THE VOYAGE OF THE “VOODOO”.--NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
Monson was the man's name that I came to deal with in New Orleans.
He had a schooner named the _Voodoo_, a coast cruiser that never went
further to sea than the Windwards. There was another white man on
the crew, but the rest were negroes. Monson was billed already for
Martinique and Trinidad, and that was why I dealt with him, and got him
cheap for a short trip beyond Tobago.
Stevey Todd set out for the north to find some relatives he thought he
had, but found none to his mind, and concluded he was an orphan. But he
found a restaurant to his mind in South Street in New York, and there
he settled himself and waited for me to come along. It's a place where
seamen generally turn up sooner or later, and I told him I would come
there. Monson and I set sail the third of September in the year '85.
Now, Monson was a man of great size and long yellowish hair and beard,
and shy, innocent-looking eyes. It always gave me a start to look up six
feet of legs and chest, and end in an expression of face which seemed
about to remark that the world was a strange place, and might be
wicked. The other white man and the negroes were a bad lot, and given
to viciousness, but Monson ruled them with a heavy fist. He hadn't been
three hours away from the river before he was banging a negro with a
board, the others looking on and grinning. He was spanking him, in
a way. He ran to me with tears in his eyes. “I'll throw that nigger
overboard!” he shouted, dancing about, and shortly after he appeared to
have forgotten the matter. I thought I should get along with him, but I
thought I'd have to keep cool and calm in dealing with him. He was such
a man as it seemed better to be acquainted with in a big open space
where there was room for him to explode. He was apt to be either gay or
outrageous, and that about any little thing. He was simple and furious
and very hearty, and that all made him good company. The negroes looked
murderous, and the other white man shifty and dirty, but he was a
competent seaman.
Three weeks later we passed Tobago and were looking for Clyde's little
island. We dropped anchor there one evening about eight o'clock. The
moon was high and the sea bright. It was sixteen years since I'd seen
that shore last, the night I rowed old Clyde up the inlet, and we buried
his canvas bags. It was hard won enough by the old man, that money,
with twenty years' dodging South American customs. We'd buried it in the
middle of a triangle of three trees. I remembered how black the sea
had been, and rough off shore. I remembered the black cruiser with its
pennon of smoke. The inlet had been reedy, and the water there quiet,
and the soil we dug in punky and wet.
I sat in the stern of the dingey now and let Monson row, which he did
powerfully. His forearm was like a log of wood, the muscles coming out
of it in knots. I was glad enough there was no danger to seaward, and
wished I could carry Clyde's money away in a check, instead of the meal
bags we had in the dingey.
We rowed along and came to the inlet. There was a lot of marsh grass and
deep-growing reeds, and clear water between that stretched away inland.
It made a straight line between the water reeds leading up to a triangle
of three trees. There was a little white house in the middle of the
triangle, with two lit windows.
I says: “Monson! Somebody's squatted on it!”
“What!” he says.
Somebody was singing in the house. Monson looked around from his rowing,
and found it very funny to his mind, for he laughed with a roar, and the
singing stopped short.
“Turn into the reeds!” I says, and we crouched there in the boat.
“It's just where the house is,” I says, “or it was. There wasn't any
house then.”
Monson shook with laughter though he kept it quiet, and I don't know
what pleased him. It would have pleased me then to see him dead, I
was that savage for the people in the house. One spot on a mean little
island, and they'd squatted on it! Yet it was plain enough, for the
inlet led up to the three trees, which seemed to invite a man to do
there whatever he had planned to do.
“Stuff 'em up their chimney,” says Monson. “Tip the hut into the creek.
That joke's on them, ain't it?”
I didn't see how the joke was on them.
“Why, I never knew an Injy islander to dig a cellar,” he says: “They lie
on the ground and get ague. Course, they might dig a hole.”
The door of the little house was closed, when we came soft along the
muddy shore and crept up to the window. There were five men inside,
around a table, leaning forward, whispering together and drinking
aguardiente. That's what Kid Sadler on the _Hebe Maitland_ used to
call “affectionate water.” They were small men, but fierce-looking and
black-eyed, and they appeared as if they were talking state secrets, or
each explaining his special brand of crime. Monson roared out and struck
the door with his fist, and they disappeared. Three of them went under
the table.
Monson had to bend his head to enter, and his shaggy hair pressed along
the ceiling. He pulled some by their legs from under the table, and one
from a bench in a dark corner by the hair, whom he left suddenly, for it
was a woman, and the two others he hauled from a closet.
“Bring us some more!” he shouted in Spanish, laughing uproariously.
“Aguardiente! Hoorah!”
