island, an indeterminate distance away. It hung in the sky like a
mysterious apparition. They regarded it fixedly, with glances almost
hostile, as if questioning its integrity; but the vision persisted.
Then they turned the boat, and rowed like madmen throughout the
afternoon. The mirage had faded in the course of an hour; but Devereux
urged them on by arguments and promises, explaining the nature of the
phenomenon and enlarging on their chances of deliverance. Hadn't they
all seen it? It couldn't be far off; it must lie somewhere along the
line of the compass bearing that he had taken.
"That night they rowed by watches, Devereux himself taking stroke oar
with either crew. And when morning dawned, the real island lay right
side up a couple of miles ahead, fair and alluring on the steel-blue rim
of the sea. You can imagine the hoarse shout that went up from parched
throats! Weak and wild, they struggled painfully at the oars; and
shortly after sunrise the boat entered a little cove that split the
front of the island, where the ground swell at once dropped off under
the shelter of a curving point of land. A few strokes more, and the surf
caught them. A long roller flung them high up the beach--a lucky thing,
for God knows they wouldn't have had the strength to save themselves.
The roller went out, leaving them planted upright on a white coral
strand; in the silence before the coming of another wave, they heard the
drip of a little stream running down the hillside at the head of the
cove. Water! They left the boat as she was, the oars cock-billed in
the rowlocks, the sail, which they'd hoisted just before dawn and had
been too weak or excited to take in, flapping loose across the gunwale,
and ran with the last strength in their bodies toward the sound. The
rivulet had cut a shallow channel in the coral, from the jungle to the
water's edge; they threw themselves face downward, buried their mouths
in the stream, and drank like animals.
"For some time afterwards they lay as they had fallen, saturated like so
many sponges, feeling the water sink into their blood. Then Devereux,
who had exercised his will power and drunk as sparingly as possible, got
to his feet and turned toward the jungle. A second time he thought his
eyes were deceiving him. A woman stood there in the half-shadow, still
grasping the branches she had parted as she stepped out on the beach.
She didn't appear frightened, but gazed at him frankly in wonder and
admiration. He thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever
seen. His heart went out to her in that astonishing moment of their
meeting, went out freely, without restraint or volition ... and she's
held it ever since, and always will. One can hardly imagine, to see him
sitting over there so dejectedly, that off on the floor of the Pacific,
years ago, and utterly unseen of the world of men, he lived such a
transcendent moment, that such a romance came to him under the sun that
we all know. It takes one back to the days of Sinbad and Urashima and
Oisin.
"He advanced toward her, making signs of friendliness--of affection,
it's to be supposed. Their hearts were free as the air, and they went
naturally, like God's children, into each other's arms. She remained
unafraid ... so he discovered that she loved him, too. Their meeting at
the head of the beach had been unobserved; they melted together into the
jungle like creatures of the light, and the boughs that she'd parted as
if opening the door of life silently closed behind them.
"A little later he returned to the beach and aroused his crew; the men
had fallen into a sort of stupor as they lay in the hot sun. The girl
led them inland to the main village of her people, where they were
received like gods dropped from the sky"
Nichols leaned back in his chair, smiling crookedly. "The story of the
advance of civilization" said he grimly "is the story of how savages
have had to learn that white men aren't gods. It's an old story
now--old and threadbare. It's been pretty nearly completely learned....
These people among whom Devereux and his party had fallen had never seen
a white man before. The story was all new and fresh to them. But owing
to the wholly exceptional circumstances, its ending didn't run according
to the usual distressful formula. In fact, it resulted in a real
victory.
"The white men were very few, to begin with; and they couldn't call on
their governments, at the head of the organized world, to support and
further with mechanical engines of destruction their various lusts and
designs. Happily, three of them died within a week after they had
landed, from the effects of that first drink of water and the
intemperate eating that followed. The other three, however, rapidly
recovered strength and peccancy, and began casting their eyes on the
women of the village. You know the ripe, luxuriant beauty of the
Marquesan women: these people were of the same root stock. It wasn't
many days before a number of violent outrages had been committed, which
rang around the island--a couple of husbands murdered, maidens violated,
and wives put to shame.
"Now, these people were moral, of course, after the wise and simple code
of nature; and the chief of the village was a man of character and
decision. He didn't waste time in parley; when the crimes were brought
home beyond peradventure, and it was seen that the gods had turned to
clay, he had the offending sailors taken into custody, and himself
dispatched all three of them with the same club. Later their best parts
were eaten at a feast of fairly legitimate rejoicing. Devereux was
spared because he had behaved himself, and because of the love of the
girl, who, it appears, was the chief's daughter.
"We've all dreamed of a life of truth and freedom; but few of us have
both won it and lost it, in the brief span of a year. You should see
Devereux's eyes kindle, while he tells you of it, while he's trying to
convince you that he isn't mad. The people of this island had no
traditions of their origin, no legends of visits from the outside world.
It happens, through the fact of prevailing winds in the Pacific, that no
sailing ship route passed near this region; steamers, also, gave it a
wide berth, for it didn't lie between anywhere and anywhere. It was a
place apart, visited by human agency only on the remotest chance. It
may well be that during a period of many years the only two vessels to
wander down those particular miles of waters were the ship that left
Devereux floating on the ocean and the ship that picked him up in the
same spot over a year later. Thus it was that the island had remained
undiscovered, peopled by a race without knowledge of the world. They
were honest and lovable children--much as God intended all of us to be,
I suppose, much as we might have been if we hadn't found a way
temporarily to surmount our destiny.
"The island itself was an emerald anchored in a field of cobalt, a jewel
floating on the broad bosom of the sea. The rustling palm trees waved
day and night before the steady trade winds; the air hung cool in the
shadows, the white surf broke on the reefs in constant thunder, and the
tropical sunlight surrounded the gem like a halo of misty gold.
Devereux lived there a year, and the love that came to him partook of
the nature of the place--fresh, divine, alluring, rich with colour and
meaning, pure as the light, true as the unchanging wind. A son was born
to them. Nothing crossed their lives of sorrow or evil. They had
forgotten time and its desperate occasions. The new day was but a
repetition of the old.
"But I can't begin to show you half of the peace and beauty of that
year. Ask me what the heart of man desires, and I'll answer that every
element of it existed there on the island--conquest, honour, joy,
creative impulse, love--enough for a dreamer or a doer, the wise design
of nature with her uneasy and aspiring offsprings. Devereux grew to
love the people; and because he seemed so different, yet conformed
naturally to the island proprieties, they exalted him. And, marvellous
to relate, he knew the worth of what he had found; he fulfilled the
opportunity, he appreciated the honour, he was worthy of the romantic
choice"
Nichols struck the table sharply with his fist. "Beware of too much
happiness!" he growled "That's another lesson of a jaundiced
civilization. It isn't expedient to embrace truth too hard.... Who
could have conceived an existence safer than Devereux's, or one more
likely to last? The broadest ocean in the world guarded him; the place
of his retreat had never been discovered. The people adored him, the
arms of a great love enfolded him; and he was glad to stay. What better
ramparts could life have built for his defence? But fate, the old
destroyer, willed it otherwise; and he was sent back to us, to an
unbelieving world--to point some obscure moral, I suppose, perhaps in an
attempt to show up all the hollowness and unreality ... if we only had
the eyes to see.
"They had saved the whaleboat, of course; Devereux used to cruise about
the island in her, catching wonderful fish, for he was a sailor at
heart, and couldn't keep off the water. One day something led him far
off shore--a speck on the horizon, which he'd no sooner seen than he
wished to investigate. It looked like a piece of wreckage, or a boat;
he became suddenly excited to think of finding traces of his fellow-men.
Thus the devil with a memory lured him to destruction. The object was
farther away than he had at first realized; it continued for a long
while to look like a boat with a man's figure propped up in one end.
But when he finally came up to it, he found nothing more interesting
than a tree floating half submerged with a huge root that indeed
resembled, even at close range, the fancy his mind had created.
"About this time it fell flat calm; he noticed a heavy squall gathering
on the eastern horizon. He took down the sail and started to row with
two short oars which he carried for an emergency. But four or five miles
lay between him and the island; before he'd covered a third of the
distance, the squall met him head on.
"It was one of those savage arch-squalls that occur on the fringe of the
trade winds once or twice in the course of a year. The island lay to
windward of him; he didn't set the sail, of course, for he would have
been unable to do anything but run before it. In fact, there was
nothing left but to try to keep her head in the wind with the two short
oars. The squall became more violent; a short choppy sea sprang up as
if by magic, and spray flew from the wave-tops in blinding sheets. At
last he had to give it up. He managed to save the oars; with one of
them in his hand he scrambled aft. The boat sped around like a chip as
his weight settled in the stern. Then she gathered headway, and he
began to steer, running away from the island. Darkness was falling; he
couldn't see how fast he was dropping the land. But his sailor's
instinct told him all about it. As night closed in, he realized the
worst; he and the whaleboat were being blown to sea.
"It seemed as if the squall would never end. The gale rushed at him for
hours, a veritable hurricane of wind, accompanied by a deluge of warm
rain. He was badly frightened, not so much for his physical safety as
on account of his imagination. He says that during those long hours of
tumult and darkness, a premonition of doom became as real to his fancy
as if an actual spirit, an embodiment of disaster, had settled down out
of the night to keep him company. He didn't feel alone--fate sailed with
him.
"In the morning, the island had, of course, disappeared. The squall had
at length passed over; the sea grew calm, and the hot sun burned down on
the water. It remained calm all day, so that he couldn't use the sail.
He rowed the heavy boat until his hands could barely touch the oars,
steering as best he knew how by the sun. He had no compass, and his idea
of the direction of the island was vague; the squall, he thought, had
struck him from about E.S.E., but he couldn't be certain. It might have
veered a point or two in the night, blowing him off at a new angle. And
what did it matter?--for he couldn't pick out the points of the compass
with the wind gone and the sun directly overhead. A horrible fear
oppressed him that with all his frantic pulling he was shaping a course
past the island. But which side--which side? As the day wore on, with
no land appearing, this fear became a certainty.
"The second night was terrible; he had begun to comprehend the immensity
of the ocean. He was lost on the Pacific. Nothing but a miracle of
miracles would lead him back to the island. In his mind's eyes he saw a
chart of the region; a dot marked the island, a smaller dot his present
position--the rest was a waste of waters. Thousands of lines radiated
from the smaller dot; these were the possible directions in which he
might steer. Only three or four of them approached the island; the rest
led nowhere.
"He remembered that he was far from the track of vessels. Not that he
wanted to return to the world, but a vessel might help him to find the
island. He was too full of life to want to die.... Scenes of the island
crossed his mind with poignant intensity. They would be searching for
him in their frail dug-out canoes. The women would be wailing behind
the village. Would his love believe that he had left her? No, he felt
her faith, across the silence. In fancy, he saw her standing at the
head of the beach, where she had first appeared to him. But her face
now was drawn in wild sorrow, her streaming eyes ranged the horizon as
if she would pierce the veil of death. He cried out to her; but the
vast cavern of the sky swallowed his words.
"It would have been merciful to kill him there in the boat; hunger and
thirst of the body are nothing, are soon over with. But think of the
surpassing cruelty of saving him! Great pains were taken to that end;
winds were manipulated, a ship was selected and driven from her course;
it was as if the elements had conspired together and the whole machinery
of the universe had paused a moment for the consummation of the act. On
a certain morning he was sighted from the quarter-deck of the
_Vanguard_; an hour later he was picked up, half dead from thirst, and
babbling of an island--as mad as a hatter, of course, since the nearest
land was the Marquesas, five hundred miles away"
*III*
"I've often tried to imagine Devereux's outlook on life, as he begged
the captain of the _Vanguard_ that morning to turn his ship about and
institute a search for an uncharted island. How the refusal must have
stunned him, with the reality still a living presence in his heart. By
Jove, you know, the smell of the land lingered in his nostrils as if
he'd just that moment left it; he could hear the voices, could feel the
touch of lips that were barely parted from his.... But they were rough
and practical on board the _Vanguard_; they had to be, for weren't they
sailing in the employment of a strictly ordered enterprise? They
laughed at him, and held their course. It was then that he began to
hate a world that wouldn't listen. He's used to it now; like the
savages, he has learned his lesson. And his interpretation of it is
accepted only as a further indication of his madness. He says simply
that we have lost our souls.
