Although Watchett of the _Battle-Axe_, and Ryder of the _Star of the
South_, were cousins, there was no great love lost between them, and
all unprejudiced observers declared that this lack of mutual
admiration was in no way due to Captain Ryder. That they remained
friends at all was owing largely to his infinite good-nature and to
the further fact that Mrs. Ryder pitied Mrs. Watchett.
'I wonder she goes to sea with him at all,' she said. 'If you were
one-quarter as horrid as your cousin, Will, I should never go to sea
till you came ashore.'
But she always went to sea with Will Ryder. It was their great
delight to be together, and there were few men, married or single,
who did not take a certain pleasure in seeing how fond they were of
each other. He was a typical seaman of the best kind; he had a fine
voice for singing, and for hailing the fore-topsail yard; his eyes
were as blue as forget-me-nots, and his skin was as clear as the air
on the Cordilleras, which peeped at them over the tops of the barren
hills which surround the Bay of Valparaiso. And Mrs. Ryder was just
the kind of wife for a man who was somewhat inclined to take things
easily. If she was as pretty as a peach, she had, like the peach,
something inside which was not altogether soft. Her brown eyes could
turn black; she had resolution and courage.
'You shall not put up with it,' was a favourite expression on her
tongue. And there were times, to use his own expression, when she
made sail when he would have shortened it. In that sense she was
certainly capable of 'carrying on.'
Both vessels were barques of about 1100 tons register, and if the
_Star of the South_ had about twenty tons to the good in size she was
rather harder to work. It is the nature of ships to develop in
certain ways, and though both of these barques were sister ships, it
is always certain that sister ships are never quite alike. But as
they belonged to the same port of London, and were owned by two
branches of the same family, all of whose money was divided up in
64ths, according to the common rule with ships, they were rivals and
rival beauties. But, unlike the more respectable ladies who owned
them, both the vessels were fast, and it was a sore point of honour
with Ryder and Watchett to prove their own the faster.
'If she only worked it a little easier I could lick his head off,'
said Ryder sadly.
But there was the rub. The _Star of the South_ needed more 'beef' in
her than the _Battle-Axe_. She wasn't so quick in stays. By the
time Ryder yelled, 'Let go and haul,' the _Battle-Axe_ was gathering
headway on a fresh tack.
'And instead of having two more hands than we are allowed, we are two
short,' said his wife bitterly. 'If I were you, Will, I'd take these
Greeks.'
'Not by an entire jugful,' replied Captain Ryder. 'I remember the
_Lennie_ and the _Caswell_, my dear. I never knew Valparaiso so bare
of men.'
'And we're sailing to-morrow,' said Connie Ryder angrily, 'and you've
betted him a hundred pounds we shall dock before him. It's too bad.
I wonder whether he'd give us another day?'
But Ryder shook his head.
'And you've known him for years! He's spending that money in his
mind.'
'But not on his wife, Will,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'If we win I'm to have
it.'
'I'd give him twenty to let me off,' said Ryder.
But Connie Ryder went on board the _Battle-Axe_ to see if she could
not induce her husband's cousin to forgo the advantage he had already
gained before sailing. She found him dark and grim, and as hard as
adamant.
'A bet's a bet, and business is business,' said Watchett. 'We
app'inted to-morrow, and bar lying out a gale from the north with two
anchors down, and cables out to the bitter end, I'll sail.'
His wife, who was as meek as milk, suggested humbly that it would be
more interesting if he waited.
'I ain't in this for interest. I'm in it for capital,' said
Watchett, grinning gloomily. 'The more like a dead certainty it
looks the better I shall be pleased.'
Mrs. Ryder darkened.
'I don't think you're a sportsman,' said she rather curtly.
'I ain't,' retorted Watchett, 'I'm a seaman, and him that'd go to sea
for sport would go to hell for pastime. You can tell Bill I'll give
him ten per cent. discount for cash now.'
As Mrs. Ryder knew that he never called her husband 'Bill' unless he
desired to be more or less offensive, she showed unmistakable signs
of temper.
'If I ever get half a chance to make you sorry, I will,' she said.
'Let it go at that,' said Watchett sulkily. 'I got on all right with
Bill before you took to going to sea with him.'
'He was too soft with you,' said Bill's wife.
'And a deal softer with you than I'd be,' said Watchett.
'Oh, please, please don't,' cried Mary Watchett in great distress.
'I thought you were a gentleman,' said Connie Ryder.
'Not you,' replied Watchett, 'you never, and you know it. I'm not
one, and never hankered to be. I'm rough and tough, and a seaman of
the old school. I'm no sea dandy. I'm Jack Watchett, as plain as
you like.'
'You're much plainer than I like,' retorted his cousin's wife; 'very
much plainer.'
And though she kissed Mary Watchett, she wondered greatly how any
woman could kiss Mary Watchett's husband.
'If I ever get a chance,' she said. 'But there, how can I?'
She wept a little out of pure anger as she returned to the _Star of
the South_. When she got on board she found the mate and second mate
standing by the gangway.
'Is there no chance of those men, Mr. Semple?'
'No more than if it was the year '49, and this was San Francisco,'
said the mate, who was a hoary-headed old sea-dog, a great deal more
like the old school than 'plain Jack Watchett.'