I don't know, or forget, how he quieted them, but pretty soon we
were seven men about the table, and the woman was serving us with
“affectionate water.” One of them, with the woman, was owner of the
house, and the others, it seemed, lived across the island. They had
heard Monson's laugh, and afterward, hearing and seeing nothing more,
they'd taken it to be ghosts and were afraid. They were fierce-looking
little men, but pleasant enough and simple-minded. “Doubtless,” they
said, “the senores were distinguished persons, who had come on a ship
and would buy tobacco.” We arranged that the four, who lived across the
island, should come back in the morning with their tobacco. So the four
went away affectionate with aguardiente, and we were left alone with
the fifth. His name was Pedronez and his wife's Lucina. Then I asked how
long they'd lived there.
“One year, six months,” he says, counting on his fingers.
“Build the house?”
“Si, senor. A noble house! A miracle!”
“Ever dig a hole here?”
“A hole! But why a hole? In the ground of the noble house! Ah, no! By no
means!”
Monson roared again, to the fright of Pedronez and Lucina, who flattened
herself against the wall. He went out and brought in the spade, and the
bags. I guarded the door, and Monson dug where I pointed in the hard
trodden earth of the floor. Pedronez and Lucina backed into corners and
chattered crazy. They seemed to think the hole was for them, and Monson
meant to bury them in it, which had as reasonable a look as anything.
Clyde's money was there still, lying no more than two feet from where
Pedronez and Lucina had walked over it eighteen months, grubbing out a
poor living. The brown bags were all rotted away and the coin was sticky
with clay. I laid a handful on the table, and told Pedronez to buy the
tobacco of the others in the morning, but I didn't suppose he would.
It seemed a hard sort of joke played by luck on the little Windward
Islander, Clyde's money lying there so long, twenty-four inches from
the soles of his feet. I remember how Pedronez clutched his throat
and shrieked after us into the night. He had shiny black eyes and skin
wrinkled about the mouth, and Lucina was draggled-looking. When we were
out of the inlet we could hear him yelling, and I had an idea he and
Lucina took to fighting to ease up their minds.
We came under the dark of the ship's side. One of the negroes leaned
over above us, and Monson told him to turn in, so short that he scuttled
away with a grunt. We heaved the stuff aboard, and took it below, and
stowed the whole four meal bags under my bunk. We got up sail before
daybreak and slipped away while the stars were still shining.
Now, I took Monson to be a simple man, though sudden in action, and a
man with an open mind, and sure to blow up with anything it was charged
with, and in that way safe, as not having the gifts to deceive. I don't
say the estimate was all gone wrong, but I'd say a man may act so simple
as to take in a cleverer man than me. He came to me the next day and
took me down below, acting mysterious, and he put on an expression that
was like a full moon trying to look like a horse trader, which wasn't a
success. Then he jerked his beard, and looked embarrassed.
“Why,” he says, “it's this way. I think I'll have half that pile, don't
you see?”
I says: “What?”
I felt like an empty meal bag with surprise. Then I says, “Of course I
was meaning to make you a present, Captain.”
“No,” he says. “That's not it. It's this way. The niggers is so tricky,
they'd drop you overboard, tied to a chunk of iron, if I told 'em they
might, don't you see? And if I don't tell them they might, seems as if
I ought to have half. Because,” he says, “they'd love to do it, because
they're that way, those niggers, and it seems that way, as if I'd ought
to have half, don't it?”
“Why don't you take it all?” I says, sarcastic and mad.
“Why?” he says, looking like a full moon that was shocked. “No! That
wouldn't be fair, don't you see?”
I kept still a while, and then I thought maybe there'd be a way or two
out, and I spoke mild.
“There's some reason in it, when you put it that way.”
“That's right,” he says, and acted joyful and free. “It's that way;”
and he went above, and I heard him banging the negroes, likely for the
wickedness they were capable of. I sat on my bunk and wondered why a man
like me was always having trouble.
Then I took a lantern and went exploring down in the hold of the ship,
which was pretty much empty of cargo, and foul, and smelt as if things
had rotted there a hundred years. There were barrels and boxes and old
canvas, and heaps of scrap iron, and some lead pipe, and coils of bad
rope. Afterward I came on deck, and had supper and talked with Monson.
He kept nudging me now and then, and saying, “It's that way;” and me
answering, “There's reason in it, when it's put that way.”
About nine o'clock I went below. By ten Monson and all the negroes were
asleep, except two with the other white man on watch. I waited an hour,
and then took a saw and a lantern, and crept from the cabin down the
ladder to the hold. The sea was easy, though moving some, and slapping
the ship's sides and the hold was full of loud echoes, smelling bad, and
very black beyond the space of lantern light, a slimy cold place, and
full of sudden noises. I worked till far in the morning, sawing lead
pipe into thin sections of maybe an eighth of an inch thick, and
thinking about Monson and whether he was deep or not. I thought he was
right about the negroes, but I thought Monson wasn't deep, but simple by
nature. It was the same as when one small boy says to another, “You give
me your jackknife and I won't tell anybody to lick you.” That gives him
a sense of good morals that's comfortable inside him.
