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T H E C O L L E C T E D P O E M S
O F J O H N M A S E F I E L D
In One Volume. 750 pages.
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=S A R D H A R K E R=
=A NOVEL=
=By=
=JOHN MASEFIELD=
=L O N D O N=
=W I L L I A M H E I N E M A N N L T D .=
First Published 1924
_Printed in Great Britain by_
THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, ST. GILES’ WORKS, NORWICH
_=To=_
_=Isaline and Henry Philpot=_
SARD HARKER
PART ONE
Santa Barbara lies far to leeward, with a coast facing to the north and
east. It is the richest of the sugar countries. Plantations cover all
the lowland along its seven hundred miles of seaboard, then above the
lowland is foothill, covered with forest, rising to the Sierras of the
Three Kings, which make the country’s frontier.
The city of Santa Barbara lies at the angle of the coast in the bight of
a bay. The Old Town covers the southern, the New Town the northern horn
of the bay: in between are the docks and quays.
In the northern or New Town there is a plaza or square, called Of the
Martyrdoms. Until about thirty years ago, there was a block of
dwelling-houses on the western side of this square, which attracted the
notice of visitors. Though the other buildings in the square were gay or
smart, with flowers, colours and lights, these were always dingy, by
decree. If any asked why they were dingy, they were told that those were
the houses of the last sighs, “las casas de los sospiros ultimos,” and
that they dated from the time of the Troubles under Don Lopez, who was
Dictator de Santa Barbara from 1875 till 1887.
This Don Lopez de Meruel, called The Terrible, after nine years of
murder and cruelty, began a year of madness by decreeing that he should
be given divine honours in all the churches of the State. Finding
himself opposed by some of the clergy and by many of the hidalgos, he
seized the daughter of one of his richest landowners, Señorita Carlotta
de Leyva de San Jacinto, then on a visit to the capital, and ordered her
to pray to him while he sat throned in public on the high altar of the
mission church. On her refusal, he ordered her to be enclosed in a house
of common prostitutes.
The mistress of this house, an Englishwoman known as Aunt Jennings,
refused to obey the order to receive her. “Miss Carlotta is a lady,” she
said, “and she does not come in here. And none but a dirty dog would
have thought of sending her. And as for praying to the dirty dog, Miss
Carlotta has done quite right. If he wants folk to pray to him, let him
come here, and my little Sunday school will give him all the pray he
wants with a wet rag off the dresser.”
When this was reported to Don Lopez, he ordered that Carlotta and Aunt
Jennings should be taken along the water-front by the hangman as far as
the Plaza in the New Town, and that there their throats should be
publicly cut against the walls of the houses on the west side, then used
as houses of charity. This deed was at once done. The two women were
killed by Don Lopez’ son, Don José, then a lad of twenty, assisted by a
negro (Jorge) and two half-breeds (Zarzas and Don Livio).
Don Manuel San Substantio Encinitas, the betrothed lover of Carlotta,
was then at his estate of Las Mancinillas, two hundred miles away. When
the news of the crime was brought to him, he gathered his friends,
sympathisers, and estate servants, some seven hundred in all, and
marched to unseat Don Lopez and avenge the murder.
His army was routed by Don Lopez in a green savannah near the city; many
of his friends, not killed in the fighting, were hunted down and killed;
he himself, with about forty horsemen, rode from the battlefield, then
swerved and made a dash for the city. They appeared at the Old Town at
sunset and summoned the fortress to surrender.
Don Livio, who commanded in the fortress, recognised Don Manuel and
determined to outwit him. While parleying at the gate as though for
terms, he sent a lad, one Pablo de Chaco-Chaco, to some Republican
troops quartered outside the fortress in a sugar warehouse. These
troops, being warned by Pablo, took up their positions in windows
commanding Don Manuel’s troop and suddenly fired in among them. In the
skirmish which followed, Don Manuel’s men fell back along the
water-front, and were shot down as they went. As darkness closed in, the
last six of them, including Don Manuel, gathered at what is known in the
ballads as the Bajel Verde, a green boat or lighter drawn up on the
beach. Here they made a stand till their ammunition failed. They then
took to the water, swimming, in the hope of reaching some English ship
in the harbour. But by this time Don Livio had sent out soldiers in
boats to patrol the water-front. All of the six except Don Manuel, were
shot or clubbed, as they swam, by these patrols. Don Manuel, through
fortune, and because he took to the water some minutes after the others,
managed to reach the English barque _Venturer_, whose captain (Cary)
took him aboard, and brought him a few days later to safety in Port
Matoche.
Eighteen months later, having laid his plans with care, Don Manuel
sailed from Calinche with another company, in a tramp steamer. He landed
unexpectedly at Santa Barbara, shot Don Lopez with his own hand and made
himself Dictator.
In spite of frequent risings of the Lopez faction, most of them led or
inspired by Don José, who had escaped Don Manuel’s justice, the rule of
the New Dictator was the most fruitful of modern times.
Lopez had caused a rhyme to be carven over the door of the cathedral of
Santa Barbara. In translation it runs:
Lopez found me brick
And left me stone.
When the new cathedral was built upon the site of the old, men
remembered this rhyme, and pled that it should be recarven:
Lopez found me brick and left me stone,
Manuel made me like an angel’s throne.
For indeed Don Manuel, in his rebuilding of the city, made the cathedral
the marvel of the New World. That and the chapel of Carlotta at his
palace, were the chief of his works in his own mind; but in truth he
made Santa Barbara as eminent for the arts and sciences as for religion.
