Five months later the _Almena_ lay at an outer mooring-buoy in Callao
Roads, again ready for sea, but waiting. With her at the anchorage
were representatives of most of the maritime nations. English ships
and barks with painted ports and spider-web braces, high-sided,
square-sterned American half-clippers, clumsy, square-bowed "Dutchmen,"
coasting-brigs of any nation, lumber-schooners from "'Frisco,"
hide-carriers from Valparaiso, pearl-boats and fishermen, and even a
couple of homesick Malay proas from the west crowded the roadstead; for
the guano trade was booming, and Callao prosperous. Nearly every type
of craft known to sailors was there; but the postman and the policeman
of the seas--the coastwise mail-steamer and the heavily sparred
man-of-war--were conspicuously absent. The Pacific Mail boat would not
arrive for a week, and the last cruiser had departed two days before.
Beyond the faint land- and sea-breeze, there was no wind nor promise of
it for several days; and Captain Benson, though properly cleared at the
custom-house for New York, was in no hurry, and had taken advantage of
the delay to give a dinner to some captains with whom he had
fraternized on shore. "I've a first-rate steward," he had told them,
"and I'll treat you well; and I've the best-trained crew that ever went
to sea. Come, all of you, and bring your first officers. I want to give
you an object-lesson on the influence of matter over mind that you
can't learn in the books."
So they came, at half-past eleven, in their own ships' dinghies, which
were sent back with orders to return at nightfall--six big-fisted,
more or less fat captains, and six big-fisted, beetle-browed, and
embarrassed chief mates. As they climbed the gangway they were met and
welcomed by Captain Benson, who led them to the poop, the only dry and
clean part of the ship; for the _Almena's_ crew were holystoning the
main-deck, and as this operation consists in grinding off the oiled
surface of the planks with sandstone, the resulting slime of sand, oily
wood-pulp, and salt water made walking unpleasant, as well as being
very hard on polished shoe-leather. But in this filthy slime the men
were on their knees, working the six-inch blocks of stone, technically
called "bibles," back and forth with about the speed and motion of an
energetic woman over a wash-board.
The mates also were working. With legs clad in long rubber boots, they
filled buckets at the deck-pump and scattered water around where
needed, occasionally throwing the whole bucketful at a doubtful spot on
the deck to expose it to criticism. As the visitors lined up against
the monkey-rail and looked down on the scene, Mr. Becker launched such
a bucketful as only a second mate can--and a man who happened to be in
the way was rolled over by the unexpected impact. He gasped a little
louder than might have been necessary, and the wasting of the bucketful
of water having forced Mr. Becker to make an extra trip to the pump,
the officer was duly incensed.
"Get out o' the way, there," he bawled, eying the man sternly. "What
are you gruntin' at? A little water won't hurt you--soap neither."
He went to the pump for more water, and the man crawled back to his
holystone. It was Bigpig Monahan, hollow-eyed and thin, slow in his
voluntary movements; minus his look of injury, too, as though he might
have welcomed the bowling over as a momentary respite for his aching
muscles.
Now and then, when the officers' faces were partly turned, a man would
stop, rise erect on his knees, and bend backward. A man may work a
holystone much longer and press it much harder on the deck for these
occasional stretchings of contracted tissue; but the two mates chose to
ignore this physiological fact, and a moment later, a little man,
caught in the act by Mr. Jackson, was also rolled over on his back, not
by a bucket of water, but by the boot of the mate, who uttered words
suitable to the occasion, and held his hand in his pocket until the
little man, grinning with rage, had resumed his work.
"There," said Captain Benson to his guests on the poop; "see that
little devil! See him show his teeth! That is Mr. Sinful Peck. I've had
him in irons with a broken head five times, and the log is full of him.
I towed him over the stern running down the trades to take the
cussedness out of him, and if he had not been born for higher things,
he'd have drowned. He was absolutely unconquerable until I found him
telling his beads one time in irons and took them away from him. Now to
get an occasional chance at them he is fairly quiet."
"So this is your trained crew, is it, captain?" said a grizzled old
skipper of the party. "What ails that fellow down in the scuppers with
a prayer-book?" He pointed to a man who with one hand was rubbing a
small holystone in a corner where a large one would not go.
"Ran foul of the big end of a handspike," answered Captain Benson,
quietly; "he'll carry his arm in splints all the way home, I think. His
name is Gunner Meagher. I don't know how they got their names, but they
signed them and will answer to them. They are unique. Look at that
outlaw down there by the bitts. That is Poop-deck Cahill. Looks like a
prize-fighter, doesn't he? But the steward tells me that he was
educated for the priesthood, and fell by the wayside. That one close to
the hatch--the one with the red head and hang-dog jib--is Seldom
Helward. He was shot off the cro'-jack yard; he fell into the lee clew
of the cro'-jack, so we pulled him in."
