“What price tobacco?” was Mr. Mellaire’s greeting, when I came on deck
this morning, bruised and weary, aching in every bone and muscle from
sixty hours of being tossed about.
The wind had fallen to a dead calm toward morning, and the Elsinore,
her several spread sails booming and slatting, rolled more miserably
than ever. Mr. Mellaire pointed for’ard of our starboard beam. I could
make out a bleak land of white and jagged peaks.
“Staten Island, the easterly end of it,” said Mr. Mellaire.
And I knew that we were in the position of a vessel just rounding
Staten Island preliminary to bucking the Horn. And, yet, four days ago,
we had run through the Straits of Le Maire and stolen along toward the
Horn. Three days ago we had been well abreast of the Horn and even a
few miles past. And here we were now, starting all over again and far
in the rear of where we had originally started.
* * * * *
The condition of the men is truly wretched. During the gale the
forecastle was washed out twice. This means that everything in it was
afloat and that every article of clothing, including mattresses and
blankets, is wet and will remain wet in this bitter weather until we
are around the Horn and well up in the good-weather latitudes. The same
is true of the ’midship-house. Every room in it, with the exception of
the cook’s and the sail-makers’ (which open for’ard on Number Two
hatch), is soaking. And they have no fires in their rooms with which to
dry things out.
I peeped into Charles Davis’s room. It was terrible. He grinned to me
and nodded his head.
“It’s just as well O’Sullivan wasn’t here, sir,” he said. “He’d
a-drowned in the lower bunk. And I want to tell you I was doing some
swimmin’ before I could get into the top one. And salt water’s bad for
my sores. I oughtn’t to be in a hole like this in Cape Horn weather.
Look at the ice, there, on the floor. It’s below freezin’ right now in
this room, and my blankets are wet, and I’m a sick man, as any man can
tell that’s got a nose.”
“If you’d been decent to the mate you might have got decent treatment
in return,” I said.
“Huh!” he sneered. “You needn’t think you can lose me, sir. I can grow
fat on this sort of stuff. Why, sir, when I think of the court doin’s
in Seattle I just couldn’t die. An’ if you’ll listen to me, sir, you’ll
cover the steward’s money. You can’t lose. I’m advisin’ you, sir,
because you’re a sort of decent sort. Anybody that bets on my going
over the side is a sure loser.”
“How could you dare ship on a voyage like this in your condition?” I
demanded.
“Condition?” he queried with a fine assumption of innocence. “Why, that
is why I did ship. I was in tiptop shape when I sailed. All this come
out on me afterward. You remember seein’ me aloft, an’ up to my neck in
water. And I trimmed coal below, too. A sick man couldn’t do it. And
remember, sir, you’ll have to testify to how I did my duty at the
beginning before I took down.”
“I’ll bet with you myself if you think I’m goin’ to die,” he called
after me.
Already the sailors show marks of the hardship they are enduring. It is
surprising, in so short a time, how lean their faces have grown, how
lined and seamed. They must dry their underclothing with their body
heat. Their outer garments, under their oilskins, are soggy. And yet,
paradoxically, despite their lean, drawn faces, they have grown very
stout. Their walk is a waddle, and they bulge with seeming corpulency.
This is due to the amount of clothing they have on. I noticed Larry,
to-day, had on two vests, two coats, and an overcoat, with his oilskin
outside of that. They are elephantine in their gait for, in addition to
everything else, they have wrapped their feet, outside their sea-boots,
with gunny sacking.
It _is_ cold, although the deck thermometer stood at thirty-three
to-day at noon. I had Wada weigh the clothing I wear on deck. Omitting
oilskins and boots, it came to eighteen pounds. And yet I am not any
too warm in all this gear when the wind is blowing. How sailors, after
having once experienced the Horn, can ever sign on again for a voyage
around is beyond me. It but serves to show how stupid they must be.