He founded, built and endowed four big universities, three opera-houses,
nineteen theatres. He discovered, encouraged, helped, and at last
employed through the years of their power, all the architects,
sculptors, painters, musicians and poets who have made Santa Barbara the
glory of Spanish-speaking America.
In his person Don Manuel was as glorious as his mind. He has been
described in a sonnet:
A calm like Jove’s beneath a fiery air.
His hands most beautiful and full of force,
Able to kill the wolf and tame the horse
Or carve the granite into angels’ hair.
His brow most noble over eyes that burn
At thought of truth or knowledge wanting aid.
His mind a very sword to make afraid,
A very fire to beacon at the turn.
His step swift as a panther’s, his will fierce
To be about the beauty of some deed,
Since beauty’s being is his spirit’s food.
His voice caressing where it does not pierce;
His wrath like lightning: he is King: indeed
He is much more, a King with gratitude.
* * * * *
Chisholm Harker, rector of Windlesham, in Berkshire, wrote a pamphlet on
English Mediæval Mystical Romances, and died young, leaving a widow and
one son, Chisholm, the “Sard” Harker of these pages, who was thirteen at
his father’s death.
Mrs. Harker married again two years later. Sard, at his own request,
went to sea, sailing first in the barque _Venturer_, Captain Cary,
mentioned a page or two back. He was on his first voyage in her when Don
Manuel took refuge in her. She was one of Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s
sugar-clippers, then regularly trading to the ports of Santa Barbara.
Later in his time Sard followed Captain Cary into the _Pathfinder_ and
remained with him in her as third, second and at last as chief mate. He
was mate of the _Pathfinder_ and had been for ten years at sea when this
tale begins. He was called “Sard” Harker (though seldom to his face)
because he was judged to be sardonic. He, too, has been described in a
sonnet:
A lean man, silent, behind triple bars
Of pride, fastidiousness and secret life.
His thought an austere commune with the stars,
His speech a probing with a surgeon’s knife.
His style a chastity whose acid burns
All slack false formlessness in man or thing;
His face a record of the truth man learns
Fighting bare-knuckled Nature in the ring.
His self (unseen until a danger breaks)
Serves as a man, but when the peril comes
And weak souls turn to water, his awakes
Like bright salvation among martyrdoms.
Then, with the danger mastered, once again
He goes behind his doors and draws the chain.
Captain Cary, who had made the _Pathfinder_ a famous ship, thought him
the best officer he had ever had.
The _Pathfinder_ was the last and finest of Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s
sugar clippers. She made some famous passages in the sugar and wool
trades before she went the way of her kind. She has been mentioned in
several sonnets:
She lies at grace, at anchor, head to tide,
The wind blows by in vain: she lets it be.
Gurgles of water run along her side,
She does not heed them: they are not the sea.
She is at peace from all her wandering now,
Quiet is in the very bones of her;
The glad thrust of the leaning of her bow
Blows bubbles from the ebb but does not stir.
Rust stains her side, her sails are furled, the smoke
Streams from her galley funnel and is gone;
A gull is settled on her skysail truck.
Some dingy seamen, by her deckhouse, joke;
The river loiters by her with its muck,
And takes her image as a benison.
* * * * *
How shall a man describe this resting ship,
Her heavenly power of lying down at grace,
This quiet bird by whom the bubbles slip,
This iron home where prisoned seamen pace?
Three slenderest pinnacles, three sloping spires,
Climbing the sky, supported but by strings
Which whine in the sea wind from all their wires,
Yet stand the strain however hard it dings.
Then, underneath, the long lean fiery sweep
Of a proud hull exulting in her sheer,
That rushes like a diver to the leap,
And is all beauty without spot or peer.
Built on the Clyde, by men, of strips of steel
That once was ore trod by the asses’ heel.
A Clyde-built ship of fifteen hundred tons,
Black-sided, with a tier of painted ports,
Red lead just showing where the water runs.
Her bow a leaping grace where beauty sports.
Keen as a hawk above the water line
Though full below it: an elliptic stern:
Her attitude a racer’s, stripped and fine,
Tense to be rushing under spires that yearn.
She crosses a main skysail: her jibboom
Is one steel spike: her mainsail has a spread
Of eighty-seven feet, earring to earring.
Her wind is a fresh gale, her joy careering
Some two points free before it, nought ahead
But sea, and the gale roaring, and blown spume.
* * * * *
Las Palomas, where this story begins, is far away to windward on the
sea-coast of the Tierra Firme. It has grown to be an important city
since the northern railway was completed. It has been a frequented port
since the days of the Conquistadores, because it is a safe harbour in
all winds save the north, with good holding ground and an abundance of
pure water for the filling. In the years 1879-80 it had an evil name,
for it was then the nearest seaport to the newly discovered goldfields
at Entre las Montanas in the province of Palo Seco, three hundred miles
inland. Many diggers returning with gold from the fields were knocked on
the head at Las Palomas.
Las Palomas means the Doves. It got its name from the blue rock-pigeons
which used to haunt the cliffs just south of the old (or Spanish) town.
The cliffs are now covered with buildings and the pigeons are gone. The
only doves thereabouts now are the Little Doves of Santa Clara in a
Convent school so named.
Las Palomas was formerly mainly a coffee and sugar port, but of late
years it has become a great place for the exportation of copper-ore from
the mines at Tloatlucan, only seven miles inland.
