GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA
On a bright, sunshiny morning a few days later, with a light breeze just
ruffling the harbor, the brig with her sails laid back and her head
pointed seaward was drifting with the ebb tide perhaps a mile and a
quarter off shore between Honolulu and Diamond Head. Captain Winchester
had set out for the city in a whale boat. Those of the sailors left aboard
were idling forward. Mr. Landers, the mate, sat by the skylight on the
poop, reading a magazine. Second Mate Gabriel and the cooper were busy at
the cooper's bench in the waist. No one else was on deck and I resolved to
attempt again to escape. The situation seemed made to order.
In the warm weather of the tropics, I had often seen old man Landers,
when there was nothing doing on deck, sit and read by the hour without
ever looking up. I hoped that this morning his magazine would prove of
absorbing interest. Gabriel and the cooper were intent upon their work.
As for the sailors, I told them I was going to try to swim ashore and if
I were discovered and they had to lower for me, I asked them to hurry as
little as possible so I might have every chance to get away.
For my adventure I wore a blue flannel shirt, dungaree trousers, and my
blue cap. I tied my shoes together with a rope yarn, which I slipped
baldric-fashion over my shoulder. In the belt at my waist I carried a
sailor's sheath knife. With this I had a foolish idea that I might defend
myself against sharks. Without attracting attention, I slipped over the
bow, climbed down by the bob-stays, and let myself into the sea. I let
myself wash silently astern past the ship's side and struck out for shore,
swimming on my side without splash or noise, and looking back to watch
developments aboard.
I am convinced to this day that if I had not been in the water, old
Landers would have kept his nose in that magazine for an hour or so
and drowsed and nodded over it as I had seen him do dozens of times
before. Either my good angel, fearful of the sharks, or my evil genius,
malignantly bent upon thwarting me, must have poked the old fellow in the
ribs. At any rate, he rose from his chair and stepped to the taff-rail
with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He placed the glasses to his eyes
and squinted toward the pier to see whether or not the captain had reached
shore. I don't know whether he saw the captain or not, but he saw me.
"Who's that overboard?" he shouted.
I did not answer. Then he recognized me.
"Hey, you," he cried, calling me by name, "come back here."
I kept on swimming.
"Lay aft here, a boat's crew," Mr. Landers sang out.
Gabriel and the cooper ran to the quarter-deck and stared at me. The
sailors came lounging aft along the rail. Mr. Landers and Gabriel threw
the boat's falls from the davit posts. The sailors strung out across the
deck to lower the boat.
"Lower away," shouted Mr. Landers.
One end of the boat went down rapidly. The other end jerked and lurched
and seemed to remain almost stationary. I wondered whether my shipmates
were bungling purposely. Mr. Landers and Gabriel sprang among them,
brushed them aside and lowered the boat themselves. A crew climbed down
the brig's side into the boat. Old Gabriel went as boatheader. In a jiffy
the sweeps were shot into place, the boat was shoved off, and the chase
was on.
All this had taken time. As the ship was drifting one way and I was
quartering off in an almost opposite direction, I must have been nearly a
half mile from the vessel when Gabriel started to run me down.
I swam on my side with a long, strong stroke that fast swimmers used to
fancy before the Australian crawl came into racing vogue. I was swimming
as I never in my life swam before--swimming for liberty. All my hope and
heart, as well as all my strength, lay in every stroke. The clear, warm
salt water creamed about my head and sometimes over it. I was making time.
Swimming on my side, I could see everything that was happening behind me.
As the boat came after me I noticed there was but a slight ripple of white
water about the prow. Plainly it was not making great speed.
"Pull away, my boys. We ketch dat feller," sang out Gabriel.
Wilson at the midship oar "caught a crab" and tumbled over backwards, his
feet kicking in the air. Wilson was a good oarsman. He was my friend. A
hundred yards more and Walker at the tub oar did the same. He also was my
friend.
The boys were doing their best to help me--to give me a chance. I knew it.
Gabriel knew it, too. The crafty old negro recognized the crisis. I could
not hear what he said or see all that he did, but the boys told me about
it afterwards. It must have been a pretty bit of acting.
Suddenly Gabriel half rose from his seat and peered anxiously ahead.
"My God!" he cried, "dat poor feller, he drown. Pull, my boys. Oh, good
God!"
The sailors at the sweeps had their backs to me. It was a good long swim
and the water was full of sharks. It was not difficult to make them
believe that I was verging on tragedy.
"Dere he go down!" Gabriel's voice was broken and sobbing. "He t'row his
hands up. He underneath de water. I cain't see him. Oh, dat poor feller!
No, dere he come up again--oh, good Lord! Pull away, my bully boys, pull
away. We save him yet."
Surely the stage lost a star when Gabriel became a whaler. The old
Thespian was good--he was great. His acting carried conviction. The
sailors believed I was drowning. They leaned upon their oars with a will.
The sweeps bent beneath the powerful strokes. The boat jumped through
the water. I noted the increased speed by the white spray that began to
stand at the bow. Gabriel helped along the speed by forward lurches of his
body, pushing at the same time upon the stroke oar. All the while he kept
shouting:
"We save him yet, dat poor feller! Pull away, my boys."
