ABOARD THE ARUNDEL
FOR a long while Jack was very light-headed and sick. He did not seem
to have any strength. It seemed to him that several days passed while
he lay in his berth, now partly waking, now partly sleeping. When he
was partly awake his mind seemed to wander, and he could not separate
the things he now saw from the things he had seen before. Both seemed
grotesque and distorted. It seemed to him that his father was nearly
always with him. He had a line of Greek to construe, but he could never
get the words correctly. He kept trying and trying to get the words
in their proper order, but always, when he would get the line nearly
correct, it would fall to pieces, and he would have to begin all over
again. He felt that his father was very angry with him, and that he
was driving him on to complete the line, and he felt that if he could
only finish the task he would have rest and be well again. But there
were three words that never would fit rightly into the line, and he
never could make them fit into it. With these several fancyings there
commingled the actual things about him. His father seemed to him to be
waiting and waiting for him to complete his task; but at the same time
he saw the sloping deck of the vessel and the berths upon the other
side, and could feel the brig rising and falling and rolling upon the
sea. There was ever present in his ears the sound of creaking and
groaning and rattling and sliding, and there were men talking together
and smoking their pipes, the pungent smell of the tobacco helping to
make him feel very sick. If he could only fit these words together into
the line, then his father would go away, and he would be well and could
go up on deck. Oh, how his head ached! He wished he could get away from
these words that would not fit into the sentence.
Then the night would come, and he would be partly asleep. Sometimes he
would lie half dreaming for an hour or more, and in the darkness the
things of his fancy were very real.
Very soon after he had been brought aboard he had a dim, distorted
vision of Dyce, the mate, coming with a lantern to where he lay,
bringing somebody along with him. It seemed to him that the two men
had leaned over him talking about him while a number of other people
had stood near. The man who had come with the mate must have been
Sim Tucker, a thin, little man, with a long, lean chin, who was a
barber-leech. Jack had felt some one trim his hair, and then do
something that had hurt him very much. It seemed to be a grotesque
nightmare that the barber-leech had sewed up his head. Afterward a
bandage was tied around his head, and then he felt more comfortable.
Jack knew very well that it had all been a dream, and he was always
surprised to wake up and find the bandage around his head.
Now and then Sim Tucker would come and speak to him. “How d’ye feel
now?” he would maybe say.
“Why,” said Jack, “I would be all well if my father would only go away.
But I can’t construe that sentence.”
“You can’t what!”
“I can’t get those Greek words right, and my father won’t go away.”
“Why, your father says they’re all right.”
“Does he?”
“Aye.”
“But there are those four words. They won’t fit.”
“Why, yes, they fit all right. Don’t you see?” Then it seemed to Jack
that they did fit into the sentence, and for a little while he was more
easy in his mind.
After a while he began to get better, and his head got clearer. Then
one day he was so well that he was able to crawl up to the deck. He
had not eaten anything at all and was very weak. He climbed up the
companion-way and stood with his head just above the scuttle. He looked
aft almost along the level of the deck. In the distance was the rise of
the poop-deck, with a man at the wheel just under the over-hang. The
first mate, Dyce, still wearing his knit cap pulled down half over his
ears, was walking up and down the poop-deck, smoking. With the rise and
fall of the vessel, Jack could catch every now and then a glimpse of
the wide, troubled ocean, moving and heaving with ceaselessly restless,
crawling waves, cut keenly and blackly at the sharp rim of the horizon
against the gray sky. Every now and then there was a great rush of air
from the vast hollow sails overhead, that swept back and forth, back
and forth across the wide, windy sky. The sailors looked at him as he
stood there with the bandage wrapped around his head. He began to feel
very sick and dizzy with the motion of the vessel, and presently he
crept down below, back to his berth again.
“Be you feeling better?” said one of the men, coming to him.
“Yes, I think I am,” said Jack, “only it makes me sick and faint-like
to stand up.”
“Well, you’ve been pretty sick,” said the man, “and that’s the sacred
truth. I thought the Captain had killed you for sure when I saw him hit
you that second crack with the pistol. I thought he’d smashed your
head in.”
Several of the other men had gathered about his berth and stood looking
down at him. Jack wished they would go away. He lay quite still, with
his eyes shut, and by and by they did leave him.
He felt very lonely and deserted. A great lump rose in his throat when
he thought of all that had happened to him. “I have not a friend in the
world,” he said to himself, and then the hot tears forced themselves
out from under his eyelids.
When next he opened his eyes he saw that Sim Tucker was standing over
him. “How d’ye feel now?” said the barber-leech.
“Oh, I feel better,” said Jack irritably. “I wish you’d go away and let
me alone.”
“Let me look at your head,” said the leecher. He unwound the bandage
deftly with his long, lean fingers. “Aye,” said he, “ye’re getting
along well now. To-morrow I’ll take out them stitches. He must have hit
ye with the cock of the pistol to make a great, big, nasty cut like
that.”