I
It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and from her uneasy anchorage in
the pass the German man-of-war struck the time, four bells. Overhead the
sun shone fiercely through a mist of fire; below, the bay gave back a
dancing glare; on the outer reef the long breakers foamed and tumbled,
white as far as the eye could reach. From his perch beneath the bows of
the _Northern Light_ a sailor, paint brush in hand, was slowly wearing
out the day--a brown-bearded, straight-nosed, handsome man of thirty,
his red shirt open to the waist, his bare arms stained with the
drippings of his brush. Astride of his plank, which hung suspended in
midair by a block and tackle at either end, the seaman faced the task
that seemed to have no end. For a week he had been at it, patch by
patch, working his way round the bark, while the bells had struck on the
man-of-war and the sun had risen and set.
As he swept his brush across the blistered wall in front of him, he
wondered moodily whether fate had nothing more in store for him than
this. Was he to finish as he had begun, a common sailor, doing forever
what others bade him?--painting other people's ships, pulling other
people's ropes, clinging at night on other people's yards to take in
other people's sails, facing tempests and squalls, reefs, lee shores,
and all the vicissitudes of the deep--for others! He laid down the brush
beside him, and in a somber reverie looked toward Apia. His eyes
scarcely took in the bigger buildings that were dotted here and there
round the circumference of the beach: the stone cathedral, the great
yellow warehouses of the Firm, the two hotels, the consulates, churches,
and stores. What attracted him, what held him in a sort of spell, were
the lesser roofs showing through the green of trees and gardens, the
tiny cottages on the outskirts of the town, or others still farther
back, scattered and solitary on the wooded hills. Was he, then, never to
possess a house of his own nor a yard of earth? Was the sea, the
accursed sea, to claim him till he died? What had he done, he asked
himself, that others drew all the prizes and left him but the
blanks--that they should stay ashore and prosper--that they should marry
and have children round them, while he drudged at sea alone? Those
traders, clerks, saloon-keepers, those mechanics, carpenters,
shipwrights, smiths, and stevedores, how he envied them! envied their
houses, their wives, their children, their gardens, their soft and
comfortable lives, everything that made them so different from himself;
he, the outcast, with no home but his musty bunk; they, the poorest,
kings beside him.
It was the sea, he said to himself--the sea, that took all and gave
nothing; the sea, mother of all injustice and misery; the sea, whose
service was to tie oneself to the devil's tail and whisk forever about
the world, sweating in doldrums, freezing in snow squalls, hanging on to
lashing yards, blinded, soaked, benumbed, the gale above, death below.
And yet even here there were some, no better indeed than he, who grasped
the meager prizes that even the sea itself could not withhold; prizes
that he could never hope to touch--the command of ships, the right to
tread the quarter-deck, the handle to one's name. How did they do it,
these favored ones of fortune? How did Hansen, that stinking Dutchman,
ever rise to be the master of the _Northern Light_?--and that swine
Bates, the mate, who already had the promise of a ship?--and Knight, the
second mate, a boy but twenty-two, yet whose foot was even now on the
upward ladder.
"Jack Wilson," said the sailor to himself, "Jack Wilson, you're a fool!"
Having several times delivered himself of this sentiment, always with an
increasing heartiness of self-contempt, he slapped on some more paint
and began to whistle. But the whistle died away again, for a little
house was peeping through the trees at him, and he remembered how he had
seen it from the road, embowered in flowers, with the river flowing at
its foot, a cool, snug, inviting little house, with green blinds, a
pigeon cote, and a flight of steps descending to the bathing pool. How
happy, no doubt, that fellar that owned it--a fellar with a regular job;
a wife, maybe, and kids to swing in that there contraption under the
mango; a fellar, as like as not, no better than himself; and yet----!
"Jack," he said huskily to himself, "how the hell have you missed it
all?"
"Women and drink," came the answer. "Women and drink, Jack, my boy."
In the course of his long and wandering life how often had he been paid
off; how often had he felt his pockets heavy with the gold so arduously
toiled for; how often had he vowed to himself that this time he would
keep it! And had he kept it? Never!
There had been windfalls, too; money that had come easily; double
handfuls of money that he had tossed in the air like a child, to see it
glitter. Sixteen hundred dollars from a lucky whaling cruise; seven
hundred dollars, his share for salvaging the derelict steamer _Shore
Ditch_; sixty-six pounds eight and fourpence that the passengers had
raised for him when he saved the girl at Durban--that, and a gold medal,
and a fancy certificate with the British and American flags intertwined.
That medal! It had gone for a round of drinks and five dollars for a
wench. And the fancy certificate! Thunder! he had left it on the
_Huascar_ when he had taken leg-bail of the Chilanean navy.
"Women and drink, Jack Wilson!"
