells!
Roll out!"
The very monotony of our life--the watches below and on deck, each like
every other, marked off by the faint clanging of the ship's bell--made
Bill's sickness seem less dreadful. There is little to thrill a lad or
even, after a time, to interest him, in the interminable routine of a long
voyage.
When we came on deck Davie Paine looked us over and said, "Where's Bill?"
Blodgett shook his head. Even this simple motion had a sleepy quality that
made me think of a cat.
"I'm afraid, sir," he replied, "that Bill has stood his last watch."
"So!" said old Davie, reflectively, in his deep voice, "so!--I was afraid
of that." Ignorant though Davie was, and hopelessly incompetent as an
officer, he had a certain kindly tolerance, increased, perhaps, by his own
recent difficulties, that made him more approachable than any other man in
the cabin. After a time he added, "I cal'ate I got to tell the captain."
Davie's manner implied that he was taking us into his confidence.
"Yes," Neddie Benson muttered under his breath, "tell the captain! If it
wasn't for Mr. Kipping and the captain, Bill would be as able a man this
minute as any one of us here. It didn't do to abuse him. He ain't got the
spirit to stand up under it."
Davie shuffled away without hearing what was said, and soon, instead of
Captain Falk, Mr. Kipping appeared, bristling with anger.
"What's all this?" he snapped, with none of the mildness that he usually
affected. "Who says Bill Hayden has stood his last watch? Is mutiny
brewing? I'll have you know I'm mate here, legal and lawful, and what's
more I'll show you I'm mate in a way that none of you won't forget if he
thinks he can try any more of his sojering on me. I'll fix him. You go
forward, Blodgett, and drag him out by the scalp-lock."
Blodgett walked off, keeping close to the bulwark, and five minutes later
he was back again.
Mr. Kipping grew very red. "Well, my man," he said in a way that made my
skin creep, "are you a party to this little mutiny?"
"N-no, sir," Blodgett stammered. "I--he-it ain't no use, he _can't_ come."
The mate looked sternly at Blodgett, and I thought he was going to hit
him; but instead, after a moment of hesitation, he started forward alone.
We scarcely believed our eyes.
By and by he came back again, but to us he said nothing. He went into the
cabin, and when next we saw him Captain Falk was by his side.
"I don't like the looks of it," Kipping was saying, "I don't at all."
As the captain passed me he called, "Lathrop, go to the galley and get a
bucket of hot water."
Running to the deck-house, I thrust my head into the galley and made known
my want with so little ceremony that the cook was exasperated. Or so at
least his manner intimated.
"You boy," he roared in a voice that easily carried to where the others
stood and grinned at my discomfiture, "you boy, what foh you come
promulgatin' in on me with 'gimme dis' and 'gimme dat' like Ah wahn't ol'
enough to be yo' pa? Ain't you got no manners nohow? You vex me, yass, sah,
you vex me. If we gotta have a boy on boa'd ship, why don' dey keep him out
of de galley?"
Then with a change of voice that startled me, he demanded in an undertone
that must have been inaudible a dozen feet away, "Have things broke? Is de
fight on? Has de row started?"
Bewildered, I replied, "Why, no--it's only Bill Hayden."
Instantly he resumed his loud and abusive tone. "Well, if dey gwine send a
boy heah foh wateh, wateh he's gotta have. Heah, you wuthless boy, git! Git
out of heah!"
Filling a bucket with boiling water, he thrust it into my hand and shoved
me half across the deck so roughly that I narrowly escaped scalding myself,
then returned to his work, muttering imprecations on the whole race of
boys. He was too much of a strategist for me.
When I took the bucket to the forecastle, I found the captain and Mr.
Kipping looking at poor old Bill.
"Dip a cloth in the water," the captain said carelessly, "and pull his
clothes off and lay the cloth on where it hurts."
I obeyed as well as I could, letting the cloth cool a bit first; and
although Bill cried out sharply when it touched his skin, the heat eased
him of pain, and by and by he opened his eyes for all the world as if he
had been asleep and looked at Captain Falk and said in a scared voice, "In
heaven's name, what's happened?"
The captain and Mr. Kipping laughed coldly. It seemed to me that they
didn't care whether he lived or died.
Certainly the men of the larboard watch, who were lying in their bunks at
the time, didn't like the way the two behaved. I caught the word
"heartless" twice repeated.
"Well," said Captain Falk at last, "either he'll live or he'll not. How
about it, Mr. Kipping?"
The mate laughed as if he had heard a good joke. "That's one of the truest
things ever was said aboard a ship," he replied, in his slow, insincere
way. "Yes, sir, it hits the nail on the head going up and coming down."
"Well, then, let's leave him to make up his mind."
So the two went aft together as if they had done a good day's work. But
there was a buzz of disapproval in the forecastle when they had gone, and
one of the men from Boston, of whom I hitherto had had a very poor opinion,
actually got out of his blankets and came over to help me minister to poor
Bill's needs.
"It ain't right," he said dipping the cloth in the hot water; "they never
so much as gave him a dose of medicine. A man may be only a sailor, but
he's worth a dose of medicine. There never come no good of denying poor
Jack his pill when he's sick."
"Ay, heartless!" one of the others exclaimed. _"I could tell things if I
would."_
That remark, I ask you to remember. The man who made it, the other of the
two from Boston, had black hair and a black beard, and a nose that
protruded in a big hook where he had broken it years before. It was easy to
recognize his profile a long way off because of the peculiar shape of the
nose. The remark itself is of little importance, of course; but a story is
made up of things that seem to be of little importance, yet really are more
significant by far than matters that for the moment are startling.
It was touching to see the solicitude of the men and the clumsy kindness of
their efforts to help poor Bill when the captain and the mate had left him.
They crowded up to his bunk and smoothed out his blankets and spoke to him
more gently than I should have believed possible. So angry were they at the
brutality of the two officers, that the coldest and hardest of them all
gave the sick man a muttered word of sympathy or an awkward helping hand.
We worked over him, easing him as best we could, while the bell struck the
half hours and the hours; and for a while he seemed more comfortable. In a
moment of sanity he looked up at me with a sad smile and said, "I wish,
lad, I surely wish I could do something for _you_." But long before the
watch was over he once more began to talk about the tiny wee girl at
Newburyport--"Cute she is as they make 'em," he reiterated weakly,
"a-waiting for her dad to come home." And by and by he spoke of his wife,
--"a good wife," he called her,--and then he made a little noise in his
throat and lay for a long time without moving.
"He's dead," the man from Boston said at last; there was no sound in the
forecastle except the rattle of the swinging lantern and the chug-chug of
waves.
I was younger than the others and more sensitive, so I went on deck and
leaned on the bulwark, looking at the ocean and seeing nothing.
[Illustration]
IV
IN WHICH THE TIDE OF OUR FORTUNES EBBS
[Illustration]