'Why doesna' the captain take the Greeks, ma'am?' asked M'Gill, the
second mate, who had been almost long enough out of Scotland to
forget his own language.
'Because he doesn't like any but Englishmen,' said Connie Ryder.
'And Scotch, of course,' she added, as she saw M'Gill's jaw fall a
little. 'I've been trying to get Captain Watchett to give us another
day.'
'All our ship and cargo to a paper bag of beans, he didn't,' said
Semple.
'I--I hate him,' cried Connie Ryder, as she entered the cabin.
'She's as keen as mustard, as red pepper,' said Semple. 'If she'd
been a man she'd have made a seaman.'
'I've never sailed wi' a skeeper's wife before,' said M'Gill, who had
shipped in the _Star of the South_ a week before, in place of the
second mate, who had been given his discharge for drunkenness; 'is
she at all interferin', Mr. Semple?'
Old Semple nodded.
'She interferes some, and it would be an obstinate cook that disputed
with her. She made a revolution in the galley, my word, when she
first came on board. Some would say she cockered the crew over much,
but I was long enough in the fo'c'sle not to forget that even a hog
of a man don't do best on hog-wash,' which was a marvellous
concession on the part of any of the afterguard of any ship, seeing
how the notion persists among owners, and even among officers, that
the worse men are treated the better they work.
'She seems a comfortable ship,' owned M'Gill.
And so every one on board of her allowed.
'Though she is a bit of a heart-breaker to handle,' said the men
for'ard. 'But for that she be a daisy. And to think that the bally
_Battle-Axe_ goes about like a racing yacht.'
It made them sore to think of it. But it also made the men on board
their rival sore to think how comfortable the _Star of the South_ was
in all other respects.
'The "old man" 'ere makes up for any ease wiv w'ich we ploughs the
briny seas,' declared Bill Gribbs, who was a Cockney of the purest
water, with a turn for reciting poetry and playing the concertina.
'For two pins I'd desert. I'm too merry for old Watchett. I'll make
a new chanty for 'im speshul, exteree speshul, same as I did for the
cook comin' out.'
'And it took the "doctor" the best part of a month to get over it and
do the 'ash 'alf proper agin,' said the rest of the crowd sadly.
'Poetry and music will be your undoin', Gribbs. It don't pay us
for'ard to guy them as is aft.'
'And didn't the "old man" stop my playin' my concertina on Sundays?'
asked Gribbs. 'And all because I don't know no 'ymn tunes. As they
says out 'ere, it tires me to think of it. I'll be gettin' even wiv
'im some day. I'll commit susancide and 'aunt 'im. 'Owsever, wot's
the odds, for "it's 'ome, deary, 'ome; it's 'ome I wish to be," and
we're sailin' in the mawnin'!'
Owing to the fact that the _Battle-Axe's_ crowd was sulky, the _Star
of the South_ got her anchor out of the ground and stood to the
north-west to round Point Angelos a good ten minutes before
Watchett's vessel was under way.
'That's good,' said Connie Ryder. 'I know they're a sulky lot by now
in the _Battle-Axe_. And our men work like dears.'
It was with difficulty she kept from tailing on to the braces as they
jammed the _Star_ close up to weather the Point. For the wind was
drawing down the coast from the nor'ard, and Valparaiso harbour faces
due north. She was glad when they rounded the Point and squared
away, for if there was any real difference in the sailing qualities
of the rival barques, the _Star_ was best with the wind free and the
_Battle-Axe_ when she was on a bowline.
'And with any real luck,' said Mrs. Ryder, 'we may have a good, fair
wind all the way till we cross the Line.'
It was so far ahead to consider the North-East Trades, which meant
such mighty long stretches on a wind that she declined to think of
them.
'We're doing very well, Will,' she said to her husband when the
starboard watch went below, and the routine of the passage home
commenced.
'It's early days,' replied Will Ryder. 'I fancy the _Battle-Axe_ is
in her best trim for a wind astern.'
But Mrs. Ryder didn't believe it.
'And if she is, she mayn't be so good when it comes to beating.'
She knew what she was talking about, and spoke good sense.
'It's going to be luck,' said Ryder. 'If either of us get a good
slant that the other misses, the last will be out of it. But I wish
I'd had those other two hands. The _Star_ wants beef on the braces.
Mr. Semple, as soon as possible see all the parrals greased and the
blocks running as free as you can make 'em.'
And Semple did his best, as the crew did. But Mrs. Ryder had her
doubts as to whether her husband was doing his. For once he seemed
to think failure was a foregone conclusion.
'I think it must be his liver,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'I'll see to that
at once.'
But instead of looking up the medicine-chest she came across the
_Pacific Directory_.
'I never thought of that,' she said. 'He's never done it: now he
shall.'
She took the big book down and read one part of it eagerly.
'I don't see why not,' she decided; and she went to her husband with
the request that he should run through Magellan's Straits when he
came to it.
'Not for dollars,' said Will Ryder. 'When I'm skipper of a Pacific
Navigation boat I'll take you through, but not till then.'
'But look at all you cut off,' urged his wife, 'if you get through.'
'And how you are cut off if you don't,' retorted Ryder. 'When I was
an apprentice I went through in fine weather for the Straits, and I'd
rather drive a 'bus down Fleet Street in a fog than try it.'
She said he had very little enterprise, and pouted.
