CROCKERY WARE
An hour before sunset, Jude, on the lookout, gave the alarm. “Sellers’s
getting ready to come off,” she cried.
Satan’s head appeared at the cabin hatch.
“Sure?”
“The boat’s alongside the _Juan_ full of dagoes, and Sellers and
Cleary’s gettin’ in.”
“Where did you stick that bottle of nose-paint?”
“Starboard forward locker.”
“One minute.”
In a minute the head reappeared and an arm holding the rum bottle.
“Now, mind you, I’m drunk,” said Satan, “fightin’ drunk, not to be
disturbed on no account. They can call again tomorrow morning.”
He smashed the rum bottle on the deck.
“Leave the pieces lyin’.” He vanished.
Jude looked at Ratcliffe and grinned.
“Rub your nose and pretend to be cryin’,” came a voice from below.
“What for should I be cryin’?” answered Jude.
“God A’mighty! I’ll show you if I get on deck! Ain’t I drunk and
cuttin’ up? What else would you be doin’? _I’ll_ larn you!”
A smash of crockery came from below that made the housekeeper spring to
the cabin skylight.
“Quit foolin’,” cried she. “I’m willin’ to rub the damn nose off my
head, but stop smashin’ the plates—what have you broke?”
Another plate went.
“I’m rubbin’.”
“Here they are!” cried Ratcliffe.
Jude’s nose did not seem to want any rubbing, nor her face. Descended
from generations of crockery worshipers and careful housewives,
instinctively hating Cleary, Sellers, Cark, and all their belongings,
feeling with perfect illogic that they had been done out of the
treasure by the “skelentons” somehow through Cark, she was convincing.
Satan with rare art had worked her up to the part. She was not crying:
her mind was raging above tears.
“Hullo, Kid!” cried Sellers, as the boat ground alongside and a filthy
ruffian with a handkerchief twisted round his head clawed on with a
boathook. “What’s the matter, Kid? What’s up with you? Where’s Satan?”
“Who’re you kiddin’?” cried Jude, as Sellers came aboard, followed by
Cleary. “Where the hull are your fenders? Comin’ cuttin’ the paint off,
you and your skullintons! Where’s Satan? He’s down below drunk as Billy
be damn and cuttin’ the lights out of the ship.”
“He’s been at the eyewash I was tellin’ you of,” said Cleary. “Look,
he’s broke a bottle of it. Lord! don’t the place stink?”
“Well, drunk or sober, he’s got to bail up,” said Sellers. “It’s my
belief he’s been spoofin’ us all along.”
“Spoofin’ who?” cried Jude.
“Cark an’ me.”
“Cark an’ you—that old leather face an’ _you_! Satan been spoofin’
you—pair of yeggmen! Satan’s straight, the on’y straight man in
Havana! Get off this ship! Come in the mornin’ if you want to try an’
rob him. Off with you now!”
“Why,” cried Sellers, half laughing, half angry, “what’s the matter
with the kid? What’s gingerin’ you up?”
The answer came from another smashed plate below.
Jude made one spring for a deck-mop standing handy, twirled it so that
the water sprayed from it in a rainbow, and brought it to the charge.
Cleary slipped over the rail.
“Off with you!” cried Jude.
“Put down that mop!” cried Sellers, now suddenly furious. “Put down
that mop, you braying little bitch! Go’n get inter your petticoats! You
ain’t a boy! I never b’lieved it, not for the last six months, an’ now
I know. You’ve give yourself away proper. Why, look at you, as round as
a tub—you’re a wumman!”
Ratcliffe looked on horrified. Jude, flushed and bright-eyed, had
somehow revealed her sex. In her excitement she looked for a moment
almost beautiful. Her tongue had done the rest. The smashing of the
plates had brought the woman out of her as a conjurer brings a rabbit
out of a hat.
“Put down that mop!”
Jude from rose color had turned awfully white; then with the élan and
dash of a gamecock she charged. The wet swab hit the ruffian full in
his flat face, and he fell on the deck with a bang.
In a second he was up and scrambling over the rail. Again she charged,
the swab meeting him this time full on his stem and sending him over
into the boat like a bag of oats.
A slush tub, fortunately half-full, and marked by her prescient mind,
was her next weapon. The contents caught Cleary full in the face, and
as the boat made off, the oars, all at sixes and sevens, wildly rowing,
she pursued it with the battery of her tongue till it was out of range.
Then she broke down and cried, sniffed, with her arm hiding her face,
and then flushed, like a thing of shame dived below.
Ratcliffe knew.
Her sex proclaimed aloud by the shameless Sellers was as a garment
stripped off her publicly. On the very first day Satan had stated her
case and she didn’t mind, though he, Ratcliffe, had been a stranger;
but it was different now, somehow. It was as if the end of her boyhood
had come. Sellers would no doubt proclaim the fact in Havana.
He heard voices from below.
“I don’t care if I’d killed him! Wish’t I had! Lea’ me alone—for two
cents I’d go drown myself! Look at them plates! You’ve broke the two
blue pattern ones an’ the chaney one with the bird on it, the best we
had, an’ not a cracked one touched! Hain’t you no sense?”
“Never you mind; I’ll get you some more.”
“I’m not wanting more. Them plates were mother’s—much you care! I’ve
gone as careful as walking on eggs with them, and now they’re broke
an’ the old Delf’ ones left. If you must be breaking and cutting
up, couldn’t you a broke the cracked ones? An’ where’s the sense in
breaking them anyhow?”
“Waal, I reckoned it’d liven you up hearin’ the crockery goin’.”
“Liven me up! Makes me believe you _have_ been getting at the rum to
hear you talk. Where’s the sense in all your doings,—ship stinking of
drink and all the crockery broke, and what’s the use?”
“I’ll show you after dark. I tell you I want to get away from those
thugs, and if I hadn’t headed them off pretendin’ to be drunk they’d
have gone through me.”
“Well, they’ll go through you right enough tomorrow morning.”
“No, they won’t.”
“Which way?”
“I’ll be gone.”
“Gone! Why, first click of the windlass and they’ll be aboard us.”
“You leave it to me.”
“Well, I wish we’d have went before you broke them plates.”
“Oh, cuss the plates!”
“Easy to say that. It makes me just nacheral wild to see that old Delf’
plate starin’ me in the face, round and sound, and the blue pattern
ones gone.”
Silence for a moment, at the end of which Satan’s head and bust
appeared at the cabin hatch.
He winked at Ratcliffe, and pointed backward with his thumb and down
below, as if indicating the domestic trouble.
“There’s no sign of them swabs comin’ off again?” asked he.
“No,” said Ratcliffe. “They seem to have had enough of it.”
The rum bottle had broken fairly in two without splinters.
“You might heave the bottle over, like a good one,” said Satan. “I
can’t show on deck for fear of those shrimps seein’ me. It’ll be dark
in an hour, and then I’ll be up. You can wait for your supper till we
get away?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ratcliffe; “I’m in no hurry.”