THE TEMPTING OF CAPTAIN OWEN KETTLE.
“If one might judge from the lacquered majesty of your office
appointments,” said Patrick Onslow, taking one of the big chairs in
Shelf’s inner sanctum, “your firm is doing a roaring fine business.”
Mr. Theodore Shelf seated himself before his desk and began sorting
out some papers. “The turnover,” he said evasively, “is enormous. Our
operations are most extensive.”
“Extensive and peculiar,” commented Onslow.
“But I regret to say that during the last eighteen months the firm’s
profits have seriously decreased, and the scope of its operations been
much hampered. I take credit to myself that this diminution could have
been prevented by no action on my part. It is entirely the outcome of
the times, and the lazy greed of the working classes, fomented by the
frothings of paid agitators. The series of strikes which we have had to
contend against is unprecedented.”
“Is it? Well, I don’t know. There have been labor bothers all down
through history, and I fancy they’ll continue to the end of time. If
you’ll recollect, there was a certain Egyptian king who once had troubles
with his bricklayers, and I fancy there have been similar difficulties
trotting through the centuries in pretty quick succession ever since.
Of course, each man thinks his own employés the most unreasonable and
grasping that have ever uttered opinion since the record began; that’s
only natural. But I might point out to you that in definite results you
aren’t in the worst box yet. Your chariot hasn’t been upset in the Red
Sea so far, and it may be that a certain operation in the Mexican Gulf
will grease up the wheels and set it running on triumphantly. Grumble if
you like, Mr. Shelf, but don’t make yourself out to be the worst-used man
in history. Pharaoh hadn’t half your opportunities.”
“Yes, yes,” said Shelf, who didn’t relish this kind of conversation; “but
we will come to business, if you please.”
“Right you are. Let’s finish floating the swindle.”
“Mr. Onslow!” exclaimed the other passionately, “will you never learn
to moderate your language? There are a hundred clerks within a hundred
feet of you through that door, and sometimes even walls can listen and
repeat. Besides, I object altogether to your phraseology. We engage in no
such things as swindles in the City. Our operations are all commercial
enterprises.”
“Very well,” said Onslow, shrugging his shoulders; “don’t let’s squabble
over it. You call your spade what you like, only I reserve a right to
clap on a plainer brand. We’re built differently, Mr. Shelf. I prefer
to be honest in my dishonesty. And now, as I’ve said, let’s get to
business. You say the charter of this steamer of yours, the _Port Edes_,
has expired, and she is back on your hands. She’s 2000 tons, built under
Lloyds’ survey, and classed 100 A1. She’s well engined, and has just
been dry-docked. She’ll insure for every sixpence of her value without
comment, and there’s nothing more natural than to send out your specie in
such a sound bottom. Remains to pick a suitable complement.”
“I’ve got a master waiting here now by appointment. His name is Kettle. I
have him to a certain extent under my thumb, and I fancy he will prove a
reliable man. He was once in our firm’s employment.”
“Owen Kettle, by any chance?”
Mr. Theodore Shelf referred to a paper on his writing-table. “Captain
Owen Kettle, yes. He was the man who lost the _Doge of Venice_, and since
then he’s never had another ship.”
“Poor devil! yes, I know. That _Doge of Venice_ case was an awful
scandal. Owners filled up the Board of Trade surveyor to the teeth with
champagne, or she’d never have been passed to sea. As it was, she’d
such an unholy reputation that two crews ran from her before they could
get her manned. She was as rotten as rust and tumbled rivets could make
her, and she was sent to sea as a coffin ship to earn her dividends
out of Lloyds’. Kettle had been out of a job for some time. He was a
desperate man, with a family depending on him, and he went as skipper,
fully conscious of what was expected of him. He did it like a man. He let
the _Doge of Venice_ founder in a North Sea gale, and, by a marvelous
chance, managed to save his ship’s company. At the inquiry, of course,
he was made scapegoat, and he didn’t contrive to save his ticket. They
suspended his master’s certificate for a year. On the strength of that
he applied to owners for maintenance, putting it on the reasonable claim
of services rendered. Owners, being upright merchants and sensible
men, naturally repudiated all knowledge or liability; said he was a
blackmailing scoundrel as well as an unskilful seaman; and threatened him
with an action for libel. Kettle, not having a solitary proof to show,
did the only thing left for him to do, and that was eat dirt or subside.
