The Story of a Crime
Although it would be quite unfair to imagine from the immense activity
prevailing in the ship during the cutting-in that Pepe was neglected,
it is certain that according to a very well understood and constantly
acted upon rule in South Sea whalers, work connected with whaling takes
precedence of everything else. Nothing is allowed to interfere with
it as long as it is humanly possible to carry it on. Remembering the
quite scanty rewards to be obtained on an average by the most ardent
and successful whalemen, the absolute impossibility of any supervision
by the owners for three or four years at a time, it is, I think, little
short of marvellous to note the extraordinary energy and perseverance
manifested by these men, of whatever grade above that of seaman, in the
chief business of the voyage.
Physical injury, lack of rest, incredible toil, privation suffered are
all made light of in the chase, capture, and disposal of the whale.
Charges are often brought against the leaders of gross inhumanity to
the men working under them in the absence of full restraint; but as
far as that cruelty consists in overwork, or work under desperate
conditions, I bear witness that if the sailor or foremost hand is not
spared, neither do those who drive him spare themselves. The voluntary
work that I have seen some of these men perform would be taken as
incredible if I were to relate it, and I therefore shrink from giving
instances. Besides, to the majority of those whom I hope will read this
book, the whole business would be unintelligible because entirely out
of the purview of a serene and quietly ordered life.
This terribly energetic method of working was a most severe lesson to
C. B., hard to learn, harder still to understand. For in the gentle
life of the islanders, though great efforts were sometimes necessary
in an emergency, as we have seen, they had no ideas of hard work as
a habit, for the love of working hard, or for the greed of gain.
They were as far removed from being ascetics as they were from being
hypocrites. They loved their simple pleasures and heartily gave thanks
to God for them, and they could not understand why any sane person
should misuse his body in order to get more than somebody else had--the
last condition being an unthinkable one to them where everything was
held in common. But it had not taken C. B. long to discover that in
the new world of which he was now a denizen, might and endurance, as
well as ability to get and keep, were the objects of praise and almost
worship. That men were held in esteem, not for what they were, but
for what they had, and that the easiest sneer to their lips was that
a priest, a parson, or a religious man of any kind was an individual
who had found that the easiest way of getting a living without work
was gaining a hold over the minds of your hard-working fellows by
pretending that you were in touch with the unseen world.
So he had early come to the conclusion that he must prove his manhood
by his eagerness to work, his indifference to fatigue, and his ability
to do all that was required of him, as well as by his passive
obedience to all the loving precepts of the Gospel. And this kept him
going sometimes when he would fain have sunk down with fatigue, a
generous pride and belief in God’s sustaining power as being certainly
no less able to uphold the Christian than the mysterious force that
kept Merritt, the man of no beliefs and strangest origin, going
apparently with ease when everybody else was sinking with fatigue.
Nobly he sustained his part, and nobody suspected how near he was
several times to giving up and declaring that whatever happened he
could work no more without rest.
This present business was really the severest he had gone through,
because his successful effort to save Pepe was made under the most
trying conditions, every ounce of his great strength as well as his
endurance of privation of air had been put forth, and then as soon
as the ship was reached work harder than ever had to be engaged in.
Consequently as soon as the last case had been strung up alongside by
the two main tackles and the business of baling it out had commenced he
was most thankful to hear the skipper say--
“Now, I’ll watch these fellows baling the case, an’ all the rest of
ye scoot, get a good skin full of grub and a rest. We’ll set blubber
watches at eight bells” (eight o’clock p.m.).
As they stepped away from the waist, with all its débris of quaint
fragments of blubber and bone, and the swish, swish of oil surging from
side to side of the deck, Merritt said to our friend--
“Christmas, me boy, I ain’t too sorry to knock off for an hour or two.
I believe I’m getting old; can’t work day in and day out ’thout wantin’
a rest same as I used to.”
C. B. replied simply--
“I thought you could hardly be made of ordinary flesh and blood. You
seem to work like a machine and never to think of rest, while I often
find myself wondering how much longer I can hold out.”