I feel sorry for Henry, the training-ship boy. He is more my own kind,
and some day he will make a henchman of the afterguard and a mate like
Mr. Pike. In the meantime, along with Buckwheat, the other boy who
berths in the ’midship-house with him, he suffers the same hardship as
the men. He is very fair-skinned, and I noticed this afternoon, when he
was pulling on a brace, that the sleeves of his oil-skins, assisted by
the salt water, have chafed his wrists till they are raw and bleeding
and breaking out in sea-boils. Mr. Mellaire tells me that in another
week there will be a plague of these boils with all hands for’ard.
“When do you think we’ll be up with the Horn again?” I innocently
queried of Mr. Pike.
He turned upon me in a rage, as if I had insulted him, and positively
snarled in my face ere he swung away without the courtesy of an answer.
It is evident that he takes the sea seriously. That is why, I fancy, he
is so excellent a seaman.
* * * * *
The days pass—if the interval of sombre gray that comes between the
darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the
sun. Our ship’s position in this waste of storm and sea is conjectural.
Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and a hundred miles
south of it. And then came another sou’west gale that tore our
fore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-ropes and swept us
away to a conjectured longitude east of Staten Island.
Oh, I know now this Great West Wind that blows forever around the world
south of 55. And I know why the chart-makers have capitalized it, as,
for instance, when I read “The Great West Wind Drift.” And I know why
the _Sailing Directions_ advise: “_Whatever you do_, _make westing_!
_make westing_!”
And the West Wind and the drift of the West Wind will not permit the
_Elsinore_ to make westing. Gale follows gale, always from the west,
and we make easting. And it is bitter cold, and each gale snorts up
with a prelude of driving snow.
In the cabin the lamps burn all day long. No more does Mr. Pike run the
phonograph, nor does Margaret ever touch the piano. She complains of
being bruised and sore. I have a wrenched shoulder from being hurled
against the wall. And both Wada and the steward are limping. Really,
the only comfort I can find is in my bunk, so wedged with boxes and
pillows that the wildest rolls cannot throw me out. There, save for my
meals and for an occasional run on deck for exercise and fresh air, I
lie and read eighteen and nineteen hours out of the twenty-four. But
the unending physical strain is very wearisome.
How it must be with the poor devils for’ard is beyond conceiving. The
forecastle has been washed out several times, and everything is soaking
wet. Besides, they have grown weaker, and two watches are required to
do what one ordinary watch could do. Thus, they must spend as many
hours on the sea-swept deck and aloft on the freezing yards as I do in
my warm, dry bunk. Wada tells me that they never undress, but turn into
their wet bunks in their oil-skins and sea-boots and wet undergarments.
To look at them crawling about on deck or in the rigging is enough.
They are truly weak. They are gaunt-cheeked and haggard-gray of skin,
with great dark circles under their eyes. The predicted plague of
sea-boils and sea-cuts has come, and their hands and wrists and arms
are frightfully afflicted. Now one, and now another, and sometimes
several, either from being knocked down by seas or from general
miserableness, take to the bunk for a day or so off. This means more
work for the others, so that the men on their feet are not tolerant of
the sick ones, and a man must be very sick to escape being dragged out
to work by his mates.
I cannot but marvel at Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs. Old and fragile as
they are, it seems impossible that they can endure what they do. For
that matter, I cannot understand why they work at all. I cannot
understand why any of them toil on and obey an order in this freezing
hell of the Horn. Is it because of fear of death that they do not cease
work and bring death to all of us? Or is it because they are
slave-beasts, with a slave-psychology, so used all their lives to being
driven by their masters that it is beyond their mental power to refuse
to obey?
And yet most of them, in a week after we reach Seattle, will be on
board other ships outward bound for the Horn. Margaret says the reason
for this is that sailors forget. Mr. Pike agrees. He says give them a
week in the south-east trades as we run up the Pacific and they will
have forgotten that they have ever been around the Horn. I wonder. Can
they be as stupid as this? Does pain leave no record with them? Do they
fear only the immediate thing? Have they no horizons wider than a day?
Then indeed do they belong where they are.
