JAKE IS FIRED AGAIN
They had left Cancer far behind, they had rejected Hank’s first idea
of steering out towards Honolulu and then making aboard for ’Frisco,
they were taking the shortest way possible home, shaving the Channel
Islands and almost careless about being stopped. They wanted to finish
the voyage as quickly as possible. Candon there in the foc’sle made his
presence felt right through the ship. It was as though he had died and
his ghost were haunting them. He never spoke unless in reply to orders.
He seemed living in a world of his own, a silent secretive world where
emotions were not. They began to appreciate the fact that they had
shipped in San Francisco, not an ordinary sailor man with blue eyes,
but a personality absolutely outside the ambit of ordinary experience.
“It’s getting on my spine,” said Hank one day, as he sat in the fusty
cabin smoking with George. “The man seems gone dead, no shame or
nothing, just as if he’d never seen us before; unless he gets an order,
and then he jumps to it.”
“It’s got on T. C.’s spine, too,” said George. “Damn him, she’s not the
same. I see her staring in front of her sometimes as if she was looking
at ghosts. She never laughs and she’s off her feed.”
“He’s worse than a cargo of skeletons,” said Hank, “and I’ve noticed
T. C. I’m not thinking any more of her, Bud, in that way, but it gets
me to see her crumpled. What are women made of, anyhow? Seems to
me if they once get gone on a man they go clean mushy for good—and
such a man! Why, I heard Jake joshing him in the foc’sle only
yesterday—Jake—and he took it like a lamb. Gets me.”
He got up and took some little photographs from a locker. They had
salved George’s kodak and developer from the _Wear Jack_, and Hank,
just before starting, had taken half a dozen snaps of the _Jack_ lying
piled on the rocks. He had done this for no sentimental reasons, but as
evidence whereby Tyrebuck could collect his insurance money. He looked
at them now with glowing satisfaction. They were the only bright spots
in this new business.
“Well,” said he, “there’s one thing. I won’t have to pay Tyrebuck his
ten thousand. Luck’s been playing pretty dirty tricks on us, but she’s
let up for once, unless she piles us same as she did the _Jack_.”
Keeping as they were, well to outward of the longitude of Guadeloupe,
there was little fear of them hitting anything except a derelict.
They passed and were passed by vessels, tanks and great four-masters,
battered by Cape Horn or making south to meet him. The traffic has
increased now-a-days in the waters between Panama and San Francisco;
it has decreased between Panama and the Horn, and is decreasing. The
Horn, that frightful criminal standing there facing the ceaseless march
of the mountainous waves, and countered by the canal, has come to
recognise the hatred of man. Day by day the ships that pass him grow
fewer, till a day may come when they cease, leaving him in loneliness
forever.
On the day that they passed the latitude of Santa Catalina Island out
of sight far to starboard, an incident occurred.
Hank had already noticed the attitude of Jake towards Candon. Jake
had evidently been putting two and two together, and arriving at
conclusions not far wrong. The attitude of the after-guard towards B.
C. completed the matter.
On this day, Hank, coming up to relieve George at the wheel, found
Tommie talking to George; at the same moment Jake rose from the foc’sle
hatch to relieve Candon. Candon’s back was turned to Jake who wished to
pass him.
“Now then, you big stiff,” cried Jake, “shift yourself, will you?”
Then the explosion came.
Candon wheeled. Next moment Jake, caught by the waistband, went flying
over the port rail, tossed away like a rag doll; the next, Candon was
after him; the next, the _Heart of Ireland_, answering to the helm, was
turning and coming up into the wind with all her canvas thrashing.
“Over with the dinghy,” cried George, giving the wheel to Tommie, and
letting go the halyards.
Tommie, without a word, watched, as the two men got the dinghy afloat.
Then she was alone.
She ran to the rail for a moment and saw away on the lifting swell, the
heads of Candon and Jake close together, Candon evidently supporting
the other and the boat making straight for them.
Ten minutes later the boat was back and Jake, half drowned, was being
hauled on board, Candon helping. Then Candon took him down to the
foc’sle to revive him. The _Heart_ was put on her course again and the
incident was closed.
Next day, Jake, subdued, went on with his work and Candon with his,
absolutely as though nothing had happened.
The day after that, with the American coast showing to starboard and
San Francisco not far ahead, Candon spoke to Hank.
“May I ask for the loan of your stylographic pen?” said Candon.
“Sure,” said Hank. “Do you want some paper?”
“I was going to ask for some,” said the other.
Hank went below and fetched up a wad of note paper, some envelopes and
the pen.
“Thanks,” said Candon, and went off to the foc’sle. It was his watch
below.