CHAPTER ONE
Mr. Baker, chief mate of the ship Narcissus, stepped in one stride out
of his lighted cabin into the darkness of the quarter-deck. Above his
head, on the break of the poop, the night-watchman rang a double stroke.
It was nine o'clock. Mr. Baker, speaking up to the man above him,
asked:--"Are all the hands aboard, Knowles?"
The man limped down the ladder, then said reflectively:--
"I think so, sir. All our old chaps are there, and a lot of new men has
come.... They must be all there."
"Tell the boatswain to send all hands aft," went on Mr. Baker; "and tell
one of the youngsters to bring a good lamp here. I want to muster our
crowd."
The main deck was dark aft, but halfway from forward, through the open
doors of the forecastle, two streaks of brilliant light cut the shadow
of the quiet night that lay upon the ship. A hum of voices was
heard there, while port and starboard, in the illuminated doorways,
silhouettes of moving men appeared for a moment, very black, without
relief, like figures cut out of sheet tin. The ship was ready for sea.
The carpenter had driven in the last wedge of the mainhatch battens,
and, throwing down his maul, had wiped his face with great deliberation,
just on the stroke of five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled
and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long
bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung
over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling and
hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the limpid, cool quietness of the
early morning. The captain was ashore, where he had been engaging some
new hands to make up his full crew; and, the work of the day over,
the ship's officers had kept out of the way, glad of a little
breathing-time. Soon after dark the few liberty-men and the new hands
began to arrive in shore-boats rowed by white-clad Asiatics,
who clamoured fiercely for payment before coming alongside the
gangway-ladder. The feverish and shrill babble of Eastern language
struggled against the masterful tones of tipsy seamen, who argued
against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts. The
resplendent and bestarred peace of the East was torn into squalid
tatters by howls of rage and shrieks of lament raised over sums ranging
from five annas to half a rupee; and every soul afloat in Bombay Harbour
became aware that the new hands were joining the Narcissus.
Gradually the distracting noise had subsided. The boats came no longer
in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped alongside
singly, in a subdued buzz of expostulation cut short by a "Not a
pace more! You go to the devil!" from some man staggering up the
accommodation-ladder--a dark figure, with a long bag poised on the
shoulder. In the forecastle the newcomers, upright and swaying amongst
corded boxes and bundles of bedding, made friends with the old hands,
who sat one above another in the two tiers of bunks, gazing at their
future shipmates with glances critical but friendly. The two forecastle
lamps were turned up high, and shed an intense hard glare; shore-going
round hats were pushed far on the backs of heads, or rolled about on the
deck amongst the chain-cables; white collars, undone, stuck out on each
side of red faces; big arms in white sleeves gesticulated; the growling
voices hummed steady amongst bursts of laughter and hoarse calls. "Here,
sonny, take that bunk!... Don't you do it!... What's your last ship?...
I know her.... Three years ago, in Puget Sound.... This here berth
leaks, I tell you!... Come on; give us a chance to swing that chest!...
Did you bring a bottle, any of you shore toffs?... Give us a bit of
'baccy.... I know her; her skipper drank himself to death.... He was a
dandy boy!... Liked his lotion inside, he did!... No!... Hold your row,
you chaps!... I tell you, you came on board a hooker, where they get
their money's worth out of poor Jack, by--!..."
A little fellow, called Craik and nicknamed Belfast, abused the ship
violently, romancing on principle, just to give the new hands something
to think over. Archie, sitting aslant on his sea-chest, kept his knees
out of the way, and pushed the needle steadily through a white patch
in a pair of blue trousers. Men in black jackets and stand-up collars,
mixed with men bare-footed, bare-armed, with coloured shirts open
on hairy chests, pushed against one another in the middle of the
forecastle. The group swayed, reeled, turning upon itself with the
motion of a scrimmage, in a haze of tobacco smoke. All were speaking
together, swearing at every second word. A Russian Finn, wearing a
yellow shirt with pink stripes, stared upwards, dreamy-eyed, from under
a mop of tumbled hair. Two young giants with smooth, baby faces--two
Scandinavians--helped each other to spread their bedding, silent, and
smiling placidly at the tempest of good-humoured and meaningless curses.
Old Singleton, the oldest able seaman in the ship, sat apart on the deck
right under the lamps, stripped to the waist, tattooed like a cannibal
chief all over his powerful chest and enormous biceps. Between the blue
and red patterns his white skin gleamed like satin; his bare back was
propped against the heel of the bowsprit, and he held a book at
arm's length before his big, sunburnt face. With his spectacles and a
venerable white beard, he resembled a learned and savage patriarch, the
incarnation of barbarian wisdom serene in the blasphemous turmoil of
the world. He was intensely absorbed, and as he turned the pages an
expression of grave surprise would pass over his rugged features. He was
reading "Pelham." The popularity of Bulwer Lytton in the forecastles of
Southern-going ships is a wonderful and bizarre phenomenon. What ideas
do his polished and so curiously insincere sentences awaken in the
simple minds of the big children who people those dark and wandering
places of the earth? What meaning can their rough, inexperienced
souls find in the elegant verbiage of his pages? What excitement?--what
forgetfulness?--what appeasement? Mystery! Is it the fascination of the
incomprehensible?--is it the charm of the impossible? Or are those
beings who exist beyond the pale of life stirred by his tales as by an
enigmatical disclosure of a resplendent world that exists within the
frontier of infamy and filth, within that border of dirt and hunger, of
misery and dissipation, that comes down on all sides to the water's edge
of the incorruptible ocean, and is the only thing they know of life, the
only thing they see of surrounding land--those life-long prisoners of the
sea? Mystery! Singleton, who had sailed to the southward since the
age of twelve, who in the last forty-five years had lived (as we
had calculated from his papers) no more than forty months ashore--old
Singleton, who boasted, with the mild composure of long years well
spent, that generally from the day he was paid off from one ship
till the day he shipped in another he seldom was in a condition to
distinguish daylight--old Singleton sat unmoved in the clash of voices
and cries, spelling through "Pelham" with slow labour, and lost in an
absorption profound enough to resemble a trance. He breathed regularly.
Every time he turned the book in his enormous and blackened hands the
muscles of his big white arms rolled slightly under the smooth skin.
