CHAPTER I_Black Pawl

BLACK PAWL

BEN AMES WILLIAMS

AUTHOR OF “EVERED”

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE

By E. P. Dutton & Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED

STATES OF AMERICA

BLACK PAWL

CHAPTER I

Spiess, a born lubber who would never learn the way of the sea, bungled

his simple share of the task of getting the mate’s boat away. Black

Pawl, master of the schooner, was near by; and he cuffed the man. The

buffet was good-natured enough, and Black Pawl laughed as he

administered it. Nevertheless it knocked Spiess end over end. The man

got up, grumbling; and Red Pawl, the captain’s son and mate, said

sharply to his father:

“I’ll handle my boat and my men, sir. Let them be.”

Black Pawl laughed again. “Fiddle, boy,” he retorted. “If you knew your

job, you’d have Spiess trained before this. He’s been thirty months on

your hands.”

“Keep your fists off my men,” Red Pawl repeated sullenly; and Black Pawl

frowned.

“Get your boat away,” he ordered. “And stop your mouth.”

They had worked into the bay that morning, threading the intricate

passages between the islands and the reefs with a familiarity that

showed Black Pawl knew his way about. Not that the passage was

difficult. There was always room, and to spare; but an ignorant man

might well have taken a short way through blue water and piled up on a

slumbering reef. Black Pawl was not ignorant, not ignorant where these

waters were concerned. He had made this anchorage a full score of times,

in his years upon the sea.

Where the schooner now lay, there was a beauty all about them, the

unmeasured and profligate beauty of the tropics that appealed to every

sense a man possessed. The eye was drunk with it; the air was richly

heavy with a fragrance that caressed the nostrils; the stirring currents

of this air brought faint, far bird-songs, and the musical tones of the

natives, and blended them in a symphony to which the murmuring sea lent

undertone. The touch of the sun and of the sun-warmed wind was as

caressing as the touch of a woman’s hand. And to the fifth sense of men

hardened to salt-horse and the rough fare of the sea, the fruit the

natives brought was delight unutterable. Beauty made for the eye, the

ear, the nose, the hand, the tongue--this lay all about them.

The islands were picturesque, densely wooded, and pleasantly broken by

steep cliffs and reaches of bare rock. They had an appearance of

permanence and strength that was welcome to eyes which had looked too

long on coral atolls that barely topped the sea. The bay where the

schooner lay was perfectly sheltered. A mile away, the beach lay white

as silver snow. To right and left, protecting horns of land came down

steeply to the water, and were wooded to the rippling edge. Along the

beach were ranged a few native houses, all but hidden among the orange

trees and the palms. Those who had seen it will know the spot--the Vau

Vau group, ten miles or so from what passed for the “town.”

The native canoes were swarming out toward the schooner, the islanders

laughing and calling like children--like amiable children, anxious to

make friends. Their narrow dugouts with the balancing outrigger were

deeply loaded with enough fruit and provender for a fleet. There was no

need to barter for food. Once the islanders saw that the schooner was

friendly, the stuff was heaped aboard. Huge oranges, great bunches of

gold and green bananas, cocoanuts by the cluster, a fowl or two. One man

laughingly slung aboard a pig, its feet trigged fast with strands of

fiber; and it lay in the waist and squealed and squealed, kicking

helplessly where it lay.

These were unspoiled folk; they lived in a land of plenty, flowing with

what passed for milk and honey. But there were no pearls, no treasures

to bring the traders flocking here--nothing but the abundant food. They

told Black Pawl, in their broken tongue, that no vessel had anchored in

this bay for three years past. They were unqualifiedly delighted to make

the schooner welcome and help her take aboard the wood and water which

she needed for the homeward voyage, just beginning. They wore loose

folds of a cloth made of bark, this scant garb supplemented here and

there by shirts or trousers of obviously Occidental origin. The women

and the children stayed in the canoes; and no man came aboard the

schooner without first donning some such garment of civilization. Many

of the men knew Black Pawl; and they stood before him--he had taken his

post at the break of the quarterdeck, and looked kindly down upon

them--and told him many things, many bits of news of themselves and of

the islands. Red Pawl and the second mate, each with his boat, had gone

ashore for water and for wood.

One thing they told Black Pawl which led him to question them at length;

and when he knew all they could tell him, he took his glass and watched

the beach, a mile away, where his son had landed. A tall islander

pointed out to him a flutter of white, a woman’s skirt. He nodded, and

watched, and saw the woman, and a black-garbed man, approach Red Pawl

and talk with him. He lowered his glass and continued to question the

natives, with an occasional glance toward the beach.

