Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was to
fetch the day's supply of water for the galley and cabin, discovered that
the barrels were empty. Mr. Jackson was so alarmed that he immediately
called Captain Doane, and not many minutes elapsed ere Captain Doane had
routed out Grimshaw and Nishikanta to tell them the disaster.
Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient Mariner
and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and bewailed. Captain
Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta was fiendish in his
descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how he should
be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched
his great hands as if throttling some throat.
"I remember, it was in forty-seven--nay, forty-six--yes, forty-six," the
Ancient Mariner chattered. "It was a similar and worse predicament. It
was in the longboat, sixteen of us. We ran on Glister Reef. So named it
was after our pretty little craft discovered it one dark night and left
her bones upon it. The reef is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane
will verify me . . . "
No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and admiring. But
Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the old man was babbling,
bellowed out ferociously:
"Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired with your everlasting
'I remember.'"
The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had slipped
somewhere in his narrative.
"No, I assure you," he continued. "It must have been some error of my
poor old tongue. It was not the _Wide Awake_, but the brig _Glister_.
Did I say _Wide Awake_? It was the _Glister_, a smart little brig,
almost a toy brig in fact, copper-bottomed, lines like a dolphin, a sea-
cutter and a wind-eater. Handled like a top. On my honour, gentlemen,
it was lively work for both watches when she went about. I was super-
cargo. We sailed out of New York, ostensibly for the north-west coast,
with sealed orders--"
"In the name of God, peace, peace! You drive me mad with your drivel!"
So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that was real and quivering. "Old
man, have a heart. What do I care to know of your _Glister_ and your
sealed orders!"
"Ah, sealed orders," the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly. "A magic
phrase, sealed orders." He rolled it off his tongue with unction. "Those
were the days, gentlemen, when ships did sail with sealed orders. And as
super-cargo, with my trifle invested in the adventure and my share in the
gains, I commanded the captain. Not in him, but in me were reposed the
sealed orders. I assure you I did not know myself what they were. Not
until we were around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the
Pacific, did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van Dieman's
Land. They called it Van Dieman's Land in those days . . . "
It was a day of discoveries. Captain Doane caught the mate stealing the
ship's position from his desk with the duplicate key. There was a scene,
but no more, for the Finn was too huge a man to invite personal
encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize his conduct to a
running reiteration of "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and "Sorry, sir."
Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it at the
time, was that of Dag Daughtry. It was after the course had been changed
and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner had privily informed him
that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their objective, that Daughtry gaily
proceeded to shave. But one trouble was on his mind. He was not quite
sure, in such an out-of-the-way place as Taiohae, that good beer could be
procured.
As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his face
white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his forehead just
between the eyebrows and above. When he had finished shaving he touched
the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot. But
he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of
sensation. The dark place was numb.
"Curious," he thought, wiped his face, and forgot all about it.
No more than he knew what horror that dark spot represented, did he know
that Ah Moy's slant eyes had long since noticed it and were continuing to
notice it, day by day, with secret growing terror.
Close-hauled on the south-east trades, the _Mary Turner_ began her long
slant toward the Marquesas. For'ard, all were happy. Being only seamen,
on seamen's wages, they hailed with delight the news that they were bound
in for a tropic isle to fill their water-barrels. Aft, the three
partners were in bad temper, and Nishikanta openly sneered at Captain
Doane and doubted his ability to find the Marquesas. In the steerage
everybody was happy--Dag Daughtry because his wages were running on and a
further supply of beer was certain; Kwaque because he was happy whenever
his master was happy; and Ah Moy because he would soon have opportunity
to desert away from the schooner and the two lepers with whom he was
domiciled.
Michael shared in the general happiness of the steerage, and joined
eagerly with Steward in learning by heart a fifth song. This was "Lead,
kindly Light." In his singing, which was no more than trained howling
after all, Michael sought for something he knew not what. In truth, it
was the _lost pack_, the pack of the primeval world before the dog ever
came in to the fires of men, and, for that matter, before men built fires
and before men were men.
He had been born only the other day and had lived but two years in the
world, so that, of himself, he had no knowledge of the lost pack. For
many thousands of generations he had been away from it; yet, deep down in
the crypts of being, tied about and wrapped up in every muscle and nerve
of him, was the indelible record of the days in the wild when dim
ancestors had run with the pack and at the same time developed the pack
and themselves. When Michael was asleep, then it was that pack-memories
sometimes arose to the surface of his subconscious mind. These dreams
were real while they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered them
little if at all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he sensed and
yearned for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten way to
it.
Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed of Steward,
Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient forbears had ran
with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage was the lair of this
pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the whole world, which was the
_Mary Turner_ ever rocking, heeling, reeling on the surface of the
unstable sea.
But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the mere
pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early invented God,
often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in trees and mountains
and among the stars. This was because man observed that man passed and
was lost out of the tribe, or family, or whatever name he gave to his
group, which was, after all, the human pack. And man did not want to be
lost out of the pack. So, of his imagination, he devised a new pack that
would be eternal and with which he might for ever run. Fearing the dark,
into which he observed all men passed, he built beyond the dark a fairer
region, a happier hunting-ground, a jollier and robuster feasting-hall
and wassailing-place, and called it variously "heaven."
Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael never
dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind and worshipping
it as God. He did not worship shadows. He worshipped a real and
indubitable god, not fashioned in his own four-legged, hair-covered
image, but in the flesh-and-blood image, two-legged, hairless,
upstanding, of Steward.