Hidden by the white moustache, his lips, stained with tobacco-juice that
trickled down the long beard, moved in inward whisper. His bleared eyes
gazed fixedly from behind the glitter of black-rimmed glasses. Opposite
to him, and on a level with his face, the ship's cat sat on the barrel
of the windlass in the pose of a crouching chimera, blinking its green
eyes at its old friend. It seemed to meditate a leap on to the old man's
lap over the bent back of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton's
feet. Young Charley was lean and long-necked. The ridge of his
backbone made a chain of small hills under the old shirt. His face of a
street-boy--a face precocious, sagacious, and ironic, with deep downward
folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth--hung low over his bony knees.
He was learning to make a lanyard knot with a bit of an old rope. Small
drops of perspiration stood out on his bulging forehead; he sniffed
strongly from time to time, glancing out of the corners of his restless
eyes at the old seaman, who took no notice of the puzzled youngster
muttering at his work.
The noise increased. Little Belfast seemed, in the heavy heat of the
forecastle, to boil with facetious fury. His eyes danced; in the crimson
of his face, comical as a mask, the mouth yawned black, with strange
grimaces. Facing him, a half-undressed man held his sides, and, throwing
his head back, laughed with wet eyelashes. Others stared with amazed
eyes. Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes,
swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below
on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white
rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were
lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for
coffins in a whitewashed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder.
Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into
a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast
shrieked like an inspired Dervish:--"... So I seez to him, boys, seez
I, 'Beggin' yer pardon, sorr,' seez I to that second mate of that
steamer--'beggin' your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must 'ave
been drunk when they granted you your certificate!' 'What do you say,
you------!' seez he, comin' at me like a mad bull... all in his white
clothes; and I up with my tar-pot and capsizes it all over his blamed
lovely face and his lovely jacket.... 'Take that!' seez I. 'I am a
sailor, anyhow, you nosing, skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos
bridge-stanchion, you! That's the kind of man I am!' shouts I.... You
should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind with tar, he was! So..."
"Don't 'ee believe him! He never upset no tar; I was there!" shouted
somebody. The two Norwegians sat on a chest side by side, alike and
placid, resembling a pair of love-birds on a perch, and with round eyes
stared innocently; but the Russian Finn, in the racket of explosive
shouts and rolling laughter, remained motionless, limp and dull, like
a deaf man without a backbone. Near him Archie smiled at his needle. A
broad-chested, slow-eyed newcomer spoke deliberately to Belfast during
an exhausted lull in the noise:--"I wonder any of the mates here are
alive yet with such a chap as you on board! I concloode they ain't that
bad now, if you had the taming of them, sonny."
"Not bad! Not bad!" screamed Belfast. "If it wasn't for us sticking
together.... Not bad! They ain't never bad when they ain't got a
chawnce, blast their black 'arts...."
He foamed, whirling his arms, then suddenly grinned and, taking a tablet
of black tobacco out of his pocket, bit a piece off with a funny show of
ferocity. Another new hand--a man with shifty eyes and a yellow hatchet
face, who had been listening open-mouthed in the shadow of the midship
locker--observed in a squeaky voice:--"Well, it's a 'omeward trip, anyhow.
Bad or good, I can do it on my 'ed--s'long as I get 'ome. And I can look
after my rights! I will show 'em!" All the heads turned towards him.
Only the ordinary seaman and the cat took no notice. He stood with arms
akimbo, a little fellow with white eyelashes. He looked as if he had
known all the degradations and all the furies. He looked as if he had
been cuffed, kicked, rolled in the mud; he looked as if he had been
scratched, spat upon, pelted with unmentionable filth... and he smiled
with a sense of security at the faces around. His ears were bending down
under the weight of his battered felt hat. The torn tails of his black
coat flapped in fringes about the calves of his legs. He unbuttoned the
only two buttons that remained and every one saw that he had no shirt
under it. It was his deserved misfortune that those rags which nobody
could possibly be supposed to own looked on him as if they had been
stolen. His neck was long and thin; his eyelids were red; rare hairs
hung about his jaws; his shoulders were peaked and drooped like the
broken wings of a bird; all his left side was caked with mud which
showed that he had lately slept in a wet ditch. He had saved his
inefficient carcass from violent destruction by running away from an
American ship where, in a moment of forgetful folly, he had dared to
engage himself; and he had knocked about for a fortnight ashore in the
native quarter, cadging for drinks, starving, sleeping on rubbish-heaps,
wandering in sunshine: a startling visitor from a world of nightmares.
He stood repulsive and smiling in the sudden silence. This clean white
forecastle was his refuge; the place where he could be lazy; where he
could wallow, and lie and eat--and curse the food he ate; where he could
display his talents for shirking work, for cheating, for cadging; where
he could find surely some one to wheedle and some one to bully--and where
he would be paid for doing all this. They all knew him. Is there a spot
on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying
to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence? A taciturn long-armed
shellback, with hooked fingers, who had been lying on his back smoking,
turned in his bed to examine him dispassionately, then, over his head,
sent a long jet of clear saliva towards the door. They all knew him! He
was the man that cannot steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work
on dark nights; that, aloft, holds on frantically with both arms and
legs, and swears at the wind, the sleet, the darkness; the man who
curses the sea while others work. The man who is the last out and the
first in when all hands are called. The man who can't do most things
and won't do the rest. The pet of philanthropists and self-seeking
landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all
about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the
unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship's
company. The independent offspring of the ignoble freedom of the slums
full of disdain and hate for the austere servitude of the sea.
Some one cried at him: "What's your name?"--"Donkin," he said,
looking round with cheerful effrontery.--"What are you?" asked another
voice.--"Why, a sailor like you, old man," he replied, in a tone that
meant to be hearty but was impudent.--"Blamme if you don't look a blamed
sight worse than a broken-down fireman," was the comment in a convinced
mutter. Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice: "He is a
man and a sailor"--then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent
down industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. Others stared
doubtfully. The ragged newcomer was indignant--"That's a fine way to
welcome a chap into a fo'c'sle," he snarled. "Are you men or a lot of
'artless canny-bals?"--"Don't take your shirt off for a word, shipmate,"
called out Belfast, jumping up in front, fiery, menacing, and friendly
at the same time.--"Is that 'ere bloke blind?" asked the indomitable
scarecrow, looking right and left with affected surprise. "Can't 'ee see
I 'aven't got no shirt?"
He held both his arms out crosswise and shook the rags that hung over
his bones with dramatic effect.