"On the top of this, came the experience in San Francisco. To have his
hopes raised so high, only to be shattered overnight when public
interest threw down the new plaything, was the final stroke of
disillusionment. He went back to the sea; this was his only means of
livelihood, and in spite of the romantic hallucination he remained a
good sailor. The ship on which he sailed from San Francisco took him
south through the Pacific, along the route of homeward bound vessels.
This, of all Pacific sailing routes, strikes nearest to the region where
Devereux had been lost and found. But it doesn't run quite far enough
to the westward actually to cross it. Devereux went to the captain, told
him straight-forwardly the inwardness of his trouble and adventure, and
begged him to shift the course a little--just to run to leeward, so that
they might strike the longitude of the place. He didn't ask to waste
any time in search. But the captain, who'd heard about his mate before
he shipped him, saw nothing in this but a mild outcropping of the
madness, and of course couldn't listen to the appeal. Running a ship to
leeward was a matter of dollars and cents.... So they drew near the
island, passed it a few hundred miles away, and left it astern as they
picked up the southeast trades.
"This was the first of many voyages; he remained in the San Francisco
trade for several years. Half a dozen times he passed the island,
always leaving it far to leeward; and the memory didn't grow cold.
Rather, it burned warmer and higher under this harrowing tantalization,
a flame fed by hope and clarified by love. Some time, if he waited
patiently, the elements would be propitious, the right chance would
come.
"But he, too, became practical about it, recognizing that until he was
his own master he wouldn't be free to seize a chance if it came his way.
He saved his money, and worked hard to advance his reputation. In due
time he was rewarded with the command of a little barque. For a number
of voyages his owners sent him to the China Sea; it was at this time
that I first met him, to fall under the spell of his romantic destiny.
At last, however, he arrived in Singapore one voyage to learn that he'd
been chartered to carry coals from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San
Francisco. He felt a wonderful elation at the news. It looked like his
long-awaited opportunity.
"In the natural order of things, you know, on the passage from Newcastle
to California, he would cross the Pacific in the westerlies below the
southeast trades, strike north through the trade winds close hauled on
the starboard tack, fetch within a reasonable distance of the coast of
Mexico, pick up the northeast trades there, and take a weatherly
departure for the last stage of the journey. By crossing the equator in
135 deg. west longitude he would be thrown to leeward heavily on that
last stage. But he must chance it; no one would know, and he could make
his easting in the North Pacific, above the trades. Chance it?--he
couldn't have failed to accept the opening, his whole life was centred
on the play. God knows, he'd waited long enough, devotedly enough, for
deliverance from this protracted anguish, for the resumption of
happiness, for another glimpse of the form of love and beauty, for a
sight of the island that more and more appeared to him in the nature of
a vivid dream.
"And, by Jove, when he got there, he couldn't find it! It didn't seem,
to be in existence any longer; at least, it wasn't to be discovered in
the region where he had expected to come across it. He couldn't remember
the exact latitude and longitude, you'll remember, although he had an
approximate position which ought to have served the purpose. He cruised
in the locality for over a week, backward and forward, around and
around, combing every square mile of its waters; but he saw no sign of
land. He had a terrible feeling that he might have passed it by night,
that if the night could have been turned to day he might have caught a
glimpse of it on the distant horizon. It was at night, he says, that
the sense of its nearness was most acute, an ethereal presence lying all
about him in the soft, impenetrable obscurity. At times he could almost
smell the land. He felt that she, too, had remembered, and had remained
faithful to him; that the pain and longing in her heart hung in
mysterious vibrations about the island, to guide him to her if ever he
came that way. But, as of old, he couldn't tell the direction; it was
always his bitter fate to lack a compass at the crises of life. He
didn't find either the island or the rock that had split the _Evening
Star_; and in the end he had to go away.
"He tried again, some years later, but with the same lack of success. I
have an idea that his latitude and longitude were away off; yet the
place where he had been picked up was exact enough. Or perhaps ... But
what's the use of speculating on a hypothesis without tangible grounds?
He couldn't find the island. _He_ is the story--as you see him over
there.
"By this time a hopeless melancholy had settled on him; yet he persisted
in what he conceived to be the main business of life. His faith,
indeed, was unquestioning; he apparently couldn't have done otherwise,
and all his days and designs arranged themselves around this central
purpose as naturally as mists rise to the sun. He left the sea, and
went into the pearl fishing enterprise down on the north coast of
Australia. He wanted to make money--and he made it. As soon as he
possessed the means, he bought a schooner, fitted her up for a year's
cruise, and disappeared over the eastern rim of the Pacific. It was
well over a year, in fact, before he turned up again.
"I happened to be in Singapore when he arrived from that first cruise.
Going down the Jetty late one afternoon to lake my sampan, I met him
wandering in the opposite direction. One look at his face told me that
he'd failed again. He had come in at noon, wasn't going anywhere, didn't
know what he wanted to do. I took him aboard with me to supper, and we
had a long evening on deck under the awning.
"'Devereux, has it ever occurred to you that the island may have sunk in
a volcanic disturbance?' I suggested, after he'd gone over the affair
for the twentieth time.
"The idea gave him comfort, strange as it may seem; he could contemplate
the entire destruction of his beloved as an event of minor importance.
It offered something to fall back on, in his mental agony; a practical
explanation to dull the edge of the frantic feeling that all the while
the island existed, if he could only find it. When I noted how he
devoured the suggestion, I enlarged on its possibility.
"'You see, you haven't been able to find the rock, either' I pointed out
'And I remember you told me there wasn't any coral formation in the
neighbourhood of that rock. A sure sign of recent volcanic activity.
I'd be willing to bet that it hadn't been on the surface very long; it
had been poked up recently for your especial benefit. And where
volcanic action is busy poking things up, it's just as liable to sink
them down again'
"'But the island had been there a long while' he objected 'It had a
coral reef all the way round; our boat crossed it by a miracle that
morning. And the people, Nichols--people don't rise full grown from the
sea, or drop down out of the air'
"I wondered whether they didn't, in this case. 'Never mind, this was the
way of it' said I 'The rock was an indication of volcanic action that
hadn't yet extended to the island. But the whole area was in danger,
and the next outbreak, which happened to be one of depression, dragged
down the island, too'
"We left the question pending, and went our various ways. Now and then
I'd run into him, wandering about the world, as the years went by. He's
never wholly given up the search. The singular thing about it is that
material fortune has fairly pursued him. He's made a lot of money, and
sunk it all in fruitless expeditions. Too bad it is that he didn't
possess a scientific bent; he knows all there is to know of the Pacific
islands on their practical side--that is, on the side that isn't worth
knowing"
Nichols struck the table again. "Well, what do you think of it?" he
demanded "There he goes, now--alone, always alone. Why was he sent back
to us? What's his obscure moral? Do you get any hint?"
"Nichols, do you yourself believe in the reality of this island?" I
asked.
He glanced at me keenly. "Isn't that wholly beside the point?" said he
"I don't believe the island exists to-day, if that is what you mean.
But there's a year in an open boat, back at the beginning of the record,
to be explained. The point is that he believes in the island. By Jove,
he remembers it--do you understand? See that droop in his back, as he
stands absently looking out of the door? He's growing old, and the
woman would be past middle age to-day, and the boy would be a man; but
they have a trick of remaining young in his memory. Oh, he faces the
fact, of course, in his practical moments; wonders what they have come
to, whether the boy ever matured, whether the woman waited, or gave him
up for lost and married another man. He can speak about these things,
because he's quite determined to believe that the island is sunk under
the ocean, that they're all dead. But when the moon's out, and he gets
to dreaming, they come back to him just as he left them, a young and
beautiful woman with a child at her breast, both of them perfectly
alive. How can you ask me ... whether I believe in the island?"
*IV*
The day following this conversation, Nichols introduced me to Devereux;
I met and talked with him several times before I left Hong Kong. If he
was mad, the fact didn't affect his daily intercourse. He was a man of
charming personality; a man who held something back, of course, but this
merely added interest to the charm. Only his eyes were strange; as he
talked, they invariably wandered upward, and were recalled to the scene
in intermittent sharp flashes.
Then I left Hong Kong, and forgot all about him for a couple of years.
At the end of that time I found myself in Batavia on business, when who
should arrive but Nichols in the barque _Omega_. I left a message for
him at his broker's, and that evening he called on me at the hotel.
Already, I had determined to ask him for a passage north.
"But it'll take me a couple of months to reach Hong Kong" he told me
"I'm going from here to Macassar, then on up the straights to Cebu and
Iloilo"
"Time is no object to me" I answered.
"Good" said he "I'll be glad enough of your company. I have one
passenger already, but he's hardly exhilarating. It's Devereux--you
remember him. The fellow who lost an island in the Pacific"
"Yes, indeed. How is he now?"
"He's in bad shape" said Nichols, tapping his head significantly "I've
had him aboard the round trip, for his health, but it hasn't seemed to
help him. I'm afraid he is really breaking up, this time"
So it was arranged that I accompany Nichols northward. I went off on
board with him that night, to enjoy the fresh sea-breeze in the outer
roads. There I renewed my acquaintance with Devereux in more intimate
circumstances.
The change in him was decidedly noticeable. His manner was odder, more
distrait; throughout the evening he sat with his chair pulled close to
the side, speaking only when spoken to, gazing off into the night and
drumming constantly on the rail with his hand. We sailed from Batavia
in a couple of days. Quite abruptly, on the morning of our departure,
Devereux approached me with a new manner, as if anxious to enter into
confidences. The anchor had just fetched away, the ship had begun to
turn on her heel. Something had moved him to the depths, some gleam of
colour, some distant view of the palm-covered islands in the offing. He
stopped me in the weather alley-way, his delicate features working with
a powerful emotion.
"I've tried..." he began; then broke off for an instant, and drew
nearer. "You know, I hardly said good-bye" he told me impressively "I
went off in a great hurry that morning" He gazed at me profoundly, like
a man looking at his own image in a mirror. "Do you know the Pacific?"
he suddenly demanded.
"Not very well" I answered "I've been to Honolulu, and New Caledonia.
Nothing in between"
"Oh..." he murmured "Then I must tell you" Without warning, he plunged
into a relation of his own tale. I listened politely, then curiously,
then with growing excitement. The tale transported him, inspired him.
It was poetic drama, tragic and magnificent, that I heard; scene after
scene unfolded itself before me as he talked, made real by his
unconscious perfection of detail, and invested with truth by his air of
fervour and simplicity. I saw the island in bold outline, in vivid
colouring; I felt the hunger and thirst, and tasted the water that they
found there on the beach; I looked up with him to behold the woman of
his dreams. His dreams, or his memories--which was it? Had there ever
been an island? The question seemed never so baffling as at that moment,
when his present madness stood so openly revealed.
After this experience he retained me in his confidence--didn't want to
talk about anything else but the vision that he saw and the sorrow that
lay on his heart. It was very distressing. One morning as I came up
the companion-way after breakfast, he plucked me nervously by the
sleeve.
"Look here" said he, leading me to windward "Nichols knows the position
of that island. He's trying to pass it..."
"Nonsense, Devereux!" I exclaimed "You mustn't credit such a thought.
Nichols knows less about it than we do"
"He's always poring over the chart" said Devereux darkly "He tries to
keep our position from me. Oh, I can see it in his eye!"
"But we aren't in that part of the world" I argued, like a man wrestling
with the wind.
He passed a hand wearily across his eye. "It looks the same" said he.
Suddenly he shot at me a piercing glance. "I don't know whether to
believe you or not!" he snarled "You're all against me, every damned
one of you!"
He quickly dropped the mood of suspicion, however, for that evening we
had another long talk about the island. The next forenoon he took a
notion to go aloft; spent a number of hours perched on the main royal
yard. There we could see him steadily searching the horizon. We seized
the opportunity to talk over his case at length in the cabin, but could
come to no decision except to let affairs run their course.
"Good Lord, Nichols, suppose he really sights an island, up there!" I
suddenly exclaimed. We bent over the chart, pricking off our exact
position that morning; and breathed a sigh of relief to discover that,
as we were going, we shouldn't sight any land till the following day.
