closer and lost their shamefaced look.
"He could knock hell out of you," said one of them from behind, and
the consul said:
"Hush, hush!"
Then he turned to Hans.
"Could he lick you, my man?"
"Not mooch," said Hans defiantly, and a subdued cheer rose from the
men behind.
"Do you hear that, Mr. Noyes?" asked the consul. "Oh yes, you hear
it. Well, it's all highly irregular, of course, but you understand
you did wrong to hit him with a telescope, or with anything for the
matter of that, and as the ship seems to have been anything but a
comfortable one, I suggest that you apologise to this man at any
rate, and pay him off."
"Ya, ya," said Hans, who at any rate understood the last three words.
"I apologise?" gasped Noyes. "By God, I'll lick him first and do
that after! Apologise!"
"Either that, or I shall back him up in proceeding against you.
Unless you would like to settle it with him now in my courtyard, with
a couple of pairs of boxing gloves," said Mr. Johnson persuasively,
and the crowd behind hummed applause.
"Lick him," said Bragg, "and lick him good."
He was not anxious for the job himself, but was as eager to see the
scrap as the consul. It is so seldom that an officer gets a chance
of seeing a real fight, and besides, he did not love Noyes at all.
And inside of two minutes the inner court saw the skipper of the
_State of Oregon_ and the man from Abo stripped to their waists and
singlets.
"Pick your own seconds," said the consul gleefully, "and I'll be
referee and timekeeper."
He forgot there was such a thing as the Foreign Office; but he did
not forget some of the habits and customs of Western America.
"There's to be no biting, or gouging or kicking," he said, "and when
a man goes down he'll have ten seconds to get up in."
The next moment Noyes sailed in. He was not a bad fighter; he could
hit hard at any rate, and sometimes stopped a blow. His previous
acquaintance with Hans's head led him to go for his body, and that
was perhaps a little in his favour, for the Finn was all abroad all
the time. At first Hans hit so slowly that when he first got there
Noyes was gone, but he gradually got a little quicker. When I was
eleven stone weight I used sometimes to box with a man who weighed
seventeen. In the first round I used to hit him when and where I
pleased; in the second I had to look out; in the third he used to get
there once and finish me for the day. Like Hans, he grew quicker as
he grew warmer, and yet Hans never touched the skipper at all in the
first round. He was knocked all over the place, and to any outsider
it looked a thousand to one on Authority. But the odd thing was that
Hans's ribs seemed as hard as his head, and his wind was
invulnerable. Twice he went down, but he rose quick enough, and when
time was called no one puffed but the skipper.
In the second round they clinched, and when the consul called on them
to break away Hans fairly threw Noyes from him.
"He'll lick him yet," said Johnson, and now Noyes had to defend
himself. Any one of Hans's blows would have killed a cow if it had
fairly landed. The skipper, half in despair, hit at his opponent's
head, and got there. He stopped Hans, but was jarred to the
shoulder. When he recovered he landed, and Hans went down to rise
again like a fives ball on a hard court, and though Noyes jabbed him
again and again straight in the face, he never left any mark or blood
behind him. And every blow of the Finn's came nearer, quicker, more
fiercely. Time was called in time to save the captain.
"I believe he'll do me," said Noyes.
"I believe it, too," said Bragg. It was not an encouraging remark to
get from one's second, and Noyes felt hurt. While he was sitting on
Bragg's knee Hans was walking round feeling his arms and talking.
"Ya, ya, I lick him goot," he said. "I lick him goot."
And now he was warm and like a flail. Both arms were equally good;
he went at his man round arm, and missed him ten times by a mere
shave. In the middle of the round Noyes, who knew he was going,
worked his glove off in a close rally, and before the consul could
intervene he struck Hans full in the face with his bare fist. It was
a timed blow that ought to have stopped a rhinoceros, and Hans threw
his head up, as the consul jumped in.
"Nein, nein," cried Hans, "take de oder off. I fight him so. I
fight goot now."
And so he did, for though the glove was put on again, there was no
sign of his having been hit, and Noyes's right hand was useless. A
left-hander finished it, and Noyes went off his feet. When he came
to he was tired and weary and found himself in the hospital with a
bandaged jaw.
"I tell _you_ there's always suthin' queer about a Finn," said the
crowd. "It took brass to draw blood from him, now didn't it?"
And the man from Abo was paid off.
"I fights goot that day," he said, when he got his money, and the
consul, who is now a magistrate at home, says there wasn't a bruise
on him.
