The _Elsinore_, fresh-loaded with coal, lay very deep in the water when
we came alongside. I knew too little about ships to be capable of
admiring her lines, and, besides, I was in no mood for admiration. I
was still debating with myself whether or not to chuck the whole thing
and return on the tug. From all of which it must not be taken that I am
a vacillating type of man. On the contrary.
The trouble was that at no time, from the first thought of it, had I
been keen for the voyage. Practically the reason I was taking it was
because there was nothing else I was keen on. For some time now life
had lost its savour. I was not jaded, nor was I exactly bored. But the
zest had gone out of things. I had lost taste for my fellow-men and all
their foolish, little, serious endeavours. For a far longer period I
had been dissatisfied with women. I had endured them, but I had been
too analytic of the faults of their primitiveness, of their almost
ferocious devotion to the destiny of sex, to be enchanted with them.
And I had come to be oppressed by what seemed to me the futility of
art—a pompous legerdemain, a consummate charlatanry that deceived not
only its devotees but its practitioners.
In short, I was embarking on the _Elsinore_ because it was easier to
than not; yet everything else was as equally and perilously easy. That
was the curse of the condition into which I had fallen. That was why,
as I stepped upon the deck of the _Elsinore_, I was half of a mind to
tell them to keep my luggage where it was and bid Captain West and his
daughter good-day.
I almost think what decided me was the welcoming, hospitable smile Miss
West gave me as she started directly across the deck for the cabin, and
the knowledge that it must be quite warm in the cabin.
Mr. Pike, the mate, I had already met, when I visited the ship in Erie
Basin. He smiled a stiff, crack-faced smile that I knew must be
painful, but did not offer to shake hands, turning immediately to call
orders to half-a-dozen frozen-looking youths and aged men who shambled
up from somewhere in the waist of the ship. Mr. Pike had been drinking.
That was patent. His face was puffed and discoloured, and his large
gray eyes were bitter and bloodshot.
I lingered, with a sinking heart watching my belongings come aboard and
chiding my weakness of will which prevented me from uttering the few
words that would put a stop to it. As for the half-dozen men who were
now carrying the luggage aft into the cabin, they were unlike any
concept I had ever entertained of sailors. Certainly, on the liners, I
had observed nothing that resembled them.
One, a most vivid-faced youth of eighteen, smiled at me from a pair of
remarkable Italian eyes. But he was a dwarf. So short was he that he
was all sea-boots and sou’wester. And yet he was not entirely Italian.
So certain was I that I asked the mate, who answered morosely:
“Him? Shorty? He’s a dago half-breed. The other half’s Jap or Malay.”
One old man, who I learned was a bosun, was so decrepit that I thought
he had been recently injured. His face was stolid and ox-like, and as
he shuffled and dragged his brogans over the deck he paused every
several steps to place both hands on his abdomen and execute a queer,
pressing, lifting movement. Months were to pass, in which I saw him do
this thousands of times, ere I learned that there was nothing the
matter with him and that his action was purely a habit. His face
reminded me of the Man with the Hoe, save that it was unthinkably and
abysmally stupider. And his name, as I was to learn, of all names was
Sundry Buyers. And he was bosun of the fine American sailing-ship
_Elsinore_—rated one of the finest sailing-ships afloat!
Of this group of aged men and boys that moved the luggage along I saw
only one, called Henry, a youth of sixteen, who approximated in the
slightest what I had conceived all sailors to be like. He had come off
a training ship, the mate told me, and this was his first voyage to
sea. His face was keen-cut, alert, as were his bodily movements, and he
wore sailor-appearing clothes with sailor-seeming grace. In fact, as I
was to learn, he was to be the only sailor-seeming creature fore and
aft.
The main crew had not yet come aboard, but was expected at any moment,
the mate vouchsafed with a snarl of ominous expectancy. Those already
on board were the miscellaneous ones who had shipped themselves in New
York without the mediation of boarding-house masters. And what the crew
itself would be like God alone could tell—so said the mate. Shorty, the
Japanese (or Malay) and Italian half-caste, the mate told me, was an
able seaman, though he had come out of steam and this was his first
sailing voyage.
“Ordinary seamen!” Mr. Pike snorted, in reply to a question. “We don’t
carry Landsmen!—forget it! Every clodhopper an’ cow-walloper these days
is an able seaman. That’s the way they rank and are paid. The merchant
service is all shot to hell. There ain’t no more sailors. They all died
years ago, before you were born even.”