It was in Macassar that we saw the first evidence of violent abberration
in Devereux. The three of us had gone ashore for the day; after an
early dinner, we were taking a short drive in the cool of the evening
through a region of small rice and coffee plantations. Somewhere beyond
the outskirts of the town, a native woman stepped from the road in front
of us to make way for our horses. She drew back against a fringe of
bamboo trees by the roadside, stretched out her arms to part the
branches behind her, and stood there motionless, in sharp relief against
the sunset, watching us pass by. Beside us, Devereux uttered a wild
cry, some unintelligible name, and leaped from the moving vehicle.
We found him prostrate at the feet of the woman, babbling in a musical,
strange tongue. The light on his face was the very madness of joy. The
woman shrieked, drawing back among the bamboo stems. Nichols reassured
her in the Bugis dialect.
"Devereux, come away!" he commanded sharply "You don't know her. For
God's sake, come away!"
Devereux got up slowly, gazing at us in wild alarm; then held out his
arms to the woman. She struggled farther back into the bamboo thicket.
Again he turned to us, drew himself together, and spoke with authority
and defiance.
"She is my wife!" said he.
It was pathetic and terrible--the very devil of a scene. He fought and
struggled; we had to take him to the carriage by main strength. A crowd
had gathered. At last Devereux grew quiet. Nichols explained as best
he could to the woman, while half a hundred ears listened eagerly to the
astonishing tale. A rapid colloquy ensued; though I couldn't understand
the words, I heard the woman's voice melt with pity.
"She wants to know whether your wife had a birthmark on her bosom"
Nichols interpreted, turning to the carriage.
Devereux shook his head; he was still dazed with the struggle. The
woman left cover, and came close to the carriage without fear. The
upper part of her sarong slipped down, disclosing a broad red blotch on
the dusky skin above her right breast. Leaning forward, she spoke a few
words in a soothing voice.
"She says that you must be mistaken" repeated Nichols "She says she is
sorry--but now you have seen that it cannot be"
Devereux stiffened in his seat, and the light suddenly went out of his
eyes. He gazed at her a moment like a rudely awakened somnambulist.
Then he slumped in the corner, as if felled by a sharp invisible blow.
The woman nodded to us, and we drove rapidly away.
He was ill for several days after that, keeping close in his room. When
he was able to come on deck again, we had reached well across the
Celebes Sea, and were about to make Sibutu Passage on the coast of
Borneo. We watched him anxiously that forenoon for signs of a return of
his malady. But he'd evidently forgotten the incident in Macassar; he
talked with us all day in a normal manner, without reference to his
affairs. It seemed as if the worst of the attack was over.
A long, narrow island lies on the west side of Sibutu Passage, clear of
the mainland and hiding several smaller islands behind it. This was
sighted while we were at dinner that noon; when we came up for our
cigars, it stood in plain view on the lee bow. Being an island against
the main, with land rising behind it as we came on, we didn't think of
it as a possible new source of excitement. As the afternoon passed,
however, Nichols called my attention to Devereux, who was acting
strangely again. For a while he would lean against the lee rail,
talking rapidly to himself; suddenly he would leave that off and take to
pacing the deck in short, quick turns, rubbing his hands together. His
eyes, it was to be noticed, kept watching the island, now less than four
miles away. His face worked with nervous energy. His whole air was one
of suppressed excitement, mingled with a certain quiet elation.
"He's using that Polynesian dialect!" Nichols exclaimed in a worried
whisper "What can we do with him? We must pass the island"
"Can't you stop there long enough to set him ashore--convince him that
it isn't his island?" I suggested.
Nichols considered soberly, then shook his head. "It wouldn't work"
said he "First place, the currents are bad, there's no harbour or
village, and no anchorage, so far as I'm aware. Second place, would
anything convince him? Even if there was once a real island, mightn't
this one, in his present condition, look as good as the next to him?
Suppose he were to insist on a hunt for the inhabitants? We'd have to
bring him away in the end--and that might only prolong the agony"
"I guess you're right, Nichols; but what's the alternative?"
"Tack ship, and stand away till night" he answered without hesitation
"Slip through the passage under cover of darkness. Trust to luck that
he'll change the mood again tomorrow, and forget what he saw this
afternoon. We can get him to sleep somehow--drug him if necessary"
"But he'll make a row at once, when you tack ship"
"I suppose so. We'll have to play him at his own game"
It seemed the better plan, and Nichols acted on it immediately.
Devereux, lost in his own sphere of unreality, didn't discover that the
ship was coming about until the island began to change its position
along the rail. He watched it a moment, looked up to see the sails flat
aback, then turned in alarm and ran toward the stern.
"What are you doing?" he cried "You can make the anchorage on this
tack. The cove lies just round that first point"
"I know" said Nichols easily "But it's getting late, and I am afraid of
the reefs. The channel is narrow, the wind's dying, the currents can't
be trusted around that entrance. I'm going to stand off and on all
night, and wait for the morning"
"Nonsense!" urged Devereux "We could easily make it! Why, Nichols, I
know that channel like a book. There's plenty of daylight left...."
"Sorry, old fellow, but I just don't dare try it" said Nichols
decisively, throwing into the words all the power of his normality "You
must remember that I have the ship on my hands"
Devereux regarded him sourly, in a sort of hostile dejection. His case
throughout was marked by a singular docility, as if all things assumed
an illogical aspect to him, and were to be met by circumlocutory
methods. "Well, I suppose your word is law" he allowed "But its damned
hard on me. I've waited a good many years, Nichols, for this night"
Without deigning to discuss the matter further, he went off down the
companion like a sulky child. Following him a few moments later to
reconnoitre, I found the door of his stateroom tightly closed.
He didn't appear at the supper table; as the evening passed it seemed
evident that he wasn't coming out again. We began to have hope of
getting through the night without another painful scene. When I looked
into his room after supper and found him sound asleep in the bunk, it
seemed too good to be true. Nichols at once tacked ship again, and we
stood back toward Sibutu Passage.
Our plan for slipping through under cover of the darkness, however, had
failed to reckon with the moonlight; that both of us had forgotten it is
a good indication of the state of our minds. For the night, when it
settled down, was positively radiant. A great soft moon hung high in
the heavens, flooding the sea with a subdued glare, and revealing every
detail of the land as we came abreast of the point of the island shortly
after midnight. Sleep was out of the question. Nichols, of course, had
to navigate the ship through the intricate passage. Thus it became my
duty to run below every little while, keeping a watch on Devereux's
door. But no sound or movement came from the closed room.
We had already forged past the main point of the island, which lay abaft
the lee beam, less than half a mile distant, when I started on this
errand for the last time. Going down the companion, I was struck by an
uneasy feeling, and found myself hurrying through the entry. When I
reached the cabin, Devereux's door stood open, a black hole in the dim
light of the swinging lamp above the chart table. A glance into the
room showed me that he was no longer in the bunk. I ran to the forward
cabin door, but seeing no one out there, turned and jumped up the after
companion on the dead run.
"Have you seen Mr Devereux come on deck?" I cried to the helmsman.
"No, sir"
Nichols, at the stern rail, had heard my question, and ran forward to
meet me. "Isn't he in his room?" he asked.
"No. I can't find him anywhere in the cabin. Must have gone up the
forward companion"
Together we hurried forward along the weather alley. Reaching the
corner of the house, where the main deck opened before us, we made out
two men standing to leeward of the mainmast, apparently in earnest
conversation. One seemed eager, excited; the other was evidently on the
defensive. Devereux and the mate, we saw the next instant. It crossed
my mind that the mate was ignorant of the intimate details of Devereux's
malady; he wasn't the sort of fellow to take into confidential
relations.
We heard his voice, now, sharply raised, as if in a final attempt to
quell the other's insistence.
"But we aren't going to stop here, I tell you! There's nothing to stop
for, no place to call...."
"_Not going to stop?..._" Devereux repeated wildly. He turned toward
the rail, holding his arms stiffly outstretched in a gesture of utter
distraction. Who can imagine the thoughts that leaped through his brain
at that moment, or fathom the depths of the disappointment that suddenly
crushed his already broken mind?
"Look out" cried Nichols at my elbow "Don't let him get away!"
But it was already too late; Devereux had heard the warning, too, and
accepted it as a challenge. With a wild cry that seemed to tremble
among the upper sails and echo back from the wooded heights of the
island, he leaped forward, dodging the mate, and gained the bulwarks
just abaft the fore preventor backstay. For an instant he stood there,
silhouetted against the bright track of the moonlight, confronting the
vision that was reality--then plunged with a magnificent abandon, and
disappeared under the silvery surface of the water.
We saw him strike out toward the island. The ship forged ahead, carrying
the moon-track with her; before we could get out a boat, he had vanished
in the shrouded wastes astern. We sought for a night and a day, but
could find no trace of his body. In that swift current setting seaward,
it was impossible that he could have reached the land.
*SERVANT AND MASTER*
*SERVANT AND MASTER*
*I*
"Steward!"
"Yes, sir, Cappen"
The little old Chinaman looked up from the brass threshold that he was
polishing. Kneeling at the entrance to the forward cabin, with his back
toward Captain Sheldon, he peered round his shoulder with a gnome-like
movement, his hands pausing on the brass.
Captain Sheldon laid down his book. He pointed an accusing forefinger
at the stateroom threshold, which the steward had just finished.
"That's dirty, Wang. You haven't half polished it. What's the matter
with you lately?"
"All light, Cappen, all light. Eye gettee old"
He shifted his pan of brick-dust, scuttled across on his knees to the
stateroom threshold, and attacked the brass again. With head bent low
and hands flying, he worked silently. His back disclosed nothing beyond
the familiar mechanical impersonality.
Captain Sheldon watched him with narrowing eyes. He realized that he
was beginning to "get down on" the old steward; yet to his mind there
was justice in the feeling. Wang wasn't so neat or careful as he used
to be. He frowned as he noted the greasy collar of the Chinaman's
tunic. A dirty steward!--he had always abhorred the notion. To his
strict ideas of nautical propriety, it meant the beginning of a ship's
disintegration. The time was not far distant, he saw clearly, when he
would have to get rid of old Wang.
He had inherited the steward along with the ship _Retriever_ when his
father died. "Wang-ti, His Mark" the entry had stood voyage after
voyage on the ship's articles; young John Sheldon had grown up taking
the venerable Chinaman for granted. He was the "old man's" trusted
servant, as much a part of the vessel as her compass or her keel. He
took entire charge of the ship's provisioning, as well as of the cabin
accessories. He kept the commissary accounts, with never a penny out of
the way; his prudence and honesty had saved the ship many a dollar.
John often used to hear his father boast that be wouldn't be able to go
to sea without Wang-ti.
In his boyhood on shipboard, there had existed a natural intimacy
between the captain's son and the factotum of the nautical household.
John's mother was dead, he roamed the ship wild from forecastle to
lazaret; and Wang had guarded his fortunes with the wise faithfulness
that knows how to keep its attentions unobserved. The captain had even
permitted his son to sit in the steward's room, watching him smoke a
temperate pipeful of opium after the noon dishes were done; this was the
measure of his trust in the old Chinaman.
Indeed, John Sheldon, had he been disposed, might have recalled a great
deal that went on in Wang's narrow room on the port side of the forward
cabin--incidents fraught with deep importance to boyhood. The room was
a place of retreat, a zone of freedom. It made little difference
whether Wang were there or not, the two understood each other, conversed
only in monosyllables, and the Chinaman apparently took no interest in
what the boy did. In return, the boy throughout this period never so
much as made an inquiry into Wang's life; that matter, too, was taken
for granted. Many an afternoon he would lie for hours on the clean,
hard bed, his head buried in a book, while the steward sat beside him on
a three-legged wooden stool, sewing or figuring his accounts, neither of
them speaking a word or glancing at the other. The click of the stone
as the Chinaman mixed his ink, the rustle of the pages, and the faint
creak of the wooden finish in the cabin, would mingle with the fainter
sounds aloft and along decks as the vessel slipped quietly through the
water.