Nearly thirty years ago, when this story begins, there was open savannah
to the north and north-west of Las Palomas city. In those days you could
walk (in that direction) in less than an hour from the heart of the city
into primeval forest. If you walked due north along the beach, from Jib
and Foresail Quay on the water-front, you could reach a part of the
forest in two miles. This was a clump of pines which came right down to
the sea on a tongue of red earth.
If, in those days, you walked through those pines, still northward over
the tongue, you came to a little beach, edged with a low bank of
shrubbery. There, between the forest and the sea, was the mansion known
as Los Xicales, where old General Martinez, the last descendant of one
who came there with Cortés, lived to his end in faith, poverty and
style.
_Los Xicales._—Nobody knew at a first hearing what the xicales were.
They were not jicales nor jicaras, as many thought, but trumpet-shaped
flowers, with blue and white stripes, which General Martinez had brought
there from the Indian territory. They were neither convolvuluses,
petunias, nor hermositas, though like all three. They were just
“xicales,” which is as near as the Spaniards could come to the Indian
name for them, which means, simply, “flowers.” The house might have been
called “the flowers” without loss of time.
* * * * *
On the evening of the 18th March, 1887, just ten years before my story
begins, Sard Harker, then on his first voyage to sea, lay in the barque
_Venturer_, in Las Palomas harbour, expecting to sail at daybreak for
Santa Barbara, “to complete with sugar for home.”
During the day, while bending sails aloft, he had seen the white walls
of Los Xicales and had been struck by their likeness to a house in
England, near the sea, where he had stayed as a child. He had taken a
good look at the place, while waiting for the sail to come up to him,
with the thought that it was either a coastguard station or a
lighthouse. After that, work occupied him until dusk, so that he put the
house out of his mind.
For some weeks he had been training himself to be “a hard case,” that
is, able to stand exposure, by sleeping on the top of the deckhouse,
between the mizen staysail and one of the boats. Here, with one blanket
between himself and the deck, one blanket over him, and a coil of boat’s
falls for a pillow, he went to bed that night as usual, thinking the
thoughts which meant much to him. These thoughts were not about the
house, but about a girl, whose idea filled his inner life intensely.
He had thought his thoughts of this girl, as he always did, when putting
the day from him, and had then turned over, to sleep as usual. He saw
the stars overhead, through a maze of the main-rigging: he heard the
water go crooning and gurgling by, and a man in the deckhouse beneath
him knock out his pipe; then instantly he was asleep, in a sea-sleep, a
depth of sleep, a million miles from this world.
Out of his sleep he started up, an hour before dawn, with that mansion
by the sea lit up in his brain and words ringing like prophecy in his
ears:
“You will meet her again in that house, for the second of the three
times. It will be very, very important, so be ready.”
He had risen up in the cold and dew of before dawn to stare towards the
house, almost expecting to see it lit with angels; but it lay among its
trees, barely visible. The dew was dripping, the water crooning and the
watchman humming a song between his teeth. The cook was up making
coffee, for there was a light in the galley; everything was as usual,
except himself.
He was so shaken with excitement that he gripped the mizen stay to keep
himself from leaping overboard to swim to that lone beach. Then caution
had come back upon him, with the thought, “It will not be to-day; we are
sailing to-day; ‘it will be,’ the message said, not ‘it is’; I am to
stand by; it is all for the future, not for now.”
At that moment the order came to call all hands; and by daylight the
_Venturer_ was standing out from the northern channel, while Sard cast
loose the gaskets and shouted “All gone the main-royal” to those on
deck. For more than nine years he saw no more of Las Palomas, but the
memory of his dream remained intense. The “first” of the “three times”
was the deepest thing in his life: it made him shake, even to think of
it: the hope of the second time kept him alive.
Then in February, 1897, he came again to Las Palomas, this time as mate
in the _Pathfinder_. Again he looked out on Los Xicales, this time
through a strong telescope from the main top-gallant cross-trees. He saw
the house unchanged in all those years, save that it looked more
battered. When he could he went ashore, and walked northward along the
beach, over the tongue of red earth with the pine trees, to the house
itself.
He found no barrier to his entrance to the grounds on that side, save
the close-growing thorny mita shrubs which covered the low bank above
the beach. Beyond the bank, they had spread beach-shingle as a drive;
the house rose up out of the shingle white and withered against the
blackness of pines and the gloom of Spanish moss. It was a pleasant,
Southern mansion, less than twenty years old, the worse for wear. It had
a look of having come down in the world, or rather, that staring look of
having come past its best, which houses share with men and flowers:
“This neither is its courage nor its choice
But its necessity, in being old.”
It had a look of having no heir, and of being the last of the family. It
had not been painted since its builders left it nineteen years before.
It was shuttered up tight, throughout; no smoke rose from it; plainly
everybody was away. He noticed big leaden urns near the blistered green
verandah. They were filled with a sprawling trailer about to blossom. He
thought, “These are probably rare flowers, brought here when the house
was new, when the owner thought that he would be a success.”
He stared at the house, thinking that there he was at last, after all
those years, there at the house of his dream, where he was to meet her
for the second time.
And now, on the excitement of being there, after all those years, after
his mind had gone alone so often to where he stood, came the
disappointment, of finding the house shut up, with no one there. He had
half-expected and wholly hoped to have found her outside the house,
looking for his coming. Hope and expectation were dashed. The house was
empty.