'Suppose the _Battle-Axe_ does it?'
Ryder declined to suppose it.
'John wouldn't try it if you guarantee the weather. I know him.'
'You never take my advice,' said his wife.
'I love you too much,' replied Will Ryder. He put his arm about her,
but she was cross, and pushed him away.
'This is mutiny,' said the captain, smiling.
'Well, I feel mutinous,' retorted Connie. 'I wanted you to steal two
of your cousin's men and you wouldn't. I'm sure they would have come
for what the _Battle-Axe_ owed them. And you wouldn't. And now I
want to go through the Straits and you won't. The very, very next
time that I want to do anything I shall do it without asking you.
Why did you bet a hundred pounds if you weren't prepared to try to
win it?'
'We'll win yet,' said the skipper, cheerfully. 'We've only just
started.'
The two vessels kept company right down to the Horn, and there,
between Ildefonso Island and the Diego Ramirez Islands, the _Star of
the South_ lost sight of her sister and rival in a dark sou'westerly
gale. With the wind astern when they squared away with Cape Horn
frowning to the nor'west, the _Star_ was a shooting star, as they
said for'ard.
'If we could on'y carry a gale like this right to the Line we'd 'ave
a pull over the _Battle-Axe_, ma'am,' said Silas Bagge, an old
fo'c'sle-man, who was Mrs. Ryder's favourite among all the crew. He
was a magnificent old chap, with a long white beard, which he wore
tucked inside a guernsey, except in fine weather.
'But we can't; there'll be the Trades,' said the captain's wife
dolorously.
'I've picked up the sou'east Trade blowin' a gale, ma'am, before
now,' said Bagge; 'years ago, in '74 or thereabouts, I was in the
_Secunderabad_, and we crossed the Line bound south, doing eleven
close-'auled, and we carried 'em to 27° south latitude. There's
times when it is difficult to say where the Trades begin south, too.
Mebbe we'll be chased by such a gale as this nigh up to 30° south.'
'It's hoping too much,' said Mrs. Ryder.
'Hope till ye bust, ma'am,' said Silas Bagge. 'Nothin''s lost till
it's won. If we can only get out of the doldrums without breakin'
our hearts working the ship, there's no knowing what'll 'appen.
'Twas a pity we didn't get them other two 'ands, though.'
And there she agreed with him.
'Me and Bob Condy could 'ave got Gribbs and Tidewell out of the
_Battle-Axe_ as easy as eat,' said Silas regretfully. ''Twas a lost
hopportunity, and there you are!'
The honourable conduct of his skipper in vetoing this little game
seemed no more than foolishness to Bagge.
'When we comes to the Hequator, and it's "square away" and "brace up"
every five minutes till one's 'ands are raw, 'twill be a grief to
every mother's son aboard,' said Bagge, as he touched his cap and
went for'ard.
But now the _Star of the South_ went booming on the outside of the
Falklands with a gale that drew into the sou'-sou'-west and howled
after her. She scooped up the seas at times and dipped her nose into
them, and threw them apart and wallowed. The men were happy, for the
fo'c'sle didn't leak, and the galley-fire was kept going every night
to dry their clothes. At midnight every man got a mug of cocoa, and
those that rose up called Mrs. Ryder blessed, and those that lay down
agreed with them. The _Star_ was a happy ship. There was no rule
against playing the concertina on a Sunday in her fo'c'sle, and the
men were not reduced to playing 'blind swaps' with their oldest rags
for amusement as they were in the _Battle-Axe_. And yet every man in
the _Star_ knew his time for growling was coming on with every pitch
and scend of the sea.
''Oly sailor, buy a knife and 'ave a shackle to it,' said Bob Condy,
who was the lightest-hearted of a happy crowd, 'but when we're
p'intin' all round the compass in the doldrums, won't my pore 'ands
suffer! I've a notion we'll go through the 'orse latitoods flyin'.
We're carryin' a good gale, and she'll draw into the eastward by and
by.'
And there he was right, for they picked up the Trades in nearly 30°
south, with only a few days of a light and variable breeze, and the
Trades were good.
'But where's the _Battle-Axe_?' asked Mrs. Ryder. She kept a bright
look-out for her, and deeply regretted that her petticoats prevented
her going aloft to search the horizon for John Watchett. She rubbed
her hands in hope.
'I do believe, Will, that we must be ahead of him,' she declared
after the South-East Trade had been steady on the _Star's_ starboard
beam for a week.
'Not much ahead,' replied Will.
And just then Bob Condy, who was aloft on the fore-t'gallant yard
cutting off old seizings and putting on new ones, hailed the deck.
'There's a sail on the port beam, sir.'
'Take a glass aloft and have a look at her, Mr. M'Gill,' said the
skipper. 'No, never mind; I'll go myself, as you've never seen the
_Battle-Axe_ at sea. I know the cut of her jib and no mistake.'
So Will Ryder went up on the main top-gallant yard, and with his leg
astride of the yard took a squint to loo'ard. He shut up the glass
so quick that his wife knew at once that the distant sail was the
_Battle-Axe_. As he came down slowly he nodded to her.
'It is?'
'Rather,' said Ryder. 'I'm sorry we've no stunsails. We're carrying
all we've got and all we can.'