The boat came up rapidly. In a little while it was almost upon me. I tried
to dodge it by darting off at right angles. It was no use--Gabriel slewed
his tiller and the boat came swishing round upon me. I had played the game
out to the last and I was beaten--that was all. I caught the gunwale near
the bow and pulled myself into the boat.
"You make dam good swim, my boy," said old Gabriel, smiling at me as he
brought the boat around and headed back for the ship.
I had made a good swim. I was fully a mile from the brig. I was not much
over a half mile from shore. I looked across the sunlit, dancing blue
water to the land. How easy it would have been to swim it! How easy it
would have been after I had crawled out upon the sands to hide in the
nearby mountains and live on wild fruit until the ship started for the
north and all danger of capture was past.
No land could have seemed more beautiful. Groves of banana, orange, and
cocoanut trees held out their fruit to me. Forests swept to the summits of
the mountains. Flowers were in riotous bloom everywhere. I could almost
count the ribs in the glossy fronds of the palms. I could hear the soft
crash of the combers on the coral beaches of those enchanted shores. It
all looked like paradise and I had missed it by half a mile.
When I reached the brig, Mr. Landers permitted me to put on dry clothing
and then put me in irons, as the sea phrase is. This consisted in
fastening my hands together in front of me with a pair of steel handcuffs
of the ordinary kind used by sheriffs and policemen everywhere. Then he
made me sit on the main hatch until Captain Winchester came back from
Honolulu, along toward sundown.
"What's the matter with that man?" roared the captain as he swung over the
rail and his eyes lighted on me.
"He jumped overboard and tried to swim ashore," said Mr. Landers in his
nasal Cape Cod drawl.
"Why didn't you get my rifle and shoot him?" thundered the captain.
"Well," returned Mr. Landers, "I don't shoot folks."
After supper the captain stuck his head out of the cabin gangway.
"Come down here, you," he said. I stepped into the cabin, now bright with
lighted lamps. The captain glared at me savagely.
"You want to give me a bad name with Captain Shorey when he takes command,
do you?" he shouted. "You want to make it appear I have been hard on my
men, eh? You think you're a smart sea lawyer, but I'll teach you the
bitterest lesson you ever learned. We are bound for the Arctic Ocean.
There are no ships up there but whale ships, and we do as we please. I
have been sailing to the Arctic for thirteen years as master and mate of
whale ships and I know just how far I can go in dealing with a man without
making myself liable to law. I am going to make it as rough for you as I
know how to make it. I will put you over the jumps right. I will punish
you to the limit. This ship is going to be a floating hell for you for
the rest of the voyage. And when we get back to San Francisco you can
prosecute me all you please."
He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked one manacle. It dropped from
one wrist and dangled from the other.
"Boy," he said to the Kanaka cabin boy, who has been listening with open
mouth and bulging eyes to this tirade, "get this man a cup of water and a
biscuit."
I had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and I sat down at the cabin
table and ate my one hardtack and drank my quart tin of water with a
relish. After my meal, the captain fastened my handcuff again and jerked a
little hatch out of the floor.
"Get down there," he said.
I climbed down and he clapped the hatch on again. I was in darkness except
for the light that filtered from the cabin lamps through the four cracks
of the hatch. When my eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, I made
out that I was in the ship's run, where the provisions for the captain's
table were stored. I rummaged about as well as I could in my handcuffs and
found a sack of raisins open and a box of soda crackers. To these I helped
myself generously. From a forecastle viewpoint they were rare dainties,
and I filled my empty stomach with them. I had not tasted anything so good
since I had my last piece of pie ashore. Pie! Dear me! One doesn't know
how good it is--just common pie baked in a bakery and sold at the corner
grocery--until one cannot get it and has had nothing but salt horse and
cracker hash for months. I used to yearn for pie by day and dream of pie
by night. At bedtime the captain snatched the hatch off again and tossed
me down my blankets. I bundled up in them as best I could and slept with
my manacles on.
I was kept in irons on bread and water for five days and nights. Sometimes
in the daytime, with one handcuff unlocked and hanging from my other
wrist, I was put at slushing down the main boom or washing paint-work. But
for the most part I was held a close prisoner in the run, being called to
the cabin table three times a day for my bread and water. Finally, when
Captain Shorey came aboard and assumed command and the vessel headed for
the north, I was released and sent to the forecastle. My shipmates proved
Job's comforters and were filled with gloomy predictions regarding my
future.
"I pity you from now on," each one said.
But their prophecies proved false. After Captain Shorey took charge of
the ship Mr. Winchester became mate. As mate he was, as may be said,
the ship's foreman, directing the work of the men, and was in much more
intimate contact with the sailors than when he had been skipper. In his
new capacity he had much greater opportunity to make it unpleasant for me
in a thousand ways. But for some reason or other he never made good that
ferocious speech he had delivered to me in the cabin.
When other green hands bungled, he damned them in round terms for their
awkwardness. When I blundered he showed me how to correct my error. "Not
that way, my boy," he would say. "Do it this way." When I took my trick at
the wheel he would often spin a yarn or crack a joke with me. He loaned
me books from time to time. In Behring Sea, when he got out his rifle
and shot okchug seals as they lay basking on cakes of ice, he almost
invariably took me with him in the boat to bring back the kill. In short,
he treated me more considerately than he treated any other man in the
forecastle and before the voyage was over we had become fast friends.