the same time that he reached for the steamcock and let off a few
preliminary blasts of steam--by way of showing that we were moving, as
it were. The idea that we were aboard a real yacht and about to cruise
forth actually seized upon my fancy in a most erratic and delightsome
way. It did on John’s, too. Plainly we needed some such idyllic dream.
Outside was the blue water of the river. Far up and down were many
craft sailing like ourselves, I said.
Inside of fifteen minutes we had appointed the smith, bos’n, and little
Ike, the smith’s helper, the bos’n’s mate. And we had said that the
carpenters and turners and millwrights were the crew and that the
“guineas” were the scullions. Mentally, we turned the engine-room into
the captain’s cabin, and here now was nothing but “Heave ho-s” and
“How does she blow thar, Bill-s?” and “Shiver my timbers-s” and “Blast
my top-lights-s” for days to come. We “heaved ho” at seven o’clock in
the morning when the engine started, “lay to and dropped anchor” at
noon when the engine stopped, “hoisted and set sail” again at one, for
heaven knows what port, and “sighted Spike” and “put hard to port” at
six. Sometimes during the day when it was hot and we were very tired
we took ideal runs to Coney and Manhattan Beach and Newport, where the
best of breezes are, in imagination, anyhow, and we found it equally
easy to sail to all points of the compass in all sorts of weather. Many
was the time we visited Paris and London and Rome and Constantinople,
all in the same hour, regardless, and our calls upon the nobility of
these places were always a matter of light comment. At night we always
managed to promptly haul up at Spike, which was another subject of
constant congratulation between the captain and the mate. For if we had
missed our trains and gotten home late!--Regardess of the fact that we
were seafaring men, we wanted our day to end promptly, I noticed.
During the days which followed we elaborated our idea, and the
_Idlewild_ became more of a reality than is to be easily understood
by those who have not indulged in a similar fancy. We looked upon the
shop as a trusty ship with a wheel at the stern, where the millwright,
an Irishman by the name of Cullen, ran the giant plane, and an anchor
at the prow, where the engine-room was. And there was a light in the
captain’s eye at times which, to me at least, betokened a real belief.
It is so easy to enter upon a fancy, especially when it is pleasing.
He would stand in the doorway of his small, hot engine-room, or lean
out of the window which commanded the beautiful sweep of water so
close to our door, and at times I verily believe he thought we were
under way, so great is the power of self-hypnotism. The river was so
blue and smooth these summer days, the passing boats so numerous. We
could see the waters race to and fro as the tides changed. It was such
a relief from the dull wearisome grind of shoveling in shavings and
carrying out ashes or loading cars, as I was occasionally compelled to
do--for my health, in my own case, I should explain. I am sure that,
as an ordinary fifteen-cent-an-hour-shaving-carrier, I valued my title
of mate as much as I ever valued anything, and the smith, “the village
smith,” was smilingly proud to be hailed as “Bos’n.” Little Ike being
of an order of mind that fancied the world ended somewhere abruptly in
the Rocky Mountains, and that you really could shoot buffaloes after
you left Buffalo, New York, did not grasp the meaning of it all at
once, but at last it dawned upon him. When he got the idea that we
really considered this a ship and that he was the bos’n’s mate with the
privilege of lowering the boats in case of a wreck or other disaster,
he was beside himself.
“Hully chee!” he exclaimed, “me a bos’n’s mate! Dat’s de real t’ing,
ain’t it! Heave ho, dere!” And he fell back on the captain’s locker and
kicked his heels in the air.
“You want to remember, though, Ike,” I said, once in an evil
moment--what small things regulate the good and evil fortunes of all
things!--“that this is the captain’s cabin and bos’n’s mates are not
much shucks on a vessel such as the _Idlewild_. If you want to retain
your position you want to be respectful, and above all, obedient. For
instance, if the captain should choose to have you act as stoker for
a few minutes now and then, it would be your place to rejoice at the
request. You get that, do you?”
“Not on yer life,” replied Ike irritably, who understood well enough
that this meant more work.
“That’s right, though,” chimed in big John, pleased beyond measure at
this latest development. “I’m captain here now, an’ you don’t want to
forget that. No back lip from any bos’n’s mate. What the mate says
goes. The shovel for yours, bos’n, on orders from the captain. Now
jist to show that the boat’s in runnin’ order you can chuck in a few
shovelfuls right now.”