'And to think he's as good as we were on our own point of sailing,'
said his wife with the most visible vexation. 'Can't you do anything
to make her go faster, Will?'
And when Will said he couldn't, unless he got out and pushed, Mrs.
Ryder sat on a hen-coop and very nearly cried. For if the
_Battle-Axe_ had done so well up to this she would do better in the
dead regions of the Line, and the _Star_ would do much worse. There
the want of a few more hands would tell. The _Star_ was no good at
catching 'cat's-paws' short-handed. She worked like an unoiled gate.
'If I'd only done what Silas Bagge wanted,' she said, 'we'd have been
all right. To think that the want of a couple of hands should make
all the difference!'
It was cruelly hard, but when vessels are under-manned at any time,
less than their complement means 'pull devil pull baker,' with the
devil best at the tug of war.
For days there was nothing to choose between the vessels, save that
the unusual strength of the Trades gave the _Star_ a trifling
advantage. Every night Watchett took in his royals. This Ryder
declined to do, though he often expected them to take themselves in.
'What did I say, ma'am,' said old Bagge. 'I told you it _could_ blow
quite 'eavy in its way in the South-East Trades.'
And thus it happened that what the _Star_ lost by day she pulled up
by night. And presently the _Battle-Axe_ edged up closer, and at
last was within hailing distance. Watchett stood on his poop with a
speaking-trumpet, and roared in sombre triumph.
'I'm as good as you this trip on your best p'int, Ryder!'
'Tell him to go to--to--thunder,' said Mrs. Ryder angrily.
Nevertheless, she waved her handkerchief to her enemy's wife, who was
standing by 'plain Jack Watchett.'
'You've done mighty well,' said Ryder in his turn, 'but it isn't over
yet.'
Jack Watchett intimated that he thought it was. He offered to double
the bet. He also undertook to sail round the _Star of the South_ in
a light wind. He offered to tow her, and made himself so
disagreeable that Mrs. Ryder, who knew what became a lady, went below
to prevent herself snatching the speaking-trumpet from her husband
and saying things for which she would be sorry afterwards. But
Ryder, though he was by no means a saint, kept his temper, and only
replied with chaff, which was much more offensive to Watchett than
bad language.
'And don't be _too_ sure,' he added. 'I may do you yet.'
'Not you,' said Watchett, 'I'm cocksure.'
They sailed in company for a week, and gradually as the Trade
lessened in driving power the _Battle-Axe_ drew ahead inch by inch.
And as she did Mrs. Ryder's appetite failed; she looked thin and ill.
'Don't feel it so much, chickabiddy,' said her husband.
'I can't help it,' sobbed Connie. 'I hate your cousin. Oh Will, if
you'd only let me entice those two men from him. Bagge was sure that
Gribbs and Tidewell would have come.'
'It wouldn't have been fair,' said Ryder.
'I--I w--wanted to win,' replied Connie, 'and it'll be calm directly,
and you know what that means.'
It was calm directly, and very soon every one knew what it meant.
For it was a real fat streak of a calm that both vessels ran into.
And as luck would have it, the _Battle-Axe_, which was by now almost
hull down to the nor'ard, got into it first. The _Star of the South_
carried the wind with her till she was within a mile of her rival.
For a whole day they pointed their jibbooms alternately at Africa and
South America, to the North Pole and the South. What little breeze
there was after that day took them further still into an absolute
area of no wind at all.
'This is the flattest calm I ever saw,' said Ryder. 'In such a calm
as this he has no advantage.'
They boxed the compass for the best part of a week, and lay and
cooked in a sun that made the deck seams bubble. At night the air
was as hot as it had been by day. The men lay on deck, on the
deck-house, on the fo'c'sle-head.
'This is a bally scorcher,' said the crews of both ships. 'Let's
whistle!'
They whistled feebly, but the god of the winds had gone a journey, or
was as fast asleep as Dagon. And day by day the two vessels drifted
together. At last they had to lower the boats and tow them apart.
Watchett was very sick with the whole meteorology of the universe,
and being a whole-souled man incapable of more than one animosity at
a time, he found no time to spare from damning a heaven of brass to
damn Ryder. At the end of the week he even hailed the _Star_ and
offered to come on board and bring his wife.
'I don't want him,' said Connie Ryder. 'I won't have him.'
And as she said this she jumped as if a pin had been stuck into her.
'What's the matter?' asked her husband.
'Nothing,' said Connie. 'But let him come!'
She went for'ard to interview the cook, so she said. But she really
went to interview Silas Bagge. When she came back she found Watchett
and his wife on board. If she was a little stiff with Watchett he
never noticed it. As a matter of fact the whims and fads and tempers
of a woman were of no more account than the growling of the men
for'ard. He was too much engaged in cursing the weather to pay her
any attention.
'This licks me,' he said, 'in a week we ain't moved: we're stuck.
'Ow long will it last, Bill?'
'It looks as if it might last for ever,' replied Ryder. 'We've
struck a bad streak.'
The women had tea and the men drank whisky and water. Although
Watchett didn't know it, two of his hands left the boat and were
given something to eat in the galley by Mrs. Ryder's orders. It was
Bagge who conveyed the invitation with the connivance of the mate,
for whom the word of the captain's wife was law.
''Ave some marmalade and butter,' said Bagge. 'Does they feed you
good in the _Battle-Axe_, Gribbs?'