“Ah, me boy,” responded Merritt, laying his hand most affectionately on
C. B.’s arm, “you forget the differences between our ages. You’re only
a boy just done growin’, ’bout twenty-two ain’t ye? while I--well I
don’t quite know how old I am, but I guess about thirty-five, have got
all my gristle hardened into man, and can plug along ’thout showin’ it.
But you shape better than any youngster I ever see.”
As Merritt finished speaking, C. B. suddenly bethought him of Pepe,
lying aft there in miserable pain, and slipped along to his side.
Finding the wounded man awake he dropped one knee beside him, saying--
“How is it, Pepe? Can I do anything for you, get a pipe, a drink, or
move you?”
Pepe looked up at the fine eager face, and moistened his lips twice or
thrice before he replied with another question: “What made ye save me?
If I’d been in your place, I’d let ye die, an’ glad o’ the chance. An’
I’d be best pleased if you’d let me go when I was three parts gone. I
don’t want t’ live cos you’ve beat me, you an’ yer Chinaman. Go away; I
hate ye, an’ if I could I’d kill ye now. What did ye ever come aboard
this ship for? Ye’ve made a hell of her for better men than you are.”
C. B. knew better than to stay and talk to a man in that frame of mind,
a man too who, for all he knew, might be raving in delirium; but he
thought with some consolation of certain unclean spirits of old who
cried to the healing Lord, “Art thou come to torment us before our
time?” and turned away to his berth below, where he found a good and
ample meal awaiting him. He ate and drank reverently, gratefully, and
then, greatly refreshed, lay down in his bunk and went fast asleep
almost on the instant, having not a single care of his own. And, as it
happened that he was not in the first watch, it was 2 a.m. before he
was called, and then he sprang to his feet at the word full of life and
energy.
When he rushed on deck he found the machinery of oil-boiling in full
blast, the caldrons bubbling fiercely, the square iron funnels of the
try-works blazing like the squat chimneys of an iron foundry, and the
clatter of the mincing machine incessant. He had little imagination or
he would have thought what a picture she made, this tiny hive of human
energy with all her toilers, in the midst of that immense stretch of
lonely ocean, engaged in converting to human use the treasure of the
boundless deep ravished from its mightiest denizen. But he only saw a
little group of almost dead-beat men who had been working mechanically
for hours, only thought pityingly of the ill-requited toil and what he
considered to be the folly of it all.
Then he plunged into the work himself, while the second and fourth
mates prowled about the decks, keeping a vigilant eye upon possible
shirkers, seeing the great casks rolled away from the cooler as the
cooked oil was poured into them and they brimmed over. In fact the ship
was now just a floating factory from which, except to an observant
onlooker if such there had been, all romance had departed to make way
for the greasy heavy toil. No lookout was kept, no hand at the wheel,
which was lashed hard a lee; for, in case any other ship should be
wandering that way, the trying-out whaler was a beacon in herself,
visible for many miles. She certainly could not run another ship down,
and any one who run her down could be little less than a criminal
lunatic, at least quite unfit to have charge of a ship.
So the heavy round of work went on without intermission until, about
4.30, the darkest hour before the dawn, all hands on deck were startled
beyond measure by hearing a high clear voice crying--
“Ship ahoy! What ship is that? Do you need any assistance?” All eyes
were turned in the direction of the hail, and there close by them rode
a ship of war, her side crowded with men plainly visible in the blue
flare she was burning, but looking all corpse-like in that unnatural
light.
Loud and clear came the response from aft, for Captain Taber seemed
to be always on hand when wanted: “Ship _Eliza Adams_ of New Bedford,
whaling, now engaged in trying out.”
“Thank you,” came the somewhat dissatisfied answer across. “I thought
you were on fire. Good-night and good luck. Go ahead, please; forty
revolutions, course S.80.W.”