“Na! I will not!”
“Come, Ike,” I said, “no insubordination. You can’t go back on the
captain like that. We have the irons for recalcitrants,” and I eyed
a pile of old rusty chains lying outside the door. “We might have
to truss him up, Cap, and lay him down below,” and to prove the
significance of my thought I picked up one end of a chain and rattled
it solemnly. The captain half choked with fat laughter.
“That’s right. Git the shovel there, Ike.”
Ike looked as if he doubted the regularity of this, as if life on
the briny deep might not be all that it was cracked up to be, but
for the sake of regularity and in order not to be reduced to the
shameful condition of a scullion, or worse, “irons,” which was
the only alternative offered, he complied. After he had thrown in
eight scoopfuls we both agreed that this was true order and that the
organization and dignity of the _Idlewild_ might well be looked upon
now as established.
Things went from good to better. We persuaded Joe, who was the
millwright’s assistant, back at the “wheel,” that his dignity would be
greatly enhanced in this matter if he were to accept the position of
day watch, particularly since his labors in that capacity would accord
with his bounden duties as a hireling of the road; for, if he were
stationed in the rear (front room, actually) anyhow, and compelled,
owing to the need of receiving and taking away various planks and
boards as they came out of the planes and molding machines, to walk to
and fro, it would be an easy matter to notice any suspicious lights on
the horizon forward and to come aft at once, or at least at such times
as the boss was not looking, or when he came to heat his coffee or get
a drink, and report.
Amiable Joe! I can see him yet, tall, ungainly, stoop-shouldered, a
slight cast in one eye, his head bobbing like a duck’s as he walked--a
most agreeable and pathetic person. His dreams were so simple, his
wants so few. He lived with his sister somewhere in Eleventh Avenue
down-town in a tenement, and carried home bundles of firewood to
her at night all this great distance, to help out. He received (not
earned--he did much more than that) seventeen and a half cents an hour,
and dreamed of what? I could never quite make out. Marriage? A little
cheap flat somewhere? Life is so pathetic at times.
“Light on the starboard bow,” or “Light on the port bow,” were the
chosen phrases which we told him he was in duty bound to use, adding
always “Sir,” as respectful subordinates should. Also we insisted on
his instantly making known to us at such times as we twain happened
to be in the engine-room together, all bell buoys, whistle buoys,
lighthouses, passing vessels and most of all the monthly pay car as
it rounded the curve half a mile up the track about the fifteenth of
every month. The matter of reporting the approach of the pay car was
absolutely without exception. If he failed to do that we would be
compelled, sad as it might be and excellent as his other services had
been, to put him in irons. Here we showed him the irons also.
Joe cheerfully accepted. For days thereafter he would come back
regularly when the need of heating his coffee or securing a drink
necessitated, and lifting a straight forefinger to his forehead, would
report, “Light on the port bow, Sir. I think it’s in the steel works
jist up the track here,” or “Light on the starboard, Sir. It’s the fast
mail, maybe, for Chicago, jist passin’ Kingsbridge.”
“No thinks, Joseph,” I used to reprimand. “You are not supposed to give
your thinks. If the captain wishes to know what it is, he will ask.
Back to the molding machine for yours, Joseph.”
Joseph, shock-headed, with dusty hair, weak eyes and a weaker smile,
would retire, and then we would look at each other, the captain and I,
and grin, and he would exclaim:
“Pretty fair discipline, mate.”
“Oh, I think we’ve got ’em going, Captain.”
“Nothin’ like order, mate.”
“You’re right, Cap.”
“I don’t suppose the mate’d ever condescend to take orders like that,
eh, mate?”
“Well, hardly, Cap.”
“Still, you don’t want to forget that I’m captain, mate.”
“And you don’t want to forget that I’m mate, Captain.”
Thus we would badger one another until one of the scullion crew
arrived, when without loss of dignity on either side we could easily
turn our attention to him.
And these scullions! What a dull crew! Gnarled, often
non-English-speaking foreigners against or in front of whom we could
jest to our hearts’ content. They could not even guess the amazing
things we were ordering them to do on penalty of this, that, and the
other.