I carried up maybe thirty pounds of lead pipe in eighth-inch sections,
and emptied out two of the bags, and shovelled in the lead pipe. I put
in enough sticky coin on top to cover it well, and the rest I put some
in the other two bags, but most in a leather satchel under some clothes.
Then I tied up the bags and shoved them under the bunk, with the
lead pipe ones in front. Eighth inch sections of lead pipe aren't so
different from gold coin, so long as they're in a meal bag with the
proper deceptiveness on top. Then I turned in and went to sleep.
In the morning I went to Monson and said, as glum as I could, that I
guessed he'd do as he liked, and as to the negroes dropping me overboard
he was probably right. Then he acted shy and timid. He followed me
back to my cabin, and stood around like he was part ashamed and part
confused, kicking his heels together nervous, and smoothing his hair.
“Why,” he said, “you see, it's this way. I think I'll take 'em now.”
Then he fished out the two front bags, opened them, squinted in, tied
them up, and walked off. I sort of gaped after him, and sat down on my
bunk, and wondered why a man like me should have that kind of trouble,
and how soon Monson would take to fooling with his bags, and find out he
owned so much lead pipe. But I heard him banging one of the negroes,
and judged he was cheerful yet. I went up on deck and lay down on some
cordage. Monson left the deck soon after.
I'd calculated on the bags staying under my bunk till we came to New
Orleans, thinking to pass off the two that were doctored on Monson in a
hurry, and then to get out of reach hot-footed. I calculated now that,
as soon as he found his bags had been doctored, he'd mention it candid
and loud, and meanwhile I might as well get my gun in working shape for
trouble. Maybe I might make a bargain with the shifty-looking white man,
and organize an argument as to which should be dropped overboard, Monson
or me. But I hadn't got to the point, when Monson came lounging up the
gangway, still acting apologetic. I judged maybe he'd stowed away his
bags without digging into them. I says:
“Let bygones be, Captain,” and he says, “That's right! It's that way.”
It was a remarkable thing how friendly and kind we got, hoping there was
no hard feeling.
That day the wind rose to a gale and the sea went wild. It kept Monson
on deck night and day for four days. It kept us in a boiling pot, and on
the fifth we entered the mouth of the Mississippi. Then Monson went
down to sleep, and he hadn't waked when we anchored off the levee at New
Orleans, which was six o'clock in the evening. By eight I was on a train
going north, with a new trunk in the baggage car.
I've never happened to see Monson since. I guess he was contented. When
I opened the bags, one of them was mainly full of eighth-inch sections
of lead pipe.
Maybe he'd heard me go down to the hold in the first place, but probably
he found first his lead pipe at the time he left me on the deck, and
then he'd changed things a bit more to his ideas of what was right,
bearing in mind the natural wickedness of the negroes. He didn't appear
to have noticed that some of the stuff was stowed in my leather satchel,
but he got nearly a third of Clyde's savings.
I came to New York and I walked along South Street, thinking of the day,
twenty years back, when I first walked along South Street, cocky and
green. Then I came toward the slip where the _Hebe Maitland_ had lain
that day, and where I'd looked at her and said, “Now, there's a ship.” I
thought of Clyde and that odd talk in the cabin of the _Hebe Maitland_,
where all my deep-sea goings began. And I looked up and I says, “Now,
there's a ship!”
The prow of her came up to the sidewalk, and the bowsprit stretched over
the street, pointing at a house on the other side that was a restaurant
by its sign. The _Annalee_ was the ship's name in gilt lettering, and
the clean lines of her and her way of lying in the water would give you
joy. I walked alongside her on the dock, and I went across the street to
look at her that way, and stood in front of the restaurant. And there
I sniffed around a bit, and there I smelt hot waffles. “It's a
tasty smell,” I says. “Smells like Stevey Todd,” and I went into the
restaurant, and there was Stevey Todd. “Stevey,” I says, “if you'll give
me some hot waffles and honey, I'll buy that ship out there if she's
buyable.” And Stevey Todd gave me hot waffles and honey, and I bought
the _Annalee_.
It might be thought, and some would say so, that the trouble I had with
Monson came of Clyde's money being unclean, as not got honestly, but
through dodging South American customs, and I'm free to admit it was
sticky when I dug it up. But it's never acted other than respectable
since that time. I never agreed with Clyde in argument, more than did
Stevey Todd. A man falls in with various folks by sea and land, and he
finds many that are made up of ill-fitting parts. Clyde was an odd man
and a bold one, though old and dry. Monson I took for a loud and joyful
one, simple and open in his mind, and violent in his habits and free of
language, and yet he acted to me both secret and moderate, and I guess I
mistook him.
Stevey Todd and I went to sea again in the coasting trade, and mainly to
the south, and saw the coasts and parts we knew in the _Hebe Maitland_
days. So I passed several years more.