I could smell the raw whiskey on the mate’s breath. Yet he did not
stagger nor show any signs of intoxication. Not until afterward was I
to know that his willingness to talk was most unwonted and was where
the liquor gave him away.
“It’d a-ben a grace had I died years ago,” he said, “rather than to
a-lived to see sailors an’ ships pass away from the sea.”
“But I understand the _Elsinore_ is considered one of the finest,” I
urged.
“So she is . . . to-day. But what is she?—a damned cargo-carrier. She
ain’t built for sailin’, an’ if she was there ain’t no sailors left to
sail her. Lord! Lord! The old clippers! When I think of ’em!—_The
Gamecock_, _Shootin’ Star_, _Flyin’ Fish_, _Witch o’ the Wave_,
_Staghound_, _Harvey Birch_, _Canvas-back_, _Fleetwing_, _Sea Serpent_,
_Northern Light_! An’ when I think of the fleets of the tea-clippers
that used to load at Hong Kong an’ race the Eastern Passages. A fine
sight! A fine sight!”
I was interested. Here was a man, a live man. I was in no hurry to go
into the cabin, where I knew Wada was unpacking my things, so I paced
up and down the deck with the huge Mr. Pike. Huge he was in all
conscience, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned, and, despite the profound
stoop of his shoulders, fully six feet in height.
“You are a splendid figure of a man,” I complimented.
“I was, I was,” he muttered sadly, and I caught the whiff of whiskey
strong on the air.
I stole a look at his gnarled hands. Any finger would have made three
of mine. His wrist would have made three of my wrist.
“How much do you weigh?” I asked.
“Two hundred an’ ten. But in my day, at my best, I tipped the scales
close to two-forty.”
“And the _Elsinore_ can’t sail,” I said, returning to the subject which
had roused him.
“I’ll take you even, anything from a pound of tobacco to a month’s
wages, she won’t make it around in a hundred an’ fifty days,” he
answered. “Yet I’ve come round in the old _Flyin’ Cloud_ in eighty-nine
days—eighty-nine days, sir, from Sandy Hook to ’Frisco. Sixty men
for’ard that _was_ men, an’ eight boys, an’ drive! drive! drive! Three
hundred an’ seventy-four miles for a day’s run under t’gallantsails,
an’ in the squalls eighteen knots o’ line not enough to time her.
Eighty-nine days—never beat, an’ tied once by the old _Andrew Jackson_
nine years afterwards. Them was the days!”
“When did the _Andrew Jackson_ tie her?” I asked, because of the
growing suspicion that he was “having” me.
“In 1860,” was his prompt reply.
“And you sailed in the _Flying Cloud_ nine years before that, and this
is 1913—why, that was sixty-two years ago,” I charged.
“And I was seven years old,” he chuckled. “My mother was stewardess on
the _Flyin’ Cloud_. I was born at sea. I was boy when I was twelve, on
the _Herald o’ the Morn_, when she made around in ninety-nine days—half
the crew in irons most o’ the time, five men lost from aloft off the
Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken square off,
knuckle-dusters an’ belayin’-pins flyin’, three men shot by the
officers in one day, the second mate killed dead an’ no one to know who
done it, an’ drive! drive! drive! ninety-nine days from land to land, a
run of seventeen thousand miles, an’ east to west around Cape Stiff!”
“But that would make you sixty-nine years old,” I insisted.
“Which I am,” he retorted proudly, “an’ a better man at that than the
scrubby younglings of these days. A generation of ’em would die under
the things I’ve been through. Did you ever hear of the _Sunny
South_?—she that was sold in Havana to run slaves an’ changed her name
to _Emanuela_?”
“And you’ve sailed the Middle Passage!” I cried, recollecting the old
phrase.
“I was on the _Emanuela_ that day in Mozambique Channel when the
_Brisk_ caught us with nine hundred slaves between-decks. Only she
wouldn’t a-caught us except for her having steam.”
I continued to stroll up and down beside this massive relic of the
past, and to listen to his hints and muttered reminiscences of old
man-killing and man-driving days. He was too real to be true, and yet,
as I studied his shoulder-stoop and the age-drag of his huge feet, I
was convinced that his years were as he asserted. He spoke of a Captain
Sonurs.
