Another day passed, then two. Before Wilbur knew it he had settled
himself to his new life, and woke one morning to the realization that
he was positively enjoying himself. Daily the weather grew warmer. The
fifth day out from San Francisco it was actually hot. The pitch grew
soft in the “Bertha Millner's” deck seams, the masts sweated resin.
The Chinamen went about the decks wearing but their jeans and blouses.
Kitchell had long since abandoned his coat and vest. Wilbur's oilskins
became intolerable, and he was at last constrained to trade his
pocket-knife to Charlie for a suit of jeans and wicker sandals, such as
the coolies wore--and odd enough he looked in them.
The Captain instructed him in steering, and even promised to show him
the use of the sextant and how to take an observation in the fake short
and easy coasting style of navigation. Furthermore, he showed him how to
read the log and the manner of keeping the dead reckoning.
During most of his watches Wilbur was engaged in painting the inside
of the cabin, door panels, lintels, and the few scattered moldings; and
toward the middle of the first week out, when the “Bertha Millner”
was in the latitude of Point Conception, he and three Chinamen, under
Kitchell's directions, ratlined down the forerigging and affixed the
crow's nest upon the for'mast. The next morning, during Charlie's watch
on deck, a Chinaman was sent up into the crow's nest, and from that time
on there was always a lookout maintained from the masthead.
More than once Wilbur looked around him at the empty coruscating indigo
of the ocean floor, wondering at the necessity of the lookout, and
finally expressed his curiosity to Kitchell. The Captain had now taken
not a little to Wilbur; at first for the sake of a white man's company,
and afterward because he began to place a certain vague reliance upon
Wilbur's judgment. Kitchell had reemarked as how he had brains.
“Well, you see, son,” Kitchell had explained to Wilbur, “os-tensiblee
we are after shark-liver oil--and so we are; but also we are on any lay
that turns up; ready for any game, from wrecking to barratry. Strike
me, if I haven't thought of scuttling the dough-dish for her insoorance.
There's regular trade, son, to be done in ships, and then there's
pickin's an' pickin's an' pickin's. Lord, the ocean's rich with
pickin's. Do you know there's millions made out of the day-bree and
refuse of a big city? How about an ocean's day-bree, just chew on that
notion a turn; an' as fur a lookout, lemmee tell you, son, cast your
eye out yon,” and he swept the sea with a forearm; “nothin', hey, so it
looks, but lemmee tell you, son, there ain't no manner of place on
the ball of dirt where you're likely to run up afoul of so many
things--unexpected things--as at sea. When you're clear o' land lay to
this here pree-cep', 'A million to one on the unexpected.'”
The next day fell almost dead calm. The hale, lusty-lunged nor'wester
that had snorted them forth from the Golden Gate had lapsed to a zephyr,
the schooner rolled lazily southward with the leisurely nonchalance of
a grazing ox. At noon, just after dinner, a few cat's-paws curdled the
milky-blue whiteness of the glassy surface, and the water once more
began to talk beneath the bow-sprit. It was very hot. The sun spun
silently like a spinning brass discus over the mainmast. On the fo'c'sle
head the Chinamen were asleep or smoking opium. It was Charlie's watch.
Kitchell dozed in his hammock in the shadow of the mainsheet. Wilbur was
below tinkering with his paint-pot about the cabin. The stillness was
profound. It was the stillness of the summer sea at high noon.
The lookout in the crow's nest broke the quiet.
“Hy-yah, hy-yah!” he cried, leaning from the barrel and calling through
an arched palm. “Hy-yah, one two, plenty, many tortle, topside, wattah;
hy-yah, all-same tortle.”
“Hello, hello!” cried the Captain, rolling from his hammock. “Turtle?
Where-away?”
“I tink-um 'bout quallah mile, mebbee, four-piecee tortle all-same
weatha bow.”
“Turtle, hey? Down y'r wheel, Jim, haul y'r jib to win'ward,” he
commanded the man at the wheel; then to the men forward: “Get the dory
overboard. Son, Charlie, and you, Wing, tumble in. Wake up now and see
you stay so.”
