THE MATE OF THE BRIG _Cohasset_
Martin returned to consciousness gradually, and _via_ the nightmare
route. He was being put to torture. He was bound, helpless, and a steel
band encircled his head, and sharp spikes were probing his brain.
He was surrounded by gibbering and leering slant-eyed yellow faces;
they screamed at him without letup, and his ears rang with their
fiendish outcry. But mingled with, and woven into, that barbarous howl
was a softer and friendlier note, at which his groping wits clutched
eagerly; it was a clear, musical chant, and somehow, it soothed his
hurts, and gave him courage to face his torturers. The yellow faces
grimaced horridly at him. He was being roughly rolled about. So, he
opened his eyes.
He was staring upward at the bare, wooden bottom-side of a bunk. It
was a long moment before he could identify that blank expanse. Then he
discovered that he was lying in a bunk, and there was something the
matter with his couch, it bounced about, and his feet were, as often as
not, higher than his head.
He was in a room. Just before his eyes was a little round window in
the wall, and through it filtered a feeble daylight when his feet were
ascendant, and when his head was uppermost he glimpsed racing, green
water on the other side of the thick glass circle. It was strangely
unaccountable.
His eyes roved. The mists were clearing somewhat from his mind. He was
in a room, yes, the queerest little cubby-hole he had ever seen. There
was a lamp in a rack against the wall, and the lamp remained stationary
and upright while the wall behind it reeled drunkenly.
Clothes dangled from pegs as if inhabited by dancing ghosts. Somewhere,
crockery rattled. There was an alarming creaking, as if great timbers
were grinding together. And there was, over all, a shrill, menacing,
unceasing howl—the same dread sounds that had made part of his dream.
Also persisted the singing voice that had drawn him safely out of his
marish visions. His eyes, continuing their sweep, passed by a tiny
desk, a rack of books, a swinging wash-basin, and encountered the
source of that musical chant. The hunchback, Little Billy, was seated
crosslegged upon the floor, sewing on some piece of wearing apparel,
and, as he deftly plied the needle, he crooned his ditty in the pure
tenor that had before charmed Martin.
“A-roving, a-roving,
Since roving’s been my ru-u-in——”
So far he got, when he looked up and saw Martin’s eyes fixed upon him.
He promptly threw his work aside, leaped to his feet and bent over the
bunk. His impish, friendly face was wreathed in a cordial smile.
“Why, hello, old scout! Had your sleep out? How do you feel?” was his
cheerful greeting.
Martin had been fully occupied in receiving impressions during the few
moments he had been awake, and until Little Billy spoke, he had not
considered himself. But at the other’s words, he suddenly discovered
that something was the matter with his body. He was sick. His head
hurt, and something terrible was happening to his inner man—he was
ascending to great heights only to drop swiftly to great depths. It was
his stomach, his stomach was performing a rapid and continuous journey
between his throat and the soles of his feet. He ached all over. He
felt it was the end; it was approaching dissolution.
“My inside—my stomach. I’m dying!” he managed to gasp.
Little Billy’s elfish grin grew wider. The wretch even chuckled as he
contemplated Martin’s misery.
“Oh, that is nothing,” Martin heard him say. “Just a little bout with
our old friend Mister Mal de Mer. You’ll be all right once you get on
your feet and get some warm food inside of you. How is the head?”
The mention of food was nauseous, but the remark anent the head
acquainted him with a new ill. He touched the place where his hair
should have been, and instead of hair his hand caressed a bandage.
He discovered that beneath the bandage was the seat of the throbbing
pain that bothered him. Also, memory began to stir in the chaos of his
mind—head bandaged, street fight, Black Cruiser, shots.
“What—what,” he stuttered.
“You were shot,” little Billy replied to that interrogatory stare.
“The bosun picked you up and carried you to the boat, and we brought
you aboard with us. You were creased. The narrowest squeak I ever saw.
The bullet just plowed over your skull. We thought at first you were
gone—fractured skull, you know—but you came out of your trance and fell
asleep. You have been lying in that bunk for about fifteen hours. It is
midafternoon now, and we have been to sea since midnight.”
“T-to sea!” gasped Martin.
The hunchback’s matter-of-fact announcement fairly took his breath. The
latter’s chuckle became more pronounced at Martin’s blank amazement.