They _are_ cowardly. This was shown conclusively this morning at two
o’clock. Never have I witnessed such panic fear, and it was fear of the
immediate thing—fear, stupid and beast-like. It was Mr. Mellaire’s
watch. As luck would have it, I was reading Boas’s _Mind of Primitive
Man_ when I heard the rush of feet over my head. The _Elsinore_ was
hove to on the port tack at the time, under very short canvas. I was
wondering what emergency had brought the watch upon the poop, when I
heard another rush of feet that meant the second watch. I heard no
pulling and hauling, and the thought of mutiny flashed across my mind.
Still nothing happened, and, growing curious, I got into my sea-boots,
sheepskin coat, and oilskin, put on my sou’wester and mittens, and went
on deck. Mr. Pike had already dressed and was ahead of me. Captain
West, who in this bad weather sleeps in the chart-room, stood in the
lee doorway of the house, through which the lamplight streamed on the
frightened faces of the men.
Those of the ’midship-house were not present, but every man Jack of the
forecastle, with the exception of Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs, as I
afterwards learned, had joined in the flight aft. Andy Fay, who
belonged in the watch below, had calmly remained in his bunk, while
Mulligan Jacobs had taken advantage of the opportunity to sneak into
the forecastle and fill his pipe.
“What is the matter, Mr. Pike?” Captain West asked.
Before the mate could reply, Bert Rhine snickered:
“The devil’s come aboard, sir.”
But his snicker was palpably an assumption of unconcern he did not
possess. The more I think over it the more I am surprised that such
keen men as the gangsters should have been frightened by what had
occurred. But frightened they were, the three of them, out of their
bunks and out of the precious surcease of their brief watch below.
So fear-struck was Larry that he chattered and grimaced like an ape,
and shouldered and struggled to get away from the dark and into the
safety of the shaft of light that shone out of the chart-house. Tony,
the Greek, was just as bad, mumbling to himself and continually
crossing himself. He was joined in this, as a sort of chorus, by the
two Italians, Guido Bombini and Mike Cipriani. Arthur Deacon was almost
in collapse, and he and Chantz, the Jew, shamelessly clung to each
other for support. Bob, the fat and overgrown youth, was sobbing, while
the other youth, Bony the Splinter, was shivering and chattering his
teeth. Yes, and the two best sailors for’ard, Tom Spink and the Maltese
Cockney, stood in the background, their backs to the dark, their faces
yearning toward the light.
More than all other contemptible things in this world there are two
that I loathe and despise: hysteria in a woman; fear and cowardice in a
man. The first turns me to ice. I cannot sympathize with hysteria. The
second turns my stomach. Cowardice in a man is to me positively
nauseous. And this fear-smitten mass of human animals on our reeling
poop raised my gorge. Truly, had I been a god at that moment, I should
have annihilated the whole mass of them. No; I should have been
merciful to one. He was the Faun. His bright, pain-liquid, and
flashing-eager eyes strained from face to face with desire to
understand. He did not know what had occurred, and, being stone-deaf,
had thought the rush aft a response to a call for all hands.
I noticed Mr. Mellaire. He may be afraid of Mr. Pike, and he is a
murderer; but at any rate he has no fear of the supernatural. With two
men above him in authority, although it was his watch, there was no
call for him to do anything. He swayed back and forth in balance to the
violent motions of the _Elsinore_ and looked on with eyes that were
amused and cynical.
“What does the devil look like, my man?” Captain West asked.
Bert Rhine grinned sheepishly.
“Answer the captain!” Mr. Pike snarled at him.
Oh, it was murder, sheer murder, that leapt into the gangster’s eyes
for the instant, in acknowledgment of the snarl. Then he replied to
Captain West:
“I didn’t wait to see, sir. But it’s one whale of a devil.”
“He’s as big as a elephant, sir,” volunteered Bill Quigley. “I seen’m
face to face, sir. He almost got me when I run out of the fo’c’s’le.”
“Oh, Lord, sir!” Larry moaned. “The way he hit the house, sir. It was
the call to Judgment.”
“Your theology is mixed, my man,” Captain West smiled quietly, though I
could not help seeing how tired was his face and how tired were his
wonderful Samurai eyes.
He turned to the mate.