Some of the younger men from the island were investigating the schooner,

clustering here and there at the sharp cries of wonder and surprise

which were uttered when some adventurer made a new and more marvelous

discovery. Yet the Deborah Hoar was not remarkable. A two-masted

whaler with full casks after close on three years in the South Pacific,

she was dingy with the smoke and soot that marred her canvas, and her

hull bore the hard marks of wear. Now all the canvas was down and

furled, except the mainsail. They would be working out again this

afternoon--no need of lowering that. The decks were scrubbed white, and

reasonably clear of the litter of gear which, seemingly disorderly, yet

is the height of order.

The blacks studied the big windlass and bitts, forward; they climbed

over and around the cold try-works; they peered down the main hatch and

adventured into the fo’c’stle, and admired from a respectful distance

the three long whaleboats on the bearers along either rail, and on skids

at the stern. These boats, tools of the Deborah’s epic trade, were

almost half as long as the schooner herself. They were, moreover, as

seaworthy as many a larger craft; and save only perhaps the dory of the

fishing-fleet, they would outride any other type of small-boat that

white men know. The two at the rails were just abeam the break in the

deck; the stern boat lay crosswise, lashed in place upon the skids. A

larger craft of the Deborah’s sort would have had one or two spare

boats stowed on the boathouse just forward of the mizzenmast; but the

Deborah’s spares, if she had had any, would have been athwartship, on

the skids, aft. As it was, she had none. The third mate and his boat had

been lost in the killing of the last whales; and the schooner was going

home with only two officers besides Black Pawl. The third mate’s widow

in Nantucket would get his lay, along with his seachest and the sparse

belongings in his cabin.

Black Pawl saw his son’s boat put off at last from the beach and start

for the schooner. He roared good-humoredly at the blacks and drove them

overside. They went, giggling and laughing. Black Pawl was a tall, lean

man, with a big framework of bones insufficiently covered with flesh.

Nevertheless there was strength in his stringy arms and his lank legs

and his gaunt torso. He had got his name of Black instead of Dan

Pawl in the days when his head was crowned with a shock of ebony; now

that shock of hair was iron gray, almost white. Beneath it, the bold,

black eyes of the man gazed mockingly at the world. He was known for a

bold man, and a cold one; he laughed much, but when he laughed, it was

as though he mocked himself and all the world. He had suffered; his face

told that. He still suffered; the mark of it was alive in his eyes.

There were whispers about him--at which he laughed.

His son, Red Pawl--they had been christened so by the men of the sea,

for it was necessary to have a mark that would distinguish one from the

other--his son was his opposite. Three inches shorter than his father,

and reputed to be thrice as strong, he was red of hair, red of

countenance, morose and sullen in speech--an unsmiling man. Whereas

Black Pawl had friends everywhere, and enemies everywhere, Red Pawl had

no friends and no enemies; but men disliked and avoided him, and

wondered why Black Pawl had him about. “I’d break his neck--even if he

were my son,” they said. Black Pawl told some one, once, in a jocular

mood, that Red was a penance. “I bear him like the load of my sins about

my neck,” he said, and laughed his mirthless laugh.

There had always been enmity between father and son. Red was in his

twenties now; Black Pawl was close to fifty. And for three months past,

Red had been taking occasion to balk his father, to come between Black

Pawl and the men, to seek strife. At such times, Black Pawl laughed at

him; but when he was alone, and thought upon the matter, he frowned with

a weary anxiety. If it had been another man, Black Pawl would have

destroyed him and had done with it. Yet it was not because Red was his

son that he held his hand; it was some stronger feeling. He disliked

Red, son or no son, as much as the others did. There may have been some

truth in the reason for his forbearance which he had given, when he

spoke--laughingly--of his own sins. It is a hard and ugly thing for a

father to recognize his own evil self in his son.

Red Pawl’s boat was nearing the schooner. It drove in a hair line,

deviating no whit; and the natives in the canoes scattered before it

with shrieks of laughing consternation. One was slow. The whaleboat

sheared away the outrigger, and the canoe spun around and filled. Red

called over his shoulder:

“Keep clear, there, you swine!”

But it was hardly worth while to swear at these islanders. They shouted

with mirth at the misadventure; a trio of paddlers hauled the occupants

of the wrecked canoe into their own craft; and Red Pawl’s boat slid

alongside the Deborah.

Black Pawl, on the quarter, saw that the man and the woman were in Red’s

boat. The man was elderly, clothed in black. The Captain knew the breed

of the church. The woman, he saw, was young.

Red and his boat-steerer steadied the boat while the missionary climbed

to the deck. He reached down and took the girl by both hands, and she

stepped lightly up to a place by his side. Red said morosely:

“Ask Cap’n Pawl.”