The dory was swung over the side, and the men dropped into her and
took their places at the oars. “Give way,” cried the Captain, settling
himself in the bow with the gaff in his hand. “Hey, Jim!” he shouted to
the lookout far above, “hey, lay our course for us.” The lookout nodded,
the oars fell, and the dory shot forward in the direction indicated by
the lookout.
“Kin you row, son? asked Kitchell, with sudden suspicion. Wilbur smiled.
“You ask Charlie and Wing to ship their oars and give me a pair.” The
Captain complied, hesitating.
“Now, what,” he said grimly, “now, what do you think you're going to do,
sonny?”
“I'm going to show you the Bob Cook stroke we used in our boat in '95,
when we beat Harvard,” answered Wilbur.
Kitchell gazed doubtfully at the first few strokes, then with growing
interest watched the tremendous reach, the powerful knee-drive, the
swing, the easy catch, and the perfect recover. The dory was cutting the
water like a gasoline launch, and between strokes there was the least
possible diminishing of the speed.
“I'm a bit out of form just now,” remarked Wilbur, “and I'm used to
the sliding seat; but I guess it'll do.” Kitchell glanced at the human
machine that once was No. 5 in the Yale boat and then at the water
hissing from the dory's bows. “My Gawd!” he said, under his breath.
He spat over the bows and sucked the nicotine from his mustache,
thoughtfully.
“I ree-marked,” he observed, “as how you had brains, my son.”
A few minutes later the Captain, who was standing in the dory's bow and
alternately conning the ocean's surface and looking back to the Chinaman
standing on the schooner's masthead, uttered an exclamation:
“Steady, ship your oars, quiet now, quiet, you damn fools! We're right
on 'em--four, by Gawd, an' big as dinin' tables!”
The oars were shipped. The dory's speed dwindled. “Out your paddles, sit
on the gun'l, and paddle ee-asy.” The hands obeyed. The Captain's voice
dropped to a whisper. His back was toward them and he gestured with one
free hand. Looking out over the water from his seat on the gun'l, Wilbur
could make out a round, greenish mass like a patch of floating seaweed,
just under the surface, some sixty yards ahead.
“Easy sta'board,” whispered the Captain under his elbow. “Go ahead,
port; e-e-easy all, steady, steady.”
The affair began to assume the intensity of a little drama--a little
drama of midocean. In spite of himself, Wilbur was excited. He even
found occasion to observe that the life was not so bad, after all. This
was as good fun as stalking deer. The dory moved forward by inches.
Kitchell's whisper was as faint as a dying infant's: “Steady all,
s-stead-ee, sh-stead--”
He lunged forward sharply with the gaff, and shouted aloud: “I got
him--grab holt his tail flippers, you fool swabs; grab holt quick--don't
you leggo--got him there, Charlie? If he gets away, you swine, I'll rip
y' open with the gaff--heave now--heave--there--there--soh, stand clear
his nippers. Strike me! he's a whacker. I thought he was going to get
away. Saw me just as I swung the gaff, an' ducked his nut.”
Over the side, bundled without ceremony into the boat, clawing,
thrashing, clattering, and blowing like the exhaust of a donkey-engine,
tumbled the great green turtle, his wet, green shield of shell three
feet from edge to edge, the gaff firmly transfixed in his body, just
under the fore-flipper. From under his shell protruded his snake-like
head and neck, withered like that of an old man. He was waving his head
from side to side, the jaws snapping like a snapped silk handkerchief.
Kitchell thrust him away with a paddle. The turtle craned his neck, and
catching the bit of wood in his jaw, bit it in two in a single grip.
“I tol' you so, I tol' you to stand clear his snapper. If that had been
your shin now, eh? Hello, what's that?”
Faintly across the water came a prolonged hallooing from the schooner.
Kitchell stood up in the dory, shading his eyes with his hat.
“What's biting 'em now?” he muttered, with the uneasiness of a captain
away from his ship. “Oughta left Charlie on board--or you, son. Who's
doin' that yellin', I can't make out.”
“Up in the crow's nest,” exclaimed Wilbur. “It's Jim, see, he's waving
his arms.”
“Well, whaduz he wave his dam' fool arms for?” growled Kitchell, angry
because something was going forward he did not understand.
“There, he's shouting again. Listen--I can't make out what he's
yelling.”