"What did he do, captain?" asked the grizzled skipper.
"Threw a marlinespike at the mate."
"What made him throw it?"
"Never asked. I suppose he objected to something said to him."
"Ought to ha' killed him on the yard. Are they all of a kind?"
"Every man. Not one knew the ropes or his place when he shipped.
They're schooner sailors from the Lakes, where the captain, if he is
civil and respectful to his men, is as good as any of them. They
started to clean us up the first day, but failed, and I went to sea
with them. Since then, until lately, it has been war to the knife. I've
set more bones, mended more heads, and plugged more shot-holes on this
passage than ever before, and my officers have grown perceptibly
thinner; but little by little, man by man, we've broken them in. Still,
I admit, it was a job. Why, that same Seldom Helward I ironed and ran
up on the fall of a main-buntline. We were rolling before a stiff
breeze and sea, and he would swing six feet over each rail and bat
against the mast in transit; but the dog stood it eight hours before he
stopped cursing us. Then he was unconscious. When he came to in the
forecastle, he was ready to begin again; but they stopped him. They're
keeping a log, I learn, and are going to law. Every time a man gets
thumped they enter the tragedy, and all sign their names."
Captain Benson smiled dignifiedly in answer to the outburst of laughter
evoked by this, and the men below lifted their haggard, hopeless faces
an instant, and looked at the party with eyes that were
furtive--cat-like. The grinding of the stones prevented their hearing
the talk, but they knew that they were being laughed at.
"Never knew a sailor yet," wheezed a portly and asthmatic captain, "who
wasn't ready to sue the devil and try the court in hell when he's at
sea. Trouble is, they never get past the first saloon."
"They got a little law here," resumed Captain Benson, quietly. "I put
them all in the guardo. The consul advised it, and committed them for
fear they might desert when we lay at the dock. When I took them out to
run to the islands, they complained of being starved; and to tell the
truth, they didn't throw their next meal overboard as usual.
Nevertheless, a good four weeks' board-bill comes out of their wages. I
don't think they'll have a big pay-day in New York: the natives cleaned
out the forecastle in their absence, and they'll have to draw heavily
on my slop-chest."
"That's where captains have the best of it," said one of the mates,
jocularly--and presumptuously, to judge by his captain's frown; "we
hammer 'em round and wear out their clothes, and it's the captain that
sells 'em new ones."
"Captain," said the grizzled one, who had been scanning the crew
intently, "I'd pay that crew off if I were you; you ought to ha' let
'em run, or worked 'em out and saved their pay. Look at 'em--look at
the devils in their eyes. I notice your mates seldom turn their backs
on 'em. I'd get rid of 'em."
"What! Just when we have them under control and useful? Oh, no! They
know their work now, and I'd only have to ship a crowd of beach-combers
and half-breeds at nearly double pay. Besides, gentlemen, we're just a
little proud of this crew. They are lake sailors from Oswego, a little
port on Lake Ontario. When I was young I sailed on the Lakes a season
or two and became thoroughly acquainted with the aggressive
self-respect of that breed. They would rather fight than eat. Their
reputation in this regard prevents them getting berths in any but
Oswego vessels, and even affects the policy of the nation. There's a
fort at Oswego, and whenever a company of soldiers anywhere in the
country become unmanageable--when their officers can't control them
outside the guard-house--the War Department at Washington transfers
them to Oswego for the tutelage they will get from the sailors. And
they get it; they are well-behaved, well-licked soldiers when they
leave. An Oswego sailor loves a row. He is possessed by the fighting
spirit of a bulldog; he inherits it with his Irish sense of injury; he
sucks it in with his mother's milk, and drinks it in with his whisky;
and when no enemies are near, he will fight his friends. Pay them off?
Not much. I've taken sixteen of those devils round the Horn, and I'll
take them back. I'm proud of them. Just look at them," he concluded
vivaciously, as he waved his hand at his men; "docile and obedient,
down on their knees with bibles and prayer-books."
"And the name o' the Lord on their lips," grunted the adviser; "but not
in prayer, I'll bet you."
"Hardly," laughed Captain Benson. "Come below, gentlemen; the steward
is ready."
From lack of facilities the mild-faced and smiling steward could not
serve that dinner with the style which it deserved. He would have
liked, he explained, as they seated themselves, to bring it on in
separate courses; but one and all disclaimed such frivolity. The dinner
was there, and that was enough. And it was a splendid dinner. In front
of Captain Benson, at the head of the table, stood a large tureen of
smoking terrapin-stew; next to that a stuffed and baked freshly caught
fish; and waiting their turn in the center of the spread, a couple of
brace of wild geese from the inland lakes, brown and glistening,
oyster-dressed and savory. Farther along was a steaming plum-pudding,
overhead on a swinging tray a dozen bottles of wine, by the captain's
elbow a decanter of yellow fluid, and before each man's plate a couple
of glasses of different size.
