The situation is hopelessly grotesque. We in the high place command the
food of the _Elsinore_, but the mutineers have captured her
steering-gear. That is to say, they have captured it without coming
into possession of it. They cannot steer, neither can we. The poop,
which is the high place, is ours. The wheel is on the poop, yet we
cannot touch the wheel. From that slitted opening in the
ventilator-shaft they are able to shoot down any man who approaches the
wheel. And with that steel wall of the chart-house as a shield they
laugh at us as from a conning tower.
I have a plan, but it is not worth while putting into execution unless
its need becomes imperative. In the darkness of night it would be an
easy trick to disconnect the steering-gear from the short tiller on the
rudder-head, and then, by re-rigging the preventer tackles, steer from
both sides of the poop well enough for’ard to be out of the range of
the ventilator.
In the meantime, in this fine weather, the _Elsinore_ drifts as she
lists, or as the windage of her lists and the sea-movement of waves
lists. And she can well drift. Let the mutineers starve. They can best
be brought to their senses through their stomachs.
* * * * *
And what are wits for, if not for use? I am breaking the men’s hungry
hearts. It is great fun in its way. The mollyhawks and albatrosses,
after their fashion, have followed the _Elsinore_ up out of their own
latitudes. This means that there are only so many of them and that
their numbers are not recruited. Syllogism: major premise, a definite
and limited amount of bird-meat; minor premise, the only food the
mutineers now have is bird-meat; conclusion, destroy the available food
and the mutineers will be compelled to come back to duty.
I have acted on this bit of logic. I began experimentally by tossing
small chunks of fat pork and crusts of stale bread overside. When the
birds descended for the feast I shot them. Every carcass thus left
floating on the surface of the sea was so much less meat for the
mutineers.
But I bettered the method. Yesterday I overhauled the medicine-chest,
and I dosed my chunks of fat pork and bread with the contents of every
bottle that bore a label of skull and cross-bones. I even added
rough-on-rats to the deadliness of the mixture—this on the suggestion
of the steward.
And to-day, behold, there is no bird left in the sky. True, while I
played my game yesterday, the mutineers hooked a few of the birds; but
now the rest are gone, and that is bound to be the last food for the
men for’ard until they resume duty.
Yes; it is grotesque. It is a boy’s game. It reads like Midshipman
Easy, like Frank Mildmay, like Frank Reade, Jr.; and yet, i’ faith,
life and death’s in the issue. I have just gone over the toll of our
dead since the voyage began.
First, was Christian Jespersen, killed by O’Sullivan when that maniac
aspired to throw overboard Andy Fay’s sea-boots; then O’Sullivan,
because he interfered with Charles Davis’ sleep, brained by that worthy
with a steel marlin-spike; next Petro Marinkovich, just ere we began
the passage of the Horn, murdered undoubtedly by the gangster clique,
his life cut out of him with knives, his carcass left lying on deck to
be found by us and be buried by us; and the Samurai, Captain West, a
sudden though not a violent death, albeit occurring in the midst of all
elemental violence as Mr. Pike clawed the _Elsinore_ off the lee-shore
of the Horn; and Boney the Splinter, following, washed overboard to
drown as we cleared the sea-gashing rock-tooth where the southern tip
of the continent bit into the storm-wrath of the Antarctic; and the
big-footed, clumsy youth of a Finnish carpenter, hove overside as a
Jonah by his fellows who believed that Finns control the winds; and
Mike Cipriani and Bill Quigley, Rome and Ireland, shot down on the poop
and flung overboard alive by Mr. Pike, still alive and clinging to the
log-line, cut adrift by the steward to be eaten alive by great-beaked
albatrosses, mollyhawks, and sooty-plumaged Cape hens; Steve Roberts,
one-time cowboy, shot by me as he tried to shoot me; Herman
Lunkenheimer, his throat cut before all of us by the hound Bombini as
Kid Twist stretched the throat taut from behind; the two mates, Mr.
Pike and Mr. Mellaire, mutually destroying each other in what must have
been an unwitnessed epic combat; Ditman Olansen, speared by Wada as he
charged Berserk at the head of the mutineers in the attempt to rush the
poop; and last, Henry, the cadet of the perishing house, shot at the
wheel, from the ventilator-shaft, in the course of his day’s work.
No; as I contemplate this roll-call of the dead which I have just made
I see that we are not playing a boy’s game. Why, we have lost a third
of us, and the bloodiest battles of history have rarely achieved such a
percentage of mortality. Fourteen of us have gone overside, and who can
tell the end?
Nevertheless, here we are, masters of matter, adventurers in the
micro-organic, planet-weighers, sun-analysers, star-rovers,
god-dreamers, equipped with the human wisdom of all the ages, and yet,
quoting Mr. Pike, to come down to brass tacks, we are a lot of
primitive beasts, fighting bestially, slaying bestially, pursuing
bestially food and water, air for our lungs, a dry space above the
deep, and carcasses skin-covered and intact. And over this menagerie of
beasts Margaret and I, with our Asiatics under us, rule top-dog. We are
all dogs—there is no getting away from it. And we, the fair-pigmented
ones, by the seed of our ancestry rulers in the high place, shall
remain top-dog over the rest of the dogs. Oh, there is material in
plenty for the cogitation of any philosopher on a windjammer in mutiny
in this Year of our Lord 1913.
* * * * *
Henry was the fourteenth of us to go overside into the dark and salty
disintegration of the sea. And in one day he has been well avenged; for
two of the mutineers have followed him. The steward called my attention
to what was taking place. He touched my arm half beyond his servant’s
self, as he gloated for’ard at the men heaving two corpses overside.
Weighted with coal, they sank immediately, so that we could not
identify them.
“They have been fighting,” I said. “It is good that they should fight
among themselves.”
But the old Chinese merely grinned and shook his head.
“You don’t think they have been fighting?” I queried.
“No fight. They eat’m mollyhawk and albatross; mollyhawk and albatross
eat’m fat pork; two men he die, plenty men much sick, you bet, damn to
hell me very much glad. I savve.”
And I think he was right. While I was busy baiting the sea-birds the
mutineers were catching them, and of a surety they must have caught
some that had eaten of my various poisons.
The two poisoned ones went over the side yesterday. Since then we have
taken the census. Two men only have not appeared, and they are Bob, the
fat and overgrown feebling youth, and, of all creatures, the Faun. It
seems my fate that I had to destroy the Faun—the poor, tortured Faun,
always willing and eager, ever desirous to please. There is a madness
of ill luck in all this. Why couldn’t the two dead men have been
Charles Davis and Tony the Greek? Or Bert Rhine and Kid Twist? or
Bombini and Andy Fay? Yes, and in my heart I know I should have felt
better had it been Isaac Chantz and Arthur Deacon, or Nancy and Sundry
Buyers, or Shorty and Larry.
* * * * *
The steward has just tendered me a respectful bit of advice.
“Next time we chuck’m overboard like Henry, much better we use old
iron.”
“Getting short of coal?” I asked.
He nodded affirmation. We use a great deal of coal in our cooking, and
when the present supply gives out we shall have to cut through a
bulkhead to get at the cargo.