“He was a great captain,” he was saying. “An’ in the two years I sailed
mate with him there was never a port I didn’t jump the ship goin’ in
an’ stay in hiding until I sneaked aboard when she sailed again.”
“But why?”
“The men, on account of the men swearin’ blood an’ vengeance and
warrants against me because of my ways of teachin’ them to be sailors.
Why, the times I was caught, and the fines the skipper paid for me—and
yet it was my work that made the ship make money.”
He held up his huge paws, and as I stared at the battered, malformed
knuckles I understood the nature of his work.
“But all that’s stopped now,” he lamented. “A sailor’s a gentleman
these days. You can’t raise your voice or your hand to them.”
At this moment he was addressed from the poop-rail above by the second
mate, a medium-sized, heavily built, clean-shaven, blond man.
“The tug’s in sight with the crew, sir,” he announced.
The mate grunted an acknowledgment, then added, “Come on down, Mr.
Mellaire, and meet our passenger.”
I could not help noting the air and carriage with which Mr. Mellaire
came down the poop-ladder and took his part in the introduction. He was
courteous in an old-world way, soft-spoken, suave, and unmistakably
from south of Mason and Dixon.
“A Southerner,” I said.
“Georgia, sir.” He bowed and smiled, as only a Southerner can bow and
smile.
His features and expression were genial and gentle, and yet his mouth
was the cruellest gash I had ever seen in a man’s face. It was a gash.
There is no other way of describing that harsh, thin-lipped, shapeless
mouth that uttered gracious things so graciously. Involuntarily I
glanced at his hands. Like the mate’s, they were thick-boned,
broken-knuckled, and malformed. Back into his blue eyes I looked. On
the surface of them was a film of light, a gloss of gentle kindness and
cordiality, but behind that gloss I knew resided neither sincerity nor
mercy. Behind that gloss was something cold and terrible, that lurked
and waited and watched—something catlike, something inimical and
deadly. Behind that gloss of soft light and of social sparkle was the
live, fearful thing that had shaped that mouth into the gash it was.
What I sensed behind in those eyes chilled me with its repulsiveness
and strangeness.
As I faced Mr. Mellaire, and talked with him, and smiled, and exchanged
amenities, I was aware of the feeling that comes to one in the forest
or jungle when he knows unseen wild eyes of hunting animals are spying
upon him. Frankly I was afraid of the thing ambushed behind there in
the skull of Mr. Mellaire. One so as a matter of course identifies form
and feature with the spirit within. But I could not do this with the
second mate. His face and form and manner and suave ease were one
thing, inside which he, an entirely different thing, lay hid.
I noticed Wada standing in the cabin door, evidently waiting to ask for
instructions. I nodded, and prepared to follow him inside. Mr. Pike
looked at me quickly and said:
“Just a moment, Mr. Pathurst.”
He gave some orders to the second mate, who turned on his heel and
started for’ard. I stood and waited for Mr. Pike’s communication, which
he did not choose to make until he saw the second mate well out of
ear-shot. Then he leaned closely to me and said:
“Don’t mention that little matter of my age to anybody. Each year I
sign on I sign my age one year younger. I am fifty-four, now, on the
articles.”
“And you don’t look a day older,” I answered lightly, though I meant it
in all sincerity.
“And I don’t feel it. I can outwork and outgame the huskiest of the
younglings. And don’t let my age get to anybody’s ears, Mr. Pathurst.
Skippers are not particular for mates getting around the seventy mark.
And owners neither. I’ve had my hopes for this ship, and I’d a-got her,
I think, except for the old man decidin’ to go to sea again. As if he
needed the money! The old skinflint!”
“Is he well off?” I inquired.
“Well off! If I had a tenth of his money I could retire on a chicken
ranch in California and live like a fighting cock—yes, if I had a
fiftieth of what he’s got salted away. Why, he owns more stock in all
the Blackwood ships . . . and they’ve always been lucky and always
earned money. I’m getting old, and it’s about time I got a command. But
no; the old cuss has to take it into his head to go to sea again just
as the berth’s ripe for me to fall into.”
Again I started to enter the cabin, but was stopped by the mate.
“Mr. Pathurst? You won’t mention about my age?”
“No, certainly not, Mr. Pike,” I said.