But I could not sleep. I took more cream of tartar. It must be the heat
of the bed-clothes, I decided, that excited my hives. And yet, whenever
I ceased struggling for sleep, and lighted the lamp and read, my skin
irritation decreased. But as soon as I turned out the lamp and closed
my eyes I was troubled again. So hour after hour passed, through which,
between vain attempts to sleep, I managed to wade through many pages of
Rosny’s _Le Termite_—a not very cheerful proceeding, I must say,
concerned as it is with the microscopic and over-elaborate recital of
Noël Servaise’s tortured nerves, bodily pains, and intellectual
phantasma. At last I tossed the novel aside, damned all analytical
Frenchmen, and found some measure of relief in the more genial and
cynical Stendhal.
Over my head I could hear Mr. Mellaire steadily pace up and down. At
four the watches changed, and I recognized the age-lag in Mr. Pike’s
promenade. Half an hour later, just as the steward’s alarm went off,
instantly checked by that light-sleeping Asiatic, the _Elsinore_ began
to heel over on my side. I could hear Mr. Pike barking and snarling
orders, and at times a trample and shuffle of many feet passed over my
head as the weird crew pulled and hauled. The _Elsinore_ continued to
heel over until I could see the water against my port, and then she
gathered way and dashed ahead at such a rate that I could hear the
stinging and singing of the foam through the circle of thick glass
beside me.
The steward brought me coffee, and I read till daylight and after, when
Wada served me breakfast and helped me dress. He, too, complained of
inability to sleep. He had been bunked with Nancy in one of the rooms
in the ’midship-house. Wada described the situation. The tiny room,
made of steel, was air-tight when the steel door was closed. And Nancy
insisted on keeping the door closed. As a result Wada, in the upper
bunk, had stifled. He told me that the air had got so bad that the
flame of the lamp, no matter how high it was turned, guttered down and
all but refused to burn. Nancy snored beautifully through it all, while
he had been unable to close his eyes.
“He is not clean,” quoth Wada. “He is a pig. No more will I sleep in
that place.”
On the poop I found the _Elsinore_, with many of her sails furled,
slashing along through a troubled sea under an overcast sky. Also I
found Mr. Mellaire marching up and down, just as I had left him hours
before, and it took quite a distinct effort for me to realize that he
had had the watch off between four and eight. Even then, he told me, he
had slept from four until half-past seven.
“That is one thing, Mr. Pathurst, I always sleep like a baby . . .
which means a good conscience, sir, yes, a good conscience.”
And while he enunciated the platitude I was uncomfortably aware that
that alien thing inside his skull was watching me, studying me.
In the cabin Captain West smoked a cigar and read the Bible. Miss West
did not appear, and I was grateful that to my sleeplessness the curse
of sea-sickness had not been added.
Without asking permission of anybody, Wada arranged a sleeping place
for himself in a far corner of the big after-room, screening the corner
with a solidly lashed wall of my trunks and empty book boxes.
It was a dreary enough day, no sun, with occasional splatters of rain
and a persistent crash of seas over the weather rail and swash of water
across the deck. With my eyes glued to the cabin ports, which gave
for’ard along the main deck, I could see the wretched sailors, whenever
they were given some task of pull and haul, wet through and through by
the boarding seas. Several times I saw some of them taken off their
feet and rolled about in the creaming foam. And yet, erect,
unstaggering, with certitude of weight and strength, among these rolled
men, these clutching, cowering ones, moved either Mr. Pike or Mr.
Mellaire. They were never taken off their feet. They never shrank away
from a splash of spray or heavier bulk of down-falling water. They had
fed on different food, were informed with a different spirit, were of
iron in contrast with the poor miserables they drove to their bidding.