"'Cos why?" he continued very loud. "The bloody Yankees been tryin' to
jump my guts out 'cos I stood up for my rights like a good 'un. I am an
Englishman, I am. They set upon me an' I 'ad to run. That's why. A'n't
yer never seed a man 'ard up? Yah! What kind of blamed ship is this?
I'm dead broke. I 'aven't got nothink. No bag, no bed, no blanket, no
shirt--not a bloomin' rag but what I stand in. But I 'ad the 'art to
stand up agin' them Yankees. 'As any of you 'art enough to spare a pair
of old pants for a chum?"
He knew how to conquer the nave instincts of that crowd. In a moment
they gave him their compassion, jocularly, contemptuously, or surlily;
and at first it took the shape of a blanket thrown at him as he stood
there with the white skin of his limbs showing his human kinship through
the black fantasy of his rags. Then a pair of old shoes fell at his
muddy feet. With a cry:--"From under," a rolled-up pair of canvas
trousers, heavy with tar stains, struck him on the shoulder. The gust of
their benevolence sent a wave of sentimental pity through their
doubting hearts. They were touched by their own readiness to alleviate
a shipmate's misery. Voices cried:--"We will fit you out, old man."
Murmurs: "Never seed seech a hard case.... Poor beggar.... I've got an
old singlet.... Will that be of any use to you?... Take it, matey...."
Those friendly murmurs filled the forecastle. He pawed around with his
naked foot, gathering the things in a heap and looked about for more.
Unemotional Archie perfunctorily contributed to the pile an old cloth
cap with the peak torn off. Old Singleton, lost in the serene regions of
fiction, read on unheeding. Charley, pitiless with the wisdom of youth,
squeaked:--"If you want brass buttons for your new unyforms I've got two
for you." The filthy object of universal charity shook his fist at the
youngster.--"I'll make you keep this 'ere fo'c'sle clean, young feller,"
he snarled viciously. "Never you fear. I will learn you to be civil
to an able seaman, you ignerant ass." He glared harmfully, but saw
Singleton shut his book, and his little beady eyes began to roam from
berth to berth.--"Take that bunk by the door there--it's pretty fair,"
suggested Belfast. So advised, he gathered the gifts at his feet,
pressed them in a bundle against his breast, then looked cautiously
at the Russian Finn, who stood on one side with an unconscious gaze,
contemplating, perhaps, one of those weird visions that haunt the men
of his race.--"Get out of my road, Dutchy," said the victim of Yankee
brutality. The Finn did not move--did not hear. "Get out, blast ye,"
shouted the other, shoving him aside with his elbow. "Get out, you
blanked deaf and dumb fool. Get out." The man staggered, recovered
himself, and gazed at the speaker in silence.--"Those damned furriners
should be kept under," opined the amiable Donkin to the forecastle. "If
you don't teach 'em their place they put on you like anythink." He
flung all his worldly possessions into the empty bed-place, gauged with
another shrewd look the risks of the proceeding, then leaped up to the
Finn, who stood pensive and dull.--"I'll teach you to swell around," he
yelled. "I'll plug your eyes for you, you blooming square-head." Most of
the men were now in their bunks and the two had the forecastle clear to
themselves. The development of the destitute Donkin aroused interest. He
danced all in tatters before the amazed Finn, squaring from a distance
at the heavy, unmoved face. One or two men cried encouragingly: "Go it,
Whitechapel!" settling themselves luxuriously in their beds to survey
the fight. Others shouted: "Shut yer row!... Go an' put yer 'ed in a
bag!..." The hubbub was recommencing. Suddenly many heavy blows struck
with a handspike on the deck above boomed like discharges of small
cannon through the forecastle. Then the boatswain's voice rose outside
the door with an authoritative note in its drawl:--"D'ye hear, below
there? Lay aft! Lay aft to muster all hands!"
There was a moment of surprised stillness. Then the forecastle floor
disappeared under men whose bare feet flopped on the planks as they
sprang clear out of their berths. Caps were rooted for amongst tumbled
blankets. Some, yawning, buttoned waistbands. Half-smoked pipes were
knocked hurriedly against woodwork and stuffed under pillows. Voices
growled:--"What's up?... Is there no rest for us?" Donkin yelped:--"If
that's the way of this ship, we'll 'ave to change all that.... You leave
me alone.... I will soon...." None of the crowd noticed him. They were
lurching in twos and threes through the doors, after the manner of
merchant Jacks who cannot go out of a door fairly, like mere landsmen.
The votary of change followed them. Singleton, struggling into his
jacket, came last, tall and fatherly, bearing high his head of a
weather-beaten sage on the body of an old athlete. Only Charley remained
alone in the white glare of the empty place, sitting between the two
rows of iron links that stretched into the narrow gloom forward. He
pulled hard at the strands in a hurried endeavour to finish his knot.
Suddenly he started up, flung the rope at the cat, and skipped after the
black tom which went off leaping sedately over chain compressors, with
its tail carried stiff and upright, like a small flag pole.
Outside the glare of the steaming forecastle the serene purity of the
night enveloped the seamen with its soothing breath, with its tepid
breath flowing under the stars that hung countless above the mastheads
in a thin cloud of luminous dust. On the town side the blackness of the
water was streaked with trails of light which undulated gently on slight
ripples, similar to filaments that float rooted to the shore. Rows
of other lights stood away in straight lines as if drawn up on parade
between towering buildings; but on the other side of the harbour sombre
hills arched high their black spines, on which, here and there, the
point of a star resembled a spark fallen from the sky. Far off, Byculla
way, the electric lamps at the dock gates shone on the end of lofty
standards with a glow blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of some
evil moons. Scattered all over the dark polish of the roadstead, the
ships at anchor floated in perfect stillness under the feeble gleam
of their riding-lights, looming up, opaque and bulky, like strange and
monumental structures abandoned by men to an everlasting repose.
Before the cabin door Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they stumbled
and lurched along past the mainmast, they could see aft his round, broad
face with a white paper before it, and beside his shoulder the sleepy
head, with dropped eyelids, of the boy, who held, suspended at the end
of his raised arm, the luminous globe of a lamp. Even before the shuffle
of naked soles had ceased along the decks, the mate began to call
over the names. He called distinctly in a serious tone befitting this
roll-call to unquiet loneliness, to inglorious and obscure struggle, or
to the more trying endurance of small privations and wearisome duties.