'Hog-wash,' said Gribbs with his mouth full. 'Ain't it, Tidewell?'
Tidewell, who was a youngster of a good middle-class family, who had
gone to sea as an apprentice and run from his ship, agreed with many
bitter words.
'As I told you, we lives like fightin'-cocks 'ere,' said Bagge.
'When you're full to the back teeth, we'll 'ave your mates up. We
likes to feed the pore and 'ungry, don't we, doctor?'
The cook, to whom Bagge had confided something, said he did his best,
his humble best.
'The _Star_'s an 'appy ship,' he added. 'We know what your ship is.'
The other two men came up in their turn and were filled with tea and
biscuit and butter and marmalade till they smiled.
'This is like home,' said Wat Crampe, who was from Newcastle.
'It wass petter, much petter,' said Evan Evans; 'and ass for the
captain's wife, she iss a lady, whateffer.'
That evening Ryder and his wife returned the call, and were rowed to
the _Battle-Axe_ by Bagge, Bob Condy, and two more of the men. Bagge
and Condy went into the fo'c'sle. They lost no time in blaspheming
the _Battle-Axe_, and in lauding their own ship.
'This 'ere's a stinkin' 'ooker, mates,' said Silas Bagge; 'why, our
fo'c'sle is a lady's droring-room compared with it. And as for the
grub, ask them as came on board us this afternoon. What d 'ye say,
Gribbs?'
'Toppin',' said Gribbs; 'it's spiled my happetite 'ere.'
'It wass good,' said the Welshman, 'it wass good, whateffer.'
Bagge took Billy Gribbs aside on the deck and had a talk with him.
'Oh Lord!' said Gribbs, 'eh, what?'
'Straight talk,' replied Silas, '_she_ said so.'
'Do you mean it?'
'Do I mean it?' returned Silas with unutterable scorn. 'In course I
mean it. It will sarve them right as it sarves right.'
Gribbs held on to the rail and laughed till he ached.
'It's the rummest notion I ever 'eard tell on.'
'Not so rummy!'
'Wot!' cried Gribbs, 'not so rummy? Well, it ain't so rummy, I'm
jiggered. I'll think of it.'
'Do it, and tell your mate Tidewell.'
'If I tell Ned, 'e'll do it for sure. 'E's the biggest joker 'ere!'
'Then tell him,' said Silas.
That evening Ned Tidewell and Billy Gribbs acted in a very strange
way on board the _Battle-Axe_. Without any obvious reason they kept
on bursting into violent fits of laughter.
'The poor blokes is gone dotty from the 'eat,' said the pitying
crowd. 'We've 'eard of such before.'
'Why shouldn't I laugh?' asked Gribbs. 'I'm laughin' because I'm a
pore silly sailorman, and my life ain't worth livin'. If I'd died
early I'd ha' bin saved a pile o' trouble. I was thinkin' of my
father's green fields as I looked over the side this afternoon.'
'Was you, really?' asked the oldest man on board, 'then you take my
advice quick and go and ask the skipper for a real good workin' pill
of the largest size.'
'Wot for?' asked Gribbs.
'Because you hobvus got a calentoor,' said the old fo'c'sleman. 'And
chaps as gets a calentoor jumps overboard. Oh, but that's well known
at sea by them as knows anythin'.'
But Gribbs laughed.
'The worst is as it's catchin',' said his adviser anxiously, 'it's
fatally catchin'. 'I've 'eard of crews doin' it one hafter the
hother till there warn't no one left. In 'eat it was and in calm.'
'Gammon,' said Gribbs. But he was observed to sigh.
'Are you 'ot in your 'ead?' asked the anxious and ancient one.
'I feels a little 'ot and rummy,' said Gribbs; 'but what I chiefly
feels is a desire to eat grass.'
The old man groaned.
'Then it's got you. Mates, we ought to tie Gribbs up, or lock him in
the sail-locker, or 'is clothes will be auctioned off before long.'
But Gribbs kicked at that, and just then eight bells struck.
'I'm turnin' in,' said Gribbs, 'and I'm all right.'
But at six bells in the first watch he was missing, as was discovered
by old Brooks, the authority on calentures. He waked up Ned
Tidewell, who was extraordinarily fast asleep.
'Where's Gribbs?'
'Not in my bunk,' returned Ned, who with Gribbs was one of the few
who still dossed in the fo'c'sle.
'Then 'e's gone overboard for sartin,' said Brooks in great alarm;
'there was the look of it in 'is eye, and in yours, too, youngster.
These long calms is fataler than scurvy. I'll go aft and report it.'
He reported it to Mr. Seleucus Thoms, the second mate, who came
for'ard and roused the scattered watch below from the deck-house and
t'gallant fo'c'sle. When all hands were mustered it was certain that
Gribbs was missing.
'This is a terrible catastrophe,' said Seleucus Thoms, who had a
weakness for fine language derived from his rare Christian name, of
which he was extremely proud; 'my name is not Seleucus Thoms if he
hasn't gone overboard.'
''E was most rampagious with laughter in the second dog-watch, sir,'
put in old Brooks. 'And 'e talked of green fields, the which I 've
'eard is a werry fatal symptom of calentoor.'
'Humph,' said Mr. Thoms, 'there's something in that.'