“He'll yell to a different pipe when I get my grip of him. I'll twist
the head of that swab till he'll have to walk back'ard to see where
he's goin'. Whaduz he wave his arms for--whaduz he yell like a dam'
philly-loo bird for? What's him say, Charlie?”
“Jim heap sing, no can tell. Mebbee--tinkum sing, come back chop-chop.”
“We'll see. Oars out, men, give way. Now, son, put a little o' that Yale
stingo in the stroke.”
In the crow's nest Jim still yelled and waved like one distraught, while
the dory returned at a smart clip toward the schooner. Kitchell lathered
with fury.
“Oh-h,” he murmured softly through his gritted teeth. “Jess lemmee lay
mee two hands afoul of you wunst, you gibbering, yellow philly-loo
bird, believe me, you'll dance. Shut up!” he roared; “shut up, you crazy
do-do, ain't we coming fast as we can?”
The dory bumped alongside, and the Captain was over the rail like
quicksilver. The hands were all in the bow, looking and pointing to the
west. Jim slid down the ratlines, bubbling over with suppressed news.
Before his feet had touched the deck Kitchell had kicked him into the
stays again, fulminating blasphemies.
“Sing!” he shouted, as the Chinaman clambered away like a bewildered
ape; “sing a little more. I would if I were you. Why don't you sing and
wave, you dam' fool philly-loo bird?”
“Yas, sah,” answered the coolie.
“What you yell for? Charlie, ask him whaffo him sing.”
“I tink-um ship,” answered Charlie calmly, looking out over the
starboard quarter.
“Ship!”
“Him velly sick,” hazarded the Chinaman from the ratlines, adding a
sentence in Chinese to Charlie.
“He says he tink-um ship sick, all same; ask um something--ship velly
sick.”
By this time the Captain, Wilbur, and all on board could plainly
make out a sail some eight miles off the starboard bow. Even at that
distance, and to eyes so inexperienced as those of Wilbur, it needed but
a glance to know that something was wrong with her. It was not that she
failed to ride the waves with even keel, it was not that her rigging was
in disarray, nor that her sails were disordered. Her distance was too
great to make out such details. But in precisely the same manner as a
trained physician glances at a doomed patient, and from that indefinable
look in the face of him and the eyes of him pronounces the verdict
“death,” so Kitchell took in the stranger with a single comprehensive
glance, and exclaimed:
“Wreck!”
“Yas, sah. I tink-um velly sick.”
“Oh, go to 'll, or go below and fetch up my glass--hustle!”
The glass was brought. “Son,” exclaimed Kitchell--“where is that man
with the brains? Son, come aloft here with me.” The two clambered up the
ratlines to the crow's nest. Kitchell adjusted the glass.
“She's a bark,” he muttered, “iron built--about seven hundred tons,
I guess--in distress. There's her ensign upside down at the
mizz'nhead--looks like Norway--an' her distress signals on the spanker
gaff. Take a blink at her, son--what do you make her out? Lord, she's
ridin' high.”
Wilbur took the glass, catching the stranger after several clumsy
attempts. She was, as Captain Kitchell had announced, a bark, and, to
judge by her flag, evidently Norwegian.
“How she rolls!” muttered Wilbur.
“That's what I can't make out,” answered Kitchell. “A bark such as she
ain't ought to roll thata way; her ballast'd steady her.”
“What's the flags on that boom aft--one's red and white and
square-shaped, and the other's the same color, only swallow-tail in
shape?”
“That's H. B., meanin: 'I am in need of assistance.'”
“Well, where's the crew? I don't see anybody on board.”
“Oh, they're there right enough.”
“Then they're pretty well concealed about the premises,” turned Wilbur,
as he passed the glass to the Captain.
“She does seem kinda empty,” said the Captain in a moment, with a sudden
show of interest that Wilbur failed to understand.
“An' where's her boats?” continued Kitchell. “I don't just quite make
out any boats at all.” There was a long silence.
“Seems to be a sort of haze over her,” observed Wilbur.
“I noticed that, air kinda quivers oily-like. No boats, no boats--an'
I can't see anybody aboard.” Suddenly Kitchell lowered the glass and
turned to Wilbur. He was a different man. There was a new shine in
his eyes, a wicked line appeared over the nose, the jaw grew salient,
prognathous.