In the afternoon I dozed for half-an-hour in one of the big chairs in
the cabin. Had it not been for the violent motion of the ship I could
have slept there for hours, for the hives did not trouble. Captain
West, stretched out on the cabin sofa, his feet in carpet slippers,
slept enviably. By some instinct, I might say, in the deep of sleep, he
kept his place and was not rolled off upon the floor. Also, he lightly
held a half-smoked cigar in one hand. I watched him for an hour, and
knew him to be asleep, and marvelled that he maintained his easy
posture and did not drop the cigar.
After dinner there was no phonograph. The second dog-watch was Mr.
Pike’s on deck. Besides, as he explained, the rolling was too severe.
It would make the needle jump and scratch his beloved records.
And no sleep! Another weary night of torment, and another dreary,
overcast day and leaden, troubled sea. And no Miss West. Wada, too, is
sea-sick, although heroically he kept his feet and tried to tend on me
with glassy, unseeing eyes. I sent him to his bunk, and read through
the endless hours until my eyes were tired, and my brain, between lack
of sleep and over-use, was fuzzy.
Captain West is no conversationalist. The more I see of him the more I
am baffled. I have not yet found a reason for that first impression I
received of him. He has all the poise and air of a remote and superior
being, and yet I wonder if it be not poise and air and nothing else.
Just as I had expected, that first meeting, ere he spoke a word, to
hear fall from his lips words of untold beneficence and wisdom, and
then heard him utter mere social commonplaces, so I now find myself
almost forced to conclude that his touch of race, and beak of power,
and all the tall, aristocratic slenderness of him have nothing behind
them.
And yet, on the other hand, I can find no reason for rejecting that
first impression. He has not shown any strength, but by the same token
he has not shown any weakness. Sometimes I wonder what resides behind
those clear blue eyes. Certainly I have failed to find any intellectual
backing. I tried him out with William James’ _Varieties of Religious
Experience_. He glanced at a few pages, then returned it to me with the
frank statement that it did not interest him. He has no books of his
own. Evidently he is not a reader. Then what is he? I dared to feel him
out on politics. He listened courteously, said sometimes yes and
sometimes no, and, when I ceased from very discouragement, said
nothing.
Aloof as the two officers are from the men, Captain West is still more
aloof from his officers. I have not seen him address a further word to
Mr. Mellaire than “Good morning” on the poop. As for Mr. Pike, who eats
three times a day with him, scarcely any more conversation obtains
between them. And I am surprised by what seems the very conspicuous awe
with which Mr. Pike seems to regard his commander.
Another thing. What are Captain West’s duties? So far he has done
nothing, save eat three times a day, smoke many cigars, and each day
stroll a total of one mile around the poop. The mates do all the work,
and hard work it is, four hours on deck and four below, day and night
with never a variation. I watch Captain West and am amazed. He will
loll back in the cabin and stare straight before him for hours at a
time, until I am almost frantic to demand of him what are his thoughts.
Sometimes I doubt that he is thinking at all. I give him up. I cannot
fathom him.
Altogether a depressing day of rain-splatter and wash of water across
the deck. I can see, now, that the problem of sailing a ship with five
thousand tons of coal around the Horn is more serious than I had
thought. So deep is the _Elsinore_ in the water that she is like a log
awash. Her tall, six-foot bulwarks of steel cannot keep the seas from
boarding her. She has not the buoyancy one is accustomed to ascribe to
ships. On the contrary, she is weighted down until she is dead, so
that, for this one day alone, I am appalled at the thought of how many
thousands of tons of the North Atlantic have boarded her and poured out
through her spouting scuppers and clanging ports.
Yes, a depressing day. The two mates have alternated on deck and in
their bunks. Captain West has dozed on the cabin sofa or read the
Bible. Miss West is still sea-sick. I have tired myself out with
reading, and the fuzziness of my unsleeping brain makes for melancholy.
Even Wada is anything but a cheering spectacle, crawling out of his
bunk, as he does at stated intervals, and with sick, glassy eyes trying
to discern what my needs may be. I almost wish I could get sea-sick
myself. I had never dreamed that a sea voyage could be so unenlivening
as this one is proving.