And when he went for'ard old Brooks was 'as proud as a dog with two
tails.' Though he usually spent the second dog-watch daily in
proving that Thoms was no sailor, this endorsement of his theory
flattered him greatly.
'I've been mistook in the second,' he said, as Thoms went aft. 'He's
got 'orse sense, after all. I shouldn't be surprised if 'e'd _make_
a sailor some day.'
And Thoms reported the catastrophe to Watchett.
'Drowned himself,' roared the captain; 'drowned himself. And who's
responsible if you ain't?'
He came on deck in a great rage and scanty pyjamas and mustered the
crew aft, and raved at them for full ten minutes as if it were their
fault. When he had relieved his mind he asked if there was any one
who could throw light on the matter, and old Brooks was shoved to the
front. He explained his views on calentures.
'Never 'eard of 'em,' said Watchett.
'And I thinks, sir, as Tidewell 'ere 'as the symptoms.'
'I haven't,' said Tidewell indignantly.
'Wild laughin' is a known symptom, sir, and Tidewell was laughin'
'orrid in the second dog-watch,' insisted Brooks. 'I'd put 'im in
irons, sir.'
But Watchett was not prepared to go so far in prophylaxis.
'If any of you 'as any more symptoms, I'll flog 'im and take the
consequences,' he declared. He went below again unhappily, for he
wasn't quite a brute after all.
'This is a mighty unpleasant thing,' he said to poor Mrs. Watchett,
who cried when she heard the news. 'It's a mighty unfortunate
affair. Gribbs was the smartest man in the whole crowd, and worth
two of the others.'
But still the great and terrible calm lasted and the morning was as
hot as yesterday, and the sea shone like polished brass and lapped
faintly like heavy oil against the glowing iron of the sister
barques. At dawn, which came up like a swiftly opening flower out of
the fertile east, the vessels were just too far apart for hailing,
and Watchett signalled the news to the _Star of the South_.
'Lost a man overboard!' said Ryder, 'that's strange. I wish to
heavens we'd found him.'
When he told his wife she seemed extraordinarily callous.
'Serves him right,' she said.
And it was wonderful how the crew of the _Star_ took the news. They
had never seemed so cheerful. They grinned when Watchett came aboard.
'This is an 'orrid circumstance,' said Watchett. 'I never lost a man
before, not even when I was wrecked in the _Violet_. And this a dead
calm!'
'Your men aren't happy,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'And you don't try to make
'em. If I give you three seven-pound tins of marmalade and some
butter, will you serve it out to them?'
But Watchett shook his head angrily.
'I'll not cocker no men up,' he declared; 'not if they all goes
overboard and leaves me and the missis to take 'er home. And what's
marmalade against 'eat like this?'
He mopped a melancholy brow and sighed.
'It will help them to keep from gloomy thoughts,' said Mrs. Ryder.
'The _Star of the South_ is a home for our men.'
'And two run in Valparaiso,' retorted Watchett, 'and I lost on'y one.'
He took a drink with his cousin, and went back on board the
_Battle-Axe_, and put the horrid day through in getting a deal of
unnecessary work done. And still no flaw of lightest air marred the
mirror of the quiet seas. Early in the first watch the boats were
lowered again to tow the vessels apart. At midnight, when the watch
below came aft and answered to their names in the deep shadow of the
moonless tropic night, Ned Tidewell did not answer to his name.
'Tidewell!' cried Thoms angrily and anxiously.
And still there was no answer but a groan from old Brooks.
'Wot did I tell you?' he demanded. 'I seed it in 'is eye.'
They searched the _Battle-Axe_ from stem to stern; they overhauled
the sails in the sail-locker; they hunted with a lantern in the
fore-peak; they even went aloft to the fore- and main-tops, where
once or twice some one who sought for coolness where no coolness
could be found went up into what they jocosely called the 'attic.'
But Ned had lost the number of his mess.
'More clothes for sale,' said the melancholy crew, as they looked at
each other suspiciously. ''Oo'll be the next?'
Brooks declared to the other fo'c'sleman that the next would be Wat
Crampe or Taffy, as they called the Welshman.
'There's an awful 'orrid look of the deep, dark knowledge o' death in
their faces,' declared old Brooks. 'They thinks of the peace of it
and the quiet, and smiles secret!'
Next morning Watchett hailed the _Star_ and told the latest dreadful
news. And at the end he added, in a truly pathetic roar: 'Send me
them tins o' marmalade aboard. And the butter.'
And when Mrs. Ryder superintended the steward's work getting these
stores out of the lazarette, she smiled very strangely. She said to
her husband--
'If he loses another hand or two the _Battle-Axe_ will be no easy
ship to work, Will.'
'I wouldn't have believed the matter of a hundred pounds would have
made you so hard,' said Ryder. And Connie Ryder pouted mutinously,
and her pout ran off into a wicked and most charming smile.
'I'm not thinking so much of the money as of our ship being beaten,'
she said.
And poor Watchett was now beginning to think the same of his ship.
Like most vessels the _Battle-Axe_ required a certain number of men
to work her easily, and her luck lay in the number allowed being the
number necessary. With two hands gone amissing she would not be much
superior to the _Star_ in easiness of handling, and if more went, a
week of baffling winds now, or later when the North-East Trade died
out, might give the Star a pull which nothing but an easterly wind
from the chops of the Channel to Dover could hope to make up. He
began to dance attendance on his crew as if they were patients and he
their doctor. And the curious thing was that they all began to feel
ill at once, so ill that they could not work in the sun. A certain
uneasy terror got hold of them; they dreaded to look over the side
lest in place of an oily sea they should look down on grass and
daisies.