It was only one of the police of the seas, a British man-o’-war
attached to the South American Squadron; but as she did not leave her
name or destination no one on board could guess who she was. Captain
Taber said sardonically, “That’s a Johnny Haul Taut, I bet; thinks
he owns the show. But I guess he’s ben sold a pup this watch. Wonder
what sort of guff he’ll enter up in his log about this.” It was not
generous, but characteristic of American captains in discussing British
seamen and their seamanship, and we can hardly quarrel or bother with
it to any good purpose. But what was entered in the log was just this--
“Saw a glare to the eastward, looking like a ship on fire, altered
course at 3.55 a.m. to E.N.E. and ran down at full speed, twelve
knots. Discovered the glare to be the whaleship _Eliza Adams_ of New
Bedford trying out a whale. Resumed course immediately, S.80.W., forty
revolutions. Weather as before.”
By the next day at noon the deck was clear of all the filth, and the
factory-like work was proceeding with machine-like regularity, all
hands being now well rested. And as cask after cask was filled at the
cooler and rolled away to a secure temporary berth on deck, the captain
was heard to say something to this effect: “I thought so. I guessed
that whale to be about the biggest in all my experience, an’ now I’m
gettin’ to be sure of it. Never saw a bigger whale nor yet richer
blubber.” By which he meant that the blubber was so full of oil that
when cut the clear fluid gushed almost like water and besides it was
full of cysts, small cells of about the size of peas, which were filled
with a bland substance of the consistency of cream, probably almost
pure spermaceti.
For although the great reservoir of spermaceti is in the head, in
this case yielding nearly fifty barrels or five tons of almost pure
spermaceti, this curious substance is found in the oil from any part of
the body, particularly the great dorsal hump. Why the head should have
so huge a quantity of this fluid contained in it is a mystery, the only
supposition concerning its use being that its very low specific gravity
brings the vast mass much more quickly to the surface than would
otherwise be the case, and brings it up too in such a position that the
spiracle or blow-hole is the first portion of the whale to break water.
This substance has nothing in it of the nature of brain matter--the
brains are quite small in proportion to the size of the creature--but
it has been held, in view of the high intelligence shown by the
whales and seals, all of which are noted for their apparent paucity
of brain, that this thought or intelligence matter is distributed
over the different nerve centres, or to put it more colloquially, the
creature has, like the telephone system in a large town, several local
exchanges, as well as one central exchange for the transaction of
general business.
And in the same way it has been supposed that the whales, huge as
they are, cannot possibly contain sufficient air for the needs of the
creatures during the prolonged period--often nearly an hour--during
which they remain under water, since they have no other means of
aerating the blood whatever. So it has been assumed that in some
mysterious way the vital principle of the air, oxygen, is in some
way secreted during the period that the whale is on the surface, a
supposition which is somewhat supported by the fact that the whale upon
coming to the surface must make so many respirations, always the same
in number, before he can seek the depths again, which would point to
some process going on in addition to ordinary breathing. Also it would
certainly be impossible for him to sink if he inflated himself, as it
were, by shipping a great reservoir full of air.
But this is probably enough of whale anatomy for one chapter, so I will
leave the subject for a while, merely recording that the captain’s most
sanguine expectations were fulfilled, the whale yielding one hundred
and sixty barrels or sixteen tons of oil and spermaceti, which at the
then high market-price of the day, £108 per ton, made the handsome
sum of over seventeen hundred pounds for less than a week’s work. Of
course the long spells of inaction and the heavy outlay as well as
upkeep must be borne in mind, and I do not suggest that the great game
was ever in the nature of a gold mine, only that when a monster like
the one we have just tried out was obtained he made a very considerable
addition to the profits of the voyage.