But this was long ago, before life had opened, before days of
responsibility and authority had overlaid youthful sentiment with a hard
veneer of efficiency. The door of that room had closed on John Sheldon
for the last time when he left the ship in New York, a boy of thirteen,
to spend a few years at home in school; he was not to share another hour
with Wang until the final hour. When next he joined the _Retriever's_
company, it was in the capacity of a rousing young second mate of
seventeen, broad shouldered and full of confidence, believing that his
place in life depended on strength and self-assertion. He picked
quarrels with the crew largely for the sake of fighting; he was
aggressive and overbearing, as befitted the type of commanding officer
that appealed to his imagination. In him, real ability was combined
with a physical prowess beyond the ordinary; he failed to meet the
reverses that teach men of lesser combative powers a much-needed lesson,
and the years conspired to develop the arbitrary side of his character.
As an instance of this unfortunate tendency, he had allowed himself,
after rising to the position of first mate on the _Retriever_, to
quarrel with his father over some trifling matter of discipline; so that
at the end of the voyage he had quitted the deck on which he had been
brought up, and had shipped away in another vessel.
It was on the voyage immediately following this incident that his father
had died suddenly at sea, half way across the Indian Ocean on the
passage home. John Sheldon had arrived in New York from the West Coast
almost in company with the _Retriever_, brought in by the mate who had
taken his place. The first news he heard was that his father had been
buried at sea. The ship was owned in the family; it seemed natural, in
view of this stroke of destiny, that he should have her as his first
command. The officers left, he took possession of the cabin and the
quarterdeck that had been his father's province for so many years; and
Wang continued his duties in the forward cabin as if nothing had
happened. The Chinaman had nursed Captain Sheldon when he took to his
bed, had found him dying the next morning, had heard his last words, and
had laid out his body for burial.
Six years had passed since then. John Sheldon was a dashing young
shipmaster of twenty-seven; and now Wang was failing. No doubt about
it. The dishes weren't clean any longer; a greasy knife annoyed Captain
Sheldon almost as much as an insult. Lately, he had begun to notice a
heavy, musty smell as he passed by the pantry door. A dirty
steward!--it wasn't to be supported, not on his ship, at any rate.
The Chinaman finished the brasses, gathered up his pan and rags, and
started for the forward cabin. Captain Sheldon laid down his book
again.
"Steward, have you got a home?"
"Oh, yes, Cappen. I got two piecee house, Hong Kong side"
Wang paused in the doorway, turning half round and steadying himself as
the ship lurched. His fingers left a smudge on the white paint. As if
perceiving it, he wiped the place furtively with the corner of his
cotton tunic, only spreading the smudge. Captain Sheldon, watching the
manoeuvre, sniffed in disgust, and continued the inquiry.
"Have you got a wife?"
"She dead, seven, eight year"
"Any children?"
"Oh, I got some piecee children, maybe three, four"
"For God's sake, don't you know how many children you've got?"
"Yes, sir, Cappen. I got four piecee, all go 'way. Maybe some dead. I
no hear"
"Hm-m" The captain knit his brows ponderously, a habit he had acquired
in the last few years, and fixed a severe glance on the old Chinaman.
"Don't you ever want to go home?"
"Oh, no, Cappen. Why fo' I go home? I b'long ship side"
After waiting a moment in silence for further questions, Wang realized
that the conversation was not to be concluded this time. He turned
slowly and shuffled off through the forward cabin, head bent and eyes
peering hard at the floor. Captain Sheldon did not see him stumble
heavily against the corner of the settee.
In the protection of the pantry, Wang put down the pan of brick-dust and
stood for a long time motionless, holding the dirty rags in the other
hand, facing the window above the dresser. He could see the small
square of light plainly, but the rest of the room was vague. His tiny,
inanimate figure, in the midst of the dim clutter of the room, expressed
a weary relaxation; he stood like a man lost in vacant thought. No one
would have suspected the feelings behind the wizened face; Wang's
countenance, as he gazed steadfastly at the square of light, was an
expressionless blank. He seemed scarcely to breathe; the spark of life
seemed to have sunk low within him, to have retreated in fear or
impotence. The hand holding the rags paused rigidly, as if petrified in
the act of putting down its grimy burden. Had Captain Sheldon come upon
him at that moment, he would have ordered him shortly to get busy, begin
to do something.
All his thoughts, in the silence of the pantry, were of loyalty. That
uncommunicative intimacy of the past had been fruitful to one, at least,
of the parties to the contract. "Young Cappen" who as a boy had been
Wang's pride and charge, was his pride and charge still. Had not "Old
Cappen" on his deathbed, whispered the final order "Keep an eye on the
boy, Wang. He's stepping high now--but the time may come when he will
need you" But of these words, his father's last utterance "Young
Cappen" of course knew nothing. They remained a profound secret between
Wang and the dead.
If it were true, Wang recognized in that unwavering gaze, that his days
of usefulness were over, he would no longer be able to discharge this
obligation. Not that his strength was less; his withered, cord-like
sinews ached to scrub and polish, to keep his domain in its old
efficient order. But this voyage he hadn't been able to see what needed
to be done. He had hardly dared allow his mind to formulate the
explanation. But now he must face it. He was going blind.
He comprehended fully the meaning of the recent conversation in the
after cabin. The pain that held him inert and motionless was half of
love and half of fear. Perhaps, he tried to tell himself "Young Cappen"
was now safely launched on the sea of life; perhaps he no longer had
need of an old man's service. Yet, in the same moment of thought, Wang
knew that this was not the fact. The knowledge filled him with a
desperate tenacity; until fate actually laid him low, he could not
submit to the turn of fortune. Old and wise in life, he realized that
"Young Cappen's" hardest lessons still lay ahead of him. He must serve
as long as he was able.
That night over the supper table, Captain Sheldon opened a biscuit;
there was a dead cockroach in it. His knife had cut it in halves. He
threw the biscuit down in disgust. Wang always made the cabin bread....
Well, why didn't the old fool take it away? He must have seen the
incident. Captain Sheldon knew that he was standing a few feet away in
the pantry door. Taking up his plate, he snapped over his shoulder
"Steward!"
Wang was at his elbow in an instant. The captain thrust the biscuit
into his trembling hand.
"Look at that! Take them all away, and bring some bread"
"Yes, sir, Cappen" The Chinaman mumbled incoherently, trying to cover
his confusion. His innate sense of the etiquette of human relations,
which even after fifty years of service had not accommodated itself to
the brusque callousness of European manners, felt bitterly outraged; no
way had been left him to save his face. Yet other and stronger emotions
quickly submerged the insult. The biscuit plate rattled like a castanet
as he set it down on the pantry dresser. As he cut into a new loaf of
bread, he shook his head slowly from side to side, like an animal in
pain, stopping in the midst of the operation to bend above the offending
biscuit and examine it closely. He loosened the cockroach with the
point of the bread knife; it fell to the plate, a dark spot on the white
china. Under his breath he heaved a staccato sigh "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
Captain Sheldon found himself unable to forget this trivial incident; he
kept brooding over it all the evening. At breakfast next morning it
came to his mind again, and followed him intermittently throughout the
day--a day of petty mishaps and annoyances, one of those days when
everything aboard the vessel seemed to be going wrong, when even the
best efforts of officers and men to please him resulted in misfortune,
and the simplest words rubbed him the wrong way. Captain Sheldon was
nearing the end of a long and tedious passage, with nerves and temper
badly frayed.
Coming below an hour after dinner, in hope to find a little peace, he
met the heavy odour of opium smoke floating through the cabin. The door
into the forward cabin had been left open. He strode out angrily; the
steward's door was open, too. Glancing into the stateroom, he saw the
old Chinaman stretched on the bed, staring with glassy eyes at the
ceiling, the pipe slipping from his fingers. Thin wisps of opium smoke
curled up from the bowl and drifted out into the cabin.
Captain Sheldon's patience snapped suddenly. By God, this was too much!
First, bugs in the bread; and now ... the lazy old swine, lying there in
an opium dream, too indolent even to close the door! The ship's
discipline was going plumb to hell. His authority was becoming a joke.
A dirty steward! By God, he wouldn't stand it any longer.
"Steward! Steward! Wake up, there!"
"What, Cappen?"
By a violent effort, Wang pulled himself out of the delicious stupor and
sat up on the edge of the bunk. The drug had not fully overcome him; in
a long lifetime, he had never exceeded the moderate daily pipeful that
would put him to sleep for only half an hour.
"Steward, I can't permit this any longer. You've left your door open,
and stunk up the whole cabin with the damned stuff"
"I s'pose close him, Cappen. Maybe wind swing him open"
"You didn't close it! You don't finish anything, now-a-days. It's got
to stop, I tell you. I can see what the trouble is. This devilish
opium is getting the best of you. It's got to stop--and the best way to
stop, is to begin now.... Give me all the opium you've got"
"Yes, sir, Cappen"
The import of the captain's words brought the old Chinaman to his senses
with a rush. He got up unsteadily, went to his chest, and began
fumbling in the lower corner. Soon he brought out a number of small
square packages done up in Chinese paper.
"Cappen, what you do with him?"
Captain Sheldon snatched the packages from the steward's hand.
"I'm going to throw it all overboard! If you've got any more of the
stuff hidden away, you're not to smoke it--do you understand? I won't
have such a mess in my cabin"
"Cappen, no can do!"
Wang was panting; a shrill note of anguish came into his voice. He
reached out a trembling hand toward the precious drug.
"Yes, you can, and you will. It's nothing but a nasty, degenerate
habit. You're too old for such things. It's making you dirty and
careless. Brace up, now--show that you're good for something. You used
to be the best steward in the fleet. I'm only trying to help you out.
If things were to go on like this much longer, I'd have to find a new
steward in Hong Kong"
Captain Sheldon, struggling to regain control of himself after the
outburst of temper, stamped off through the after cabin. Wang heard him
go up the companion. He sat down again on the edge of the bunk, a
crumpled heap, inert and silent, his eyes dulled by a fear beyond any he
had yet known. For fifty years he had smoked daily that tiny pipeful of
opium. With all that life had brought him, could he summon strength for
this new and terrible ordeal?
*II*
Fire, like the rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike, and eats up
a tall ship at sea as readily as it guts a splendid castle. They were
half way across from Luzon to the China coast, only a few hundred miles
from Hong Kong and the end of the passage, when the blaze was discovered
in the fore hold, already well under way. Quickly it became
unmanageable. Through a day and a night of frantic effort the whole
ship's company fought the flames, retreating aft inch by inch while
destruction followed them relentlessly under decks. In the gleam of a
dawn striking across a smooth sea and lighting up the pale faces
gathered on the top of the after house, it became apparent that the ship
was doomed.
Daylight found them in the boats, standing off to watch the last lurid
scene. The ship burned fiercely throughout the forenoon. At midday,
under a blistering sun, her bows seemed suddenly to crumple and
dissolve; surrounded by a cloud of steam, she settled forward with a
loud hissing noise, and slowly vanished under the waters of the China
Sea.
Captain Sheldon, sitting upright in the stern of the long-boat, watched
the scene with set jaw and snapping eyes. It was his first disaster,
the first time he had met destiny coming the other way. A fierce anger,
like the fire he had just been fighting, ran in his blood. He was
beside himself. It seemed inconceivable that there was no way to bring
his ship back out of the deep; that the very means of authority had
vanished, that he was powerless, that the event was sealed for all time.
He wanted to strike out blindly, hit something, crush something.
Well he knew that if any blame attached to the matter, it rested on him
alone. For some occult reason, as it now seemed, the mate a few days
before had broached the subject of fire, in conversation at the supper
table. Not that fire was to be expected; no one ever had heard of it
with such a cargo. Why had the mate chosen that day, of all others,
when the captain had lost his patience with old Wang, to talk about fire
throughout the supper period, to follow him on deck with the subject in
the evening? The talk had only aroused the perversity of his own
opposition. The mate, waxing eloquent and imaginative, had at length
succeeded in frightening himself; had wanted to take off the fore hatch
in the dog watch, just to look into the hold. Had he done so then, the
fire would probably have been discovered in season to overcome it. But
Captain Sheldon, sarcastic and bristling with arbitrariness, had flatly
commanded him to leave the fore hatch alone.
Well, no use in crying over spilt milk. The ship was gone.