Things went from better to best. We reached the place where the fact
of the shop’s being a ship, and the engineer the captain, and I the
mate, and the smith the bos’n, _ad infinitum_, came to be a matter of
general knowledge, and we were admired and congratulated and laughed
with until nearly all the workers of the shop, with some trifling
and unimportant exceptions, the foreman for one, began to share our
illusion--carpenters, cabinet-makers, joiners, all. The one exception,
as I say, was the foreman, only he was a host in himself, a mean,
ill-dispositioned creature, of course, who looked upon all such ideas
as fol-de-rol, and in a way subversive of order and good work. He
was red-headed, big-handed, big-footed, dull. He had no imagination
beyond lumber and furniture, no poetry in his soul. But the crew, the
hundred-headed crew, accepted it as a relief. They liked to think they
were not really working, but out upon a blue and dancing sea, and came
back one by one, the carpenters, the tinsmiths, the millwrights, one
and all, with cheerful grins to do us honor.
“So you’re the captain, eh?” lazy old Jack, the partner of car-loading
Carder, asked of the engineer, and John looked his full dignity at once.
“That I am, Jack,” he replied, “only able seamen ain’t supposed to ask
too many familiar questions. Are they, mate?”
“Well, I should say not,” I replied, arriving with a basket of
shavings. “Able seamen should always salute the captain before
addressing him, anyhow, and never fail to say _Sir_. Still, our crew
is new. It’s not very _able_ and the seamen end of it is a little _on
the fritz_, I’m thinking. But, all things considered, we can afford
to overlook a few errors until we get everything well in hand. Eh,
Captain?”
“Right, mate,” returned the captain genially. “You’re always
right--nearly.”
Before I could start an argument on this score, one of the able seamen,
one who was thus discourteously commented on, observed, “I don’t know
about that. Seems to me the mate of this here ship ain’t any too much
shucks, or the captain either.”
The captain and I were a little dismayed by this. What to do with an
able seaman who was too strong and too dull to take the whole thing
in the proper spirit? It threatened smooth sailing! This particular
person was old Stephen Bowers, the carpenter from the second floor who
never to us seemed to have quite the right lightness of spirit to make
a go of all this. He was too likely to turn rough but well-meant humor
into a personal affront to himself.
“Well, Captain, there you are,” I said cautiously, with a desire to
maintain order and yet peace. “Mutiny, you see.”
“It does look that way, don’t it?” big John replied, eyeing the
newcomer with a quizzical expression, half humorous, half severe.
“What’ll we do, mate, under such circumstances?”
“Lower a boat, Captain, and set him adrift,” I suggested, “or put him
on bread and water, along with the foreman and the superintendent.
They’re the two worst disturbers aboard the boat. We can’t have these
insubordinates breaking up our discipline.”
This last, deftly calculated to flatter, was taken in good part, and
bridged over the difficulty for the time being. Nothing was taken so
much in good part or seemed to soothe the feelings of the rebellious as
to include them with their superiors in an order of punishment which on
the very first day of the cruise it had been decided was necessary to
lay upon all the guiding officers of the plant. We could not hope to
control them, so ostensibly we placed them in irons, or lowered them in
boats, classifying them as mutineers and the foreman’s office as the
lock-up. It went well.
“Oh no, oh no, I don’t want to be put in that class,” old Bowers
replied, the flattering unction having smoothed his ruffled soul. “I’m
not so bad as all that.”
“Very well, then,” I replied briskly. “What do you think, Captain?”
The latter looked at me and smiled.
“Do you think we kin let him go this wunst?” he inquired of me.
“Sure, sure,” I replied. “If he’s certain he doesn’t want to join the
superintendent and the foreman.”
Old Bowers went away smiling, seemingly convinced that we were going
to run the boat in ship-shape fashion, and before long most of the
good-natured members of the crew consented to have themselves called
able seamen.
For nearly a month thereafter, during all the finest summer weather,
there existed the most charming life aboard this ideal vessel. We
used the shop and all its details for the idlest purposes of our
fancy. Hammers became belaying pins, the machines of the shop ship’s
ballast, the logs in the yard floating debris. When the yard became too
cluttered, as it did once, we pretended we were in Sargasso and had to
cut our way out--a process that took quite a few days. We were about
all day commenting on the weather in nautical phrases, sighting strange
vessels, reporting disorders or mutiny on the part of the officers in
irons, or the men, or announcing the various “bells,” lighthouses, etc.