Feeling that he was trespassing, he walked to the western side of the
house, climbed the stone steps and rang the bell, which gave forth a
jangle far away to his left. No one answered the bell, though he rang a
second time. Little scraps of plaster were scaling off the wall by the
bell-pull; the forest behind the house needed cutting back: it was
coming too close with its evil and its darkness. The noise of its
sighing was like the whispering of heirs about a death-bed.
“I am not to meet her here this time,” he said to himself; “but since
she may live here or have been here, I will go all round it, so that I
may know what she has known.”
He found that it ran, roughly, north and south, parallel with the beach.
It had an old green verandah on the sides looking on the sea; the stone
perron and steps on the west, and out-houses, on which the jungle was
encroaching, to the north. On the north side was a path, which seemed to
be still in use: it led through an iron gate, which was open, as though
to invite him on. He passed through it, into a jungle of evergreens, in
which he heard the noise of water. In a few minutes he came out on to a
causeway of stone which led over swampy ground to a pier or quay, on the
bank of a river which curved out into the sea there. The pavement
continued inland upstream along the bank of the river till the forest
hid it from sight.
As all water interests a sailor, Sard stopped on the bank to watch this
river. It came round a curve out of the forest, broadened suddenly to a
width of thirty yards, and went babbling in a shallow over the sands
into the sea. It was like listening to poetry to hear it.
“They had this place a harbour once,” Sard thought, “and boats loaded
produce here. Then, in some flood, the other side of the harbour was
washed away: there is a bit of a pier of masonry still standing: and
they were never able to afford to repair it. This river makes the
northern boundary of the estate, I suppose.”
He stayed, watching the water so intently that he never saw the approach
of a woman, coming from the forest along the path by the riverside. He
looked up suddenly and found a tall old proud-looking negress within a
few feet of him. She was dressed in black, she wore a mantilla over her
shoulders, and a big straw Gainsborough hat upon her head. She wore very
heavy old silver earrings in her ears, which were small. Her nose was
small; her face was sharply and cleanly cut; she walked like an empress;
she had race in every line of her. She carried a small basket, which
Sard judged to contain eggs or meat. She seemed at once both to resent
and to ignore Sard’s presence there. Sard saluted her, and asked her
whether he could reach a road to Las Palomas by continuing along the
river.
“Yes,” she said. “But if you will come with me by the house, it will be
a shorter way.”
She led Sard back along his path; presently they were in sight of the
house.
“Madam,” Sard said, “who lives in this house?”
“It is closed at present. I live here with my husband. I am Tia Eusebia,
the caretaker.”
“Whose house is it?”
“It is the house of General Martinez, who is away in the South.”
“It has been a beautiful house. Is General Martinez married? Has he
children?”
“God has willed that the General should be alone.”
“When will he return?”
“Who knows?”
By this time they were at the northern end of the house where there was
a small door. Tia Eusebia brought out her door-key.
“See,” she said, “since you want the road to Las Palomas, continue past
the house; turn to the right near the front door, up the drive to the
lodge. The gates are locked, but you can pass. If you then turn to the
left, you will be upon the road to the North Gate of Las Palomas, which
is distant, by the savannah, a league; but, by the seashore, less.”
“Thank you indeed, Madam, for your guidance,” Sard said. “And now will
you tell me yet one thing more? Do you know of one, Señorita de la
Torre, who has been to this house, or is now here or to come here?”
“De la Torre?”
“Yes. Señorita Juanita de la Torre.”
“God has neither brought nor promised such,” she said. “It is thought
that some English may come here, but of no such name.”
“This lady is not English, but Spanish.”
“If she be young and beautiful, she will not come here, Señor, where
youth died long ago and beauty withered. This is the house of the xicale
flowers, brought from the Indian country by the General, for his love,
who died before she saw them, and for his son, who died before they
flowered.”
“They flower for others, Señora,” Sard said.
“Others do not taste with my tongue,” she said. “But since God favours
others, it is enough. Vaya con Dios, Señor.”
“Adios, Señora.”
He went, as she had told him, up the drive to the lodge, which was
ruinous but inhabited, since a negro child was crying in it. The gates
were locked, as she had said, but he could pass by a gap in the fence
into the road. The fence was mainly gap: it might have been said that
the gaps had fence in them. The forest shut in the road, which went on
the right hand (as he judged) to a bridge over the river, and on the
left hand to the savannah and Las Palomas. Sard walked back to Las
Palomas and went on board his ship to his cabin.
Sitting there, on his red velvet settle, he wondered what it all meant.
On an unforgettable day fourteen years before, when he was a boy, he had
met a girl, who had changed his life for him. He had met her by a
succession of chances and had never seen her since. Four years later, he
had been told in a dream, such as no one could neglect, that he would
meet the girl again at Los Xicales.
After the dream, life had kept him away from following his fancy: he had
had to serve his time and make his way. Five years after the dream, he
had been free for a while: he had gone to Spain to look for the girl,
but had found no trace of her.
“And now that I come to Los Xicales,” he said, “I find the house shut up
and her name not known. Whenever I hope to make this more than a dream,
it goes to nothing.”
He looked from his ports upon the deck of the ship. He told himself that
he was a grown man who ought not to let himself be swayed by a dream.
“As for the girl,” he told himself, “she is dead or has forgotten, or is
where I shall never see her.”