As the chief mate read out a name, one of the men would answer: "Yes,
sir!" or "Here!" and, detaching himself from the shadowy mob of
heads visible above the blackness of starboard bulwarks, would step
bare-footed into the circle of light, and in two noiseless strides pass
into the shadows on the port side of the quarterdeck. They answered in
divers tones: in thick mutters, in clear, ringing voices; and some,
as if the whole thing had been an outrage on their feelings, used an
injured intonation: for discipline is not ceremonious in merchant ships,
where the sense of hierarchy is weak, and where all feel themselves
equal before the unconcerned immensity of the sea and the
exacting appeal of the work.
Mr. Baker read on steadily:--"Hansen--Campbell--Smith--Wamibo. Now,
then, Wamibo. Why don't you answer? Always got to call your name twice."
The Finn emitted at last an uncouth grunt, and, stepping out, passed
through the patch of light, weird and gaudy, with the face of a man
marching through a dream. The mate went on faster:--"Craik--Singleton--
Donkin.... O Lord!" he involuntarily ejaculated as the incredibly
dilapidated figure appeared in the light. It stopped; it uncovered pale
gums and long, upper teeth in a malevolent grin.--"Is there any-think
wrong with me, Mister Mate?" it asked, with a flavour of insolence in
the forced simplicity of its tone. On both sides of the deck subdued
titters were heard.--"That'll do. Go over," growled Mr. Baker, fixing
the new hand with steady blue eyes. And Donkin vanished suddenly out of
the light into the dark group of mustered men, to be slapped on the back
and to hear flattering whispers:--"He ain't afeard, he'll give sport to
'em, see if he don't.... Reg'lar Punch and Judy show.... Did ye see the
mate start at him?... Well! Damme, if I ever!..." The last man had gone
over, and there was a moment of silence while the mate peered at his
list.--"Sixteen, seventeen," he muttered. "I am one hand short, bo'sen,"
he said aloud. The big west-countryman at his elbow, swarthy and bearded
like a gigantic Spaniard, said in a rumbling bass:--"There's no one left
forward, sir. I had a look round. He ain't aboard, but he may turn up
before daylight."--"Ay. He may or he may not," commented the mate,
"can't make out that last name. It's all a smudge.... That will do, men.
Go below."
The distinct and motionless group stirred, broke up, began to move
forward.
"Wait!" cried a deep, ringing voice.
All stood still. Mr. Baker, who had turned away yawning, spun round
open-mouthed. At last, furious, he blurted out:--"What's this? Who said
'Wait'? What...."
But he saw a tall figure standing on the rail. It came down and pushed
through the crowd, marching with a heavy tread towards the light on the
quarterdeck. Then again the sonorous voice said with insistence:--"Wait!"
The lamplight lit up the man's body. He was tall. His head was away
up in the shadows of lifeboats that stood on skids above the deck. The
whites of his eyes and his teeth gleamed distinctly, but the face was
indistinguishable. His hands were big and seemed gloved.
Mr. Baker advanced intrepidly. "Who are you? How dare you..." he began.
The boy, amazed like the rest, raised the light to the man's face. It
was black. A surprised hum--a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed
mutter of the word "Nigger"--ran along the deck and escaped out into the
night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he stood
in a swagger that marked time. After a moment he said calmly:--"My name
is Wait--James Wait."
"Oh!" said Mr. Baker. Then, after a few seconds of smouldering silence,
his temper blazed out. "Ah! Your name is Wait. What of that? What do you
want? What do you mean, coming shouting here?"
The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb. The men had approached and
stood behind him in a body. He overtopped the tallest by half a head.
He said: "I belong to the ship." He enunciated distinctly, with soft
precision. The deep, rolling tones of his voice filled the deck without
effort. He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly condescending, as if
from his height of six foot three he had surveyed all the vastness of
human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it. He went
on:--"The captain shipped me this morning. I couldn't get aboard sooner.
I saw you all aft as I came up the ladder, and could see directly you
were mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name. I thought
you had it on your list, and would understand. You misapprehended."
He stopped short. The folly around him was confounded. He was right as
ever, and as ever ready to forgive. The disdainful tones had ceased,
and, breathing heavily, he stood still, surrounded by all these white
men. He held his head up in the glare of the lamp--a head vigorously
modelled into deep shadows and shining lights--a head powerful and
misshapen with a tormented and flattened face--a face pathetic and
brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger's
soul.
Mr. Baker, recovering his composure, looked at the paper close. "Oh,
yes; that's so. All right, Wait. Take your gear forward," he said.
Suddenly the nigger's eyes rolled wildly, became all whites. He put
his hand to his side and coughed twice, a cough metallic, hollow, and
tremendously loud; it resounded like two explosions in a vault; the dome
of the sky rang to it, and the iron plates of the ship's bulwarks seemed
to vibrate in unison, then he marched off forward with the others. The
officers lingering by the cabin door could hear him say: "Won't some of
you chaps lend a hand with my dunnage? I've got a chest and a bag." The
words, spoken sonorously, with an even intonation, were heard all
over the ship, and the question was put in a manner that made refusal
impossible. The short, quick shuffle of men carrying something heavy
went away forward, but the tall figure of the nigger lingered by the
main hatch in a knot of smaller shapes. Again he was heard asking: "Is
your cook a coloured gentleman?" Then a disappointed and disapproving
"Ah! h'm!" was his comment upon the information that the cook happened
to be a mere white man. Yet, as they went all together towards the
forecastle, he condescended to put his head through the galley door and
boom out inside a magnificent "Good evening, doctor!" that made all the
saucepans ring. In the dim light the cook dozed on the coal locker in
front of the captain's supper. He jumped up as if he had been cut with
a whip, and dashed wildly on deck to see the backs of several men going
away laughing. Afterwards, when talking about that voyage, he used to
say:--"The poor fellow had scared me. I thought I had seen the devil."
The cook had been seven years in the ship with the same captain. He was
a serious-minded man with a wife and three children, whose society he
enjoyed on an average one month out of twelve. When on shore he took
his family to church twice every Sunday. At sea he went to sleep every
evening with his lamp turned up full, a pipe in his mouth, and an open
Bible in his hand. Some one had always to go during the night to put out
the light, take the book from his hand, and the pipe from between his
teeth. "For"--Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining--"some night,
you stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no
cook."--"Ah! sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call... wish you all
were," the other would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether
imbecile and touching. Belfast outside the galley door danced with
vexation. "You holy fool! I don't want you to die," he howled, looking
up with furious, quivering face and tender eyes. "What's the hurry?