“Mr. Pike, will you please go for’ard and interview this devil? Fasten
him up and tie him down and I’ll take a look at him in the morning.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Pike; and Kipling’s line came to me:
“Woman, Man, or God or Devil, was there anything we feared?”
And as I went for’ard through the wall of darkness after Mr. Pike and
Mr. Mellaire along the freezing, slender, sea-swept bridge—not a sailor
dared to accompany us—other lines of “The Galley Slave” drifted through
my brain, such as:
“Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold—
We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the hold. . . ”
And:
“By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel,
By the welts the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal . . .
”
And:
“Battered chain-gangs of the orlop, grizzled draughts of years gone by
. . . ”
And I caught my great, radiant vision of Mr. Pike, galley slave of the
race, and a driver of men under men greater than he; the faithful
henchman, the able sailorman, battered and grizzled, branded and
galled, the servant of the sweep-head that made mastery of the sea. I
know him now. He can never again offend me. I forgive him
everything—the whiskey raw on his breath the day I came aboard at
Baltimore, his moroseness when sea and wind do not favour, his savagery
to the men, his snarl and his sneer.
On top the ’midship-house we got a ducking that makes me shiver to
recall. I had dressed too hastily properly to fasten my oilskin about
my neck, so that I was wet to the skin. We crossed the next span of
bridge through driving spray, and were well upon the top of the
for’ard-house when something adrift on the deck hit the for’ard wall a
terrific smash.
“Whatever it is, it’s playing the devil,” Mr. Pike yelled in my ear, as
he endeavoured to locate the thing by the dry-battery light-stick which
he carried.
The pencil of light travelled over dark water, white with foam, that
churned upon the deck.
“There it goes!” Mr. Pike cried, as the _Elsinore_ dipped by the head
and hurtled the water for’ard.
The light went out as the three of us caught holds and crouched to a
deluge of water from overside. As we emerged, from under the
forecastle-head we heard a tremendous thumping and battering. Then, as
the bow lifted, for an instant in the pencil of light that immediately
lost it, I glimpsed a vague black object that bounded down the inclined
deck where no water was. What became of it we could not see.
Mr. Pike descended to the deck, followed by Mr. Mellaire. Again, as the
_Elsinore_ dipped by the head and fetched a surge of sea-water from aft
along the runway, I saw the dark object bound for’ard directly at the
mates. They sprang to safety from its charge, the light went out, while
another icy sea broke aboard.
For a time I could see nothing of the two men. Next, in the light
flashed from the stick, I guessed that Mr. Pike was in pursuit of the
thing. He evidently must have captured it at the rail against the
starboard rigging and caught a turn around it with a loose end of rope.
As the vessel rolled to windward some sort of a struggle seemed to be
going on. The second mate sprang to the mate’s assistance, and,
together, with more loose ends, they seemed to subdue the thing.
I descended to see. By the light-stick we made it out to be a large,
barnacle-crusted cask.
“She’s been afloat for forty years,” was Mr. Pike’s judgment. “Look at
the size of the barnacles, and look at the whiskers.”
“And it’s full of something,” said Mr. Mellaire. “Hope it isn’t water.”
I rashly lent a hand when they started to work the cask for’ard,
between seas and taking advantage of the rolls and pitches, to the
shelter under the forecastle-head. As a result, even through my
mittens, I was cut by the sharp edges of broken shell.
“It’s liquor of some sort,” said the mate, “but we won’t risk broaching
it till morning.”
“But where did it come from?” I asked.
“Over the side’s the only place it could have come from.” Mr. Pike
played the light over it. “Look at it! It’s been afloat for years and
years.”
“The stuff ought to be well-seasoned,” commented Mr. Mellaire.
Leaving them to lash the cask securely, I stole along the deck to the
forecastle and peered in. The men, in their headlong flight, had
neglected to close the doors, and the place was afloat. In the
flickering light from a small and very smoky sea-lamp it was a dismal
picture. No self-respecting cave-man, I am sure, would have lived in
such a hole.