“I will put her right out of my mind,” he said. He tried to interest
himself in a book, but found it impossible. “I cannot put her out of my
mind,” he said. “She is all twined into it and part of it. And the dream
tells truth. Probably she is at Los Xicales now and needs my help.”
As this thought was unbearable, he went ashore again to make sure. “She
will be there this time,” he told himself. “Beyond all doubt she will be
there this time.” Presently he was at the lodge gates, making sure.
At the lodge, a negro child was still crying. A very tall, lean, pale
negro was sitting on the edge of the lodge’s verandah-stoop, plaiting a
withy-basket. Sard hailed him.
“Has a Spanish lady come to this house to-day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is she at the house now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is her name, do you know?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is her name?”
“What is her name?”
“Yes,” Sard said, “what is her name?”
“What name?”
“The name she is called by: her surname.”
“Whose name?”
“The lady’s name.”
“Which name? There’s so many names.”
“The name of the Spanish lady who came to this house to-day.”
“Oh,” the man said, “the name of the lady who came to this house
to-day?”
“Yes, that is what I want to know; what is her name?”
“Yes, sir,” the negro said; “now I know what you want. I didn’t know for
the first moment what you asked me about, but now I know. Oh, yes, sir.
Look, sir, I’m making a basket:
Put the withy there,
Cross the withy there,
Jesus in the air . . .
Sir, forgive my asking, but have you a little bit of tobacco or a
god-dam cigarette?”
“No,” Sard said, “I have not.”
“What do you want here, sir?” the man asked. “What do you come to this
house for? This is General Martinez’ house.”
“So I understand,” Sard said. “I want to know the name of the lady who
came to this house to-day.”
“Oh, Lord, are you American?”
“No.”
“I thought you were an American, because you talked such funny
language.”
“What is the name of the lady?”
“There is no lady here, sir; the lady died a hundred years ago. Oh, say,
the lovely yellow candles, and the priest he go Do diddy diddy oh do.”
“Then there is no lady?”
“All put into the grave: ring a bell: Do.”
“Is anyone at the house at all?”
“All in the grave. Do. Ring the bell. Do.”
A square-faced man, riding sideways on a heavily-laden mule, stopped in
the road.
“Sir,” he said to Sard, “can I be of service to you?”
“Yes, sir,” Sard said. “Can you tell me if any Spanish lady came, or is
coming, to this house to-day?”
“The house is shut up, sir. No one will come to this house for some
weeks. I, who am Paco, know this, since I have this day talked with
Ramón, the caretaker of the General. It may be that in some weeks’ time,
when the English, who are to be here, have come, Tio Ramón may know
more.”
Sard thanked him and walked on; he came to a little bridge over the
river, crossed it, and continued through the forest for half a mile,
when he came to a cleared patch where a forge stood beside the road with
an inn (of sorts) alongside it. Here a grey old Italian, who said that
his name was Enobbio, confirmed what Paco had said: the house of Los
Xicales was shut up, in the care of Tio Ramón and his wife Eusebia: no
visitor would come there for some weeks.
Sard thanked him and returned to his ship.
“There it is,” he said, when he stood once more in his cabin. “This
thing has no foundation in fact, but it has the power to make me do
stupid things. I will not go ashore again, unless I have some certain
tidings to take me there. This love has led me elsewhere in the past: it
must not lead to folly now.”
His room was light enough to show how little his love had led him to
folly in the past. He was a tall lean muscular man in hard condition,
sunburnt to the colour of a Red Indian. His hair was black, very fine
and worn a little long (to shore eyes). He was clean-shaven and his face
was a clear brown with blood in it. Wind and sun puckers made his look
hawklike. His hands were big and fine. He was always choicely and subtly
well-dressed. Everything about him was fastidious, to the point of
keeping people aloof and afraid.
His room contained many books, for he was deeply read in his profession
and in the sciences allied to it. He spoke the four languages which he
reckoned to be necessary in his profession. French, German and Norwegian
he had learned from intelligent shipmates as a lad: Spanish he had
learned more thoroughly, since it was “her” native tongue. He had read
not widely but choicely in all these tongues. In English he cared deeply
for only one literary period, from the coming of Dryden to the death of
Doctor Johnson. A flute and the music of that time amused his odd
moments. He had taught himself to make accurate drawings of things which
interested him. His sketch books contained much that would be valuable
now to historians of that old way of life:
“The forepeak of the _Venturer_ at 3 a.m., March 3rd, 1889, after
collision with the _Tuggranong_.”
“The main top-gallant parral goes.”
“The following sea. June 16th, 1891,” etc., etc.
On the bulkheads of his room were standard and aneroid barometers given
to him by the Meteorological Society, with other instruments, for the
excellence of his meteorological records.
He looked round these things, with the thought that they were not life,
but the solace of loneliness. He felt as lonely as a captain. “I’ll go
no more ashore,” he thought, “I’ll spend my time teaching the boys
Spanish. Huskisson has a gift for languages: he ought not to be at sea.”
He did not go ashore again, but thought, day after day, that before he
sailed he would perhaps go. As the time passed, the thought that he was
a fool to be swayed thus by dreams kept him on board. In five more weeks
the _Pathfinder_ got her hatches on, although light, ready to drop down
to leeward to Santa Barbara to complete with sugar for home. It was the
evening of the 18th March, 1897: the tug was to be alongside early the
next morning, to tow her clear of the Rip-Raps.