All the oil having been run down, and the lavish application of lye and
sand to the decks and paintwork having made the ship look her usual
smart self, the monotonous old routine began again, but for our hero
at least its monotony was a thing of the past. For one thing he began
on his bundle of books, only reading a very little at a time at first,
but gradually getting absorbed in them and reading on to the great
loss of his sleep. But oh, to be able to read like him, to drink with
an entirely unsophisticated thirst at the fountain of good literature
believing every word as if it were directly inspired! Of course he read
his Bible as he had always done, from a genuine love of it and a full
appreciation of its living histories, not at all as a religious duty,
but as with his wonderful memory he knew it nearly all by heart, it was
entirely delightful to him to get hold of something fresh.
At last his chief, Merritt, said to him one night, with just the
slightest shade of grievance in his voice, “’Pears to me you’re mighty
busy these days, too busy to have a yam even. What ’yer doin’ anyhow
with yer nose in a book all the time?”
For a moment the idea of the extremely taciturn Merritt wanting a yam
almost made C. B. smile, but he suppressed the impulse and replied
apologetically--
“I’m afraid I’ve been a bit selfish of late, but the fact is I’ve just
found my way into a new world. I never knew how much there was in
books before, and I forget everything else but the people that seem to
be all alive before me, doing and saying things that I never dreamed
of before. You see, I’ve missed very much the long talks and pleasant
society that I’ve been used to all my life till I came here, for no
one here seemed to care about anything that I like, and I can’t listen
to their yarns at all: they’re all dreadful to me because of the bad
language.”
Merritt looked at him keenly for the space of a minute, and then said
as if thinking aloud, “I wonder what Pepe thinks of ye now since you
saved his life. Don’t seem overnabove thankful ’s far ’s I can see.
Spoke t’ him yet?”
C. B. flushed dark red as he replied, “Yes, I asked him the next day
if I could do anything for him, and I found him as bitter as ever. He
knows all about the business--how, I don’t know, but he does--and he
seems to hate me worse for it. What it means I don’t understand, but I
can’t alter it, and so I must let him go his own way.”
“I know,” grunted Merritt; “he’s a bad man, eaten up with jealousy of
you. If you’d a ben a no ’count greenie that couldn’t keep your end
up, an’ had to knuckle down to him in the half deck same as his other
cronies do or did, you wouldn’t had no trouble with him. I got no use
for men like him except to make oil, for he’s a pretty fair average
whaleman--I’m not denying that.
“But what I like about you is that you’re not only a good whaleman, but
you’re a good man. An’ now I want to tell you somethin’. I ben achin’
to get it off my chest for a long time past, ever since I took such a
shine t’ ye at the first lowerin’. I told yer I had a chum once, didn’t
I? Yes; well, I picked him up on the beach at the Bay of Islands.
He’d swum ashore from the _Guidin’ Light_, a whaleship that had the
reputation in her day of being the worst of all the bad ships that ever
went a spoutin’. He was pretty desperate, but he knew enough not to try
and skip while she was anchor: the standin’ twenty dollars reward would
ha’ put every Maori in the neighbourhood on his track in a fluke-twist.
So he waited till she was under weigh, and then when she was well off
the heads he slipped down a rope and put for shore.
“Well, he’d fetched round to Russell, an’, mind I’m telling ye, they
were pretty hard crowd there those days, so if a poor devil had no
money he stood a gaudy chance of starvin’. Well, I was in a good homely
ship, the _Mornin’ Star_, the skipper’s boat-header at that, an’ we
come into the Bay of Islan’s to wood and water up an’ give liberty as
usual. I come ashore with the skipper as soon as the kellick was down,
and while he was up at the store I strolled along the beach an’ I finds
Dick, the chap I’m talkin’ about, lyin’ on the sand half dead. I gives
him a kick just to let him know he was liable for a sunstroke, and he
gets up halfway and looks at me just like a dog I had once. That was
enough for me. I gets him up, takes him to old Rowsell’s store, and
fills him full of good grub an’ beer, and then when the skipper come
along I puts in a word fer him an’ he’s taken aboard.