Even as I looked a bursting sea filled the runway between the house and
rail, and through the doorway in which I stood the freezing water
rushed waist-deep. I had to hold on to escape being swept inside the
room. From a top bunk, lying on his side, Andy Fay regarded me steadily
with his bitter blue eyes. Seated on the rough table of heavy planks,
his sea-booted feet swinging in the water, Mulligan Jacobs pulled at
his pipe. When he observed me he pointed to pulpy book-pages that
floated about.
“Me library’s gone to hell,” he mourned as he indicated the flotsam.
“There’s me Byron. An’ there goes Zola an’ Browning with a piece of
Shakespeare runnin’ neck an’ neck, an’ what’s left of _Anti-Christ_
makin’ a bad last. An’ there’s Carlyle and Zola that cheek by jowl you
can’t tell ’em apart.”
Here the _Elsinore_ lay down to starboard, and the water in the
forecastle poured out against my legs and hips. My wet mittens slipped
on the iron work, and I swept down the runway into the scuppers, where
I was turned over and over by another flood that had just boarded from
windward.
I know I was rather confused, and that I had swallowed quite a deal of
salt water, ere I got my hands on the rungs of the ladder and climbed
to the top of the house. On my way aft along the bridge I encountered
the crew coming for’ard. Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike were talking in the
lee of the chart-house, and inside, as I passed below, Captain West was
smoking a cigar.
After a good rub down, in dry pyjamas, I was scarcely back in my bunk
with the _Mind of Primitive Man_ before me, when the stampede over my
head was repeated. I waited for the second rush. It came, and I
proceeded to dress.
The scene on the poop duplicated the previous one, save that the men
were more excited, more frightened. They were babbling and chattering
all together.
“Shut up!” Mr. Pike was snarling when I came upon them. “One at a time,
and answer the captain’s question.”
“It ain’t no barrel this time, sir,” Tom Spink said. “It’s alive. An’
if it ain’t the devil it’s the ghost of a drownded man. I see ’m plain
an’ clear. He’s a man, or was a man once—”
“They was two of ’em, sir,” Richard Giller, one of the “bricklayers,”
broke in.
“I think he looked like Petro Marinkovich, sir,” Tom Spink went on.
“An’ the other was Jespersen—I seen ’m,” Giller added.
“They was three of ’em, sir,” said Nosey Murphy. “O’Sullivan, sir, was
the other one. They ain’t devils, sir. They’re drownded men. They come
aboard right over the bows, an’ they moved slow like drownded men.
Sorensen seen the first one first. He caught my arm an’ pointed, an’
then I seen ’m. He was on top the for’ard-house. And Olansen seen ’m,
an’ Deacon, sir, an’ Hackey. We all seen ’m, sir . . . an’ the second
one; an’ when the rest run away I stayed long enough to see the third
one. Mebbe there’s more. I didn’t wait to see.”
Captain West stopped the man.
“Mr. Pike,” he said wearily, “will you straighten this nonsense out.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Pike responded, then turned on the men. “Come on, all
of you! There’s three devils to tie down this time.”
But the men shrank away from the order and from him.
“For two cents . . . ” I heard Mr. Pike growl to himself, then choke
off utterance.
He flung about on his heel and started for the bridge. In the same
order as on the previous trip, Mr. Mellaire second, and I bringing up
the rear, we followed. It was a similar journey, save that we caught a
ducking midway on the first span of bridge as well as a ducking on the
’midship-house.
We halted on top the for’ard-house. In vain Mr. Pike flashed his
light-stick. Nothing was to be seen nor heard save the white-flecked
dark water on our deck, the roar of the gale in our rigging, and the
crash and thunder of seas falling aboard. We advanced half-way across
the last span of bridge to the fore-castle head, and were driven to
pause and hang on at the foremast by a bursting sea.
Between the drives of spray Mr. Pike flashed his stick. I heard him
exclaim something. Then he went on to the forecastle-head, followed by
Mr. Mellaire, while I waited by the foremast, clinging tight, and
endured another ducking. Through the emergencies I could see the pencil
of light, appearing and disappearing, darting here and there. Several
minutes later the mates were back with me.
