1909
I
A short, square chunk of a man walked into a shipping office on the East
Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes,
a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed
shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his
weather-beaten face as a spike collar frames a dog's.
“You don't want to send this vessel to sea again,” blurted out the
chunk. “She ought to go to the dry-dock. Her boats haven't had a
brushful of paint for a year; her boilers are caked clear to her
top flues, and her pumps won't take care of her bilge water. Charter
something else and lay her up.”
The Manager turned in his revolving chair and faced him. He was the
opposite of the Captain in weight, length, and thickness--a slim,
well-groomed, puffy-cheeked man of sixty with a pair of uncertain, badly
aimed eyes and a voice like the purr of a cat.
“Oh, my dear Captain, you surely don't mean what you say. She is
perfectly seaworthy and sound. Just look at her inspection--” and he
passed him the certificate.
“No--I don't want to see it! I know 'em by heart: it's a lie, whatever
it says. Give an inspector twenty dollars and he's stone blind.”
The Manager laughed softly. He had handled too many rebellious captains
in his time; they all had a protest of some kind--it was either the
crew, or the grub, or the coal, or the way she was stowed. Then he added
softly, more as a joke than anything else:
“Not afraid, are you, Captain?”
A crack started from the left-hand corner of the Captain's mouth,
crossed a fissure in his face, stopped within half an inch of his stub
nose, and died out in a smile of derision.
“What I'm afraid of is neither here nor there. There's cattle
aboard--that is, there will be by to-morrow night; and there's a lot of
passengers booked, some of 'em women and children. It isn't honest to
ship 'em and you know it! As to her boilers send for the Chief Engineer.
He'll tell you. You call it taking risks; I call it murder!”
“And so I understand you refuse to obey the orders of the Board?--and
yet she's got to sail on the 16th if she sinks outside.”
“When I refuse to obey the orders of the Board I'll tell the Board, not
you. And when I do tell 'em I'll tell 'em something else, and that is,
that this chartering of worn-out tramps, painting 'em up and putting 'em
into the Line, has got to stop, or there'll be trouble.”
“But this will be her last trip, Captain. Then we'll overhaul her.”
“I've heard that lie for a year. She'll run as long as they can insure
her and her cargo. As for the women and children, I suppose they don't
count--” and he turned on his heel and left the office.
On the way out he met the Chief Engineer.
“Do the best you can, Mike,” he said; “orders are we sail on the 16th.”
*****
On the fourth day out this conversation took place in the smoking-room
between a group of passengers.
“Regular tub, this ship!” growled the Man-Who-Knew-It-All to the Bum
Actor. “Screw out of the water every souse she makes; lot of dirty
sailors skating over the decks instead of keeping below where they
belong; Chief Engineer loafing in the Captain's room every chance he
gets--there he goes now--and it's the second time since breakfast. And
the Captain is no better! And just look at the accommodations--three
stewards and a woman! What's that to look after thirty-five passengers?
Half the time I have to wait an hour to get something to eat--such as it
is. And my bunk wasn't made up yesterday until plumb night. That bunch
in the steerage must be having a hard time.”
“We get all we pay for,” essayed the Travelling Man. “She ain't rigged
for cabin passengers, and the Captain don't want 'em. Didn't want
to take me--except our folks had a lot of stuff aboard. Had enough
passengers, he said.”
“Well, he took the widow and her two kids”--continued the
Man-Who-Knew-It-All--“and they were the last to get aboard. Half the
time he's playing nurse instead of looking after his ship. Had 'em all
on the bridge yesterday.”
“He _had_ to take 'em,” protested the Travelling Man. “She was put under
his charge by his owners--so one of the stewards told me.”
“Oh!--_had to_, did he! Yes--I've been there before. No use
talking--this line's got to be investigated, and I'm going to do the
investigating as soon as I get ashore, and don't you forget it! What's
your opinion?”
The Bum Actor made no reply. He had been cold and hungry too many days
and nights to find fault with anything. But for the generosity of a few
friends he would still be tramping the streets, sleeping where he could.