“We happened to be a couple of hands short, so the old man wasn’t sorry
to have him, and I--well, I don’t know what it could ha’ been, but I
got so fond of that fellow you can’t think. When he got into decent
rig, and had two or three square meals, he was a different chap, quite
handsome and a regular Jim Dandy. He was a white man too, some sort of
an Englishman I guess, an’ he could talk like a hull box o’ books. We
was only about nine months out from New Bedford when he came aboard,
an’ before another three months he’d so twisted himself around me, one
that had never had a pet before since I first knew myself, that I’d
ha’ died for him. He was after oarsman in my boat an’ smart too, but,
though I wouldn’t see it then, he was a coward an’ a sneak of the worst
kind. I was in hot water the whole time takin’ his part, for he was
always in rows, an’ used to run to me like a kid. I think I liked him
all the more for that, an’ beside a row has always ben a sort o’ tonic
to me.
“Looking back now I can’t understand the hold that fellow had over me,
for he was always playing some dirty trick or another, not on me, but
other fellows, an’ I had to get him out o’ them. An’ if ever I went
for him real angry, he could always salve me over in a few minutes
with that soapy tongue of his. At last I found him out. We went into
Callao, an’ it was the days when shanghaiing was carried on wuss there
than anywhere else. No one was allowed out of the ship except on such
business as takin’ the skipper ashore, an’ then we was forbid to leave
the boat. But he had ben there before, an’ knew Buck Murphy, the big
shanghai boss, who used ter come down on the quay an’ yam with him
very quiet. One afternoon while we was waitin’ for the skipper, Dick
persuades me to come up to a house not above two ships’ lengths away
an’ have a drink with him, bringin’ two hands out of the boat with us
and leavin’ a Kanaka in charge. It was only to be for a minute.
“Even t’ this day I don’t know what made me go. I knew better, o’
course, an’ I never did care much fer drink anyway. But that fellow
could make me do anythin’ he liked, I believe, an’, so I went, like a
silly goat as I was. I smelt somehow that all wasn’t right when I got
in, for there was as tough a lookin’ crowd as ever I see sittin’ about,
an’ half of ’em looked ready to begin on anybody they didn’t sorter
just cotton to. But I had my drink, three fingers of aguardiente, an’
so did the two chaps as was with us, two Yanks they was. Just as I puts
my glass down I sees Dick lookin’ at me curious, an’ in that moment I
knew that he had sold me. I never want to feel like that again. The
bottom seemed to have fell out of everything. I jumped up, knockin’
the big table over; I heard an’ awful crashin’ an’ bangin’ an’, then
nothin’.
“When I came to agen I was bein’ hauled along a deck by the neck, an’ I
was feelin’ wuss nor ever I had felt in my life. I heard somebody yell
‘up with ye, dirt; an’ loose that maintgallant s’l,’ an’ I started,
the sailor in me, I s’pose. But as I got on the sheer pole I looked
around, for my head was gettin’ clearer, and there, not more’n a mile
away was the _Mornin’ Star_ at anchor, an’ we flyin’ past her at the
rate o’ knots before a fresh breeze under topsails fore and aft. Just
one look was enough for me. I slued round and dived, comin’ up headin’
straight for the ole ship. And the skunk in charge o’ that hooker that
I’d ben shanghaied into stood on his poop an’ took pot shots at me from
a Winchester as long as he could see me. But he dassent heave to where
he was ’n I played the ole islan’ game on him, boy, long swim under
water, bob up an’ a guts full of air, then down agen. Why, I’d run the
blockade of forty ships if only the water was rough enough.
“Presently the old man sees me, he’d ben disturbed by the noise o’ the
shootin’, an’, as he afterwards told me, he ups with his glass an’
makes out who it was. An’ then he was that excited he couldn’t keep
still; but he had too much savvy to lower a boat until the ship that
I’d jumped from was outer gunshot. Then they come an’ picked me up. I
was feelin’ real good, for that swim had put new life inter me. When
I got aboard the ole man was that delighted t’ see me I thought he’d
a cried, an’ I was some glad t’ get back. I told him all I knew, an’
he says, ‘Why that chum o’ yours is wuss an’ what even I thought him,
an’ you know I never did like him. He got down inter my cabin that day
somehow and stole about two hundred dollars in money an’ some bits o’
julery as I prized, an’ I hain’t heard nothin’ of him since.’