In an evil hour, however, we lit upon the wretched habit of pitching
upon little Ike, the butt of a thousand quips. Being incapable of
grasping the true edge of our humor, he was the one soul who was yet
genial enough to take it and not complain. We called upon him to shovel
ashes, to split the wood, to run aft, that was, to the back gate, and
see how the water stood. More than once he was threatened with those
same “irons” previously mentioned, and on one occasion we actually
dragged in a length, pretending to bind him with it and fasten him to
the anvil (with the bos’n’s consent, of course), which resulted in a
hearty struggle, almost a row. We told him we would put him in an old
desk crate we had, a prison, no less, and once or twice, in a spirit
of deviltry, John tried to carry out his threat, nailing him in, much
against his will. Finally we went to the length of attempting to
physically enforce our commands when he did not obey, which of course
ended in disaster.
It was this way. Ike was in the habit of sweeping up his room--the
smith’s shop--at three o’clock in the afternoon, which was really not
reasonable considering that there were three hours of work ahead of all
of us, and that he was inclined to resent having his fine floor mussed
up thereafter. On the other hand I had to carry shavings through there
all this time, and it was a sore temptation to drop a few now and then
just for the devil’s sake. After due consultation with the captain,
I once requested him to order that the bos’n’s mate leave the floor
untouched until half past four, at least, which was early enough. The
bos’n’s mate replied with the very cheering news that the captain could
“go to the devil.” He wasn’t going to kill himself for anybody, and
besides, the foreman had once told him he might do this if he chose,
heaven only knows why. What did the captain think that he (the bos’n’s
mate) was, anyhow?
Here at last was a stiff problem. Mutiny! Mutiny! Mutiny! What was to
be done? Plainly this was inconveniencing the mate and besides, it was
mutiny. And in addition it so lacerated our sense of dignity and order
that we decided it could not be. Only, how to arrange it. We had been
putting so much upon the bos’n’s mate of late that he was becoming a
little rebellious, and justly so, I think. He was always doing a dozen
things he need not have done. Still, unless we could command him,
the whole official management of this craft would go by the board,
or so we thought. Finally we decided to act, but how? Direct orders,
somehow, were somewhat difficult to enforce. After due meditation we
took the bos’n, a most approving officer and one who loved to tease Ike
(largely because he wanted to feel superior himself, I think), into
our confidence and one late afternoon just after Ike had, figuratively
speaking, swabbed up the deck, the latter sent him to some other part
of the shop, or vessel, rather, while we strewed shavings over his
newly cleaned floor with a shameless and lavish hand. It was intensely
delicious, causing gales of laughter at the time--but--. Ike came back
and cleaned this up--not without a growl, however. He did not take it
in the cheerful spirit in which we hoped he would. In fact he was very
morose about it, calling us names and threatening to go to the foreman
[in the lock-up] if we did it again. However, in spite of all, and
largely because of the humorous spectacle he in his rage presented we
did it not once, but three or four times and that after he had most
laboriously cleaned his room. A last assault one afternoon, however,
resulted in a dash on his part to the foreman’s office.
“I’m not goin’ to stand it,” he is declared to have said by one who
was by at the time when he appeared in front of that official. “They’re
strewin’ up my floor with shavin’s two an’ three times every day after
I’ve cleaned it up for the day. I’ll quit first.”
The foreman, that raw, non-humorous person previously described, who
evidently sympathized with Ike and who, in addition, from various
sources, had long since learned what was going on, came down in a
trice. He had decided to stop this nonsense.
“I want you fellows to cut that out now,” he declared vigorously on
seeing us. “It’s all right, but it won’t do. Don’t rub it in. Let him
alone. I’ve heard of this ship stuff. It’s all damn nonsense.”
The captain and mate gazed at each other in sad solemnity. Could it
be that Ike had turned traitor? This was anarchy. He had not only
complained of us but of the ship!--the _Idlewild_! What snakiness
of soul! We retired to a corner of our now storm-tossed vessel and
consulted in whispers. What would we do? Would we let her sink or try
to save her? Perhaps it was advisable for the present to cease pushing
the joke too far in that quarter, anyhow. Ike might cause the whole
ship to be destroyed.
Nevertheless, even yet there were ways and ways of keeping her afloat
and punishing an insubordinate even when no official authority existed.