"We'll start off with an appetizer, gentlemen," said the host, as he
passed the decanter to his neighbor. "Here is some of the best Dutch
courage ever distilled; try it."
The decanter went around, each filling his glass and holding it poised;
then, when all were supplied, they drank to the grizzled old captain's
toast: "A speedy and pleasant passage home for the _Almena_, and
further confusion to her misguided crew." The captain responded
gracefully, and began serving the stew, which the steward took from him
plate by plate, and passed around.
But, either because thirteen men had sat down to that table, or because
the Fates were unusually freakish that day, it was destined that,
beyond the initial glass of whisky, not a man present should partake of
Captain Benson's dinner. On deck things had been happening, and just as
the host had filled the last plate for himself, a wet, bedraggled,
dirty little man, his tarry clothing splashed with the slime of the
deck, his eyes flaming green, his face expanded to a smile of ferocity,
appeared in the forward doorway, holding a cocked revolver which
covered them all. Behind him in the passage were other men, equally
unkempt, their eyes wide open with excitement and anticipation.
"Don't ye move," yelped the little man, "not a man. Keep yer hands out
o' yer pockets. Put 'em over yer heads. That's it. You too, cappen."
They obeyed him (there was death in the green eyes and smile), all but
one. Captain Benson sprang to his feet, with a hand in his breast
pocket.
"You scoundrels!" he cried, as he drew forth a pistol. "Leave this----"
The speech was stopped by a report, deafening in the closed-up space;
and Captain Benson fell heavily, his pistol rattling on the floor.
"Hang me up, will ye?" growled another voice through the smoke.
In the after-door were more men, the red-haired Seldom Helward in the
van, holding a smoking pistol. "Get the gun, one o' you fellows over
there," he called.
A man stepped in and picked up the pistol, which he cocked.
"One by one," said Seldom, his voice rising to the pitch and timbre of
a trumpet-blast, "you men walk out the forward companionway with your
hands over your heads. Plug them, Sinful, if two move together, and
shoot to kill."
Taken by surprise, the guests, resolute men though they were, obeyed
the command. As each rose to his feet, he was first relieved of a
bright revolver, which served to increase the moral front of the enemy,
then led out to the booby-hatch, on which lay a newly broached coil of
hambro-line and pile of thole-pins from the boatswain's locker. Here he
was searched again for jack-knife or brass knuckles, bound with the
hambro-line, gagged with a thole-pin, and marched forward, past the
prostrate first mate, who lay quiet in the scuppers, and the erect but
agonized second mate, gagged and bound to the fife-rail, to the port
forecastle, where he was locked in with the Chinese cook, who,
similarly treated, had preceded. The mild-faced steward, weeping now,
as much from professional disappointment as from stronger emotion, was
questioned sternly, and allowed his freedom on his promise not to "sing
out" or make trouble. Captain Benson was examined, his injury diagnosed
as brain-concussion, from the glancing bullet, more or less serious,
and dragged out to the scuppers, where he was bound beside his
unconscious first officer. Then, leaving them to live or die as their
subconsciousness determined, the sixteen mutineers sacrilegiously
reentered the cabin and devoured the dinner. And the appetites they
displayed--their healthy, hilarious enjoyment of the good things on the
table--so affected the professional sense of the steward that he ceased
his weeping, and even smiled as he waited on them.
When you have cursed, beaten, and kicked a slave for five months it is
always advisable to watch him for a few seconds after you administer
correction, to give him time to realize his condition. And when you
have carried a revolver in the right-hand trousers pocket for five
months it is advisable occasionally to inspect the cloth of the pocket
to make sure that it is not wearing thin from the chafe of the muzzle.
Mr. Jackson had ignored the first rule of conduct, Mr. Becker the
second. Mr. Jackson had kicked Sinful Peck once too often; but not
knowing that it was once too often, had immediately turned his back,
and received thereat the sharp corner of a bible on his bump of
inhabitiveness, which bump responded in its function; for Mr. Jackson
showed no immediate desire to move from the place where he fell. Beyond
binding, he received no further attention from the men. Mr. Becker, on
his way to the lazarette in the stern for a bucket of sand to assist in
the holystoning, had reached the head of the poop steps when this
occurred; and turning at the sound of his superior's fall, had bounded
to the main-deck without touching the steps, reaching for his pistol as
he landed, only to pinion his fingers in a large hole in the pocket.
Wildly he struggled to reclaim his weapon, down his trouser leg, held
firmly to his knee by the tight rubber boot; but he could not reach it.