You blessed wooden-headed ould heretic, the divvle will have you soon
enough. Think of Us... of Us... of Us!" And he would go away, stamping,
spitting aside, disgusted and worried; while the other, stepping out,
saucepan in hand, hot, begrimed and placid, watched with a superior,
cock-sure smile the back of his "queer little man" reeling in a rage.
They were great friends.
Mr. Baker, lounging over the after-hatch, sniffed the humid night in
the company of the second mate.--"Those West India niggers run fine and
large--some of them... Ough!... Don't they? A fine, big man that, Mr.
Creighton. Feel him on a rope. Hey? Ough! I will take him into my watch,
I think." The second mate, a fair, gentlemanly young fellow, with a
resolute face and a splendid physique, observed quietly that it was
just about what he expected. There could be felt in his tone some slight
bitterness which Mr. Baker very kindly set himself to argue away. "Come,
come, young man," he said, grunting between the words. "Come! Don't be
too greedy. You had that big Finn in your watch all the voyage. I will
do what's fair. You may have those two young Scandinavians and I...
Ough!... I get the nigger, and will take that.... Ough! that cheeky
costermonger chap in a black frock-coat. I'll make him.... Ough!...
make him toe the mark, or my.... Ough!.... name isn't Baker. Ough! Ough!
Ough!"
He grunted thrice--ferociously. He had that trick of grunting so between
his words and at the end of sentences. It was a fine, effective grunt
that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy, bull-necked
frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed face, his steady
eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long ago discounted
by the men. They liked him; Belfast--who was a favourite, and knew
it--mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley--but with greater
caution--imitated his rolling gait. Some of his sayings became
established, daily quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go
no farther! Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting
occasion the mate could "jump down a fellow's throat in a reg'lar
Western Ocean style."
Now he was giving his last orders. "Ough! You, Knowles! Call all hands
at four. I want... Ough!... to heave short before the tug comes. Look
out for the captain. I am going to lie down in my clothes.... Ough!...
Call me when you see the boat coming. Ough! Ough!. The old man is sure
to have something to say when he gets aboard," he remarked to Creighton.
"Well, good-night.... Ough! A long day before us to-morrow.... Ough!...
Better turn in now. Ough! Ough!"
Upon the dark deck a band of light flashed, then a door slammed, and Mr.
Baker was gone into his neat cabin. Young Creighton stood leaning over
the rail, and looked dreamily into the night of the East. And he saw in
it a long country lane, a lane of waving leaves and dancing sunshine.
He saw stirring boughs of old trees outspread, and framing in their arch
the tender, the caressing blueness of an English sky. And through the
arch a girl in a light dress, smiling under a sunshade, seemed to be
stepping out of the tender sky.
At the other end of the ship the forecastle, with only one lamp burning
now, was going to sleep in a dim emptiness traversed by loud breathings,
by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths yawned black, like
graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain of gaudy
chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. A leg hung
over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with
a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two light snores,
that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue. Singleton
stripped again--the old man suffered much from prickly heat--stood cooling
his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned
chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger, half
undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing of his box, and spreading
his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about in his socks, tall and
noiseless, with a pair of braces beating about his calves. Amongst
the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin munched a piece of hard
ship's bread, sitting on the deck with upturned feet and restless eyes;
he held the biscuit up before his mouth in the whole fist and snapped
his jaws at it with a raging face. Crumbs fell between his outspread
legs. Then he got up.
"Where's our water-cask?" he asked in a contained voice.
Singleton, without a word, pointed with a big hand that held a short
smouldering pipe. Donkin bent over the cask, drank out of the tin,
splashing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him
over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved up sideways.
"There's a blooming supper for a man," he whispered bitterly. "My dorg
at 'ome wouldn't 'ave it. It's fit enouf for you an' me. 'Ere's a big
ship's fo'c'sle!... Not a blooming scrap of meat in the kids. I've
looked in all the lockers...."
The nigger stared like a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign
language. Donkin changed his tone:--"Giv' us a bit of 'baccy, mate," he
breathed out confidentially, "I 'aven't 'ad smoke or chew for the last
month. I am rampin' mad for it. Come on, old man!"
"Don't be familiar," said the nigger. Donkin started and sat down on a
chest near by, out of sheer surprise. "We haven't kept pigs together,"
continued James Wait in a deep undertone. "Here's your tobacco." Then,
after a pause, he inquired:--"What ship?"--"Golden State," muttered Donkin
indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled low.--"Ran?" he
said curtly. Donkin nodded: one of his cheeks bulged out. "In course
I ran," he mumbled. "They booted the life hout of one Dago chap on the
passage 'ere, then started on me. I cleared hout 'ere.--" "Left your
dunnage behind?"--"Yes, dunnage and money," answered Donkin, raising
his voice a little; "I got nothink. No clothes, no bed. A bandy-legged
little Hirish chap 'ere 'as give me a blanket. Think I'll go an' sleep
in the fore topmast staysail to-night."
He went on deck trailing behind his back a corner of the blanket.
Singleton, without a glance, moved slightly aside to let him pass. The
nigger put away his shore togs and sat in clean working clothes on his
box, one arm stretched over his knees. After staring at Singleton for
some time he asked without emphasis:--"What kind of ship is this? Pretty
fair? Eh?"
Singleton didn't stir. A long while after he said, with unmoved
face:--"Ship!... Ships are all right. It is the men in them!"
He went on smoking in the profound silence. The wisdom of half a century
spent in listening to the thunder of the waves had spoken unconsciously
through his old lips. The cat purred on the windlass. Then James Wait
had a fit of roaring, rattling cough, that shook him, tossed him like
a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring eyes headlong on his
sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sleepily out of his bunk:
"'Struth! what a blamed row!"--"I have a cold on my chest," gasped
Wait.--"Cold! you call it," grumbled the man; "should think 'twas
something more...."--"Oh! you think so," said the nigger upright and
loftily scornful again. He climbed into his berth and began coughing
persistently while he put his head out to glare all round the
forecastle. There was no further protest. He fell back on the pillow,
and could be heard there wheezing regularly like a man oppressed in his
sleep.
