Small wonder that Miss West remains sea-sick on an ocean like this,
which has become a factory where the veering gales manufacture the
selectest and most mountainous brands of cross-seas. The way the poor
_Elsinore_ pitches, plunges, rolls, and shivers, with all her lofty
spars and masts and all her five thousand tons of dead-weight cargo, is
astonishing. To me she is the most erratic thing imaginable; yet Mr.
Pike, with whom I now pace the poop on occasion, tells me that coal is
a good cargo, and that the _Elsinore_ is well-loaded because he saw to
it himself.
He will pause abruptly, in the midst of his interminable pacing, in
order to watch her in her maddest antics. The sight is very pleasant to
him, for his eyes glisten and a faint glow seems to irradiate his face
and impart to it a hint of ecstasy. The _Elsinore_ has a snug place in
his heart, I am confident. He calls her behaviour admirable, and at
such times will repeat to me that it was he who saw to her loading.
It is very curious, the habituation of this man, through a long life on
the sea, to the motion of the sea. There _is_ a rhythm to this chaos of
crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve
it. But Mr. Pike _knows_ it. Again and again, as we paced up and down
this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he
would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the _Elsinore_ smashed
down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that
seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt,
snap-of-the-whip effect as she began the corresponding roll to
windward. In vain I strove to learn how Mr. Pike forecasts these
antics, and I am driven to believe that he does not consciously
forecast them at all. He _feels_ them; he knows them. They, and the
sea, are ingrained in him.
Toward the end of our little promenade I was guilty of impatiently
shaking off a sudden seizure of my arm in his big paw. If ever, in an
hour, the _Elsinore_ had been less gymnastic than at that moment, I had
not noticed it. So I shook off the sustaining clutch, and the next
moment the _Elsinore_ had smashed down and buried a couple of hundred
feet of her starboard rail beneath the sea, while I had shot down the
deck and smashed myself breathless against the wall of the chart-house.
My ribs and one shoulder are sore from it yet. Now how did he know?
And he never staggers nor seems in danger of being rolled away. On the
contrary, such a surplus of surety of balance has he that time and
again he lent his surplus to me. I begin to have more respect, not for
the sea, but for the men of the sea, and not for the sweepings of
seamen that are as slaves on our decks, but for the real seamen who are
their masters—for Captain West, for Mr. Pike, yes, and for Mr.
Mellaire, dislike him as I do.
As early as three in the afternoon the wind, still a gale, went back to
the south-west. Mr. Mellaire had the deck, and he went below and
reported the change to Captain West.
“We’ll wear ship at four, Mr. Pathurst,” the second mate told me when
he came back. “You’ll find it an interesting manoeuvre.”
“But why wait till four?” I asked.
“The Captain’s orders, sir. The watches will be changing, and we’ll
have the use of both of them, without working a hardship on the watch
below by calling it out now.”
And when both watches were on deck Captain West, again in oilskins,
came out of the chart-house. Mr. Pike, out on the bridge, took charge
of the many men who, on deck and on the poop, were to manage the
mizzen-braces, while Mr. Mellaire went for’ard with his watch to handle
the fore-and main-braces. It was a pretty manoeuvre, a play of
leverages, by which they eased the force of the wind on the after part
of the _Elsinore_ and used the force of the wind on the for’ard part.
Captain West gave no orders whatever, and, to all intents, was quite
oblivious of what was being done. He was again the favoured passenger,
taking a stroll for his health’s sake. And yet I knew that both his
officers were uncomfortably aware of his presence and were keyed to
their finest seamanship. I know, now, Captain West’s position on board.
He is the brains of the _Elsinore_. He is the master strategist. There
is more in directing a ship on the ocean than in standing watches and
ordering men to pull and haul. They are pawns, and the two officers are
pieces, with which Captain West plays the game against sea, and wind,
and season, and ocean current. He is the knower. They are his tongue,
by which he makes his knowledge articulate.
* * * * *
A bad night—equally bad for the _Elsinore_ and for me. She is receiving
a sharp buffeting at the hands of the wintry North Atlantic. I fell
asleep early, exhausted from lack of sleep, and awoke in an hour,
frantic with my lumped and burning skin. More cream of tartar, more
reading, more vain attempts to sleep, until shortly before five, when
the steward brought me my coffee, I wrapped myself in my dressing-gown,
and like a being distracted prowled into the cabin. I dozed in a
leather chair and was thrown out by a violent roll of the ship. I tried
the sofa, sinking to sleep immediately, and immediately thereafter
finding myself precipitated to the floor. I am convinced that when
Captain West naps on the sofa he is only half asleep. How else can he
maintain so precarious a position?—unless, in him, too, the sea and its
motion be ingrained.
I wandered into the dining-room, wedged myself into a screwed chair,
and fell asleep, my head on my arms, my arms on the table. And at
quarter past seven the steward roused me by shaking my shoulders. It
was time to set table.