“Son,” he exclaimed, gimleting Wilbur with his contracted eyes; “I have
reemarked as how you had brains. I kin fool the coolies, but I can't
fool you. It looks to me as if that bark yonder was a derelict; an' do
you know what that means to us? Chaw on it a turn.”
“A derelict?”
“If there's a crew on board they're concealed from the public gaze--an'
where are the boats then? I figger she's an abandoned derelict. Do you
know what that means for us--for you and I? It means,” and gripping
Wilbur by the shoulders, he spoke the word into his face with a savage
intensity. “It means salvage, do you savvy?--salvage, salvage. Do you
figger what salvage on a seven-hundred-tonner would come to? Well, just
lemmee drop it into your think tank, an' lay to what I say. It's all the
ways from fifty to seventy thousand dollars, whatever her cargo is; call
it sixty thousand--thirty thou' apiece. Oh, I don't know!” he exclaimed,
lapsing to landman's slang. “Wha'd I say about a million to one on the
unexpected at sea?”
“Thirty thousand!” exclaimed Wilbur, without thought as yet.
“Now y'r singin' songs,” cried the Captain. “Listen to me, son,” he went
on, rapidly shutting up the glass and thrusting it back in the case;
“my name's Kitchell, and I'm hog right through.” He emphasized the words
with a leveled forefinger, his eyes flashing. “H--O--G spells very truly
yours, Alvinza Kitchell--ninety-nine swine an' me make a hundred swine.
I'm a shoat with both feet in the trough, first, last, an' always.
If that bark's abandoned, an' I says she is, she's ours. I'm out for
anything that there's stuff in. I guess I'm more of a beach-comber by
nature than anything else. If she's abandoned she belongs to us. To 'll
with this coolie game. We'll go beach-combin', you and I. We'll board
that bark and work her into the nearest port--San Diego, I guess--and
get the salvage on her if we have to swim in her. Are you with me?” he
held out his hand. The man was positively trembling from head to
heel. It was impossible to resist the excitement of the situation, its
novelty--the high crow's nest of the schooner, the keen salt air, the
Chinamen grouped far below, the indigo of the warm ocean, and out yonder
the forsaken derelict, rolling her light hull till the garboard streak
flashed in the sun.
“Well, of course, I'm with you, Cap,” exclaimed Wilbur, gripping
Kitchell's hand. “When there's thirty thousand to be had for the asking
I guess I'm a 'na'chel bawn' beach-comber myself.”
“Now, nothing about this to the coolies.”
“But how will you make out with your owners, the Six Companies? Aren't
you bound to bring the 'Bertha' in?”
“Rot my owners!” exclaimed Kitchell. “I ain't a skipper of no oil-boat
any longer. I'm a beach-comber.” He fixed the wallowing bark with
glistening eyes. “Gawd strike me,” he murmured, “ain't she a daisy? It's
a little Klondike. Come on, son.”
The two went down the ratlines, and Kitchell ordered a couple of the
hands into the dory that had been rowing astern. He and Wilbur followed.
Charlie was left on board, with directions to lay the schooner to. The
dory flew over the water, Wilbur setting the stroke. In a few moments
she was well up with the bark. Though a larger boat than the “Bertha
Millner,” she was rolling in lamentable fashion, and every laboring
heave showed her bottom incrusted with barnacles and seaweed.
Her fore and main tops'ls and to'gallants'ls were set, as also were her
lower stays'ls and royals. But the braces seemed to have parted, and
the yards were swinging back and forth in their ties. The spanker was
brailed up, and the spanker boom thrashed idly over the poop as the bark
rolled and rolled and rolled. The mainmast was working in its shoe,
the rigging and backstays sagged. An air of abandonment, of unspeakable
loneliness, of abomination hung about her. Never had Wilbur seen
anything more utterly alone. Within three lengths the Captain rose in
his place and shouted:
“Bark ahoy!” There was no answer. Thrice he repeated the call, and
thrice the dismal thrashing of the spanker boom and the flapping of
the sails was the only answer. Kitchell turned to Wilbur in triumph. “I
guess she's ours,” he whispered. They were now close enough to make out
the bark's name upon her counter, “Lady Letty,” and Wilbur was in
the act of reading it aloud, when a huge brown dorsal fin, like the
triangular sail of a lugger, cut the water between the dory and the
bark.