"Give way!" he shouted across the water to the mate's boat "Keep along
with me. We'll strike in for the coast, and follow it down"
All the afternoon they rowed silently in the broiling heat and
mirror-like calm. The coast of China came in sight, a range of high
blue-grey mountains far inland. Nearer at hand, a group of outlying
islands appeared on the horizon. Captain Sheldon swung his course to the
westward, heading directly into the blinding sun that by this time had
sunk low in the western sky.
In the extreme bow of the longboat sat the old steward, gazing straight
ahead with unseeing eyes. His head was uncovered; the sun beat down on
him without effect. He made no movement, uttered no sound. Alone and
helpless, he suffered the throes of the most desperate struggle that
human consciousness affords--the struggle of the will against the call
of a body habituated to opium.
In the latter part of the afternoon they sighted a big Chinese junk,
close inshore against the islands. A light breeze had begun to ruffle
the water. On the impulse of the moment, Captain Sheldon decided to
board the junk and have himself carried to Hong Kong under sail. The
idea caught him and suited his fancy; he couldn't bear to think of
arriving in port in open boats. Instructions were shouted to the mate's
boat, the head of the longboat was again swung around, and a course was
laid to intercept the brown-sailed native craft under the lee of the
land.
All this passed unnoticed by the silent figure in the bow, wandering
blindly through a grim vale of endeavour. As time went on, however,
Wang seemed to realize that a change had taken place in the plan of
their progress. The sun no longer shone full in his face. He glanced
up dully, caught a vague sight of the junk, now close aboard and
standing, to his veiled eyes, like a dark blot on the clear rim of the
horizon; then pulled himself hastily together and made a low inquiry of
the man at the bow oar. The answer seemed to galvanize his tortured
body into action. He began to scramble aft under the moving oars.
"Here, what's the trouble forward?" Captain Sheldon tried to make out
the cause of the commotion.
"Wang wants to come aft, sir"
"What for? Shove him into the bottom of the boat"
"He says he must see you, sir"
"Oh, the devil ... Well, let him come. He needn't hold up the boat for
that"
Many hands helped the old Chinaman aft.
Muttering rapidly to himself, he sank into a place beside the captain.
"What's that you say?" demanded Captain Sheldon "What are you trying to
hatch up now?"
Wang made a vague beckoning gesture in the captain's face. Behind all
that floated wildly through his mind, stood the fixed thought that he
must not shame "Young Cappen" by openly imparting information.
"Are you sick or crazy?" demanded Captain Sheldon again, bending above
the maundering old man.
"Cappen, junk he no good!" whispered Wang feverishly "No can do,
Cappen! Must go 'way, chop-chop. Night come soon. Maybe no see"
Captain Sheldon gave a loud laugh. He spoke for all to hear.
"What damned nonsense have you got into your head now?"
"No, sir, Cappen. Look-see!" Wang grasped the other's arm with frantic
strength, pulling him down "You no savvy him, Cappen. Killee quick, no
good! You no wanchee him. Go Hong Kong side, chop-chop. Night come,
maybe can do. Cappen, I savvy plenty what for!"
"Oh, shut up, you raving old idiot!" cried Captain Sheldon, roughly.
At this inopportune moment the mate, ranging alongside in his boat,
offered a suggestion. They were closing in with the junk now; a row of
yellow faces peered over the side toward them, watching with narrow
bright eyes every movement of the approaching boats.
"Captain Sheldon, I don't like the looks of that crowd" said the mate
nervously "Hadn't we better sheer off, sir?"
"No, certainly not!" shouted the angry captain. "I suppose I'm still in
charge here, even if the ship is gone. Do you think I haven't any
judgment? By God, between a timid mate and a crazy steward.... Give
way, boys, there's nothing to be afraid of!"
The breeze had by this time died away, the junk was scarcely moving. A
moment later their oars rattled against the side. Captain Sheldon
scrambled aboard. He gave a rapid glance along the low maindeck, but
saw nothing to arouse his suspicion. A man, evidently the captain of
the craft, was advancing toward him; the crew were crowding around to
overhear the conversation. But all this was only natural. An ordinary
trading junk, of course; heaven alone knew what all these native craft
really were doing. After a moment's scrutiny, he dismissed from his
mind any thought that may secretly have been aroused by Wang's warning
and the mate's unfortunate remark.
"You losee ship--ha?" The captain of the junk accosted him in good
pidgin English.
"Yes--she burned this morning. I want you to take me to Hong Kong"
Within half an hour the bargain had been struck, and they were
comfortably established on the new deck. The breeze had freshened, the
junk's head had been put about, the two ship's boats trailed astern in
single file at the end of a long line. The _Retriever's_ company had
partaken of a Chinese supper; many of them were spending the last hour
of daylight in examining the queer craft, passing remarks on her strange
nautical points, while the native crew watched their movements with
furtive gaze.
Captain Sheldon paced to and fro on the high poop deck, chewing the end
of a cigar and ruminating on the unaccountable turns of fortune. The
adventure of boarding the junk had for a time broken the savage current
of his thoughts; but now, with the affair settled and night closing in,
the mood of anger and bitterness claimed him again with redoubled
intensity.
The mate ranged up beside him with a friendly air. He felt the need of
a reconciliation.
"You'll be interested to hear, Captain, that old Wang has found a
pipeful of opium"
"The devil you say! I wondered where the old rascal had disappeared to.
How do you know?"
"He's been hanging around the Chinese crew, sir, ever since we came
aboard. I went through their quarters down below forward a while ago,
and there he lay in one of their bunks, dead to the world, with the pipe
across his chest"
"The useless old sot!" exclaimed Captain Sheldon "I had made up my mind
to get rid of him this time, anyway. You know he has been in the
family, so to speak. But I don't like the idea of his going off with
his native gang. Combined with the opium business, it looks suspicious.
You'd better keep an eye on him. He's got a grudge against me, you
know, since I took away his stuff"
"I guess they'll all bear watching, sir"
"Oh, nonsense! There isn't the slightest cause for alarm. It's
perfectly evident that this craft is a peaceful trader, and we could
handle the whole gang of 'em if they began to make trouble. They won't,
though, never fear; a Chinaman is too big a coward. This captain seems
to be quite an intelligent fellow; I've just been having a yarn with
him. He has given up his room to me; well, not much of a room, nothing
but a bunk and a door, but such as it is, it's all he has. Funny
quarters they have down below, like a labyrinth of passages, all leading
nowhere.
The mate laughed. "Funny enough forward, too; a damned stinking hole,
if you ask me, sir"
While they were talking on the poop, Wang appeared on deck forward, went
to the weather rail and sniffed a deep breath of the land breeze. He had
had an hour's opium sleep--an hour of heaven, an hour of life again.
Now he could command his faculties. Blindness was no hindrance to work
in the dark; was even an advantage, since for many months now he had
been accustomed to feeling and groping his way. Fate had been good to
him, at the last. Now he possessed the strength to do what he would
have to do.
The familiar voices of the mate and the captain came to his ears, but he
did not glance in their direction. The least move on his part to give
information would have been his last. He had heard enough already to
know that the death of the whole ship's company that night was being
actively planned, for the sake of the boats and the mysterious tin box
that Captain Sheldon carried.
*III*
In spite of physical exhaustion, it was nearly midnight before Captain
Sheldon left the deck and crawled into the narrow den under the
poop-deck that had been given up to him by the Chinese captain. He
could not get to sleep for a long while. He was taking his loss very
hard; that inflexible, proud disposition would almost have met death
sooner than admit an error. At length, however, he fell into a light
and uneasy slumber.
He was awakened some time later by a light touch on the arm--a touch
that started him from sleep without alarming him into action. A voice
whispered softly in his ear
"Cappen! Cappen! This b'long Wang. No makee speakee" A firm hand was
laid over his mouth.
In the pitchy darkness of the close room, Captain Sheldon could see
absolutely nothing. Listening intently, he heard stealthy movements
outside the door. On deck there was utter silence. He became aware
instinctively that the junk was no longer moving, that the wind had
gone.
He lay perfectly still. The suddenness of the occasion had brought an
unaccountable conflict of impulses and emotions. He felt that an
alarming crisis was in the air. Along with this feeling came another,
strange enough at such a time--a sense of confidence in the old steward.
He had immediately recognized the voice in his ear. Why hadn't he jumped
out of bed? Why wasn't he lying there in momentary expectation of a
knife in the ribs--why didn't he throw himself aside to avoid it? He
could not understand his own immobility; yet he remained quiet.
Something in the old Chinaman's whisper held him in its command. Pride
had succumbed to intrinsic authority.
The rapid whisper began again, panting and insistent.
"Cappen, you come now. Mus' come quick. I savvy how can do. Maybe got
time. S'pose stay here, finishee chop-chop" The hand was removed from
his mouth, as if conscious that discretion had sufficiently been
imposed.
"What has happened, Wang?" whispered the agitated captain.
"Makee killee, all samee I know"
"Where's the mate? Where's the crew?"
"All go, Cappen" Again the hand came over his mouth "You come quick.
Bym'by, no can do"
Captain Sheldon flung the steward's arm aside and sat up wildly. "Good
God, let me go, Wang! I must go out...."
"Cappen, make no bobbery"
"Where's my revolver?" The captain was hunting distractedly through the
bed.
"He go, too" The whisper took on a despairing tone. "Cappen, s'pose
you gotee match?"
"Yes"
"Makee one light"
Captain Sheldon found the box and struck a match. The tiny illumination
filled the narrow cabin. As the flame brightened, Wang rolled over on
the floor, disclosing one hand held against his left breast, a hand
holding a bloody wad of tunic against a hidden wound. A sop of blood on
the floor marked the spot where he had been lying.
The match burned out. Again came the painful whisper.
"Maybe can do now. Bym'by, no can do"
"My God, Wang! You're wounded! How can we get out? I'll carry you"
"No, sir, Cappen. I savvy way. You feelee here, Cappen"
The steward was already fumbling with his free hand at a ringbolt in the
floor. He guided the captain's arm to it. Captain Sheldon grasped the
ringbolt, pulled up a trap-door that seemed to lead into the hold.
Letting himself over the edge, his feet found a deck not far below. He
stood upright in the opening, and lifted Wang bodily to the lower level.
The old Chinaman struggled to be put down.
"Wang, keep still--let me carry you"
"No, sir, Cappen. Walkee-walkee, can do. You no savvy way"
Stooping and keeping an arm half around him, Captain Sheldon followed
Wang through a shallow lazaret. It led forward into the open hold.
They passed beneath a hatch, where Wang drew aside in the deeper shadow,
listening. Not a sound came from overhead. Again they stole forward.
The wounded man held on indomitably, bearing his pain in a silence that
seemed almost supernatural, as if unknown to the other he had been
rendered invulnerable by a magic spell. Beyond the hatch they entered a
narrow passage-way, and came out suddenly into the junk's forecastle,
the quarters of the Chinese crew. A ladder led to another open hatch in
the deck above.
As they reached the foot of the ladder, a fearful yelling suddenly broke
out toward the stern, a sound of savage anger. Naked feet pattered on
the deck overhead going aft. Wang grasped the captain's arm.
"S'pose breakee in door, no findee. One minute have got! Boat stand
off, waitee! Go quickee, Cappen, jump ovelboa'!"
Captain Sheldon heard him with a shock of incredulity. "The boats are
standing off? The crew haven't been killed?"
"No, sir, Cappen. All hand savee! You go now"
He felt the old man sag in his arms.
"Wang, I can't leave you here!"
"Why for, Cappen? Wang no good. Quickee! Makee jump!"
The voice broke; the frail body crumpled and slipped to the floor.
Gathering all his strength, Captain Sheldon slung the old steward's
unconscious form over his shoulder and swarmed up the ladder. As he
gained the deck, a tall figure dashed between him and the rail; other
figures were racing through the waist of the junk. An angry chatter
broke out at the foot of the ladder up which he had just come.
Holding Wang to one side, he struck out heavily at the man who blocked
his path, felling him to the deck. Darkness and surprise saved the day
for him; their quarry had appeared like a whirlwind in their very midst.
The next instant Captain Sheldon had gained the rail, and jumped clear
of the junk's side. The two bodies made a loud splash that echoed
through the calmness of the night. As he came to the surface,
desperately striking away from the junk and trying to keep Wang's head
above water, he heard a shout a little distance off in the darkness, and
the rattle of oars as the boats sprang into action.