Heavy with the brief heaviness of sleep I had had, I dressed and
stumbled up on to the poop in the hope that the wind would clear my
brain. Mr. Pike had the watch, and with sure, age-lagging step he paced
the deck. The man is a marvel—sixty-nine years old, a life of hardship,
and as sturdy as a lion. Yet of the past night alone his hours had
been: four to six in the afternoon on deck; eight to twelve on deck;
and four to eight in the morning on deck. In a few minutes he would be
relieved, but at midday he would again be on deck.
I leaned on the poop-rail and stared for’ard along the dreary waste of
deck. Every port and scupper was working to ease the weight of North
Atlantic that perpetually fell on board. Between the rush of the
cascades, streaks of rust showed everywhere. Some sort of a wooden
pin-rail had carried away on the starboard-rail at the foot of the
mizzen-shrouds, and an amazing raffle of ropes and tackles washed
about. Here Nancy and half-a-dozen men worked sporadically, and in fear
of their lives, to clear the tangle.
The long-suffering bleakness was very pronounced on Nancy’s face, and
when the walls of water, in impending downfall, reared above the
_Elsinore’s_ rail, he was always the first to leap for the life-line
which had been stretched fore and aft across the wide space of deck.
The rest of the men were scarcely less backward in dropping their work
and springing to safety—if safety it might be called, to grip a rope in
both hands and have legs sweep out from under, and be wrenched
full-length upon the boiling surface of an ice-cold flood. Small wonder
they look wretched. Bad as their condition was when they came aboard at
Baltimore, they look far worse now, what of the last several days of
wet and freezing hardship.
From time to time, completing his for’ard pace along the poop, Mr. Pike
would pause, ere he retraced his steps, and snort sardonic glee at what
happened to the poor devils below. The man’s heart is callous. A thing
of iron, he has endured; and he has no patience nor sympathy with these
creatures who lack his own excessive iron.
I noticed the stone-deaf man, the twisted oaf whose face I have
described as being that of an ill-treated and feeble-minded faun. His
bright, liquid, pain-filled eyes were more filled with pain than ever,
his face still more lean and drawn with suffering. And yet his face
showed an excess of nervousness, sensitiveness, and a pathetic
eagerness to please and do. I could not help observing that, despite
his dreadful sense-handicap and his wrecked, frail body, he did the
most work, was always the last of the group to spring to the life-line
and always the first to loose the life-line and slosh knee-deep or
waist-deep through the churning water to attack the immense and
depressing tangle of rope and tackle.
I remarked to Mr. Pike that the men seemed thinner and weaker than when
they came on board, and he delayed replying for a moment while he
stared down at them with that cattle-buyer’s eye of his.
“Sure they are,” he said disgustedly. “A weak breed, that’s what they
are—nothing to build on, no stamina. The least thing drags them down.
Why, in my day we grew fat on work like that—only we didn’t; we worked
so hard there wasn’t any chance for fat. We kept in fighting trim, that
was all. But as for this scum and slum—say, you remember, Mr. Pathurst,
that man I spoke to the first day, who said his name was Charles
Davis?”
“The one you thought there was something the matter with?”
“Yes, and there was, too. He’s in that ’midship room with the Greek
now. He’ll never do a tap of work the whole Voyage. He’s a hospital
case, if there ever was one. Talk about shot to pieces! He’s got holes
in him I could shove my fist through. I don’t know whether they’re
perforating ulcers, or cancers, or cannon-shot wounds, or what not. And
he had the nerve to tell me they showed up after he came on board!”
“And he had them all the time?” I asked.
“All the time! Take my word, Mr. Pathurst, they’re years old. But he’s
a wonder. I watched him those first days, sent him aloft, had him down
in the fore-hold trimming a few tons of coal, did everything to him,
and he never showed a wince. Being up to the neck in the salt water
finally fetched him, and now he’s reported off duty—for the voyage. And
he’ll draw his wages for the whole time, have all night in, and never
do a tap. Oh, he’s a hot one to have passed over on us, and the
_Elsinore’s_ another man short.”
“Another!” I exclaimed. “Is the Greek going to die?”
“No fear. I’ll have him steering in a few days. I refer to the misfits.
If we rolled a dozen of them together they wouldn’t make one real man.
I’m not saying it to alarm you, for there’s nothing alarming about it;
but we’re going to have proper hell this voyage.” He broke off to stare
reflectively at his broken knuckles, as if estimating how much drive
was left in them, then sighed and concluded, “Well, I can see I’ve got
my work cut out for me.”