The missionary looked aft and saw Black Pawl on his quarterdeck. He

turned to the girl, and smiled, and said: “Come!”

They walked side by side toward the starboard deck-steps. Black Pawl

studied them as they approached, but made no move to meet them. The

missionary stood aside to let the girl climb to the quarter, then

followed her and approached Black Pawl. He was an old man, with white

hair and kindly eyes and lips; a man mellowed by right living and right

thinking; a broad man, without cant and without guile. This was written

plain in his face; but that spirit of mockery which lived in Black Pawl

moved him to say in greeting:

“Good morning, Father!”

He knew quite well that this missionary was not of that church which is

father and mother to her people; he also knew that clergy of another

cloth, if they are meanly made, resent the appellation he had given this

man. But the missionary only smiled and said in his gentle, firm tones

without a note of pique:

“Good morning, Cap’n Pawl.”

And by this Black Pawl knew him for a man, and thrust out his big hand.

They gripped.

“My name is Samuel Poor,” the missionary said; “and this is Ruth

Lytton.”

He gestured toward the girl; and Black Pawl, turning, saw her at close

range, and his heart for an instant stood still.

She was tall and strongly made, and sweetly. Further, she was beautiful.

But there was something else in her face, and in her eyes, which pierced

the Captain’s consciousness. For an instant his face was a mask of

tragedy. The missionary was looking at the girl, and did not see; but

the girl saw and was troubled.

Then Black Pawl smiled. There was beauty in the man when he

smiled--beauty, and the radiance of strength, and the glory of audacity.

He took her hand.

“Ruth--Lytton?” he repeated.

“Yes,” said the missionary. The girl studied this tall man who held her

hand; and because she was brave, she asked him:

“Why were you--unhappy when you saw me?”

“Unhappy?” Black Pawl flung back his head and laughed. “I am never

unhappy. There is nothing worth unhappiness.”

“Why?” she repeated.

His eyes met hers evenly; and a spark flashed between them. He touched

her hand, which he still held, with his left, then dropped it.

“You are like some one I have known,” he said almost as if to himself,

“--a little. That was my first thought. It is gone now. I was wrong. A

fancy that comes to me often! The notion that the women I meet are--like

some one I have known.”

He turned to the missionary, and the girl stepped back a little--but

still watching him, as though she could not take her eyes away from him.

Yet this was not strange, for Black Pawl was a man whom men and women

anywhere would stop to look at twice. He asked the missionary now:

“What can I do for you?”

“Miss Lytton and I want passage home with you.”

Black Pawl chuckled. “There are passenger ships touching at the Islands.

Why choose the Deborah?”

“It should be cheaper,” said the missionary. “We have not the money for

the more expensive way.”

“How do you know it will be cheaper?”

“We count on your good nature, Cap’n Pawl.”

Himself an audacious man, the Captain admired audacity in others.

“You have courage, sir,” he said.

“I know men,” was the missionary’s quiet reply.

“Where are your belongings?”

“On the beach.”

“I’ll send for them.”

The missionary smiled. “No need for you to send,” he said. “I will--”

He stepped to the rail and called to the nearest canoe. Half a dozen

thrust toward the schooner, and the missionary spoke to the men in them.

They darted shoreward, racing. The missionary looked after them, his

eyes shaded beneath the wide brim of his hat. Other canoes pressed

together below him, and he talked cheerily to their occupants. A woman

began to wail, and the missionary called down reassurance to her.

The girl turned to the Captain, who had watched the little scene with

her.

“They love him,” she commented. “They are sorry he is going away.”

A man saw her, and grinning, shouted something; she smiled and lifted

her hand.

“They love you, too,” Black Pawl said. “That is easy seen.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she replied. “And I them.”

The Captain studied her with a sidelong glance, measuring her profile,

and marking the shape of forehead and of eye; and upon his face that

tragic mask again descended. But when she turned toward him, he flung it

off with a laugh. They leaned against the rail side by side, talking

idly.

About the schooner the canoes threaded their expert way. Amidships,

stores of wood were coming aboard. The second mate’s boat approached the

Deborah, towing casks of water. Red Pawl set men to rig tackle to

swing the casks aboard. The gear creaked as the booms swung back and

forth with each lift and fall of the schooner beneath them. Above their

heads the mainsail flapped. The cries of the islanders rose softly,

their musical tones smothering the harsh commands of the mate.

The second mate’s boat was nearing. With her eyes upon it, the girl

asked:

“Who is the officer in that boat?”

“Dan Darrin,” Black Pawl told her, “my second mate. A fine boy.” He

chuckled teasingly. “And you’re rosy already, at the sight of him.”

“I’m not,” she denied, her cheeks refuting her denial.

“A fine boy,” declared Black Pawl again.