THE SCUTTLING OF THE _PANDORA_.
There are ships with good and evil reputations, independent of the
men who own or sail them. Some, it would seem, had their keels laid
on a lucky day, others were assuredly--
Built i' th' eclipse and rigged with curses dark.
Many have furrowed all the seas of ocean and have lost no lives, and
have cost neither owner nor underwriters money. But some there are
(and those who follow the sea will know them) which have never
achieved a single passage without being nearly cast away, without
killing or maiming men. For such a ship the very shoals themselves
decrease in depth through the unlucky set of some abnormal tide: for
them the 'trades' spring up far south and die in premature calm ten
degrees from the Line. They are well built and highly classed, and
yet spring leaks. Derelicts lie in wait for them: they are chased
through every sea by cyclones and tornadoes. In them the luck of
lucky men is finally of no avail: seamen fall from aloft in calms;
the gear gives without notice; stores rot in spite of care. They
break the heart of all who have to do with them: in them blood is
suddenly spilt: in them strong men waste and die.
Such a ship was the _Pandora_, and, as she lay off Sandridge, at
anchor in Hobson's Bay, there was not a sailorman in Australia who
would have shipped in her from choice.
"I've heerd the skipper of one ship I was in talk about the nature of
vessels," said Jack Marchmont, as he sat with his mate on the end of
the pier, "and _he_ allowed that ships was like men, launched with
nat'ral dispositions. He talked a lot of scientific guff about
deviation, and what he said was as ships had this or that deviation
all according how their heads was p'inted on the stocks. If she
p'inted sou-west, she played quite a different game with the compass
to what she would have done if she had laid nor'-east. And I believe
him. The _Pandora_ must have p'inted straight for hell, Joe."
"She is a bad 'un, I own," said his mate, "but it ain't a matter of
ch'ice. Ships is few, and men is plenty, and it's a case of 'John,
get up and let Jack sit down' with you and me. If she was a wuss
ship than she is, and a wetter (though this ain't a wetter), and if
she killed as many as the plague, I ain't goin' to work Tom Cox's
traverse ashore any more. And there ain't no _beer_ in the
scuttle-butt neither, and Bailey looks at us as black as black. I'm
goin' to ship," and Joe Rennet rose.
"I ain't got a farden to jingle of a tombstone," he said.
"Mark me," said Jack gloomily, "you'll never have no tombstone if we
ships in the _Pandora_. 'Tain't her way to run any man's relatives
into _that_ expense."
But Joe shrugged his shoulders.
"Mebbe this trip'll break her luck; and you've got to ship along.
'Cause why? We've on'y one chest atween the two of us. Cheer up,
old son. Why, I'd ship in the _Leander_, and they say she killed and
drownded seventy men in five years. Blow me, I've got to the p'int
that I'd ship in a blooming diving-bell!"
And three days later the two men, with twelve others who were just as
deep in debt to the boarding-house keepers, signed on for the
_Pandora_, bound for London. They went on board that very night.
The mates kept a keen eye on them: they knew the ship's reputation
and more than once men who had come on board at night had disappeared
by the morning. The first few hours in any ship, as in any other
kind of work, are the most trying, and the first sight of a damp and
empty foc'sle is for ever discouraging. For all the _Pandora's_
crowd from London had "skipped" in Melbourne.
"And right they was," said more than one of the new crowd, "for one
of them was killed, and two was drowned, and another will walk lame
for the rest of his life."
But when the sun came up over the low brown hills to the eastward,
and the daylight danced upon the landlocked waters of the great bay,
they turned to with more cheerful hearts. The summer had spent two
of its golden months, but the sky was clear, and a warm north wind
blew. The ship was clean, and yet not too clean. It did not suggest
the interminable intolerable labour of an American ship, all brass
and bright-work. And as the new crew hove up the anchor they found
the windlass was no heart-breaker.
"Give it her, boys," said the mate, and they slapped the brakes up
and down with a will.
"I reckon the crowd aft are pretty decent," said Joe, as he jumped up
aloft to loosen the fore-topsail. "Oh, I dessay she ain't 'arf bad."
And as the crew allowed, there was little to complain of about the
way the _Pandora_ was found.
"She ain't like our last ship," was Joe's comment. "Every time she
'it a sea out o' the common she'd shake shearpoles off of 'er, as a
dog shakes water."
But Jack Marchmont was not consoled.
"I ain't denyin' that the owners and the old man do their best," he
said, "but if they rove silk gear and bent silk sails, they'd not
alter the nature of her. I'll feel safe when I grinds gravel under
my heels, and not till then."