Sympathizing with Mr. Pike is futile; the only effect is to make his
mood blacker. I tried it, and he retaliated with:
“You oughta see the bloke with curvature of the spine in Mr. Mellaire’s
watch. He’s a proper hobo, too, and a land lubber, and don’t weigh
more’n a hundred pounds, and must be fifty years old, and he’s got
curvature of the spine, and he’s able seaman, if you please, on the
_Elsinore_. And worse than all that, he puts it over on you; he’s
nasty, he’s mean, he’s a viper, a wasp. He ain’t afraid of anything
because he knows you dassent hit him for fear of croaking him. Oh, he’s
a pearl of purest ray serene, if anybody should slide down a backstay
and ask you. If you fail to identify him any other way, his name is
Mulligan Jacobs.”
* * * * *
After breakfast, again on deck, in Mr. Mellaire’s watch, I discovered
another efficient. He was at the wheel, a small, well-knit, muscular
man of say forty-five, with black hair graying on the temples, a big
eagle-face, swarthy, with keen, intelligent black eyes.
Mr. Mellaire vindicated my judgment by telling me the man was the best
sailor in his watch, a proper seaman. When he referred to the man as
the Maltese Cockney, and I asked why, he replied:
“First, because he is Maltese, Mr. Pathurst; and next, because he talks
Cockney like a native. And depend upon it, he heard Bow Bells before he
lisped his first word.”
“And has O’Sullivan bought Andy Fay’s sea-boots yet?” I queried.
It was at this moment that Miss West emerged upon the poop. She was as
rosy and vital as ever, and certainly, if she had been sea-sick, she
flew no signals of it. As she came toward me, greeting me, I could not
help remarking again the lithe and springy limb-movement with which she
walked, and her fine, firm skin. Her neck, free in a sailor collar,
with white sweater open at the throat, seemed almost redoubtably strong
to my sleepless, jaundiced eyes. Her hair, under a white knitted cap,
was smooth and well-groomed. In fact, the totality of impression she
conveyed was of a well-groomedness one would not expect of a
sea-captain’s daughter, much less of a woman who had been sea-sick.
Life!—that is the key of her, the essential note of her—life and
health. I’ll wager she has never entertained a morbid thought in that
practical, balanced, sensible head of hers.
“And how have you been?” she asked, then rattled on with sheer
exuberance ere I could answer. “Had a lovely night’s sleep. I was
really over my sickness yesterday, but I just devoted myself to resting
up. I slept ten solid hours—what do you think of that?”
“I wish I could say the same,” I replied with appropriate dejection, as
I swung in beside her, for she had evinced her intention of
promenading.
“Oh, then you’ve been sick?”
“On the contrary,” I answered dryly. “And I wish I had been. I haven’t
had five hours’ sleep all told since I came on board. These pestiferous
hives. . . ”
I held up a lumpy wrist to show. She took one glance at it, halted
abruptly, and, neatly balancing herself to the roll, took my wrist in
both her hands and gave it close scrutiny.
“Mercy!” she cried; and then began to laugh.
I was of two minds. Her laughter was delightful to the ear, there was
such a mellowness, and healthiness, and frankness about it. On the
other hand, that it should be directed at my misfortune was
exasperating. I suppose my perplexity showed in my face, for when she
had eased her laughter and looked at me with a sobering countenance,
she immediately went off into more peals.
“You poor child,” she gurgled at last. “And when I think of all the
cream of tartar I made you consume!”
It was rather presumptuous of her to poor-child me, and I resolved to
take advantage of the data I already possessed in order to ascertain
just how many years she was my junior. She had told me she was twelve
years old the time the _Dixie_ collided with the river steamer in San
Francisco Bay. Very well, all I had to do was to ascertain the date of
that disaster and I had her. But in the meantime she laughed at me and
my hives.
“I suppose it is—er—humorous, in some sort of way,” I said a bit
stiffly, only to find that there was no use in being stiff with Miss
West, for it only set her off into more laughter.
“What you needed,” she announced, with fresh gurglings, “was an
exterior treatment.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve got the chicken-pox or the measles,” I protested.
“No.” She shook her head emphatically while she enjoyed another
paroxysm. “What you are suffering from is a severe attack . . . ”
She paused deliberately, and looked me straight in the eyes.
“Of bedbugs,” she concluded. And then, all seriousness and
practicality, she went on: “But we’ll have that righted in a jiffy.
I’ll turn the _Elsinore’s_ after-quarters upside down, though I know
there are none in father’s room or mine. And though this is my first
voyage with Mr. Pike I know he’s too hard-bitten” (here I laughed at
her involuntary pun) “an old sailor not to know that his room is clean.
Yours” (I was perturbed for fear she was going to say that I had
brought them on board) “have most probably drifted in from for’ard.
They always have them for’ard.
“And now, Mr. Pathurst, I am going down to attend to your case. You’d
better get your Wada to make up a camping kit for you. The next couple
of nights you’ll spend in the cabin or chart-room. And be sure Wada
removes all silver and metallic tarnishable stuff from your rooms.
There’s going to be all sorts of fumigating, and tearing out of
woodwork, and rebuilding. Trust me. I know the vermin.”