“It will be just ten years to a day,” Sard said, “at five to-morrow
morning, since that dream was a fire in my soul; but all the same, I
will not go ashore; this inner life of mine shall fool me no longer.”
He passed the evening making his room all ready for sea-fight, for the
_Pathfinder_ was a lively ship when not loaded down to her marks. When
all was stowed and chocked, he took his flute and played some of the
airs printed in D’Urfey’s “Pills to Purge Melancholy.” He was not more
than a competent player, but the night and the water gave a magic to his
fluting. The men came aft as far as the waist and hung in a body there,
“Listening to that sweet piping.”
At about ten o’clock, knowing that he was to be on deck at daybreak, he
turned in. He heard Captain Cary, in the chart-house on deck, call the
steward for his nightcap; he heard the steward go, and the spoon chink
in the glass. Then the watchman went shuffling forward from the main
hatch, tapping out his pipe. The sea gurgled down the side, then life
was shut off as by the turning of a tap, he was asleep in a sea-sleep,
dead to the world.
Out of his sleep he started up, an hour before dawn, with the knowledge
that a gigantic cock of fire was bursting out of clouds and crowing:
“To-day, to-day, to-day, for the second of the three times, O be ready,
O be ready, O be ready; at the house of the xicale flowers; to-day,
to-day, to-day.”
Instantly the crowing of the cock and the image of the house were merged
in the memory of the first time, so that all was burning with the idea
of her. He leaped up, for all these things were real, in his room,
there, as it seemed, to be touched and caught. He saw them slowly fade
from him, die away, not as it seemed, into his brain, but out of his
three forward ports into the greyness of morning. He followed them till
his brow was pressed on the brass rim of one of the ports. There was
nothing beyond but the deck, the hatch, the bulk of the mainmast made
darker by the mizen staysail, and the noise of the dropping of dew.
“To-day,” he said, “to-day. Why, we sail to-day. We shall be gone in two
hours, far out of this, and God knows if I shall ever be here again.
“Very well, then. I will go ashore. I will leave ship and sea, so as not
to fail her.
“I cannot do that,” he added, “I am tied, both to Captain Cary and to
the ship. I shall sail at daybreak. I must get on deck.”
It was but a step from his cabin door to the deck. He stood beneath the
break of the poop, looking out upon the dimness; he heard the cocks
crowing ashore.
“I’ll put these dreams in their place,” he said to himself. “But when
they come, they are shaking experiences. As long as I know that they
mean nothing, I can steer a compass course.”
He brought a towel to the waist, stripped and called the watchman to
pour some buckets of salt water over him. As he dressed in his cabin
afterwards, the steward brought him some coffee; he carried it out on
deck, and heard the cocks crowing far inland in clearings of the forest.
“It is a marvellous noise,” he muttered; “they shout for the sun before
there is a glimmer, and the sun comes. To-day, to-day, to-day.”
The deck was wet with dew, which was dripping from the eaves of the
deckhouses. The port was not yet awake, though lights were burning. The
ship was awake: there was a light at the galley door; the boatswain was
standing there, yarning with the cook; and from time to time a drowsy
man shambled into the light from forward to fetch coffee or to ask a
light.
Sard put his cup between two pins and stared at the line of the coast to
the north of the town, some two or three miles from him. There, in the
dimness of the dawn, the white of Los Xicales just showed against the
blackness of the forest. He looked at it intently. It was one small
patch of paleness, becoming clearer from minute to minute.
“That is it,” he said to himself. “I’ve thought of it every day for ten
years, and stared at it ever since we moored, and been to it twice; and
now that I am sailing I am warned again that I am to meet her there
again. I am warned just as I was warned ten years ago, on this very day
of the year, at this very time of the day, in this very berth of Las
Palomas, just as I was sailing as I am to-day, for Santa Barbara, on
that cruise when we saved Don Manuel. The second of the three times is
to be to-day and I am to be ready.”
Looking over the water at the house, the emotion which had woken him
surged back upon him, so that he had to grip the pins.
“It is all madness,” he said. “A man must go by intellect and will.
These dreams fight against both. Life has settled the matter: I am not
to meet her. My task here is to sail this ship wherever the old man bids
me. Now I will do my task.”
He walked forward to the port half deck door where the boys stood
waiting for a call.
“On deck; turn-to here. Get the colours up, ready for bending, two of
you,” he said. “Huskisson, get the Blue Peter.” As they came trooping
out behind him, he turned to the boatswain, who was hanging about in the
waist waiting for the word.
“Rig the head-pump,” he said.
“Rig the head-pump, sir,” the boatswain said. “Head-pump there, two of
you. Beg pardon, sir, shall we be heaving in, after washing down?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Dorney, the third mate, drove some of the boys forward with an
accent from the northern midlands. “Now, choom Jellybags,” he said, “get
tha boockets; and Nibs and Woolfram get tha scroobers. We want a good
harbour scroob for sailing.”
Mr. Dorney was a rougher customer than the other mates, but a faultless
practical seaman. He would have made a perfect boatswain. Anything to be
done with hands (especially a dangerous thing) was Mr. Dorney’s delight.
He had a heavy, loutish, expressionless face, which seemed to have been
badly carved out of pale wood. He had only scraped through his
navigation examinations after three attempts. “Ah haate all this fooss
of sights,” he said. “Ah can foodge a day’s work.” In any emergency he
was as swift as Sard himself, but his excellence stopped at seamanship:
he was a coastwise seaman who had strayed into blue water.