They told each other dolorous tales of the ship when they ate, and in
the second dog-watch, which was all their own. And yet the wind was
fair and put them through Bass's Strait, and well to the south and
east, day by day.
"It's too good to last," said Jack.
Aft much the same feeling existed, though no one knew it for'ard.
Yet Captain Rayner was a melancholy man, and seemed very soft to
those whom luck had ever sent to sea with American ship-masters. He
had sailed three voyages in the _Pandora_ and had read the burial
service every passage. Once he had read it to the devouring sea as a
grave, when five men had gone at once from the foc'sle head; but he
never spoke of the ship and her ways, even if he always came on deck
with the air of a man who expects bad news. Though he never knew it,
his look at last got upon the men's nerves. But their nerve was
shaken from the first; superstition had hold of them. They called
him 'Jonah.'
"It's a black look out with such a skipper," said some, and though
the evil history of the _Pandora_ ran far back beyond Rayner's time,
they attributed her present ill-luck to him.
The mind of the seaman is a limited mind. He is a child, a creature
of arrested development. The infinite sameness of the sea, its dull
and at times appalling lack of interest, do not move him to growth.
The romance of it is for those who know it not, or for those who pass
beyond the borders of its great roads of travel. For the merchant
seaman the ocean is a method of toil; only disaster or the fear of it
gives it savour. And the work is the same for ever. They dwell on
little things, are easily pleased, easily hurt. In such minds grows
superstition, in such panic fears flourish if they are not held in a
strong hand. Though both the mates were good men, they were young,
and Rayner was weak.
The very fairness of the weather, though fair weather is common
enough off the Horn in summer, got on the crew's minds, when they
came in sight of the Diego Ramirez Islands and presently hauled up
for the north.
"None of us ever passed these 'ere Daggarammarines in weather like
this," they said, as they shook their heads. "Why, it might be a
mill-pond!"
And when, three days later, a change of weather sent a south-west
gale howling after them, they shook their heads again.
"Ah, she's goin' to get it now. This'll make up for it. Who's goin'
first?"
They found out now what the _Pandora_ could do to make their lives
unhappy. She was both weatherly and fast, but her lines for'ard were
such that she never rose to any sea she struck till green water
poured over the top-gallant foc'sle two feet deep. She shipped one
sea at midnight that ripped off the scuttle-hatch and poured solid
water into the foc'sle that washed the men out of the lower bunks.
The hatch went overboard, and it was morning before any one dared go
on the foc'sle head to spike planks down in place of it. All night
long a cataract poured down on them, and water spurted in through the
plugged hawse pipes. Soon there was not a dry blanket in their den;
steam rose from the wet-packed sleepers. It was 'all hands' at four
bells in the middle watch, and they went on deck to shorten sail.
Not a man wore oilskins; they had nothing to keep from getting wet.
Even Joe, who was the most cheerful man for'ard, fell to growling.
"Call this a ship?" he said. "She's scared of the top of the sea and
wants to dive so's to get out o' the wet. Stow the foresail, is it?
I reckon the old man is goin' to heave her to while he can. He can't
have much heart to do it with a fair wind."
And perhaps Rayner had little heart. But if he had little, the mate
was cheery enough. He bellowed loudly, and the men jumped.
"Now then, haul taut the lifts," he roared. "That'll do. Weather
clew-garner! Ease off the sheet a bit!"
They slacked away the tack and hauled up the weather-gear.
"Now then, lee-gear, and jump aloft and furl it."
The night was black and the wind heavy in increasing squalls. Even
with the foresail hanging in the gear, and bellying out in great
white bladders, she still cut the seas like a knife, and scooped the
seas in over her head. Blankets and bags washed out on deck, for
there was no door to the men's quarters, only a heavy canvas screen
from the break of the foc'sle. And from aloft dull foam gleamed as
the _Pandora_ drove the seas asunder. The men sprang into the
weather-rigging with the second mate leading. As he came to the
futtock shrouds, he laid hold of the foremost shroud with his right
hand, and jumped for the band of the yard-truss. His foot slipped
and his hand-hold gave. He snatched with a yell at the top-gallant
sheet leading through the top, but was too late to grasp and hold it.
"By God, the _Pandora's_ luck," said the men in the rigging as they
heard him reach the deck. And when the foresail was stowed and they
went down they heard the man was dead. They found the _Pandora_ made
heavy weather still, when she was brought to the wind, and she only
lay to decently when she was stripped to the goose-winged
main-topsail. The men went into their wet and devastated den in
gloomy silence.