Singleton stood at the door with his face to the light and his back to
the darkness. And alone in the dim emptiness of the sleeping forecastle
he appeared bigger, colossal, very old; old as Father Time himself,
who should have come there into this place as quiet as a sepulchre to
contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler.
Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a devoured and
forgotten generation. He stood, still strong, as ever unthinking; a
ready man with a vast empty past and with no future, with his childlike
impulses and his man's passions already dead within his tattooed breast.
The men who could understand his silence were gone--those men who knew
how to exist beyond the pale of life and within sight of eternity. They
had been strong, as those are strong who know neither doubts nor hopes.
They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly
and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent those men as
whining over every mouthful of their food; as going about their work
in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew toil,
privation, violence, debauchery--but knew not fear, and had no desire
of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to inspire;
voiceless men--but men enough to scorn in their hearts the sentimental
voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a fate unique
and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the privilege
of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and, indispensable,
without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge of a home--and
died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They were the
everlasting children of the mysterious sea. Their successors are the
grown-up children of a discontented earth. They are less naughty, but
less innocent; less profane, but perhaps also less believing; and if
they have learned how to speak they have also learned how to whine. But
the others were strong and mute; they were effaced, bowed and enduring,
like stone caryatides that hold up in the night the lighted halls of
a resplendent and glorious edifice. They are gone now--and it does not
matter. The sea and the earth are unfaithful to their children: a truth,
a faith, a generation of men goes--and is forgotten, and it does not
matter! Except, perhaps, to the few of those who believed the truth,
confessed the faith--or loved the men.
A breeze was coming. The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to
a heavier puff; and suddenly the slack of the chain cable between the
windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch, and rose
gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life
that had been lurking stealthily in the iron. In the hawse-pipe the
grinding links sent through the ship a sound like a low groan of a
man sighing under a burden. The strain came on the windlass, the chain
tautened like a string, vibrated--and the handle of the screw-brake moved
in slight jerks. Singleton stepped forward.
Till then he had been standing meditative and unthinking, reposeful
and hopeless, with a face grim and blank--a sixty-year-old child of
the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been
expressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much
part of his existence as his beating heart called up a gleam of alert
understanding upon the sternness of his aged face. The flame of the lamp
swayed, and the old man, with knitted and bushy eyebrows, stood over the
brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing shadows.
Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead slightly
and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and after swaying
imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap on the hard wood
planks. Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a violent throw forward
of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the brake. He recovered
himself, breathed largely, and remained for a while glaring down at the
powerful and compact engine that squatted on the deck at his feet like
some quiet monster--a creature amazing and tame.
"You... hold!" he growled at it masterfully in the incult tangle of his
white beard.
CHAPTER TWO
Next morning, at daylight, the Narcissus went to sea.
A slight haze blurred the horizon. Outside the harbour the measureless
expanse of smooth water lay sparkling like a floor of jewels, and as
empty as the sky. The short black tug gave a pluck to windward, in the
usual way, then let go the rope, and hovered for a moment on the quarter
with her engines stopped; while the slim, long hull of the ship moved
ahead slowly under lower topsails. The loose upper canvas blew out
in the breeze with soft round contours, resembling small white clouds
snared in the maze of ropes. Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards
hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all
shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round
and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her
low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two
paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She
resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle, surprised by the light,
overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with ineffectual effort
into the distant gloom of the land. She left a lingering smudge of smoke
on the sky, and two vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place
where she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating
on the swell--an unclean mark of the creature's rest.
The Narcissus left alone, heading south, seemed to stand resplendent and
still upon the restless sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam swept
past her sides; the water struck her with flashing blows; the land
glided away slowly fading; a few birds screamed on motionless wings over
the swaying mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds went
away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow running for
Bombay, rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon,
lingered and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship's wake, long and
straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The
setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below
the blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, coming up from
behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It
left the ship glistening from trucks to water-line, and with darkened
sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared
for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and
monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men
mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of some block
aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.
Mr. Baker, coming out of his cabin, called out the first name sharply
before closing the door behind him. He was going to take charge of the
deck. On the homeward trip, according to an old custom of the sea, the
chief officer takes the first night-watch--from eight till midnight.
So Mr. Baker, after he had heard the last "Yes, sir!" said moodily,
"Relieve the wheel and look-out"; and climbed with heavy feet the
poop ladder to windward. Soon after Mr. Creighton came down, whistling
softly, and went into the cabin. On the doorstep the steward lounged,
in slippers, meditative, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the
armpits.
On the main deck the cook, locking up the galley doors, had an
altercation with young Charley about a pair of socks. He could be heard
saying impressively, in the darkness amidships: "You don't deserve a
kindness. I've been drying them for you, and now you complain about
the holes--and you swear, too! Right in front of me! If I hadn't been a
Christian--which you ain't, you young ruffian--I would give you a clout on
the head.... Go away!" Men in couples or threes stood pensive or moved
silently along the bulwarks in the waist. The first busy day of a
homeward passage was sinking into the dull peace of resumed routine.
Aft, on the high poop, Mr. Baker walked shuffling and grunted to himself
in the pauses of his thoughts. Forward, the look-out man, erect between
the flukes of the two anchors, hummed an endless tune, keeping his eyes
fixed dutifully ahead in a vacant stare. A multitude of stars coming out
into the clear night peopled the emptiness of the sky. They glittered,
as if alive above the sea; they surrounded the running ship on all
sides; more intense than the eyes of a staring crowd, and as inscrutable
as the souls of men.
The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth,
went on lonely and swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of
sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude
moved with her, ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and
always imposing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened
with life, appeared far off--disappeared; intent on its own destiny.
The sun looked upon her all day, and every morning rose with a burning,
round stare of undying curiosity. She had her own future; she was alive
with the lives of those beings who trod her decks; like that earth which
had given her up to the sea, she had an intolerable load of regrets and
hopes. On her lived timid truth and audacious lies; and, like the earth,
she was unconscious, fair to see--and condemned by men to an ignoble
fate. The august loneliness of her path lent dignity to the sordid
inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward, as if
guided by the courage of a high endeavour. The smiling greatness of
the sea dwarfed the extent of time. The days raced after one another,
brilliant and quick like the flashes of a lighthouse, and the nights,
eventful and short, resembled fleeting dreams.