That's where it has gone, every dollar of it. To the sharks and
bloodsuckers of seaport towns; to the tawdry sisterhood that spun their
nets for Jack ashore; to those women that wheedled the seaman's last
cent, and laughed to see him starving in the streets. It was for these
he worked, then! It was for these he was even this minute painting the
bloody bark; for rumsellers and harlots! He repeated the words to
himself as he looked at his torn nails and blackened hands. For
these--by God, for these! He felt within himself the welling of a great
resolution, of a great revolt. He would reform. He would save his money.
He would live straight. When they were paid off at Portland there should
be two hundred dollars coming to him--two hundred dollars, more or less.
He would put it in the bank, and get a shakedown in one of them model
lodging houses. He would turn in at night with "Jesus, lover of my soul"
in worsted work above his blessed head, and in the morning he would
plank down his fifteen cents and begin the day with gospel tea. He would
be a man! Yes, sirree, a man! Not a hog!
Then in his mind's eye he saw himself rolling down the street, a girl on
either arm, the gaslights dancing in his tipsy head. He would meet a
shipmate and drop in somewhere for a drink; another shipmate and another
drink; and then, the party growing as it went, a general adjournment to
one of them hurdy-gurdies. Here they would dance and drink and sing and
whoop it up like hell, till--till--Yes, that's what would happen. That's
what always happened. Them good resolutions always ended that way--in
smoke. He had made them, man and boy, these fourteen years. He would
make them, he supposed, until the day he died. And keep them? No; he was
a hog; he would go on like a hog; he would die a hog--a durned, low,
dirty, contemptible hog!
He spat in the water to emphasize his self-disgust, cursed the infernal
sun, and then, dipping into the pot again, continued his job.
Turning round to rest his arms, he perceived, beneath the deep shade of
the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy
settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that
was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to
it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a
capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern
sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig
in her arms. Strange packages of _tapa_ cloth were carried out; bundles
of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge stone for an anchor,
a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage.
These were all thrown in, and stored with noisy good-humor and a dozen
different readjustments. The baby, in turn, was given the bow, the
stern, the center, as though nothing would satisfy it. A pig broke loose
and was hilariously recaptured. A dejected, thin person, somewhat past
middle years, in what seemed no costume but his native skin, retired
shoreward with the parrakeet. An old chief, his head white with lime,
after a prolonged nose-rubbing with those on shore, marched out to the
boat, carrying an umbrella above his stately head. There were more
farewells in shallow water, more running to and fro; a brief
reappearance of the undecided parrakeet. The young men took their places
at the thwarts, the old chief settled the tiller on the rudder head, the
women, girls, and children crowded in wherever they could, and then,
amid shouts and cheers, the paddles dipped and the boat moved slowly
seaward.
Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown
savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a
white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the
heights of the world's ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously,
as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen
to the dip of the paddles; hear the mellow chorus that times the
rowers' strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling!
His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life!
What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at _them_!
They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to
sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization--hell! He would give
all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle
with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a
durned Kanaka!
The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark
on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed
in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the
accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the
women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed
with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the
other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect
and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his
comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the
white water splashing under their bow.
Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great Caesar! he
knew that old fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the
Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and
shaking her hand to him, that was little Fetuao, the daughter, who used
to look at him so shyly and laugh when she met his eyes; little Fetuao,
that he had given the dominoes to, and that dress from the Dutch firm,
and them beads! Fetuao! Wasn't she pretty as she stood there in the boat
calling to him; so slim and straight, with her splendid hair flying in
the wind, and her brown bosom open to the sun! Pretty! My God, she was a
spanking beauty, that girl!
The boat came to a stop beneath him; the paddles backed, and Wilson,
with some embarrassment, received the stare of the whole party below.
"Poor white mans work all time!" exclaimed Fetuao, standing on a thwart
to raise her head to the level of his foot.
"Like hell!" said Jack.
"Kanaka more better," said the girl.
"A damn sight!" agreed Jack.
"Jack," said Fetuao, "I go home now, and never see you no more. Good-by,
Jack!"
She raised her little hand, which the sailor clasped in his big one. Her
tender, troubled eyes met his own; her mouth quivered; her fingers
tightened on his palm.
"Jack," she said suddenly, "you come along us, Jack."
"Do you mean it, puss?" he said eagerly. "Do you mean it?"
"Oh, Jack, you come, too," she pleaded.
"You come--that's good!" cried the old chief.
Jack, in a dream, looked above him and met the sour glances of Hansen
and Bates, whom the noise had brought to the ship's rail; then he looked
below into the girlish face upraised to his. For better or worse, his
resolution was taken. They might keep his chest; they might keep his
wages; their stinking ship might sink or swim for all he cared. They
were welcome to what Jack Wilson left behind him, for Jack Wilson at
last was FREE! He dropped lightly into the boat beside Fetuao, and with
one arm around her naked waist he shouted to the natives to shove off.
"_Fo'e!_" cried the chief, and the paddles moved again.
Above their heads the astounded captain clutched the arm of the
astounded mate, and pointed wildly after the deserter.
"---- ----!" exclaimed Hansen.
"The ---- ---- ---- ----!" roared Bates.