*IV*
The longboat was the first to reach him. They pulled him in with his
burden still in his arms. The mate, appearing beside them in the other
boat, gave vent to his anxiety.
"Good God, Captain Sheldon, I thought you were done for! Why didn't you
come, sir? Wang gave me your orders; we hauled up the boats very quietly
as you said, and got into them, while he kept the Chinamen busy forward
with talk. He said you would come, sir; but we were discovered, and I
had to sheer off. I was afraid they'd sink the boats, sir, before we
could do anything. I didn't know what weapons they had. I was just
planning an attack, sir. Then I thought I saw them stab old Wang...."
"I've got Wang" said Captain Sheldon solemnly "They did stab him.
Those weren't my orders--they were his. And he's the only one to pay
the price!" The young captain was beginning to face a harder lesson
than the mere loss of a vessel.
"I don't understand, sir. Wasn't it the right thing to do?" The mate
was completely puzzled by this new development.
"Yes, yes, it was the right thing to do!" cried Captain Sheldon
impatiently "He was right, and I was wrong. Now leave me alone"
He bent above the shrunken form of the old steward. Wang's eyelids
fluttered; he was slowly regaining consciousness.
"Wang, why didn't you come and tell me, in time to save all this?"
The Chinaman's eyes regarded him with a stare of mingled surprise and
affection, a stare that somehow suggested a wise and quiet amusement.
"I tellee you, Cappen. You no savvy. S'pose no savvy, no can do. Mus'
wait, makee savvy."
It was a terrible condemnation. Captain Sheldon ground his teeth at the
bitter truth of it. His own obstinacy, his own evil! Nothing that Wang
could have said, before the thing had happened, would possibly have
changed his mind. He had committed himself to error. The old servant
had been forced to save them single-handed, to retrieve his master's
failure with his own life.
Wang was muttering, as he neared the end. He was about to join "Old
Cappen" With a good report and a clean record. No one could have known
the depth of the calm that had come to that aged heart. Even the awful
pain of the wound had stopped, under the shock of the cool water. He
seemed to be drifting off into an eternal opium dream.
"What is it, Wang? Can I do anything for you?"
"No, sir, Cappen. Bym'by, finishee"
He lay quiet for a moment, then plucked at the other's sleeve.
"Old Cappen say, boy step high. Look out! Maybe more-better stop,
look-see"
Captain Sheldon buried his face in his hand. Had the words come with
lesser force, they would have infuriated him; had the advice been given
as advice, it would have defeated its own ends. But now it came with the
authority of death, sealed with the final service it came with the
meaning of life, and could not be denied.
*RESCUE AT SEA*
*RESCUE AT SEA*
When an Arctic blizzard strikes the Atlantic Coast without warning, the
coal laden schooner that puts to sea trusting in an uncertain Providence
catches it off to the northward of Cape Cod or down along the Jersey
shore; and you read in your morning paper how some steamer reached her
in the nick of time, and rescued her frozen crew as she was on the point
of going down.
But this was not always the way of it; a mechanical age has completely
forgotten the day when steam was an innovation on the sea, when sailing
ships were the accepted mode of travel and transportation, and when the
details of rescue breathed a more romantic story. It was not so many
years ago that steamers themselves were heavily rigged, relying to a
large extent on their canvas when the wind was favourable. Then the
lanes of the sea were crowded with handsome square-rigged sailing
vessels; and your morning paper reported more often how sail had lent a
hand to steam, than steam to sail.
But let me tell it in the captain's own words.
* * * * *
I was coming home that time from Liverpool to New York in the ship
_Pactolus_, a moderate clipper of the early seventies. A regular run,
it was; voyage after voyage I'd been the rounds from New York with
general cargo to San Francisco, from San Francisco with wheat to
Liverpool, thence home in ballast, less than a year for the complete
circuit. A famous course, the course that had called into being the
extreme clipper ship, and the one on which her best and most astonishing
records had been made.
So we were flying light, in a great hurry to swing across the Western
Ocean; for my owners had cabled that the cargo was ready and the ship
badly needed. A spell of dirty weather had followed us ever since
leaving Liverpool; it had kept me on deck night and day, but I wasn't
complaining so long as the wind hung on our tail. At length, however,
the easterly spell seemed to have blown itself out, and a change of
weather was imminent. Nightfall of the day that brought us abreast of
the Banks of Newfoundland closed in with threatening signs. I kept the
deck till midnight, saw the wind shift into the sout'ard, but at last
decided that we weren't to catch a blow that night. It was early
autumn, a season when storms in the Atlantic aren't always dependable.
Soon after the watch was changed I went below, leaving word to be called
in case things took a turn.
At four o'clock in the morning, when they changed the watch again, the
mate stepped below and rapped at the cabin door. I came out of my bunk
all-standing, thinking at once of a change of weather and trying to feel
it in the angle of the deck.
"What's up, Mr Ridley?" I called "Is it breezing on from the
southeast?"
"No, sir" he answered through the door "But there's a strange light on
the weather bow, sir, a long way off. I wish you'd come up and have a
look at it. I think it must be a ship afire"
I dressed immediately, and went on deck. Off about three points on the
weather bow a big glow lit up the heavens, like an island burning
somewhere below the horizon. It was impossible to estimate the distance
it was away; but only one thing could cause it, there on the broad
Atlantic with no land nearer than five hundred miles. That thing was
fire. For it distinctly wasn't a natural phenomenon; all those hard
violet rays that characterize electrical disturbances were lacking, and
in their place were the warm tones of smoke and flame, reflected
brightly in the low-hanging sky.
I hauled the ship up as close to the wind as possible, trimmed the yards
carefully, and found that I could just fetch the light of the
conflagration by jamming her hard. Before this, we had been running
free, with the wind a couple of points abaft the beam. Almost as soon
as we brought her to the wind, it began to breeze on in little gusts;
the delayed southeaster, I realized, was at last rapping at the door.
The skysails were already furled, and under ordinary conditions I should
now have taken in the royals; but I kept them set and let her go. She
was a smart vessel on the wind; the more sail she carried, up to a
certain point, the better she liked it and the higher she would point.
She heeled a little harder as she felt the squalls, gave a lift and a
lunge, then found her pace and settled to it, heading directly for the
lurid glow in the western, sky.
Within an hour we were able to make out the tops of flame above the
horizon, and saw that there must be a big vessel afire. The flames
flickered, appearing and vanishing behind the rim of the ocean, as if
the world had caught ablaze and was trying to touch off the sky. A wild
sight, almost supernatural; it sent a chill through our hearts, and the
whole ship's company were terribly excited. I thought of trying to set
the skysails, but my better judgment prevailed. It wouldn't do to carry
anything aloft at such a time. In the freshening breeze the _Pactolus_
had all the canvas she wanted, and was making an excellent run of it, as
if she realized that time might be a matter of life and death.
The burning ship, when the mate first called me, must have been about
thirty-five miles away. At half past six we had her well in view. She
looked like an enormous torch dropped on a black and angry ocean; solid
flames mounted hundreds of feet in air, illuminating a wide arc of the
western horizon. Long before we reached her, the fire lighted our own
decks with a wild glare and painted our sails a hideous red.
At seven o'clock, just as dawn was beginning to break, we passed a
hundred yards to windward of her, took up a favourable position a short
distance beyond, and swung our main yard. She was a large three-masted
bark-rigged steamer, a passenger vessel, I saw with increasing alarm.
Her main and mizzen masts had already been burned away, the middle
section of her hull was red-hot like a stove, and the sheet of solid
flame that we'd been watching for hours rose above her with a steady
appalling roar, as if a great bellows were blowing under her keel.
It had been apparent to us from the first that nobody could be left
aboard--nobody left alive, that is. I felt certain, however, that if
they had managed to get away in the boats, they'd be clinging to the
vicinity of the disaster, in the knowledge that she would attract
everything afloat through a radius of fifty miles or more. Almost
immediately, this notion was confirmed; we sighted a bright light on the
water just astern of the steamer, then another, and in a few minutes
three flare-ups were burning in as many boats and as many directions.
Nothing for us to do but keep our mainyard aback and let them row to us.
Thus fifteen or twenty minutes passed, while I was on tenterhooks over
the ship's situation.
At length, after a desperate struggle, they dragged one by one under our
lee. The mate had charge of getting the people aboard. Men in the main
channels passed a bow and stern line to each boat, others fended them
off with boat-hooks, still others helped the castaways over the rail.
It was a lucky chance that we reached them when we did; the three boats
were badly overloaded, half full of water, the wind by this time was
breezing on sharply, and the sea making up minute by minute. They
wouldn't have been able to keep themselves afloat another hour.
The captain's boat was the first to come alongside. I saw them pass up
a woman with a year-old baby, then an invalid man. Next came another
woman, who proved to be the stewardess of the steamer; she was carrying
a heavy parcel done up in a tablecloth, that rattled and jangled like a
bag of doubloons. In an overloaded boat, in half a gale of wind, she
had salvaged the ship's tableware! The rest of the crowd were
indiscriminate; except for the women, of whom there weren't many, I
couldn't tell passengers from crew. As I stood watching at the break of
the poop, a man with a long beard and a blanket wrapped around him came
up to me. He seemed half dazed; he was carrying in his hand a small
hatchet, the blade stained with blood.
"What the devil are you doing with that thing?" I demanded.
"I killed the ox, sir" he answered wildly--it came over me in a flash
that he must be the cook. "I couldn't leave him there to burn"
The captain was the last man from that boat to come over the side. I
shook his hand, but had no time just then for conversation; a fact that
he recognized at a glance, drawing a little way aft along the weather
alley and leaving me alone. For everything had to be done at once, you
know; these people saved, and my own ship looked after. We were in a
ticklish position. With main yard aback, and every squall heavier than
the last, we might easily get stern-way on and that would never do. I
felt pretty confident of my gear aloft, but if anything carried away to
hinder the handling of the sails, we should find ourselves in a pretty
kettle of fish. Above all, I kept a sharp eye on the relative position
of the burning steamer. Aback as we were, with so much canvas spread,
we must, I thought, be drifting steadily down toward her; and it would
be the end of us to run afoul of that inferno, or even to fall to
leeward of her. Watching closely, I soon made out that we held our
distance from the craft, or rather, that she held her distance from us;
incredible as it seemed, she was drifting as fast as we were. I turned
to her captain, calling his attention to this mystery.
"Yes, I noticed it" said he "It seems to me that the sheet of flame
must in some way be acting like an enormous sail. I can think of no
other explanation"
Neither could I--and I believe that he was right. She had been
barque-rigged, as I said, and the foremast with its heavy yards, still
standing, kept her head three or four points off the wind, so that she
lay in the position of running free; her sides, too, were high, caught a
lot of wind, and gave her headway. But the sheet of flame must have
helped her progress. For here we were with a ship flying light, and
sufficient canvas spread to drive us to leeward at a rate of four or
five knots an hour, even with the main yard holding her dead.
Too much canvas, in fact; the wind had begun to come with a new weight
and no time afforded for proper seamanship. No time. We had taken in
the royals before we reached the steamer; had clewed them up, but been
obliged to leave them hanging, we'd ranged past her so rapidly. As we
backed the main yard, we had let all three of the topgallant yards run
down, and hauled down the flying jib. All these light sails were
threshing and pounding aloft, while the men who should have furled them
were busy saving life in the lee channels; the jib was slatting itself
to pieces on the end of the jibboom. At that very moment, under
ordinary conditions, we should have been housed down under reefed upper
topsails.
The captain of the steamer had been waiting for me to find a free
moment. Now he pulled up beside me.
"My name is Potter, Captain Clark" said he "I just heard your mate call
you by name. It's needless to say anything, sir, about what you are
doing for us"
"Yes" I answered "save that for the coffee. We haven't got through the
soup yet"
He gave a short laugh. "Speaking of grub, Captain, how about fresh
water? We haven't much in the boats, and we're adding a good many to
your ship's company"
"I've water enough to last a hundred men for a month" I told him "Water
enough for washing, and all purposes" The iron tank below the
main-deck, five thousand gallons, had just been filled in Liverpool.
He looked at me a little incredulously. "Thank God!" said he "I've been
worrying about that ever since I came aboard. Your American ships go
well provided for"
The third boat had then come alongside. "Is this your whole outfit,
Captain Potter?" I asked.