“Yes, my legal friend, you have invaded the troublous domains of old
King Nep.,” he continued genially. “As the bosun remarked this morning,
when a few playful tons of H2O rolled him along the main deck, ‘’Ere
we are, swiggle me stiff, safe and sound at sea again!’” Little Billy
struck an oratorical pose, and declaimed musically:
“O, we’re running free with a gale abaft,
And we’re bound for the End o’ the World!”
“But—why did you bring—” mumbled Martin.
“We had to fetch you along,” interrupted Little Billy. “If the bosun
had left you behind, those yellow devils would have finished you, or
else the police would have nabbed you. The police were at our heels
when we made the getaway from the wharf, as it was. By Jove! It was
for your own benefit we shanghaied you—you realize, don’t you, that a
street fight with guns in a civilized town like Frisco, with wounded,
perhaps dead, men lying around, makes a rather serious business? But
don’t you worry any about the future. Everything is rosy. We are safe
at sea, and booming along with a gale at our backs. The law may have
gobbled up Wild Bob Carew and his crew—hope it did, but suspect my
haughty captain squirmed out of it as he usually does. We have made our
getaway, anyhow.”
At sea! Disturbing visions were dancing through Martin’s mind. At sea!
It was one thing to stand in an office window, idly watching passing
ships, and longing to be at sea. It was quite another thing to awaken
without foreknowledge, in a stuffy and careening berth, on a strange
ship that was plowing through a storm, possessed of a wounded head and
a gadabout stomach, and be informed casually by a grinning gnome that
he was fleeing the law—that he had been kidnaped so he would avoid the
consequences of a wild and deadly street brawl.
A man accustomed to rough buffets and fickle fortune might well
blink his eyes over such a situation. To Martin, the clerk, to whose
law-abiding existence both fights and police had hitherto been
strangers, the information was more than a shock. It was an earthquake.
His world was tumbling about his ears.
The jolt galvanized him to action. He sat up in his bunk and swung
his legs over the side. For a second he had some wild idea of rushing
forth, and somehow stepping ashore, and back into yesterday. Then he
steadied himself.
“But what will I do?” he demanded of the hunchback. “Where are you
going? I am not a sailor, I am a clerk—and my job——”
“My friend,” said Little Billy, “I think you may definitely assume that
your connection with the legal profession is severed. Your job is close
on two hundred miles astern. But as I told you a moment since, you
need not worry about your future. Why, you have already been adopted
into the happy family—you are already one of the jolly company of the
brig _Cohasset_, with equal rights, and an equal share. And if we have
decent luck with this job ahead of us, you will have no cause to grieve
at being yanked out of your berth ashore. It isn’t so bad, is it? We
know you leave no family behind—oh, yes, we know quite a lot about you,
Martin Blake, we had to look you up—and I think you will be blessing us
in a day or two for prying you out of your rut. You are the right sort.
You were never cut out for a clerk! By Jove! You should hear the bosun
tell how you bowled over Carew, himself, with your empty gun! You are a
nervy one, all right. I’ll wager this business ahead of us will be more
to your liking than the one you leave behind.”
“What is it?” asked Martin. “Where are you going?”
“Not my story—I can’t tell you, now,” answered Little Billy. “You’ll
find out tonight, after supper. There will be a pow-wow in the cabin,
and the Old Man and Miss Ruth will enlighten you then.”
“Miss Ruth!” echoed Martin, thinking for the first time of the girl who
had innocently got him into this mess. “That is the girl! Then we got
the girl safely?”
“Oh, yes, she is aboard, and safe enough. She dressed your head—neat
job of bandaging she does. Well, Blake, I’ll have to be about my
duties. I’m steward, you know. This is my room. You are to bunk with
me. I would advise you to get up on deck if you can manage it. There
is no cure for seasickness like being on your feet in fresh air. Don’t
worry about your head—it is only a flesh wound, and it will heal in a
couple of days. And after supper you’ll hear all about it. So long.”
The door closed behind the sprightly little figure, and Martin was left
alone.
Alone, but with thoughts enough for company. He sat there with his legs
swinging over the side of the bunk, nursing his sore head and trying to
digest the information Little Billy had imparted.