“Shark!” said Kitchell; “and there's another!” he exclaimed in the next
instant, “and another! Strike me, the water's alive with 'em'! There's
a stiff on the bark, you can lay to that”; and at that, acting on some
strange impulse, he called again, “Bark ahoy!” There was no response.
The dory was now well up to the derelict, and pretty soon a prolonged
and vibratory hissing noise, strident, insistent, smote upon their ears.
“What's that?” exclaimed Wilbur, perplexed. The Captain shook his
head, and just then, as the bark rolled almost to her scuppers in their
direction, a glimpse of the deck was presented to their view. It was
only a glimpse, gone on the instant, as the bark rolled back to port,
but it was time enough for Wilbur and the Captain to note the parted
and open seams and the deck bulging, and in one corner blown up and
splintered.
The captain smote a thigh.
“Coal!” he cried. “Anthracite coal. The coal he't up and generated gas,
of course--no fire, y'understand, just gas--gas blew up the deck--no way
of stopping combustion. Naturally they had to cut for it. Smell the gas,
can't you? No wonder she's hissing--no wonder she rolled--cargo goes
off in gas--and what's to weigh her down? I was wondering what could 'a'
wrecked her in this weather. Lord, it's as plain as Billy-b'damn.”
The dory was alongside. Kitchell watched his chance, and as the bark
rolled down caught the mainyard-brace hanging in a bight over the
rail and swung himself to the deck. “Look sharp!” he called, as Wilbur
followed. “It won't do for you to fall among them shark, son. Just look
at the hundreds of 'em. There's a stiff on board, sure.”
Wilbur steadied himself on the swaying broken deck, choking against the
reek of coal-gas that hissed upward on every hand. The heat was almost
like a furnace. Everything metal was intolerable to the touch.
“She's abandoned, sure,” muttered the Captain. “Look,” and he pointed
to the empty chocks on the house and the severed lashings. “Oh, it's
a haul, son; it's a haul, an' you can lay to that. Now, then, cabin
first,” and he started aft.
But it was impossible to go into the cabin. The moment the door was
opened suffocating billows of gas rushed out and beat them back. On the
third trial the Captain staggered out, almost overcome with its volume.
“Can't get in there for a while yet,” he gasped, “but I saw the stiff
on the floor by the table; looks like the old man. He's spit his false
teeth out. I knew there was a stiff aboard.”
“Then there's more than one,” said Wilbur. “See there!” From behind
the wheel-box in the stern protruded a hand and forearm in an oilskin
sleeve.
Wilbur ran up, peered over the little space between the wheel and the
wheel-box, and looked straight into a pair of eyes--eyes that were
alive. Kitchell came up.
“One left, anyhow,” he muttered, looking over Wilbur's shoulder; “sailor
man, though; can't interfere with our salvage. The bark's derelict,
right enough. Shake him out of there, son; can't you see the lad's dotty
with the gas?”
Cramped into the narrow space of the wheel-box like a terrified hare in
a blind burrow was the figure of a young boy. So firmly was he wedged
into the corner that Kitchell had to kick down the box before he could
be reached. The boy spoke no word. Stupefied with the gas, he watched
them with vacant eyes.
Wilbur put a hand under the lad's arm and got him to his feet. He was
a tall, well-made fellow, with ruddy complexion and milk-blue eyes, and
was dressed, as if for heavy weather, in oilskins.
“Well, sonny, you've had a fine mess aboard here,” said Kitchell. The
boy--he might have been two and twenty--stared and frowned.
“Clean loco from the gas. Get him into the dory, son. I'll try this
bloody cabin again.”
Kitchell turned back and descended from the poop, and Wilbur, his arm
around the boy, followed. Kitchell was already out of hearing, and
Wilbur was bracing himself upon the rolling deck, steadying the young
fellow at his side, when the latter heaved a deep breath. His throat and
breast swelled. Wilbur stared sharply, with a muttered exclamation:
“My God, it's a girl!” he said.