The men had shaken into their places, and the half-hourly voice of the
bells ruled their life of unceasing care. Night and day the head and
shoulders of a seaman could be seen aft by the wheel, outlined high
against sunshine or starlight, very steady above the stir of revolving
spokes. The faces changed, passing in rotation. Youthful faces, bearded
faces, dark faces: faces serene, or faces moody, but all akin with the
brotherhood of the sea; all with the same attentive expression of eyes,
carefully watching the compass or the sails. Captain Allistoun, serious,
and with an old red muffler round his throat, all day long pervaded the
poop. At night, many times he rose out of the darkness of the companion,
such as a phantom above a grave, and stood watchful and mute under the
stars, his night-shirt fluttering like a flag--then, without a sound,
sank down again. He was born on the shores of the Pentland Firth. In his
youth he attained the rank of harpooner in Peterhead whalers. When he
spoke of that time his restless grey eyes became still and cold, like
the loom of ice. Afterwards he went into the East Indian trade for the
sake of change. He had commanded the Narcissus since she was built. He
loved his ship, and drove her unmercifully; for his secret ambition was
to make her accomplish some day a brilliantly quick passage which would
be mentioned in nautical papers. He pronounced his owner's name with a
sardonic smile, spoke but seldom to his officers, and reproved errors
in a gentle voice, with words that cut to the quick. His hair was
iron-grey, his face hard and of the colour of pump-leather. He shaved
every morning of his life--at six--but once (being caught in a fierce
hurricane eighty miles southwest of Mauritius) he had missed three
consecutive days. He feared naught but an unforgiving God, and wished
to end his days in a little house, with a plot of ground attached--far in
the country--out of sight of the sea.
He, the ruler of that minute world, seldom descended from the Olympian
heights of his poop. Below him--at his feet, so to speak--common mortals
led their busy and insignificant lives. Along the main deck, Mr. Baker
grunted in a manner bloodthirsty and innocuous; and kept all our noses
to the grindstone, being--as he once remarked--paid for doing that very
thing. The men working about the deck were healthy and contented--as most
seamen are, when once well out to sea. The true peace of God begins at
any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land; and when He sends there
the messengers of His might it is not in terrible wrath against
crime, presumption, and folly, but paternally, to chasten simple
hearts--ignorant hearts that know nothing of life, and beat undisturbed
by envy or greed.
In the evening the cleared decks had a reposeful aspect, resembling the
autumn of the earth. The sun was sinking to rest, wrapped in a mantle of
warm clouds. Forward, on the end of the spare spars, the boatswain
and the carpenter sat together with crossed arms; two men friendly,
powerful, and deep-chested. Beside them the short, dumpy sailmaker--who
had been in the Navy--related, between the whiffs of his pipe, impossible
stories about Admirals. Couples tramped backwards and forwards, keeping
step and balance without effort, in a confined space. Pigs grunted in
the big pigstye. Belfast, leaning thoughtfully on his elbow, above the
bars, communed with them through the silence of his meditation. Fellows
with shirts open wide on sunburnt breasts sat upon the mooring bits,
and all up the steps of the forecastle ladders. By the foremast a
few discussed in a circle the characteristics of a gentleman. One
said:--"It's money as does it." Another maintained:--"No, it's the way
they speak." Lame Knowles stumped up with an unwashed face (he had the
distinction of being the dirty man of the forecastle), and showing a
few yellow fangs in a shrewd smile, explained craftily that he "had seen
some of their pants." The backsides of them--he had observed--were thinner
than paper from constant sitting down in offices, yet otherwise they
looked first-rate and would last for years. It was all appearance. "It
was," he said, "bloomin' easy to be a gentleman when you had a clean
job for life." They disputed endlessly, obstinate and childish; they
repeated in shouts and with inflamed faces their amazing arguments;
while the soft breeze, eddying down the enormous cavity of the foresail,
distended above their bare heads, stirred the tumbled hair with a touch
passing and light like an indulgent caress.
They were forgetting their toil, they were forgetting themselves.
The cook approached to hear, and stood by, beaming with the inward
consciousness of his faith, like a conceited saint unable to forget his
glorious reward; Donkin, solitary and brooding over his wrongs on the
forecastle-head, moved closer to catch the drift of the discussion below
him; he turned his sallow face to the sea, and his thin nostrils moved,
sniffing the breeze, as he lounged negligently by the rail. In the glow
of sunset faces shone with interest, teeth flashed, eyes sparkled. The
walking couples stood still suddenly, with broad grins; a man, bending
over a wash-tub, sat up, entranced, with the soapsuds flecking his wet
arms. Even the three petty officers listened leaning back, comfortably
propped, and with superior smiles. Belfast left off scratching the ear
of his favourite pig, and, open mouthed, tried with eager eyes to have
his say. He lifted his arms, grimacing and baffled. From a distance
Charley screamed at the ring:--"I know about gentlemen more'n any of you.
I've been intermit with 'em.... I've blacked their boots." The cook,
craning his neck to hear better, was scandalised. "Keep your mouth shut
when your elders speak, you impudent young heathen--you." "All right, old
Hallelujah, I'm done," answered Charley, soothingly. At some opinion of
dirty Knowles, delivered with an air of supernatural cunning, a ripple
of laughter ran along, rose like a wave, burst with a startling roar.
They stamped with both feet; they turned their shouting faces to the
sky; many, spluttering, slapped their thighs; while one or two, bent
double, gasped, hugging themselves with both arms like men in pain. The
carpenter and the boatswain, without changing their attitude, shook with
laughter where they sat; the sailmaker, charged with an anecdote about a
Commodore, looked sulky; the cook was wiping his eyes with a greasy rag;
and lame Knowles, astonished at his own success, stood in their midst
showing a slow smile.
Suddenly the face of Donkin leaning high-shouldered over the after-rail
became grave. Something like a weak rattle was heard through the
forecastle door. It became a murmur; it ended in a sighing groan. The
washerman plunged both his arms into the tub abruptly; the cook became
more crestfallen than an exposed backslider; the boatswain moved his
shoulders uneasily; the carpenter got up with a spring and walked
away--while the sailmaker seemed mentally to give his story up, and began
to puff at his pipe with sombre determination. In the blackness of the
doorway a pair of eyes glimmered white, and big, and staring. Then James
Wait's head protruding, became visible, as if suspended between the two
hands that grasped a doorpost on each side of the face. The tassel of
his blue woollen nightcap, cocked forward, danced gaily over his left
eyelid. He stepped out in a tottering stride. He looked powerful as
ever, but showed a strange and affected unsteadiness in his gait;
his face was perhaps a trifle thinner, and his eyes appeared rather
startlingly prominent. He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing
light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though
fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle
and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out and
settled on all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The
joy of laughter died on stiffened lips. There was not a smile left among
all the ship's company. Not a word was spoken. Many turned their
backs, trying to look unconcerned; others, with averted heads, sent
half-reluctant glances out of the corners of their eyes. They resembled
criminals conscious of misdeeds more than honest men distracted by
doubt; only two or three stared frankly, but stupidly, with lips
slightly open. All expected James Wait to say something, and, at the
same time, had the air of knowing beforehand what he would say. He
leaned his back against the doorpost, and with heavy eyes swept over
them a glance domineering and pained, like a sick tyrant overawing a
crowd of abject but untrustworthy slaves.