He was troubled, yet somehow not depressed. His coward fears of a
few moments ago were gone, and he could face the situation now with
considerable aplomb. Of course, it was disturbing to learn that he was
probably a fugitive from justice; and with his knowledge of the law he
could very well appreciate the probably serious consequences of last
night’s affair. Why, there were likely dead men in the city morgue as
a result, and old Smatt, judging himself betrayed by his clerk, might
swear him a murderer. He was a vindictive old man, Martin knew. And
Spulvedo—he knew he had shot Spulvedo; he had seen the man drop.
Martin felt a qualm at that remembrance—shooting a man was a new and
terrible experience, and his conscience had scruples concerning the
sanctity of human life. If Martin Blake could then have seen a few
months into the future....
Yet he had no regrets for the part he had played. He had been
headstrong, he knew, in so unreservedly joining forces with the strange
people of this strange ship. But what else could he have done and
retained his self-respect? A man, by George, owed it to himself to be
willing to fight for a woman in distress—especially such a good-looking
girl as this mysterious Miss Ruth. Little Billy, and these people,
seemed to be at outs with the police, but he knew he was on the right
side.
And so he was one of the jolly company of the brig _Cohasset_! This
craft seemed to have been fated to enter his life. He recalled how
interested he had been when the boatswain first mentioned the name,
last night, in Johnny Feiglebaum’s. Last night! Why, it seemed a year
ago! “Happy ship,” the boatswain had called her, and Little Billy had
referred to the “happy family.” A queer outfit he had fallen in with.
Well, at least he would see that “blessed, bleedin’ little mate” the
boatswain was so exercised about.
Brig _Cohasset_! What kind of a ship was a brig, anyway? He would see.
Arrived at this conclusion, Martin felt better. He rolled clear of the
bunk and balanced himself on the swaying floor. He was going to take
the hunchback’s advice and look over this new home of his, and take the
tonic prescribed for his peripatetic stomach. Already, he felt much
better. He even contemplated food without disgust.
He had been undressed, and he discovered his clothes hanging on the
wall. While he donned them, his spirits continued to mount. He was done
with fright and worry.
Things were not so bad. It was true there was no one ashore to grieve
at his disappearance, save good Mrs. Meagher. But how in the world did
the hunchback discover that fact? Come what might, he was done with his
old drab life, done with musty legal forms, done with the job he so
loathed. There was a jubilant tinge to his thoughts. Why, he was just
where he had so often longed to be—“Out There where Things happened!”
That all-pervading screaming that rang in his ears—why, that was the
wind whistling through the rigging, overhead, the storm king’s brazen
voice that he had so often dreamed of hearing. And that disconcerting
lurching beneath his feet—why, that was the heaving deck he had so
lusted to press foot upon.
What matter if it did play havoc with his midriff. That would pass;
already he was feeling fit. Now he would go out and get acquainted with
his shipmates—ah, shipmates! He smacked his lips over the word. Already
he knew the hunchback and the boatswain—fine fellows. And the girl—he
had seen her once and would never forget her face. That shining mass of
hair....
And Martin laved himself in the basin, spruced himself before the
little glass, and let himself out of the room.
Martin stepped into the ship’s cabin. He knew it was the cabin, because
he had often read passages descriptive of just such a room.
There were several doors on either side. They led to the berths. There
was the curve of the ship’s stern in the after wall, portholes, and a
divan which followed the half-round. Chairs, a large table, swinging
lamps, a skylight overhead. There was the companion ladder, leading to
the deck above.
He made for the ladder. At its base he stopped. Some one was
descending. A hale, white-bearded, rosy-cheeked old man came down from
the deck. He had a serene and smiling countenance.
Martin waited expectantly, with half-extended hand. This must be the
“Old Man” of the hunchback’s reference. But the old man’s wide-open
eyes stared over his head, or through him. He walked past within a foot
of Martin and gave not the least indication that he noticed Martin’s
presence. A second later he disappeared through a door on the farther
side of the room.
Martin’s hand dropped to his side. He was nonplused and somewhat
piqued. It was unbelievable that he had been unseen. Why, the man had
passed within touching distance and had looked straight at him! If this
were the captain of the jolly brig...
However, just now he was eager to reach outdoors. He mounted the ladder
and found himself in a box-like hatch. He thrust aside a canvas flap
and stepped out on deck.
A blast of cold wind slapped his face and almost took his breath for a
moment. He was facing aft, looking out over the stern of the ship, and
his eyes beheld a tumbling chaos, a fearsome waste of leaping waters.