"'Ere's a bloomin' pretty general average," said Joe, as he found his
chest, which was also his chum's, staved in by the impact of an
iron-bound one which had fetched away from its lashings. But no one
growled, and no one answered him. The young second "greaser" had
been liked by them. They sat and smoked in gloomy silence, and only
half of the watch below turned into the driest bunks. They thought
that the _Pandora_ had begun, and though she lay to easily enough,
few slept. They were afraid of their ship; she was unlucky,
accursed, an evil personality. About her was the odour of death.
"Case was a good boy," they said, "and would have been a fine officer
by-and-by. Well, our turn next."
Every time the _Pandora_ bowed a wave the hawse-holes still spurted;
the foc'sle deck ran wet and glimmered darkly in the feeble light
from the stinking lanterns swinging on both port and starboard sides.
The air was saturated with moisture, rank sweat ran down the beams,
dripping blankets swayed from the edges of unoccupied bunks; the men
were damp, subdued, unhappy. Now, as the ship lay to, the wind no
longer swept into the foc'sle under the flapping screen by the
windlass, but still eddies of swift cold air shook it, and the men
shivered under their oilskins, that they wore now for warmth.
"I wish I'd never seed her," said Jack Marchmont, and Joe did not
answer his mate. Not ten words were spoken till the wheel and
look-out were relieved at four o'clock. Both were idle jobs, for the
night was still as dark as death, and the wheel with a grummet over
its spokes looked after itself.
"Oh, it's all solid comfort, this is," said Jack. "I wonder whose
wet clothes will be for sale next?"
They buried the second mate in the grey waste of sea before they put
the _Pandora_ before the moderating gale. The mate read the burial
service, for Captain Rayner stayed below. The steward told the men
in a whisper that he was ill.
"He's all broke up," he said, "I seed him cryin' like a child. And
no wonder; this is a wicked ship. I wish I'd left her in Melbourne."
And some of the men frowned. They did not like to hear him call the
_Pandora_ wicked. For the ship was, in its way, alive; it was
possessed. They wished to propitiate it; superstition had them by
the throat.
But they were easier when the body was committed to the deep. And
the mate assumed a more cheerful air when he had carried the Prayer
Book into his berth and came on deck again. They put the ship before
the wind and loosed the foresail. But though the wind had taken off,
the sea was very heavy, and the _Pandora_ wallowed riotously. She
took in seas over both rails. Thrice that day she filled the
main-deck, and but for the life-lines rigged right from the foc'sle
to the poop many men would have been washed overboard. As she ran
with the wind on the port quarter, she sometimes dived as if she
would never come up. The galley fire was out, and could not be
lighted; the men drank water and ate biscuit.
"Hogs, dogs, and sailors," they said. Every time the vessel dived
they held their breath.
The mate had a hard time, for Rayner was incapable of work, and she
carried no apprentices. Forward there was no one capable of an
officer's work; there was no broken skipper whom drink had destroyed,
no young fellow with a second mate's "ticket." So Mr. Gamgee
practically slept on deck in snatches till he slept almost as he
stood under the weather-cloth in the mizzen rigging. He prayed for
moderate weather, for a sight of the sun. But though the gale was
less, it still blew hard, and the sky was black and the racing scud
low, and the sun was not seen by day or a star by night. On the
third day Gamgee staggered as he walked.
"If the old man can't come on deck soon I'll have to cave in," he
thought. He shook his fist at the ship. "I wish I'd never seen her.
She's a man-killer."
That night when the starboard watch was called at twelve the wind
took off suddenly, and the _Pandora_ pounded in the wallow of the sea
like a bull-buffalo in a bog. She shipped seas over both rails; the
racing waves astern came and slapped their crests at the man at the
wheel; she scooped up the sea forward every stagger she made. She
had been running under the reefed foresail and the fore and main
topsails close reefed. Now they shook the reefs out. Gamgee was
alert and alive, but his nerves half-betrayed him. He jumped from
the poop to the main-deck, and back again. He wanted to be mate and
second mate and skipper too. And as the fresh canvas took hold of
her, she slapped at the rising sea, dived into it, and as the wind
bellowed almost as keen as ever, the man at the wheel lost his nerve,
gave her too much helm, snatched at her, gave her too much again, and
almost broached her to. And then the mate was again on the main-deck.
Some one heard him say "O God!" as the Atlantic fell on board; but no
one ever heard him say anything again.