In a minute or two Sard was forward with his watch, setting the pace in
washing decks against the second mate. He had rolled up his trousers to
the knee and worked barefooted in advance of the scrubbers, scattering
sand for them to scrub with, then snatching buckets from the
water-carriers to sluice the portion scrubbed. By the time his watch had
worked aft to the main hatch, he was five yards ahead of the second
mate. There came a hail from a water-boat going past them to the outer
anchorage.
“Pathfinders ahoy!”
Sard went to the rail to take the hail. The water-boat was going dead
slow, as though only half awake. She still carried her navigation
lights, but men were taking them in and blowing them out as she paused
to speak.
“Pathfinder ahoy!”
“Hullo, the water-boat.”
“Your tug won’t be alongside till six this evening.”
“At six this evening! Why not this morning?”
“She’s blown some of her god-dam guts out.”
“Where is she?”
“Having her guts done at Ytá-Ytá.”
“Right.”
“Will you tell Captain Cary?”
“Right, Mister.”
“The _Otoque_ will be in. You’ll get your mail before you sail. So long,
Mister.”
“So long, Mister.”
Sard slipped on shoes, unrolled his trousers and went to report to
Captain Cary, who was sitting bolt upright in a chair in his chart-room,
being shaved by his steward.
“The tug has broken down, sir. She can’t be alongside till six this
evening.”
“Who said this?”
“The skipper of the water-boat, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harker. Mr. Harker.”
“Sir.”
“I shall wait for her. I won’t try the Rip-Raps without a tug. Carry on
with your brass work and bright work. Stay one moment, I’ve got
something to say to you, Mr. Harker. I believe you used to be fond of
boxing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The agents gave me some tickets the other night, for a sort of an
assault-at-arms this afternoon. Since we are not to sail, perhaps you
would like to take them, and go, after dinner this afternoon. Would you
like to go?”
“Thank you, sir. Yes; very much.”
“Then oblige me by taking the tickets. Steward, find the tickets for Mr.
Harker.”
“Where are they, Captain Cary?”
“I told you to find them.”
“Very good, Captain Cary.”
They were in the pocket of the Captain’s go-ashore coat. They were
handed over to Sard.
“You can take your own time, of course, Mr. Harker,” the captain said.
“Let me see, you never got ashore here in the _Venturer_?”
“No, sir.”
“And I think you were only ashore once this time since the anchors were
down. You ought to see the place; not that there’s anything to see: so
stay out of the ship if you wish, till the tug’s alongside. I have
always gone by the maxim, Mr. Harker, that one ought to see everything
that one has the chance of seeing; because in life not many have one
chance and none has two.”
“Thank you, Captain Cary. Are we to heave in, sir?”
“Not till this afternoon, Mr. Harker.”
“Thank you, Captain Cary.”
Sard returned to the deck to finish the washing down. He had the running
rigging thrown from the pins and recoiled: he had the men to the
brasswork; saw the colours up and the house flag and Blue Peter hoisted.
Captain Cary was on deck by a quarter to eight with an eye like a hawk
for a spot or a started rope yarn. Sard at that moment was at the
windlass with the carpenter. Coming out, he cast a glance aft and a
glance aloft, with the thought that for all that magnificent thing, the
ship, he was the man responsible, and that she would stand even Captain
Cary’s eye. “She is in good order,” he thought, “she can stand anything
that the sea can send. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
She was indeed beautiful, even from forward, looking aft. The power of
her sheer made a sailor catch his breath. She was not very lofty, but
her yards were very square: her spread was huge. She was in lovely
order; yards squared, harbour-stowed, all the chafing gear bran-new, and
the decks already sea-shape. He sent a boy aloft to dip a rope clear,
and then went aft, with an eye for everything and the knowledge that the
ship was fit.
As he went aft, he stopped just abaft the fo’c’sle (the forward
deckhouse) to have another look at her. He never realised how much he
liked his work until just before it was tested. He looked up at her
great steel masts with the enormous yards (the fore and main yards
together, end for end, as long as three cricket pitches) with the
thought that this was art, this iron shell, with her gear, and that he
was the master of this art. “It’s a good framework,” he thought, “a good
foundation. Building a steeple is only going a little further in the
same direction, and building a steeple is the finest thing a man can do.
But a steeple is based on rock and this thing flies along water. This
thing works for her living.”
He stopped abreast of the main-rigging to have a word with “Pompey”
Hopkins, the second mate, a fair-haired, snub-nosed man of twenty-three,
whose sea career he had watched from its beginning. He was called
“Pompey” because he came from Portsmouth.
“Any chance of a Liverpool leave, Mr. Harker, since we are not to sail?”
“None, Mister,” Sard said; “you know the old man by this time, don’t
you?”
“What shall we be doing, then?”
“After breakfast he will have a look-see and decide to trim her by the
head.”
“I used to think sugar was a food,” Pompey said, “but now I know that
it’s a poison.”
Sard left the deck in charge of Pompey and went below to make ready for
breakfast. He had been too busy ever since dawn to think of his own
affairs, but down in his cabin the words of the warnings rang again in
his brain: “You will meet her again in that house: it will be . . .
very, very important.” And deep within his mind a voice seemed speaking:
“You, who did not believe, see what has been done for you. The way has
been cleared for you to go ashore.”
“Yes,” he thought, “I shall be ashore by two bells. I could go to the
house before the boxing. I shall be free here for five hours, when I
expected to be out at sea. All the same, I am not ashore yet. Captain
Cary may change his mind.”