'Daisies draws a man, and buttercups draws a man,' said old Brooks.
'Don't,' said Crampe with a snigger, 'you make me feel that I must
pick buttercups or die.'
'Do you now?' asked Brooks; 'do you now?'
And he sneaked aft to the skipper, who was turning all ways as if he
were wondering where windward was.
'I'm very uneasy about Crampe, sir,' he said with a scrape as he
crawled up the port poop-ladder. ''Is mind is set on buttercups.'
'The devil it is,' cried Watchett, and going down on the main-deck he
called Crampe out.
'What's this I 'ears about you 'ankerin' after buttercups?' he
demanded very anxiously.
'I _did_ feel as if I'd like to see one, sir,' said Crampe.
'Don't let me 'ear of it again,' began Watchett angrily, but he
pulled himself up with an ill grace, 'but there, go in and lie down,
and you needn't come on deck in your watch. I can't afford to lose
no more mad fools. And you shall 'ave butter instead of buttercups.'
'And marmalade, sir?' suggested Crampe. 'Marmalade is yellow too;
yellow as buttercups.'
'Say the word agin and I'll knock you flat,' said the skipper. But
nevertheless he sent the whole crowd marmalade and butter at four
bells in the first dog-watch.
'Ho, but it iss fine,' said 'Efan Efans.' 'Thiss iss goot grup
whateffer and moreover, yess!'
'They scoffs the like in the _Star_ day in and day out,' said Crampe.
'If I can't roll on grass I'd like to be in her.'
And that night both Crampe and Evans disappeared.
'I believes I 'eard a splash soon after six bells,' said old Brooks.
'Mates, this is most 'orrid. I feels as if I should be drawed
overboard by a mermaid in spite of myself.'
And Watchett went raving crazy. He blasphemed his mate till the man
was ready to jump overboard too. He turned on Thoms and slanged him
until the second greaser walked to the port rail of the poop and
discharged a number of silent curses which would have done credit to
the skipper of a barge, if they had been spoken aloud.
'At dark, lock the lot up in the fo'c'sle,' said Watchett, 'and not a
soul comes out till daylight. If this goes on longer we'll stick in
the doldrums till the Day of Judgment.'
Ryder came on board the _Battle-Axe_ as soon as the latest news was
signalled to him. Mrs. Ryder declined to go, but she gave him a
timely piece of advice.
'Don't let him off the bet, Will, or I'll never forgive you.'
'I won't do that,' said her husband hastily, as if he hadn't been
thinking of doing it.
'And if he asks for a man or two, you know we're short-handed
already?'
'Tell me something I don't know,' said Ryder a trifle crossly. Even
his sweet temper suffered in 115° in the shade.
'I dare say I could,' said his wife when he was in his boat. 'I dare
say I could.'
Watchett received his cousin with an air of gloom that would have
struck a damp on anything anywhere but the Equator.
'This is a terrible business,' he said. 'I never 'eard of anything
like it. Every night a man, and last night two!'
Ryder was naturally very much cut up about it, and said so.
'Will you have some more marmalade?' he asked anxiously.
'Marmalade don't work,' said Watchett sadly. 'It don't work worth a
cent, nor does butter. I'd give five pounds for some green cabbage.'
A brilliant idea struck Ryder.
'Why don't you paint her green, all the inside of the rail and the
boats?'
'She'd be a holy show, like a blasted timber-droghing Swede,' said
Watchett with great distaste. 'But d'ye think it'd work?'
'You might try,' replied Ryder.
'And now you've got the bulge on me,' sighed Watchett, 'with two
'ands missin' from both watches she'll be as 'ard in the mouth as
your _Star_. You might let me off that bet, Bill.'
'No,' said Ryder, 'a bet's a bet.'
'But fairness is fairness,' urged Watchett. 'There should be a
clause in a bet renderin' it void by the act of God or the Queen's
enemies.'
'There isn't,' said his cousin. 'And you forget you wouldn't help me
about those two hands I wanted.'
'Oh, if you talk like that----'
'That's the way I talk,' said Ryder remembering the wife he had left
behind him. 'I'm sorry.'
'Damn your sorrow,' said Watchett. 'But I'll lose no more, and
'taint your money yet.'
'Will you and Mary come on board to tea?' asked Ryder.
'I won't tea with no unfair person with no sympathy,' returned
Watchett savagely.
And when Ryder had gone he set the crowd painting his beautiful white
paint a ripe grass green.
'Watch if it soothes 'em any,' he said to Seleucus Thoms. 'If it
seems to work I'll paint 'er as green as a child's Noah's ark.'
And that night there was no decrease of the _Battle-Axe's_ sad crowd,
in spite of the fact that he did not keep his word and lock them up
in the stuffy fo'c'sle. For soon after midnight the mate, Mr.
Double, felt one side of his face cooler than the other as he stood
staring at the motionless lights of the _Star of the South_, then
lying stern on to the _Battle-Axe's_ starboard beam.
