Another morning of overcast sky and leaden sea, and of the _Elsinore_,
under half her canvas, clanging her deck ports, spouting water from her
scuppers, and dashing eastward into the heart of the Atlantic. And I
have failed to sleep half-an-hour all told. At this rate, in a very
short time I shall have consumed all the cream of tartar on the ship. I
never have had hives like these before. I can’t understand it. So long
as I keep my lamp burning and read I am untroubled. The instant I put
out the lamp and drowse off the irritation starts and the lumps on my
skin begin to form.
Miss West may be sea-sick, but she cannot be comatose, because at
frequent intervals she sends the steward to me with more cream of
tartar.
I have had a revelation to-day. I have discovered Captain West. He is a
Samurai.—You remember the Samurai that H. G. Wells describes in his
_Modern Utopia_—the superior breed of men who know things and are
masters of life and of their fellow-men in a super-benevolent,
super-wise way? Well, that is what Captain West is. Let me tell it to
you.
We had a shift of wind to-day. In the height of a south-west gale the
wind shifted, in the instant, eight points, which is equivalent to a
quarter of the circle. Imagine it! Imagine a gale howling from out of
the south-west. And then imagine the wind, in a heavier and more
violent gale, abruptly smiting you from the north-west. We had been
sailing through a circular storm, Captain West vouchsafed to me, before
the event, and the wind could be expected to box the compass.
Clad in sea-boots, oilskins and sou’wester, I had for some time been
hanging upon the rail at the break of the poop, staring down fascinated
at the poor devils of sailors, repeatedly up to their necks in water,
or submerged, or dashed like straws about the deck, while they pulled
and hauled, stupidly, blindly, and in evident fear, under the orders of
Mr. Pike.
Mr. Pike was with them, working them and working with them. He took
every chance they took, yet somehow he escaped being washed off his
feet, though several times I saw him entirely buried from view. There
was more than luck in the matter; for I saw him, twice, at the head of
a line of the men, himself next to the pin. And twice, in this
position, I saw the North Atlantic curl over the rail and fall upon
them. And each time he alone remained, holding the turn of the rope on
the pin, while the rest of them were rolled and sprawled helplessly
away.
Almost it seemed to me good fun, as at a circus, watching their antics.
But I did not apprehend the seriousness of the situation until, the
wind screaming higher than ever and the sea a-smoke and white with
wrath, two men did not get up from the deck. One was carried away
for’ard with a broken leg—it was Iare Jacobson, a dull-witted
Scandinavian; and the other, Kid Twist, was carried away, unconscious,
with a bleeding scalp.
In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not
break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape
being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving
spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs
out of my sleep-starved brain.
And all the time, slender, aristocratic, graceful in streaming
oilskins, in apparent unconcern, giving no orders, effortlessly
accommodating his body to the violent rolling of the _Elsinore_,
Captain West strolled up and down.
It was at this stage in the gale that he unbent sufficiently to tell me
that we were going through a circular storm and that the wind was
boxing the compass. I did notice that he kept his gaze pretty steadily
fixed on the overcast, cloud-driven sky. At last, when it seemed the
wind could not possibly blow more fiercely, he found in the sky what he
sought. It was then that I first heard his voice—a sea-voice, clear as
a bell, distinct as silver, and of an ineffable sweetness and volume,
as it might be the trump of Gabriel. That voice!—effortless,
dominating! The mighty threat of the storm, made articulate by the
resistance of the _Elsinore_, shouted in all the stays, bellowed in the
shrouds, thrummed the taut ropes against the steel masts, and from the
myriad tiny ropes far aloft evoked a devil’s chorus of shrill pipings
and screechings. And yet, through this bedlam of noise, came Captain
West’s voice, as of a spirit visitant, distinct, unrelated, mellow as
all music and mighty as an archangel’s call to judgment. And it carried
understanding and command to the man at the wheel, and to Mr. Pike,
waist-deep in the wash of sea below us. And the man at the wheel
obeyed, and Mr. Pike obeyed, barking and snarling orders to the poor
wallowing devils who wallowed on and obeyed him in turn. And as the
voice was the face. This face I had never seen before. It was the face
of the spirit visitant, chaste with wisdom, lighted by a splendour of
power and calm. Perhaps it was the calm that smote me most of all. It
was as the calm of one who had crossed chaos to bless poor sea-worn men
with the word that all was well. It was not the face of the fighter. To
my thrilled imagination it was the face of one who dwelt beyond all
strivings of the elements and broody dissensions of the blood.
The Samurai had arrived, in thunders and lightnings, riding the wings
of the storm, directing the gigantic, labouring _Elsinore_ in all her
intricate massiveness, commanding the wisps of humans to his will,
which was the will of wisdom.
And then, that wonderful Gabriel voice of his, silent (while his
creatures laboured his will), unconcerned, detached and casual, more
slenderly tall and aristocratic than ever in his streaming oilskins,
Captain West touched my shoulder and pointed astern over our weather
quarter. I looked, and all that I could see was a vague smoke of sea
and air and a cloud-bank of sky that tore at the ocean’s breast. And at
the same moment the gale from the south-west ceased. There was no gale,
no moving zephyrs, nothing but a vast quietude of air.
“What is it?” I gasped, out of equilibrium from the abrupt cessation of
wind.
“The shift,” he said. “There she comes.”
And it came, from the north-west, a blast of wind, a blow, an
atmospheric impact that bewildered and stunned and again made the
_Elsinore_ harp protest. It forced me down on the rail. I was like a
windle-straw. As I faced this new abruptness of gale it drove the air
back into my lungs, so that I suffocated and turned my head aside to
breathe in the lee of the draught. The man at the wheel again listened
to the Gabriel voice; and Mr. Pike, on the deck below, listened and
repeated the will of the voice; and Captain West, in slender and
stately balance, leaned into the face of the wind and slowly paced the
deck.
It was magnificent. Now, and for the first time, I knew the sea, and
the men who overlord the sea. Captain West had vindicated himself,
exposited himself. At the height and crisis of storm he had taken
charge of the _Elsinore_, and Mr. Pike had become, what in truth was
all he was, the foreman of a gang of men, the slave-driver of slaves,
serving the one from beyond—the Samurai.
A minute or so longer Captain West strolled up and down, leaning easily
into the face of this new and abominable gale or resting his back
against it, and then he went below, pausing for a moment, his hand on
the knob of the chart-room door, to cast a last measuring look at the
storm-white sea and wrath-sombre sky he had mastered.
Ten minutes later, below, passing the open cabin door, I glanced in and
saw him. Sea-boots and storm-trappings were gone; his feet, in carpet
slippers, rested on a hassock; while he lay back in the big leather
chair smoking dreamily, his eyes wide open, absorbed, non-seeing—or, if
they saw, seeing things beyond the reeling cabin walls and beyond my
ken. I have developed an immense respect for Captain West, though now I
know him less than the little I thought I knew him before.