But the incident and the subsequent starvation haven’t tended to sweeten
his temper. Latterly he’s been serving as mate on a Pacific ship, and he
was just a terror with his men. He simply kept alive by carrying his fist
on a revolver-butt. There isn’t a man who’s served with Red Kettle three
weeks that wouldn’t have cheerfully swung for the enjoyment of murdering
him.”
“You appear to know a good deal about this man.”
“When it suits my purpose,” returned Onslow drily, “I mostly contrive to
know something about anybody. However, it’s no use discussing the poor
beggar any longer. What’s amiss with having him in now?”
Shelf touched one of the electric buttons which studded the edge of his
table, and a clerk appeared, who went away again, and shortly returned.
With him was a dried-up little man of about forty, with a red head and a
peaked red beard, who made a stiff, nervous salaam to Mr. Theodore Shelf,
and then turned to stare at Onslow with puckered amazement.
Onslow nodded and laughed. “Been carrying any more pilgrims from Port
Saïd to the Morocco coast on iron decks?” he asked.
“I never did that,” snapped Captain Kettle.
“Ah, one’s memory fails at times. I dare say also you forget a water
famine when the condenser broke down, and a trifling affray with
knuckledusters and other toys; and a dash of cholera; and nine dead
bodies of Hadjis which went overboard? Perhaps, too, you don’t remember
fudging a clean bill of health, and baksheeshing certain officials of his
Shereefian Majesty?”
“No,” said Captain Kettle sourly, “I don’t remember.”
“I’m going to forget it also, if you’ll prove yourself a sensible man,
and deal amicably with Mr. Shelf and myself. I’m also going to forget
that when you were shipping rice for Calcutta in ’82 you rented mats you
called your own to the consignor, and made a tidy penny out of that; and
I shall similarly let slip from my memory a trifling squeeze of eight
hundred dollars which you made out of a stevedore in New Orleans, before
you let him touch your ship, in the fall of ’82.”
“You can’t make anything out of those,” said Kettle. “They’re the
ordinary customs of the trade.”
“Shipmasters’ perquisites for which owners pay? Exactly. I know some
skippers consider these trifles to be their lawful right. But a court of
law might be ignorant enough to set them down as robbery.”
“I should like to know where you’ve got all these things from,” Captain
Kettle demanded, facing Onslow, with his lean scraggy neck thrust forth
nearly a foot from its stepping. “I should like to know, too, how you’re
here? I’d a fancy you were dead.”
“Other people have labored under that impression. But I’ve an awkward
knack of keeping alive. You’ve the same. The faculty may prove useful
to us both in the course of the next month, if you’re not ass enough to
refuse £500.”
“Ho! That’s the game we’ve got bent, is it? What old wind-jammer do you
want me to lose now?”
“Sir!” thundered Shelf, lifting his voice for the first time. “This is
pretty language. I would have you remember that but a short time ago you
were in my employ.”
“And a fat lot of good it did me,” retorted the sailor. “But,” he added,
with the sudden recollection that it is never wise of a master mariner to
irritate any shipowner, “but, sir, I wasn’t talking to you. I fancied it
was Mr. Onslow here who was wanting to deal with me.”
“Then your fancy carried you astray, captain,” said Shelf. “Come, come,
don’t let’s get angry with one another. As I repeatedly impress on all
who come in contact with me, there is never any good born out of words
voiced in anger. Mr. Onslow has seen fit to mention a few of your—shall I
say—eccentricities, just to show—er—that we understand one another.”
“To show he’s got his knife in me, Mr. Shelf, and can wraggle it if he
chooses.”
“What a fractious pepper-box it is!” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Man,
dear, if I’ve got to be shipmate with you for a solid month, d’ye think
I’d put your back up more than’s necessary? If you remember me at all,
you must know I’m the deuce of a stickler for my own personal comfort and
convenience. You can bet I haven’t been talking at you through gratuitous
cruelty. But Mr. Shelf and I have got a yarn to bring out directly, which
is a bit of a coarse, tough-fibered yarn, and we didn’t want you to give
it a top-dressing of varnish. So, by way of safeguard, I pointed out to
you that if we show ourselves to be sinners, you needn’t sing out that
you find yourself in evil company for the first time.”