“Half our head-gear’s carried away,” Mr. Pike told me. “We must have
run into something.”
“I felt a jar, right after you’ went below, sir, last time,” said Mr.
Mellaire. “Only I thought it was a thump of sea.”
“So did I feel it,” the mate agreed. “I was just taking off my boots. I
thought it was a sea. But where are the three devils?”
“Broaching the cask,” the second mate suggested.
We made the forecastle-head, descended the iron ladder, and went
for’ard, inside, underneath, out of the wind and sea. There lay the
cask, securely lashed. The size of the barnacles on it was astonishing.
They were as large as apples and inches deep. A down-fling of bow
brought a foot of water about our boots; and as the bow lifted and the
water drained away, it drew out from the shell-crusted cask streamers
of seaweed a foot or so in length.
Led by Mr. Pike and watching our chance between seas, we searched the
deck and rails between the forecastle-head and the for’ard-house and
found no devils. The mate stepped into the forecastle doorway, and his
light-stick cut like a dagger through the dim illumination of the murky
sea-lamp. And we saw the devils. Nosey Murphy had been right. There
were three of them.
Let me give the picture: A drenched and freezing room of rusty,
paint-scabbed iron, low-roofed, double-tiered with bunks, reeking with
the filth of thirty men, despite the washing of the sea. In a top bunk,
on his side, in sea-boots and oilskins, staring steadily with blue,
bitter eyes, Andy Fay; on the table, pulling at a pipe, with hanging
legs dragged this way and that by the churn of water, Mulligan Jacobs,
solemnly regarding three men, sea-booted and bloody, who stand side by
side, of a height and not duly tall, swaying in unison to the
_Elsinore’s_ down-flinging and up-lifting.
But such men! I know my East Side and my East End, and I am accustomed
to the faces of all the ruck of races, yet with these three men I was
at fault. The Mediterranean had surely never bred such a breed; nor had
Scandinavia. They were not blonds. They were not brunettes. Nor were
they of the Brown, or Black, or Yellow. Their skin was white under a
bronze of weather. Wet as was their hair, it was plainly a colourless,
sandy hair. Yet their eyes were dark—and yet not dark. They were
neither blue, nor gray, nor green, nor hazel. Nor were they black. They
were topaz, pale topaz; and they gleamed and dreamed like the eyes of
great cats. They regarded us like walkers in a dream, these pale-haired
storm-waifs with pale, topaz eyes. They did not bow, they did not
smile, in no way did they recognize our presence save that they looked
at us and dreamed.
But Andy Fay greeted us.
“It’s a hell of a night an’ not a wink of sleep with these goings-on,”
he said.
“Now where did they blow in from a night like this?” Mulligan Jacobs
complained.
“You’ve got a tongue in your mouth,” Mr. Pike snarled. “Why ain’t you
asked ’em?”
“As though you didn’t know I could use the tongue in me mouth, you old
stiff,” Jacobs snarled back.
But it was no time for their private feud. Mr. Pike turned on the
dreaming new-comers and addressed them in the mangled and aborted
phrases of a dozen languages such as the world-wandering Anglo-Saxon
has had every opportunity to learn but is too stubborn-brained and
wilful-mouthed to wrap his tongue about.
The visitors made no reply. They did not even shake their heads. Their
faces remained peculiarly relaxed and placid, incurious and pleasant,
while in their eyes floated profounder dreams. Yet they were human. The
blood of their injuries stained them and clotted on their clothes.
“Dutchmen,” snorted Mr. Pike, with all due contempt for other breeds,
as he waved them to make themselves at home in any of the bunks.
Mr. Pike’s ethnology is narrow. Outside his own race he is aware of
only three races: niggers, Dutchmen, and Dagoes.
Again our visitors proved themselves human. They understood the mate’s
invitation, and, glancing first at one another, they climbed into three
top-bunks and closed their eyes. I could swear the first of them was
asleep in half a minute.
“We’ll have to clean up for’ard, or we’ll be having the sticks about
our ears,” the mate said, already starting to depart. “Get the men
along, Mr. Mellaire, and call out the carpenter.”