Three meals a day--four, if he wanted them--and a bed in a room all to
himself instead of being one in a row of ten, was heaven to him. What
the Captain, or the Engineer, or the crew, or anybody else did, was
of no moment, so he got back alive. As to the widow's children, he
had tried to pick up an acquaintance with them himself--especially
the boy--but she had taken them away when she saw how shabby were his
clothes.
The Texas Cattle Agent now spoke up. He was a tall, raw-boned man, with
a red chin-whisker and red, weather-scorched face, whose clothing looked
as if it had been pulled out of shape in the effort to accommodate
itself to the spread of his shoulders and round of his thighs. His
trousers were tucked in his boots, the straps hanging loose. He
generally sat by himself in one corner of the cramped smoking-room, and
seldom took part in the conversation. The Bum Actor and he had exchanged
confidences the night before, and the Texan therefore felt justified in
answering in his friend's stead.
“You're way off, friend,” he said to the Man-Who-Knew-It-All. “There
ain't nothin' the matter with the Line, nor the ship, nor the Captain.
This is my sixth trip aboard of her, and I know! They had a strike among
the stevedores the day we sailed, and then, too, we've got a scrub lot
of stokers below, and the Captain's got to handle 'em just so. That kind
gets ugly when anything happens. I had sixty head of cattle aboard here
on my last trip over, and some of 'em got loose in a storm, and there
was hell to pay with the crew till things got straightened out. I ain't
much on shootin' irons, but they came handy that time. I helped and I
know. Got a couple in my cabin now. Needn't tell me nothin' about the
Captain. He's all there when he's wanted, and it don't take him more'n a
minute, either, to get busy.”
The door of the smoking-room opened and the object of his eulogy
strolled in. He was evidently just off the bridge, for the thrash of
the spray still glistened on his oilskins and on his gray, half-moon
whiskers. That his word was law aboard ship, and that he enforced it
in the fewest words possible, was evident in every line of his face
and every tone of his voice. If he deserved an overhauling it certainly
would not come from any one on board--least of all from Carhart--the
Man-Who-Knew-It-All.
Loosening the thong that bound his so'wester to his chin, he slapped it
twice across a chair back, the water flying in every direction, and then
faced the room.
“Mr. Bonner.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the big-shouldered Texan, rising to his feet.
“I'd like to see you for a minute,” and without another word the two men
left the room and made their way in silence down the wet deck to where
the Chief Engineer stood.
“Mike, this is Mr. Bonner; you remember him, don't you? You can rely on
his carrying out any orders you give him. If you need another man let
him pick him out--” and he continued on to his cabin.
Once there the Captain closed the door behind him, shutting out the
pound and swash of the sea; took from a rack over his bunk a roll of
charts, spread one on a table and with his head in his hands studied
it carefully. The door opened and the Chief Engineer again stood beside
him. The Captain raised his head.
“Will Bonner serve?” he asked.
“Yes, glad to, and he thinks he's got another man. He's what he calls
out his way a 'tenderfoot,' he says, but he's game and can be depended
on. Have you made up your mind where she'll cross?”--and he bent over
the chart.
The Captain picked up a pair of compasses, balanced them for a moment in
his fingers, and with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle,
dropped the points astride a wavy line known as the steamer track.
The engineer nodded:
“That will give us about twenty-two hours leeway,” he said gravely, “if
we make twelve knots.”
“Yes, if you make twelve knots: can you do it?”
“I can't say; depends on that gang of shovellers and the way they
behave. They're a tough lot--jail-birds and tramps, most of 'em. If
they get ugly there ain't but one thing left; that, I suppose, you won't
object to.”
The Captain paused for a moment in deep thought, glanced at the pin
prick in the chart, and said with a certain forceful meaning in his
voice:
“No--not if there's no other way.”
The Chief Engineer waited, as if for further reply, replaced his cap,
and stepped out into the wind. He had got what he came for, and he had
got it straight.
With the closing of the door the Captain rolled up the chart, laid it
in its place among the others, readjusted the thong of his so'wester,
stopped for a moment before a photograph of his wife and child, looked
at it long and earnestly, and then mounted the stairs to the bridge.
With the exception that the line of his mouth had straightened and
the knots in his eyebrows tightened, he was, despite the smoking-room
critics, the same bluff, determined sea-dog who had defied the Manager
the week before.