Ike had loved the engine-room, or rather, the captain’s office, above
all other parts of the vessel because it was so comfortable. Here
between tedious moments of pounding iron for the smith or blowing
the bellows or polishing various tools that had been sharpened, he
could retire on occasion, when the boss was not about and the work
not pressing (it was the very next room to his) and gaze from the
captain’s door or window out on the blue waters of the Hudson where lay
the yachts, and up the same stream where stood the majestic palisades.
At noon or a little before he could bring his cold coffee, sealed in
a tin can, to the captain’s engine and warm it. Again, the captain’s
comfortable locker held his coat and hat, the captain’s wash bowl--a
large wooden tub to one side of the engine into which comforting warm
water could be drawn--served as an ideal means of washing up. Since
the bos’n’s mate had become friendly with the captain, he too had
all these privileges. But now, in view of his insubordination, all
this was changed. Why should a rebellious bos’n’s mate be allowed to
obtain favors of the captain? More in jest than in earnest one day
it was announced that unless the bos’n’s mate would forego his angry
opposition to a less early scrubbed deck----
“Well, mate,” the captain observed to the latter in the presence of the
bos’n’s mate, with a lusty wink and a leer, “you know how it goes with
these here insubordinates, don’t you? No more hot coffee at noon time,
unless there’s more order here. No more cleanin’ up in the captain’s
tub. No more settin’ in the captain’s window takin’ in the cool mornin’
breeze, as well as them yachts. What say? Eh? We know what to do with
these here now insubordinates, don’t we, mate, eh?” This last with a
very huge wink.
“You’re right, Captain. Very right,” the mate replied. “You’re on the
right track now. No more favors--unless---- Order must be maintained,
you know.”
“Oh, all right,” replied little Ike now, fully in earnest and thinking
we were. “If I can’t, I can’t. Jist the same I don’t pick up no
shavin’s after four,” and off he strolled.
Think of it, final and complete mutiny, and there was nothing more
really to be done.
All we could do now was to watch him as he idled by himself at odd free
moments down by the waterside in an odd corner of the point, a lonely
figure, his trousers and coat too large, his hands and feet too big,
his yellow teeth protruding. No one of the other workingmen ever seemed
to be very enthusiastic over Ike, he was so small, so queer; no one,
really, but the captain and the mate, and now they had deserted him.
It was tough.
Yet still another ill descended on us before we came to the final loss,
let us say, of the good craft _Idlewild_. In another evil hour the
captain and the mate themselves fell upon the question of priority, a
matter which, so long as they had had Ike to trifle with, had never
troubled them. Now as mate and the originator of this sea-going
enterprise, I began to question the authority of the captain himself
occasionally, and to insist on sharing as my undeniable privilege all
the dignities and emoluments of the office--to wit: the best seat in
the window where the wind blew, the morning paper when the boss was
not about, the right to stand in the doorway, use the locker, etc.
The captain objected, solely on the ground of priority, mind you, and
still we fell a-quarreling. The mate in a stormy, unhappy hour was
reduced by the captain to the position of mere scullion, and ordered,
upon pain of personal assault, to vacate the captain’s cabin. The mate
reduced the captain to the position of stoker and stood in the doorway
in great glee while the latter, perforce, owing to the exigencies of
his position, was compelled to stoke whether he wanted to or no. It
could not be avoided. The engine had to be kept going. In addition,
the mate had brought many morning papers, an occasional cigar for the
captain, etc. There was much rancor and discord and finally the whole
affair, ship, captain, mate and all, was declared by the mate to be a
creation of his brain, a phantom, no less, and that by his mere act of
ignoring it the whole ship--officers, men, masts, boats, sails--could
be extinguished, scuttled, sent down without a ripple to that limbo of
seafaring men, the redoubtable Davy Jones’s locker.
The captain was not inclined to believe this at first. On the contrary,
like a good skipper, he attempted to sail the craft alone. Only, unlike
the mate, he lacked the curious faculty of turning jest and fancy into
seeming fact. There was a something missing which made the whole thing
seem unreal. Like two rival generals, we now called upon a single army
to follow us individually, but the crew, seeing that there was war
in the cabin, stood off in doubt and, I fancy, indifference. It was
not important enough in their hardworking lives to go to the length
of risking the personal ill-will of either of us, and so for want of
agreement, the ship finally disappeared.
Yes, she went down. The _Idlewild_ was gone, and with her, all her fine
seas, winds, distant cities, fogs, storms.
For a time indeed, we went charily by each other.