The water filled her from rail to rail. She shuddered, and then
lifted slowly, and as she ran once more before the wind and rolled,
she poured out the sea on either side. The main-deck ports were
burst outward, the gear floated in inextricable tangles, a
four-hundred-gallon tank, lashed under the poop ladders, broke from
its lashings and took charge of the deck. In the black darkness and
the imminent danger men cried out. Some cried to their mates and
were answered, some were not answered. With the mate three other men
had gone.
And then she cleared herself once more, and the men came together
under the break of the poop. Joe asked for Jack Marchmont; but Jack
had saved any one from the expense of a tombstone.
"And I over-persuaded 'im to ship in her. Oh, she's a bloody ship."
Then one man said:
"Where's Mr. Gamgee?"
Joe ran up to the poop.
"Mr. Gamgee! sir!"
"He ain't here," said the man at the wheel. "Oh, Joe, what is it?"
"'Twas your doin'," cried Joe. "There's two gone, and Jack with 'em,
and Mr. Gamgee!"
And the man at the wheel fell all ashake. His face was ashy in the
feeble glimmer of the binnacle light.
"Come and take her, Joe," he implored. "Oh, the swine she is. I'm
in a tremble, Joe. She's too much for me."
And tragedy heaped itself on tragedy. The steward came on deck, and
heard that the mate was gone. He lost his head and ran in to the
captain crying; he was ludicrous, horrible, speechless. And Rayner
sat up in his bunk, and fell back without knowing what had happened.
He never knew, for though the steward shook him feebly, his failing
heart had failed, and brandy never brought him to. The steward ran
on deck blubbering.
"I believe the captain's dead," he sobbed.
And the two boldest of the men took off their caps and went into the
cabin humbly. A greater than their commander was there. They stood
in silence, fiddling with their caps, and stared at the quiet white
face upon its pillow.
"Oh yes, he's dead," they whispered. They backed out respectfully;
they were stunned, and were adrift; they were all masterless men;
authority had been removed; they faced the unknown with dread. They
saw now that they had rested on others' knowledge. What did they
know of the sea after all?
They gathered on the poop.
"What?" said Joe, who was at the wheel. "Him gone too. And we----"
They all understood. They were in peculiar isolation, in danger.
And what would be said if they saved themselves and the ship?
"'Twill look as if we'd mutinied," said Joe. But he had a touch of
natural authority in him. "As soon as it gets light we'll write out
a true account of it and sign it, all of us. And we'll make for the
nearest port."
They were all quiet men, Englishmen and Dutchmen, and there was no
more drink in the ship than that in the medicine chest. The steward
drank what remained of it. And in the morning all the remainder of
the crew met on the poop. At first they had a certain natural
reluctance to use that portion of the ship, but if they did not meet
there the steersman could not take his share in the talk. But Joe
did most of the talking.
"I reckon the nearest port is Buenos Ayres," he said. "This mornin'
I took the liberty of lookin' at the chart, and there ain't nothin'
'andier as is common talk with sailormen. If we stand north we'll
about 'it it off; or any ways, we'll 'it on the track of steamers
makin' for it, and we might get the lend of a hofficer to take us in.
What do you say, mates?"
Some nodded, some shrugged their shoulders, and some said, "Buenos
Ayres? Oh yes, that'll do as well as another."
"And I've took the liberty," said Joe solemnly, "of borrowin' the
log-book from down below, and I've wrote out a plain account of all
this 'ere, as I said last night. For it's best put down, and it's
ships' law as everythin' serious should be wrote out in the log-book,
and nowheres else. Shall I read it?"
And he read out what he had written:--
"Three days back, as told in the log, Mr. Case, the second mate, fell
from the foreyard as we was goin' to take in the foresail, and was
killed. He was buried accordin' the next day, while we was 'ove to.
And last night in the middle watch, as all 'ands was makin' sail, the
wind 'avin' fallen light sudden and the sea bein' very 'eavy, we
shipped an 'eavy sea over the port rail as washed Mr. Gamjy overboard
with Jack Marchmont, A.B., Andrew Anderson, A.B., and Thomas Griggs,
boy. And the captain bein' ill, as the log says, died sudden on
'earing it, and is now lyin' dead in 'is cabin. Whereas, there bein'
no officer in the ship, all 'ands assembled as aforesaid, declares
this is the truth, the 'ole truth, and nothin' but the truth, so 'elp
us Gawd. And we intends makin' for bonus airs, or monty Vidyo."