For the last two years he had noticed old age, “with crawling clutch,”
laying hold of Captain Cary. One of its results was an old-maidish
inquisitiveness about his officers’ doings ashore; a desire to screen
them from “temptation.” This was easily to be understood, since he had
himself trained all his officers from their first coming to sea, but it
was trying to grown men. Sard knew that Captain Cary looked upon him
partly as a favourite chick, a prize hatching from a clutch who had
become “my mate,” or “my chief officer,” or “my Mr. Harker,” but that
mainly Captain Cary still thought of him as a boy in the half deck,
whose morals must be watched in port. “I know,” he muttered, “the old
man will say something at breakfast that will check my movements ashore.
He won’t give me absolute liberty on the day of sailing.”
He went into the long narrow cabin, that was painted white fore and aft;
little shields painted with blue and white stripes were on all the doors
opening into this cabin. A clock and a tell-tale compass were under the
skylight, set into the coamings. All round the after bulkhead were
stands of arms, old Snider rifles, bayonets, boarding pikes, tomahawks
and cutlasses, all shining like stars. On the table were six red
geraniums in pots. The table shone with electro-plated ware, for Captain
Cary kept a style. He was at the head of the table in clean white
drills. The old steward stood at attention beside him. Sard took his
seat.
At breakfast, Captain Cary, after feeding his canaries, talked of the
pleasure of getting away to sea with a full crew. “When my brother was
here in the _Lolita_ in ’79, in the beginning of the gold-rush,
everybody left her, except his boatswain, and none of them came back,
except one of the boys, a lad of the name of Jenkins, who had a lump of
gold as big as one hand, done up in a handkerchief.”
“I hope, sir, that your brother charged Jenkins bullion-rates for
freightage.”
“No, Mr. Harker; he gave him the end of a brace for going out of the
ship. And Jenkins went ashore in the ship’s dinghy that night and never
went aboard again. He started one of these low dance-and-cigar divans;
there used to be too many of them. He married one of these greaser women
after, but I never heard that he did much good.”
“Did your brother get a crew, sir?”
“Yes; when some of the gold-diggers had had enough of it; or too much,
as often happened, for there were Indians, then, in the foothill
country, seventy miles from here. When I was here myself, in ’74 or ’75,
you could see the Indian bucks riding their ponies. You could get your
hair cut for nothing outside the walls after nightfall in those days.
You can get your throat cut for nothing inside the walls in these days,
for the matter of that.”
“Yes, sir. I hear, sir, that that is because the rum-smugglers have been
landing their cargoes along the coast here.”
“There’s a great deal too much lawlessness all along this coast, Mr.
Harker, and it is all coming here from outside. Your Occidental is a
quiet, hard-working man, or used to be, as I remember, but a breed of
hard cases has got loose here out of some jail, or every jail in Europe
by the look of them, and Las Palomas is not Occidental any longer. You
couldn’t give the people liberty here, even on Sunday, not even just to
go to the church ship and back. The place is a sink of iniquity. Mr.
Hopkins, have you seen the Mission Church here? It is very remarkable;
that is, it is said to be by those who know, for its paintings of the
Last Judgment. I was thinking of sending you ashore this morning, to see
them—since we are not to sail.”
“Thank you, sir; thank you very much, sir,” the second mate answered.
The captain turned up his eyes as though he were watching a bird through
the skylight: he reddened and gurgled in his throat.
Sard, who knew the symptoms, stole a glance at Pompey Hopkins, caught
his eye and gave him the flutter of a smile. Pompey was another lad who
had served all his seven years at sea under Captain Cary; he, too, was
still a boy, in the captain’s eyes, to be guarded from the sins of a
seaport town. Sard and he both saw the thought slowly crystallising in
their captain’s mind:
“If I send this boy to one of these foreign churches, he may be caught
by this foreign way of worship and fall into all kinds of sin: it is
just devil-worship by what I understand of it. He had better stay on
board and do some useful work.” In a few seconds the captain’s voice was
heard again.
“I was thinking that, Mr. Hopkins; that I would send you ashore this
morning; but I’m not at all satisfied with her trim. When we are riding
light, as we shall be this time, I like her to be more by the head. I
will just have a look-see, as the Chinese say, from the dinghy after
breakfast, and if it’s as I think, Mr. Harker, you will have the people
down and see if we can’t get her down more. She lies a much better
course in a light wind when she is by the head.
“I think, too, Mr. Harker, that since we are so light, we’ll have the
main-royal mast down on deck. And let the boys do it all, will you, with
yourself and old Birkett. Since ships became big, they do not get the
practice in these things which we used to have. I remember when people
came down to the water-front to see a ship of seven hundred tons.”
“Yes, sir: do you indeed, sir?”
“Yes, sir, and ships of the line sent down top-gallant yards at dusk.”
Pompey Hopkins’ face expressed due wonder, with the inner reservation
that “this kind of thing was the old man’s perk.”
“A little more kedgeree, Mr. Hopkins?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Steward, have the goodness to give Mr. Hopkins a little more kedgeree.
About this kedgeree, Mr. Harker: they call the fish Pompano ashore here
at Las Palomas, but it is not the true Pompano, which is the great
delicacy at New Orleans, but more of a salt-water shad.”
“What’s in a name, Captain Cary? It is a credit to any name. What is the
true Pompano like, sir?”