“I didn’t say nothin’, I couldn’t, but I reckoned that if ever I met
Mr. Dick agen, no matter where or how, it’d be his last meetin’ with
anybody.
“I went an’ had a good sleep an’ a feed, an’ that night as soon as it
was dark I goes t’ the skipper an’ says I: ‘I’m goin’ ashore, sir,
with your permission, but I don’t want no boat, I’ll swim.’ He knew
me an’ he says, ‘Well, if you must you must. But I don’t want t’ lose
ye, try an’ get back agen.’ An’ I says, ‘You bet I’ll be back before
mornin’.’ So I puts my ole bowie in my belt, slips down over the side,
an’ puts for the shore. It was only a couple o’ miles off, so I was
as fresh as paint when I lands, an’ then I starts off on my search. I
knew, of course, that my joker calc’lated on me bein’ a good many miles
away by this time, so I didn’t dodge about, I went straight to the rum
mill he’d lured me to. An’ when I shoved open the door, there he is, a
settin’ with a big drink afore him, and Buck Murphy with two other boys
o’ the same class sittin’ around with cards in their hands. They were
playin’ bluff.
“I wasn’t: I made one jump at him like a cougar. I knew I could a
had him out o’ the middle of a regiment of soldiers, an’ as I went I
knocked the kerosine lamp over that was on the table so that the only
light that there was came from the burnin’ ile lappin’ around the
wooden shanty. I got him by the neck, with my left hand. With the other
I pulls my knife an’ as I choked him I felt for anythin’ touchin’ me
an’ cut at it. The flame burst up high an’ showed me the rest o’ the
crowd clearin’, so I pulls up quickly an’ has a good look at him. I
thought he was dead, but I makes sure an’ then has a peep round. An’ in
the corner of the room I sees a big hole. Bein’ as clear in my mind as
I am now I makes a breach for it, guessin’ what it was, drops through
it an’ finds myself in the harbour which was all right.
“So I takes a little journey, lands and get my bearin’s on, then
paddles off quietly to the ship feelin’ quite easy in my mind. I got
aboard agen at midnight, and was very near shot by the mate who, seein’
me climb inboard in the dark, thought I was some pirate or another. I
jollied him a bit about his shootin’, not much, because I ain’t big on
the shoot myself, then turned in, tellin’ him I’d give the cuffer t’
the skipper in the mornin’.
“I was middlin’ tired, an’ I had to be called at two bells, an’ as
soon as I come on deck the ole man says, ‘So you got back all right,
Merritt?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘an’ I’ve squared the account. Mister
Dick won’t sell any more men, his pleasant little game is stopped for
a full due.’ ‘Why, you surely didn’t kill him, did you, Merritt?’
says he, holdin’ up both han’s as if he was scared like. ‘Well, if I
didn’t,’ says I, ‘it’s a funny thing to me. But I don’t think there’s
much doubt about it;’ an’ I went on to give him the story. Would you
believe it, he looked at me as if I hurt his eyesight, an’ from that
out I don’t think he really ever liked me. Some men is like that, ye
know. They know you’ve done the right thing, yet they hate ye for doin’
it. But that didn’t trouble me any.”
All through the long recital C. B. had listened with mingled feelings
of admiration and horror, and when Merritt had finished he held out his
hand and said--
“Mr. Merritt, I feel that your deed was terrible, but I can’t find it
in my heart to blame you, except that you acted in revenge. But that
man was a danger and needed killing, I know, and I feel that you were
only the instrument in doing a necessary work. I couldn’t think any
less of you, for I believe you acted according to the light you had,
and anyhow I love and admire you.”