"Good God, no!" he cried "There's another boat somewhere--if it hasn't
gone down"
"We sighted only three. But we'll find it for you, all in due time" I
reassured him.
"It's the second mate's boat" said he "The poor fellow was half blind
from fighting the fire, but he insisted that he could take charge of a
boat. He couldn't have lost her--he was no more heavily loaded than we
were. I expect he's been left somewhere to windward, Captain; we have
drifted away from him. You'd hardly believe it, but we had tough work,
rowing our strongest, to keep up with the drift of the vessel. My
orders were to keep her in company as long as she burned"
"Well, if your second mate is to windward, we may have difficulty in
reaching him" I pointed out "You see how it is, sir; this will be a
living gale inside of an hour. But we will do everything possible.
Wait till it grows a little lighter. In the meantime, what about these
boats of yours?"
"I'm done with them, Captain" he answered "You can do what you like"
There were two big steel lifeboats, and a smaller Whitehall boat. "I'll
swing the lifeboats aboard, then, and let the other go" said I "We may
have a fire of our own before we reach New York; and my boats would
barely accommodate my own ship's company. Mr. Ridley, rig a preventor
lift on the lee main yard-arm, and hoist those two big boats aboard"
My mate, I'm sorry to say, had lost his head in the excitement and
confusion. A fine old man, an excellent seaman, came from down Deer
Island way; but he had outlived his usefulness, as many of us do. He
was running fore and aft the ship, accomplishing nothing, and chiefly
whining about his sails being slat to pieces.
Just as I gave the order to hoist in the boats, the third group of
castaways, in charge of the steamer's boatswain, were coming over the
rail. These men were mostly from the forecastle; for she had been
heavily sparred, crossed a couple of royal yards, and carried fourteen
men before the mast to handle her sails. The boatswain was an impudent
little Londoner, every inch a sailor, and one of your old-fashioned
chanty-men. He caught my eye from the maindeck, and whipped out his
whistle.
"Shall I tyke the order, Captain?" he roared through the din.
"Go ahead!" I told him, waving my hand. Old Ridley hadn't heard me,
anyway.
"Aloft there, men!" cried the boatswain with a swagger, giving a long
blow on his whistle "Here's a bloomin' deck under yer feet again, an'
Di-vy Jones'll wyt a while longer. D'ye hear the Old Man's orders?
Preventor lift on the lee main yard-arm, there, and hoist in the
bloomin' boats. Lively now, lend a hand, my lads, an' show 'em what ye
knows"
They sprang up the ratlines like monkeys; heaven knows, a tarry rope
must have felt good in their hands again! In a jiffy they had rigged
the lift, and got a sling under the first boat. A few moments later, as
the boat rose slowly across the rail, I heard the little Cockney's voice
aloft, raised in a hauling chanty:
"Oh, Bony was a war-ri-or,
A-_way_! Ay-_yah!_
A war-ri-or, a ter-ri-or,
Jean Fran-swar!"
His men came in loudly on the chorus; their voices gave me a turn, to
think of the vicissitudes of fortune. For they had been snatched from
certain death, and they knew it already. As it happened, that tall fire
in mid-ocean was not reported by anyone else; we were the only ship in
all those waters to sight and come up with it. And in less than an hour
after we had taken the last man aboard, we were stripped to three lower
topsails, hove-to in a howling gale.
Full daylight had come while they were hoisting in the boats. We still
lay with the main yard aback, to windward of the burning steamer; forty
minutes, perhaps, had passed since we'd come into the wind. In a few
minutes more we should be ready to get under way--and no sign yet of the
fourth boat with her load of frightened humanity.
I caught a young scamp running by, a boy from home that I'd had for the
round voyage. "Here, you young rascal, jump aloft and see if you can
pick up another boat anywhere" said I "She's likely to be to windward.
Hustle, now! You've been nothing but trouble all the voyage; now earn
your salt" I knew that he had the sharpest pair of eyes aboard.
He was up the mainmast in a flash, slipped past the slatting
topgallant-sail, and reached the sky-sail yard. In a few minutes he
sang out
"I see a boat to leeward, sir!"
"Where away?"
"Just abeam, beyond the steamer"
I feared that his imagination had run away with him, so sent the second
mate into the mizzen cross-trees with a pair of binoculars. He reported
a boat sure enough to leeward--a boat with a tiny sail set.
"That accounts for it!" exclaimed Captain Potter "I forgot that
leg-o'-mutton sail in the second mate's boat. But why has he used it,
to run away from the steamer, when I ordered him to stand by her?"
"I'm afraid it means that he is hard pressed" I answered "He's had to
run for it, in order to keep afloat. We must fill away at once. I hope
we can manage to reach him in time"
While we were swinging the main yard, Captain Potter stood on the after
house, alone beside the mizzen mast, watching his burning vessel. She
was a splendid steamer, only a few years old. He watched her soberly.
I left him to himself. After we had got the _Pactolus_ off before the
wind, with things around decks a little under control, he said good-bye
to his command, as it were, turned aft, and took his place beside me on
the quarterdeck.
"Can you make out the boat yet from the deck?"
"She's dead ahead. They have seen her from the forecastle"
We looked aloft. Yards were groaning, gear was cracking; under full
upper-topsails the ship swept down the wind like a racehorse, fairly
leaping through the water. She must have been a splendid sight to those
poor fellows in the second mate's boat, waiting for her at the door of
death.
"You have a fine ship, sir" said Captain Potter. "I've never seen a
ship handled so smartly, in such a breeze and under so much sail. You
must avail yourself of any help that my crew can give you. My officers
are thorough seamen, brought up under sail"
"Thank you, sir--I see that they are" I answered "But after we have
things straightened around once more, I think we won't need any
assistance" My pride was up, you know, now that the affair was
beginning to turn out so well. She was a British steamer, and these
officers, fine young Englishmen of the best breed, ambitious and
well-trained in the school of sailing ships, were watching me and my
vessel with critical eyes. I'd show them what it meant to be picked up
by a Yankee clipper.
"I make this passage every year, Captain" I went on "and always carry
extra men for it. After leaving my wheat in Liverpool, I have to get
back to New York in the quickest possible time, to load again for
California. It's much like your steamer with her schedule. With extra
men I'm able to carry on sail a little longer, handle her in ordinary
weather with one watch, and save the wear and tear on the crew. The
wear and tear comes mostly on me. I'll have your crew to fall back on
now, and will be able to hold my sail still longer. A sort of reserve
force, you know, ready to jump in an emergency"
He glanced over the stern-rail, where the steamer lay blazing in our
wake. In falling off we had swung a wide circle around her, to escape
the path of the sparks as they whirled down the wind; and now had left
her a couple of miles astern.
"She burns well, Captain" I observed "That's the hottest fire I ever
felt, or ever wanted to feel"
He gave a bitter laugh. "They loaded her especially for it" said he
"Cotton goods, and butter, and bacon, and hams" As if not caring to
look at her any longer, he turned forward, mounted the steps to the top
of the house, and took up his old position by the mizzen mast.
In twenty minutes after filling away, we had reached the second mate's
boat. A look through the binoculars showed me that things were indeed
in a bad way with them; there wasn't a moment to lose. The boat seemed
momentarily on the point of filling, while half a dozen men along her
sides baled frantically with buckets and other utensils. A man in the
stern sheets was waving wildly at us, as if to communicate some
information. I had a notion what it was; they were trying to tell us
that they wouldn't be able to bring the boat into the wind. I saw that
plainly. Captain Potter, coming hurriedly to the after end of the
house, evidently saw it, too.
"How will you pick them up, Captain?" he asked nervously.
"I think we can do it without difficulty" I answered, as if such
measures were a matter of course. In point of fact, I had never
executed the manoeuvre that seemed necessary in this pass, and had never
heard of its being tried by anyone else. As we approached the boat, I
hauled the ship well out on their starboard quarter, passed them several
hundred yards to port and left them a quarter of a mile astern; then
swung the ship across their course, came up to leeward of them with a
shock and a crash, backed the main yard, lost headway, and stopped in
exactly the right position for them to fetch our stern as they ran
before the wind. In other words, I cut a half circle around them and
placed myself athwart their hawse, in the way of an old-fashioned naval
manoeuvre.
We looked down on them from the quarter-deck as they raced toward us.
Several men seemed disabled, water was washing nearly up to her thwarts,
but a few oars were poised in readiness, showing intelligence and
discipline somewhere aboard. In a moment she was on the point of our
weather quarter, sweeping past our stern.
"Round the stern!" shouted Captain Potter and I together "Get under the
lee, and jump for the main channels!"
But they had already seized their last and only opportunity. A smooth
patch on the water favoured them; they made the turn nicely, let go
their sail, and succeeded in paddling up under our quarter.
"Jump while it's smooth!" I cried "Let the boat go"
My crew had by this time become expert channelsmen. One of them caught
the painter, others used their boathooks; and the last load of castaways
from the steamer tumbled over the side, more dead than alive, but alive
enough to know that they'd been saved. The painter was cast off, the
boat drifted clear of the quarter, filled, overturned, and was whirled
away on the top of a breaking sea. Safely on our decks, watching this
symbol of elemental destruction, stood every soul of the steamer's
company.
"I really must congratulate you again!" said Captain Potter heartily
"That was a feat of seamanship, sir. You seem to be able to put your
ship through the eye of a needle"
"She handles nicely, doesn't she?" I agreed. As a matter of fact, I felt
like congratulating myself; I won't deny that I had a feeling of pride,
as well as a prayer of thankfulness for our universal good luck. Things
had gone without a hitch, at a time when a hitch might easily have
called for payment in human life.
So here we were, with sixty people landed suddenly on our decks; with
whole topsails set, and a gale of wind turned loose upon us. I'd been
obliged to abandon the upper sails, while we were saving the first three
boatloads; they had slat themselves to shreds before we could find time
to furl them. The chief thing now was to get the upper topsails in. I
made up my mind that we would shorten sail with our own crew. The crowd
from the steamer were completely fagged out; they had been fighting fire
and the Atlantic for twenty-four hours. I told them to go below, in the
after cabin or the forward house, anywhere, have a smoke, and rest
wherever they could find a chance to lie down; and instructed my steward
to pass round a supply of dry tobacco.
When they had faded away and the decks were cleared for action, Captain
Potter approached me again. "I hardly dare ask about provisions" he
began "I'm sorry to tell you that we brought very little. The fire
cleaned out our galley and store-rooms first of all, and we were barely
able to save a meal or two of biscuits and canned grub"
I thought a minute, making a rough estimate. "We can furnish provisions
to go with the water, Captain" I told him.
"What!--without allowance?" he cried.
"Without allowance" said I "I never liked the idea of putting people on
an allowance; it's too much like starving yourself by degrees. I can
guarantee you provisions to last us for a month or six weeks, three good
meals a day; and we can't in common fortune be out that long. The best
of provisions, I think you'll find"
"How does it happen, sir?" he demanded.
"It doesn't happen. We're always prepared for just such an emergency.
More than once I've met a ship short of provisions, and furnished her
with a boatload or two. You can't anticipate what is liable to happen;
but a lazaret full of beef and flour and potatoes fills in almost
anywhere"
He shook his head in amazement. "I've often heard it said that American
ships were remarkably well-found" he observed "But I shouldn't have
believed a yarn like this from my best friend. Let's see, we've brought
you three times your ordinary ship's company; and you have provisions
and water for all hands to last longer than twice your usual run to New
York. Are you positive, sir?"
"Positive. Give yourself no further worry on that score"
"Back there in the boats" said Captain Potter "I was thinking that, if
God was good to us, we might be picked up by some Slavonian bark, with
only macaroni enough aboard to take him to the Banks of Newfoundland,
where he'd depend on catching a few codfish, and water or not according
as it rained. Then it would have been a case of Halifax or St. Johns,
or else a transfer in open boats to another vessel, with more danger to
my passengers and crew. This, Captain, seems like a pleasant dream"
There was no necessity for telling him how it really did happen. In the
line for which I was sailing, a captain had the fitting out of his own
vessel, and was given practically a free hand. I'd found that there
were many things that I could buy cheaper and better in Liverpool; and I
always laid in a supply of these for the round trip. Things like hams,
and bacon, and tobacco; yes, tobacco, the best American plug at a
shilling a pound, the same article that I would have had to pay fifty
cents for in New York. At Liverpool, too, we could get the finest
French and Irish potatoes; though they wouldn't keep for the round trip,
I used to lay in enough to last me to New York and down to the Line on
the outward passage. We had a ton and a half of potatoes on board that
trip, when we sailed from Liverpool; we reached New York with half a ton
of them left, so you can judge how short of provisions we were. Then
there were certain things, especially flour, and canned fruits,
vegetables and preserves of all kinds, which I could buy cheapest and
best in San Francisco; I'd supplied the ship there with these articles,
for the round trip, and a good half of the stock still remained.