Mr. Theodore Shelf had been shuffling his feet uneasily for some time.
Onslow’s method of speech jarred him to the verge of profanity. His
own saintliness was a garb which he never threw entirely away at any
moment. His voice had always the oily drone of the conventicle. His smug
hypocrisy was a perennial source of pride and comfort to him, without
which he would have felt very lonely and abandoned.
At this point he drew the conversation into his own hands. It had been
said of him that he always addressed the House of Commons as though he
were addressing a congregation from the pulpit of his own tin tabernacle,
and he preached out his scheme of plunder, violence, and other moral
uncleanness with similar fervent unction. Onslow was openly amused, and
once broke out into a mocking laugh. He was never at any pains to conceal
his contempt for Mr. Theodore Shelf; which was more honest than judicious
on his part.
Kettle, on the other hand, wore the puckered face of a puzzled man. The
combination of cant and criminality was not altogether new to him. Men
of his profession are frequently apt to behave like fiends unbooted at
sea, and then grovel in clamorous piety amongst the pews of some obscure
meeting-house during all their stay ashore. It is a peculiar trait;
but many a sea-scoundrel believes that he can lay up a stock of fire
insurance of this sort, which will comfortably see him through future
efforts. In Kettle’s mind, however, shipowners were a vastly different
class of beings, and so it never occurred to him that the same might
apply to them.
In this attitude Captain Kettle listened to the sermon which was reeled
out to him, and rather gathered that the project he was exhorted to take
part in was in some obscure manner a missionary enterprise promoted
solely in the honor and glory of Mr. Theodore Shelf’s own particular
narrow little sect; and had Mr. Shelf made any appreciable pause between
his sonorous periods, Kettle would have felt it his respectful duty to
slip in a humble “Amen.” But the dictator of the great shipping firm was
too fearful of interruptions from his partner to give any opening for a
syllable of comment.
But if Captain Owen Kettle was unversed in the finer niceties of the
art of hypocrisy, he was a man of angular common-sense; and by degrees
it dawned upon him that Mr. Shelf’s project, when removed of its
top-dressing of religion, was in its naked self something very different
from what he had at first been drawn to believe.
As this idea grew upon him, the devotional droop faded from the corners
of his lips, and his mouth drew to a hard, straight line, scarcely to be
distinguished amongst the curving bristles of hair which surrounded it.
But he made no interruption, and drank in every word till the speaker had
delivered the whole of his say. Then he uttered his decision.
“So, gentlemen, you are standing in as partners over this precious
business? And because you know me to be a poor broke man, with a wife
and family, you naturally think you can buy me to work for you off the
straight. Well, perhaps that’s possible, but there are two ways of doing
it, and of the two I like Mr. Onslow’s best. When a man’s a blackguard,
it don’t make him swallow any the sweeter for setting up to be a little
tin saint. And I don’t mind who I say that to.”
“My good man,” snarled Shelf, “do you mean to threaten me?”
“No, I don’t. I just gave you my own opinion, as from man to man,
just because I respect myself. But I’m not going round to your place
of worship to shout it out to them that sit under you. They wouldn’t
believe me if I did. Not now at any rate. Besides, it wouldn’t do me any
good, and I couldn’t afford it. I’m a needy man, Mr. Shelf, as you have
guessed; and that’s why I’m going to accept your offer. But don’t let us
have any misunderstanding between ourselves as to what it foots up to.
What I’m going to sign on for directly, when you hand me the papers, is
a spell of piracy on the high seas, neither more nor less. And I’m going
to have my money all paid down in advance before I ring an engine-bell on
your blasted tramp of a steamer. I guess that’s fair enough. My family’ll
want something to go on with if I’m caught, because if one’s found out
at this game it’s just a common ordinary hanging matter. Yes, sir, swing
by the neck till I’m dead as an ax, and may Heaven have mercy on _your_
miserable tag of a soul! That’s what this tea-party means, and for your
dirty £500 you’re buying a live human man.”