His anxious face betrayed his predicament to the wakening men, and when
he looked into Mr. Jackson's revolver, held by Sinful Peck, he
submitted to being bound to the fife-rail and gagged with the end of
the topgallant-sheet--a large rope, which just filled his mouth, and
hurt. Then the firearm was recovered, and the descent upon the
dinner-party quickly planned and carried out.
Have you ever seen a kennel of hunting-dogs released on a fine day
after long confinement--how they bark and yelp, chasing one another,
biting playfully, rolling and tumbling over and over in sheer joy and
healthy appreciation of freedom? Without the vocal expression of
emotion, the conduct of these men after that wine dinner was very
similar to that of such emancipated dogs. They waltzed, boxed,
wrestled, threw each other about the deck, turned handsprings and
cartwheels,--those not too weak,--buffeted, kicked, and clubbed the
suffering Mr. Becker, reviled and cursed the unconscious captain and
chief officer, and when tired of this, as children and dogs of play,
they turned to their captives for amusement. The second mate was taken
from the fife-rail, with hands still bound, and led to the forecastle;
the gags of all and the bonds of the cook were removed, and the
forecastle dinner was brought from the galley. This they were invited
to eat. There was a piece of salt beef, boiled a little longer than
usual on account of the delay; it was black, brown, green, and
iridescent in spots; it was slippery with ptomaines, filthy to the
sight, stinking, and nauseating. There were potatoes, two years old,
shriveled before boiling--hard and soggy, black, blue, and bitter after
the process. And there was the usual "weevily hardtack" in the
bread-barge.
Protest was useless. The unhappy captives surrounded that dinner on the
forecastle floor (for there was neither table to sit at, nor chests,
stools, or boxes to sit on, in the apartment), and, with hands behind
their backs and disgust in their faces, masticated and swallowed the
morsels which the Chinese cook put to their mouths, while their
feelings were further outraged by the hilarity of the men at their
backs, and their appetites occasionally jogged into activity by the
impact on their heads of a tarry fist or pistol-butt. At last a portly
captain began vomiting, and this being contagious, the meal ended; for
even the stomachs of the sailors, overcharged as they were with the
rich food and wine of the cabin table, were affected by the spectacle.
There were cool heads in that crowd of mutineers--men who thought of
consequences: Poop-deck Cahill, square-faced and resolute, but
thoughtful of eye and refined of speech; Seldom Helward, who had shot
the captain--a man whose fiery hair, arching eyebrows, Roman nose, and
explosive language indicated the daredevil, but whose intelligent
though humorous eye and corrugated forehead gave certain signs of
repressive study and thought; and Bigpig Monahan, already described.
These three men went into session under the break of the poop, and came
to the conclusion that the consul who had jailed them for nothing would
hang them for this; then, calling the rest to the conference as a
committee of the whole, they outlined and put to vote a proposition to
make sail and go to sea, leaving the fate of their captives for later
consideration--which was adopted unanimously and with much profanity,
the central thought of the latter being an intention to "make 'em
finish the holystonin' for the fun they had laughin' at us." Then
Bigpig Monahan sneaked below and induced the steward to toss through
the store-room dead-light every bottle of wine and liquor which the
ship contained. "For Seldom and Poop-deck," he said to him, "are the
only men in the gang fit to pick up navigation and git this ship into
port again; but if they git their fill of it, it's all day with you,
steward."
Six second mates on six American ships watched curiously, doubtingly,
and at last anxiously, as sails were dropped and yards mastheaded on
board the _Almena_, and as she paid off from the mooring-buoy before
the land-breeze and showed them her stern, sent six dinghies, which
gave up the pursuit in a few minutes and mustered around the buoy,
where a wastefully slipped shot of anchor-chain gave additional
evidence that all was not right. But by the time the matter was
reported to the authorities ashore, the _Almena_, having caught the
newly arrived southerly wind off the Peruvian coast, was hull down on
the western horizon.
* * * * *
Four days later, one of the _Almena's_ boats, containing twelve men
with sore heads, disfigured faces, and clothing ruined by oily
wood-pulp,--ruined particularly about the knees of their trousers,--came
wearily into the roadstead from the open sea, past the shipping, and up
to the landing at the custom-house docks. From here the twelve
proceeded to the American consul and entered bitter complaint of
inhuman treatment received at the hands of sixteen mutinous sailors on
board the _Almena_--treatment so cruel that they had welcomed being
turned adrift in an open boat; whereat, the consul, deploring the
absence of man-of-war or steamer to send in pursuit, took their
individual affidavits; and these he sent to San Francisco, from which
point the account of the crime, described as piracy, spread to every
newspaper in Christendom.