Butter--we had barrels of it. In fact, we could actually have fed all
hands of them for two or three months without allowance; but I didn't
want to spoil the effect by overdoing it. I let them continue to think
that this was the accepted fashion on board of an American ship crossing
the Western Ocean.
That afternoon, when the _Pactolus_ was at last shortened down, the
empty bolt-ropes unbent from the upper yards, and the decks cleared for
heavy weather, the question of accommodations had to be disposed of. We
started with the after cabin; the woman with her baby had one spare
stateroom, the invalid man another. To Captain Potter I assigned a
third spare stateroom, so that he could be by himself. My own room,
with double bunk, sofa, and mattresses on the floor, I gave up to the
rest of the women passengers; the stewardess slept on the sofa in the
after cabin, and generally looked after the ladies' quarters.
This accounted for all the spare staterooms we had. For myself, I took
the upper bunk in the mate's room, at the same time moving the second
mate to this room, where he and the mate, having alternate watches,
could share the same bunk. This left the second mate's room free for the
accommodation of the steamer's three deck officers, with two single
bunks and a knock-down of pillows and blankets on the floor. In the
steward's room also there were two berths; my steward kept the lower,
the first steward of the steamer had the upper, and her second steward
another knock-down on the floor.
In the forward house there were the galley, carpenter's shop, and sail
room, all narrow rooms running from side to side of the house, each with
two doors and two windows; forward of the sail room were the two
forecastles, separated from each other by a fore-and-aft partition in
the middle of the house, and opening forward on either side of the fore
hatch. I moved all of my crew into one forecastle, since my only watch
would be sleeping at a time; and put the steamer's crew into the vacated
one, where bunks and bed clothes were ready for them to use. The engine
room crowd were assigned to the carpenter's shop; the rest of the
men-folk, a miscellaneous lot, first, second, and third class passengers
all together, were given the sail room.
We had on board quantities of second-hand burlap and old sails, rolls
and rolls of them, to be put down under the cargo of wheat, enough to
line the whole inside of the ship when she was loaded; these were rolled
up in the 'tween-decks after we discharged at Liverpool, to be
overhauled and repaired on the passage across to New York, before being
stowed away for use again in San Francisco. They were just what we
needed for beds and coverings. In the two narrow rooms in the forward
house, spread plenty thick on the floors, they made the finest possible
knock-downs; although they were packed in pretty tight, the men couldn't
have been more comfortable in their own berths.
Captain Potter wanted me to put them below the hatches. We were
ballasted with salt in the lower hold, but the 'tween-decks were clean
and empty; she was in splendid trim for sailing, dry as a bone in heavy
weather. Undoubtedly, the 'tween-decks would have made a comfortable
place for the men, with plenty of room all around. But my objection was
a perfectly practical one. Every one of these men had saved his pipe; in
many cases it seemed to be about all that he had saved. Pipes had been
going in every mouth since they'd come aboard. And the sight of that
burning steamer was seared into my eyes. It gave me the shivers merely
to think of sending all those pipes to sit on a bed of sail-cloth below
the hatches. Some kind of a fire was only to be expected; but a fire in
the forward house would be the lesser of two evils.
With all my care, I made a serious mistake in these arrangements; a
mistake due to my ignorance of steamship etiquette. I assigned the
chief engineer to a place forward with the engine-room crowd, and paid
him no further attention. The status of engineers wasn't in my
category; I thought of them, when I thought of them at all, as belonging
to some indefinite lower region, and lumped them all together. But I
was careful to make the proper distinction with the deck officers, for
this was a matter within my own province.
Captain Potter gave me a broad hint that afternoon. "My chief engineer
is a fine man, sir" he said "There has never been friction between us.
He is highly thought of by the office"
I received the news as something in the way of conversation; wasn't much
interested just then in the affairs of his vessel. What did I know of
steamers? I'd been brought up under sail; and a steamer to me was
nothing but a new-fangled usurper of the ocean, a thing to be sneered
at, and to be outsailed when possible. It wasn't till some years
afterwards, I remember, that I learned by accident that the chief
engineer of a steamer was next in position to her master, above all of
the deck officers. The knowledge was a shock to me; I recalled Captain
Potter's remark, realized what I'd done, and saw how nice they had been
about it. Even to-day, it annoys me to think of the mistake, and of the
comment it must have caused.
We lived like kings; I gave free access to the provisions, fore and aft.
The first steward of the steamer said "I'll wait at table" Our forward
cabin table, hauled out to its full length, would seat fourteen people;
he had to set it up three times for each meal, for all the passengers
ate aft. The second steward said "I'll wash dishes" So he stood all
day in the pantry, digging away at an endless job; for of course there
weren't dishes enough to go around three whacks. The cook joined my cook
and steward in the galley forward; among them they kept us fed. Made up
a barrel of flour into bread every day, for one item. By chance, I
overheard the steamer's first officer say one evening after supper, that
her fare at its best hadn't equalled ours.
They were frank in admiration of the ship; of her equipment, her sailing
qualities, her cleverness, dryness, and general seaworthiness; I could
see that they were a little envious, too, of the way we handled her. We
had a crew of Liverpool toughs, hard men, but experienced sailors, bred
to American ships and their ways. They had caught the spirit of the
game, filled the steamer's crew full of tall yarns in the dog-watch, and
performed feats of seamanship for them on deck whenever the opportunity
offered. Once the excitement of that first day was over, old Ridley's
superb knowledge of his position emerged again. My second officer was
one of your tall, fiery down-east youths, twenty-one years old, smart as
a steel trap and able as a whirlwind.
We put the _Pactolus_ through her paces, I can assure you; carried sail
till all was blue. Luck sent us strong and favourable winds. In the
dead of night I would often see the steamer's officers, dressed and
wandering around the decks, or gathered in a group and holding low
conversation; the ship would be scuppers under, the deck at a dangerous
angle, masts and yards buckling and groaning, a spread of motionless
canvas rising aloft as hard as a board; the whole hull humming like a
top, as she raced through the water at a fourteen-knot clip. It made
them nervous; they wanted to give me their advice, but being young and
proud, they wouldn't do it. I suppose they called me a reckless Yankee.
But I knew my ship and trusted in my gear, knew exactly what I could do
with them; and didn't carry away so much as a rope-yarn throughout the
passage.
Only once did I have to call on our visitors for help. Closing in with
Nantucket, we had run full-tilt into another southerly wind. It wasn't
more than half a gale, and I had kept her running under a heavy press of
canvas. After twelve hours had gone by, I knew that soon the wind would
jump into the westward in a flurry, as all southeasters do in the end.
Feeling secure, with extra men to draw on in case I got caught aback, I
held my sail and course till the last gun was fired. We were running
with the wind on the port beam, under three whole topsails, whole
mainsail and foresail, spanker, mizzen, main and foretopmast staysails,
and inner jib.
And before I knew it, I had really got caught. The wind jumped without
warning, jumped quick and hard; one minute it was our old half-gale from
the southward, the next minute it was a howling westerly squall. Before
we could possibly pay off to the northward, the ship was flat aback.
Then it was "All hands on deck to shorten sail!" with a vengeance, the
vessel lying down to port, the masts cracking, the shrouds slackening
with an ominous sag, and things in general looking badly for a while.
The officers of the steamer ran on deck feather white, feeling the ship
go over to windward; her first mate ranged up close beside me, and kept
glancing backward and forward from my face to the masts, as if he
expected them to go over the side any minute and wanted to watch me when
they fell.
As soon as I'd seen that we were caught aback, I had let the three upper
topsails come down with a run. My crew were aloft now on fore, main and
mizzen, furling these sails, which I couldn't afford to lose. Neither
could I afford to lose the mainsail or break the main yard; but at that
moment there were no men to spare from the topsails, where the second
mate was working like a demon; while old Ridley had all that he could do
on deck, letting go gear and attending to the three topsail yards. With
every fresh puff of westerly wind, I saw the main yard bending like a
bow; it was a big spar, over ninety feet long. The mainsail was a new
piece of canvas, and probably would hold; but the tack or the weather
brace might carry away under the unequal strain, and then the yard was
gone.
"You can blow your whistle, sir" I said to the young officer who had
been watching me so closely--they all carried whistles in their pockets,
to call their men with. "Take charge of that mainsail, if you please,
and get it off her as quickly as you can"
He needed no second invitation; was off in a flash, blowing a loud toot
as he ran forward. I heard the call answered by another whistle in the
waist; that little Cockney boatswain had been getting anxious, too. Out
came the steamer's crew with a rush from their side of the forward
house, where they'd fallen into the habit of loafing regardless of what
went on outside. Clew-garnets and buntlines were manned with seamanlike
precision, the tack was started, the sheet was eased away, and in a
remarkably short time they had smothered the big sail and hauled it up
to the yard.
But they didn't intend to leave the job half finished. "Aloft, boys,
and out on the yard!" cried the mate. A moment later he sprang up the
ratlines himself, to superintend the job; the little Cockney took the
weather yardarm, piping a song as he perched above the water; they
furled the sail smartly, reaching the deck along with our own men from
the topsail yard.
Captain Potter, who had come on deck in the interval, was watching his
men with manifest pride. I was glad that it happened so, and took
especial pains to compliment the chief officer before all hands. He
blushed like a school girl, now that the emergency was over. The little
Cockney, however, couldn't resist a stroke of impudence.
"We thanks ye, Captain" he sang out loudly "That's the w'y we does it
aboard of a bloomin' lime-juicer"
The sally brought a roar from the whole main-deck, in which I'd have
been a stick if I hadn't joined.
"What do you do with such saucy rascals?" I called to Captain Potter
"Shall I keel-haul him, or serve him an extra pint of grog?"
"Myke it a pint o' grog all around, Ol' Bo-ri-i" giggled the boatswain,
dodging around the mast.
"I would if I could, my men" I laughed "But as you know, we have no grog
or lime-juice in a Yankee ship. Beef and biscuit, work and wages, is
what we sail on. You need no grog, if that's a sample of the way you
feel" And I pointed aloft to the neatly furled mainsail.
With stern way on, we had by this time hauled out to port, braced the
yards sharp up, and caught the wind in the foresail and three lower
topsails. Our visitors perhaps had saved us from a serious accident; at
any rate, they'd demonstrated their ability. It gave them something to
brag about on their own account; while the effect on my crew was only to
intensify the spirit of rivalry. In fact, the incident brought a great
improvement to the tone of the ship; for I had noticed during the last
couple of days a growing animosity between the steamer's forecastle and
ours, due to the forced inactivity of the former.
On the following day the westerly breeze blew itself out; in the early
afternoon a steamer overtook us, bound in for New York, passing about
four miles to windward. We were then off to the southward of Nantucket,
having come about on the starboard tack during the night. I set a
string of signals "Come closer. Have important news to communicate"
The steamer made them out, changed her course, and ran down within
hailing distance. She was a German vessel, one of the first oil-tankers
to cross the Atlantic, they told me in New York; her name was the
_Energie_. Her captain couldn't speak English fluently; but he had
picked up a New York pilot somewhere on the Banks, a man who'd been
carried to sea by another vessel in a storm. He was the fellow who
talked to me from the bridge, although I didn't know it at the time.
"Steamer ahoy!" I hailed; "The British steamer _Santiago_ has burned at
sea. I have on board her entire ship's company, and am taking them to
New York. No one was lost, either passengers or crew. Please report us
all well"
They held a consultation over this news on the bridge of the _Energie_.
Soon I was hailed in a familiar South Street twang.
"Captain, don't you want to be relieved of your guests? You must be
short of provisions"