In the foreground of this picture, just across the skylight from him,
stood the man at the wheel. He was an integrant feature of that wild
scene, felt Martin. In Heaven’s name, what manner of outlander was he?
Squat and bulky in oilskins, broad-faced, high-cheeked, brown-colored,
his forehead was tattooed, and ridges of horrible scars disfigured both
plump cheeks. His eyes were small, feral; he gave Martin a fleeting,
incurious glance, and turned his attention to his work. He stood
impassive, clutching the wheel-spokes.
The deck was wet and slippery. The ship lunged down the slope of a sea,
and Martin slid to leeward. He fought his way up-deck again and grasped
the side of the hatch for support. The mishap had turned him about. He
now faced forward, and the wheelman was forgotten.
He was on the poop, and he overlooked the length of the ship. The brig
_Cohasset_ was before his eyes, as much of her as was above water. But,
as a matter of fact, and as he was later informed, he did not look upon
a brig at all; the _Cohasset_ was a brig only by virtue of sailors’
loose habits of speech. She was in truth “a rig what ye rarely see,
lad, a proper brigantine, a craft what I’ll be swiggled stiff if ye can
mate ’er anyw’ere for sailing and comfort.”
But nice distinctions of rig did not bother Martin on this, his first,
view of his new home. He was looking through his landsman eyes.
He saw, over the break of the poop, a sweep of deck that careened
till the lee rail dipped, and green seas lolloped aboard and swirled,
foam-flecked, aft. He saw the long jib-boom, now stabbing the leaden
sky, now plunging into the depths. He saw the pyramid of bellying
canvas on the foremast, the great foresail, the topsails, and the bare
spars above.
He saw the great boom above his head, and the vast expanse of the
mainsail, a tremendous canvas, even though reefed. He saw the
straining, board-like staysails. He heard the harsh scream of the
wind aloft, the vibrant thrumming of tautened stays, the banging of
a block, the crash of boarding seas. Grim sounds, and an outlook to
daunt a young man whose maritime experience consisted of an occasional
ferry-boat trip.
Martin was aghast. The ship was a chip in a maelstrom, lost, tossed
about, sport of those monster waves. The ticklish game of “carrying on”
was beyond Martin’s present ken. He was thinking in the terms of his
favorite literature. He was awe-struck by the fury of the elements, by
the limitless expanse of upheaving waters, by the long, white-crested
seas racing down the wind. He was beholding the raging main!
“Hello, Mr. Blake! Glad to see you about. Nice little puff we have had
for a starting boost—about blown out, I’m afraid.”
The words, rich, throaty, tinged with amusement, came down the wind
to Martin’s ears. Martin turned his head. Opposite him on the sloping
weather deck, regarding him with a smile, stood the girl—“Miss Ruth.”
Martin stared. Had he heard aright, “little puff”? This battle of wind
and wave a little puff! And she who regarded this cataclysmic scene
with such contempt—that brave and confident figure, swaying so easily
to the deck’s reel, that bizarre costume, that sparkling face—was
she the distressed maid he had fought for the night before? Yes, he
remembered that vivid, expressive face. By George, she was a beauty!
She was, without doubt, an uncommonly pretty girl, and the strange
costume she wore accentuated, rather than hid, her charms. A serge
skirt came but little below her knees, and beneath it Martin saw feet
and ankles encased in stout, trim, absurdly small sea boots.
She wore a sailor’s pea-coat, open at the front and disclosing a
guernsey covering a swelling bosom. The great mass of dark hair Martin
remembered so well was knotted and piled atop her head, and a blue,
peaked cap perched saucily aslant the mass.
Her face was alive, vivacious. The eyes were large, dark, bright, the
lips were ripe and smiling, the cheeks weather-bronzed but not swarthy.
Martin drank in the details of her appearance greedily, and they left
him tongue-tied. Yes, by George, she was a beauty! Her carriage was
regal, and there was about her an air of competence, of authority. She
was not disturbed by her surroundings—she laughed. What had she called
the storm? A puff! She seemed, by George, like a sprite of the storm!
Like the steersman yonder, she seemed to belong to this setting of
laboring ship and tumultuous sea. Here she came toward him with hand
outstretched.