'Eh, what? Jerusalem!' said Double. Then he let a joyous bellow out
of him: 'Square the yards!'
For there was a breath of wind out of the south. Both vessels were
alive in a moment, and while the _Battle-Axe_ was squaring away the
_Star's_ foreyard was braced sharp up on the starboard tack till she
fell off before the little breeze. Then she squared her yards too,
and both vessels moved at least a mile towards home before they began
fooling all round the compass again.
'Them hands missin' makes a difference,' said Watchett gloomily.
'Less than enough is starvation.'
As they fought through the night for the flaws of wind which came out
of all quarters, the short watches of the _Battle-Axe_ found that out
and cursed accordingly. But it was a very curious thing that the
_Star of the South_ was never so easy to handle.
'That foreyard goes round now,' said old Semple, 'as if it was hung
like a balance. This is very surprising so it is.'
He mentioned the remarkable fact to M'Gill when he came on deck at
four in the morning, and so long as it was dark, as it was till
nearly six, M'Gill found it so too. And both watches were in a
surprisingly good temper. For nothing tries men so much as 'brace
up' and 'square away' every five minutes as they work their ship
through a belt of calm. But as soon as the sun was up the _Star_
worked just as badly as she did before.
'It's maist amazin',' said M'Gill.
During the day the calm renewed itself and gave every one a rest.
But once more the breeze came at night, and the amazing easiness of
the _Star_ showed itself when the darkness fell across the sea.
Ryder and Semple and M'Gill were full of wonder and delight.
'The character of a ship will change sometimes,' said Semple. 'It's
just like a collision that will alter her deviation. This calm has
worked a revolution.'
Because of this revolution the _Star_ got ahead of the _Battle-Axe_
every change and chance of the wind. She got ahead with such effect
that on the third day the _Battle-Axe_ was hull down to the
south'ard, and when the fourth dawn broke she was out of sight. This
meant much more than may appear, for the _Star_ picked up the
North-East Trade nearly four days earlier than her rival, and a
better Trade at that; for when the _Battle-Axe_ crawled into its area
it was half-sister to a calm, while the _Star_ was doing eight knots
an hour. And as there was now no need to touch tack or sheet, there
was no solution of the mysterious ease with which she worked in the
dark. How long the mystery might have remained such no one can say,
but it was owing to Mrs. Ryder's curious behaviour that it came out.
She laughed in the strangest manner till Ryder got quite nervous.
'Those chaps that jumped overboard from the _Battle-Axe_ laughed like
that,' he told her in great anxiety.
And she giggled more and more.
'Shall I try marmalade?' she asked. Then she sat down by him and
went off into something so like hysterics that a mere man might be
excused for thinking she was crazy.
'They're not dead,' she cried, 'they're not dead!'
'Who aren't dead?' asked her husband desperately. And remembering
something which had been told him years before, he took her hands and
slapped with such severity that she screamed and then cried, and
finally put her head upon his shoulder and confessed.
'Was it mutiny of me to do it?' she asked penitently.
Will Ryder tried to look severe, and then laughed until he cried.
'Whatever made you think of it?'
'It wasn't a what, it was a who,' said his wife; 'it was Silas Bagge.'
'The devil it was,' said Will, and with that he went on deck.
'Call all hands, and let them muster aft,' he said to M'Gill, who,
much wondering, did what he was told. The watch on deck dropped
their jobs, and the watch below turned out.
'Call the names over,' said Ryder sternly.
'They're all here, sir,' said M'Gill.
The skipper looked down at the upturned faces of the men and singled
out Silas Bagge as if he meant to speak to him. But he checked
himself, and going down on the main deck, walked for'ard to the
fo'c'sle. The men turned to look after him, and there was a grin on
every face which would have been ample for two. Ryder walked
quickly, and pushing aside the canvas door he came on a party playing
poker. He heard strange voices.
'I go one petter, moreover,' said one of them.
'I see you, and go two better,' said a man with a Newcastle burr in
his speech.
Then Ryder took a hand.
'And I see you,' he remarked. They dropped their cards and jumped to
their feet.
'What are you doing here?' he demanded. And there wasn't a word from
one of them: they looked as sheepish as four stowaways interviewing
the skipper before a crowd of passengers.
'Get on deck,' said Ryder. And much to M'Gill's astonishment, the
addition to the crew appeared with the captain behind them.
'Divide this lot among the watches,' said Ryder.
Leaving M'Gill 'to tumble to the racket,' he walked to the mate's
berth and explained to him that henceforth the _Star of the South_
would go about as easy by day as by night.
'Then they're not dead?' cried Semple.
'Not by a jugful,' said Ryder, nodding.
'This is very lucky, sir,' said the mate, smiling.
'It's devilish irregular too,' replied the skipper, as he rubbed his
chin. 'Are you sure you knew nothing of it, Mr. Semple?'
'Me, sir? Why, I'd look on it as mutiny,' said Semple, 'rank mutiny!'
'It was Mrs. Ryder's notion, Semple.'
'You don't say so, sir! She's a woman to be proud of.'
'So she is,' replied Ryder, 'so she is.'
He went back to his wife.
'You'll win the hundred pounds now, Will?'
'I believe I shall,' said Ryder.
'And I'll spend it,' cried his wife, coming to him and kissing him.
'I believe you will,' said Ryder.
It was a happy ship.