She walked easily, body inclining gracefully to the ship’s whims,
disdaining aid of skylight or hatch. Martin clung to the hatch with one
hand and extended his other.
He thrilled to the warm clasp she gave him. He glowed at the friendly
light in her eyes. She was tall, taller than she looked at a distance,
almost as tall as he. She did not seem to raise her voice, yet her
words reached him distinctly above the howl of the wind. He had to
shout his answers.
“How does your head feel?” were her first words.
He answered reassuringly, and remembered of a sudden that it was those
brown, shapely fingers that wrapped the bandage.
“I am Ruth Le Moyne,” she continued. “I would like to thank you for
what you did last night. You were splendid! Little Billy has told us
how promptly you volunteered your aid, when you knew it meant danger to
yourself. It was brave of—oh, words are so tame! But you can guess what
it meant to me—I, a girl, and Carew——”
Yes, Martin knew. He hastened to shout that he knew. The girl’s
attitude made him uncomfortable. He shouted that he knew all about it,
and that it was nothing, really nothing. He would like to do it again;
he was really glad to be at sea on such a jolly little ship; the bump
on his head was nothing; no, his seasickness was past; what he had done
was nothing, by George, not worth mentioning!
So he said, while he held Ruth Le Moyne’s hand and looked into her
eyes—dark brown eyes, he noticed, not bright now, but misty with
gratitude—-and he meant what he said.
“Of course, you feel strange and lost,” she said. “But you will get
quickly used to ship life, and I know you will like it. You know, we
call ourselves the ‘happy family.’ You are one of us, now. You share in
the venture, and if we are successful—but you will hear all about it
after awhile.”
She broke off abruptly, looked aloft, then turned to the helmsman.
“Watch your eye, Oomak!” she called.
The savage-appearing steersman inclined his head submissively and
pulled upon the wheel spokes. Martin stared, surprised. What had this
entrancing bundle of femininity to do with the steering of the ship?
She turned to him again.
“We are losing the breeze,” she said regretfully. “I suppose, though,
we shouldn’t complain. We have gained a good offing.”
Losing the breeze!
“Do you mean—is the storm passing?” asked Martin.
“The storm?” She stared, then smiled. “Oh, yes—see!”
Martin looked up. Rifts of blue sky showed in the leaden blanket
overhead. But the sea seemed as wild, his ear sensed no decrease in the
wind’s howl. This girl seemed very sure.
“I’ll set the t’gal’n’s’l and shake a reef out of the mains’l at eight
bells,” she continued. “Just a few moments of the time, now. You know,
we are cracking on.”
“Oh—of course,” said Martin blankly. He didn’t know just what she was
talking about, but the salty words rolled off her tongue very glibly.
“W-what are you on the ship, Miss——”
“Oh, I forgot that you didn’t know,” laughed the girl. “Why, I am the
mate.”
The mate! This radiant, laughing creature the mate! This slip of a
girl! Oh, ho, no wonder the boatswain wept and spoke of posies, and the
hunch-back waxed poetical in description. This girl...
Martin suddenly gulped. He remembered the prim, mutton-chopped little
man of his imaginings, the gentle, senile little mate of the brig
_Cohasset_. He winced and blushed at the recollection of his idle
thoughts. But a woman for mate! Why—and he stared about him—this girl
must be in practical command of the ship. His life, the lives of those
oilskin-clad figures he saw lounging forward, all the lives on the
ship, were in her hand, dependent upon her skill. Mate! He had never
heard——
“You seem rather surprised,” she rallied him. “I see disapproval in
your face. But I assure you, I am a very good mate. I even have a
master’s ticket.”
Martin stuttered in his confusion and tangled himself in a web of
denial. Then came a blessed interruption. Up through the companion
hatch, to which he still clung, arose a white head, and then the man.
It was the serene-faced old man who had passed him by in the cabin.
“The captain!” announced the beskirted mate. “Captain, here is Mr.
Blake—Mr. Blake, meet Captain Dabney.”
The old man stepped out on deck and turned his head about uncertainly.
His hand wandered an instant, and then met Martin’s. His face wreathed
in a cordial smile.
“Glad to meet you, lad,” he said.
Martin found himself without words. He was fascinated by the captain’s
eyes, those serene, blue eyes that stared at him without seeing him.
Captain Dabney was blind.