No one went away. They waited in fascinated dread. He said ironically,
with gasps between the words:--
"Thank you... chaps. You... are nice... and... quiet... you are! Yelling
so... before... the door...."
He made a longer pause, during which he worked his ribs in an
exaggerated labour of breathing. It was intolerable. Feet were shuffled.
Belfast let out a groan; but Donkin above blinked his red eyelids with
invisible eyelashes, and smiled bitterly over the nigger's head.
The nigger went on again with surprising ease. He gasped no more, and
his voice rang, hollow and loud, as though he had been talking in an
empty cavern. He was contemptuously angry.
"I tried to get a wink of sleep. You know I can't sleep o' nights.
And you come jabbering near the door here like a blooming lot of old
women.... You think yourselves good shipmates. Do you?... Much you care
for a dying man!"
Belfast spun away from the pigstye. "Jimmy," he cried tremulously, "if
you hadn't been sick I would------"
He stopped. The nigger waited awhile, then said, in a gloomy tone:--"You
would.... What? Go an' fight another such one as yourself. Leave
me alone. It won't be for long. I'll soon die.... It's coming right
enough!"
Men stood around very still and with exasperated eyes. It was just what
they had expected, and hated to hear, that idea of a stalking death,
thrust at them many times a day like a boast and like a menace by this
obnoxious nigger. He seemed to take a pride in that death which, so far,
had attended only upon the ease of his life; he was overbearing about
it, as if no one else in the world had ever been intimate with such
a companion; he paraded it unceasingly before us with an affectionate
persistence that made its presence indubitable, and at the same time
incredible. No man could be suspected of such monstrous friendship! Was
he a reality--or was he a sham--this ever-expected visitor of Jimmy's?
We hesitated between pity and mistrust, while, on the slightest
provocation, he shook before our eyes the bones of his bothersome and
infamous skeleton. He was for ever trotting him out. He would talk of
that coming death as though it had been already there, as if it had been
walking the deck outside, as if it would presently come in to sleep
in the only empty bunk; as if it had sat by his side at every meal.
It interfered daily with our occupations, with our leisure, with our
amusements. We had no songs and no music in the evening, because
Jimmy (we all lovingly called him Jimmy, to conceal our hate of his
accomplice) had managed, with that prospective decease of his, to
disturb even Archie's mental balance. Archie was the owner of the
concertina; but after a couple of stinging lectures from Jimmy he
refused to play any more. He said:--"Yon's an uncanny joker. I dinna ken
what's wrang wi' him, but there's something verra wrang, verra wrang.
It's nae manner of use asking me. I won't play." Our singers became mute
because Jimmy was a dying man. For the same reason no chap--as Knowles
remarked--could "drive in a nail to hang his few poor rags upon," without
being made aware of the enormity he committed in disturbing Jimmy's
interminable last moments. At night, instead of the cheerful yell, "One
bell! Turn out! Do you hear there? Hey! hey! hey! Show leg!" the
watches were called man by man, in whispers, so as not to interfere with
Jimmy's, possibly, last slumber on earth. True, he was always awake, and
managed, as we sneaked out on deck, to plant in our backs some cutting
remark that, for the moment, made us feel as if we had been brutes, and
afterwards made us suspect ourselves of being fools. We spoke in low
tones within that fo'c'sle as though it had been a church. We ate our
meals in silence and dread, for Jimmy was capricious with his food, and
railed bitterly at the salt meat, at the biscuits, at the tea, as at
articles unfit for human consumption--"let alone for a dying man!" He
would say:--"Can't you find a better slice of meat for a sick man who's
trying to get home to be cured--or buried? But there! If I had a chance,
you fellows would do away with it. You would poison me. Look at what
you have given me!" We served him in his bed with rage and humility, as
though we had been the base courtiers of a hated prince; and he rewarded
us by his unconciliating criticism. He had found the secret of keeping
for ever on the run the fundamental imbecility of mankind; he had the
secret of life, that confounded dying man, and he made himself master
of every moment of our existence. We grew desperate, and remained
submissive. Emotional little Belfast was for ever on the verge
of assault or on the verge of tears. One evening he confided to
Archie:--"For a ha'penny I would knock his ugly black head off--the
skulking dodger!" And the straightforward Archie pretended to be
shocked! Such was the infernal spell which that casual St. Kitt's nigger
had cast upon our guileless manhood! But the same night Belfast stole
from the galley the officers' Sunday fruit pie, to tempt the fastidious
appetite of Jimmy. He endangered not only his long friendship with
the cook but also--as it appeared--his eternal welfare. The cook was
overwhelmed with grief; he did not know the culprit but he knew that
wickedness flourished; he knew that Satan was abroad amongst those men,
whom he looked upon as in some way under his spiritual care. Whenever he
saw three or four of us standing together he would leave his stove, to
run out and preach. We fled from him; and only Charley (who knew the
thief) affronted the cook with a candid gaze which irritated the good
man. "It's you, I believe," he groaned, sorrowful and with a patch of
soot on his chin. "It's you. You are a brand for the burning! No more of
your socks in my galley." Soon, unofficially, the information was spread
about that, should there be another case of stealing, our marmalade
(an extra allowance: half a pound per man) would be stopped. Mr.
Baker ceased to heap jocular abuse upon his favourites, and grunted
suspiciously at all. The captain's cold eyes, high up on the poop,
glittered mistrustful, as he surveyed us trooping in a small mob from
halyards to braces for the usual evening pull at all the ropes. Such
stealing in a merchant ship is difficult to check, and may be taken as
a declaration by men of their dislike for their officers. It is a bad
symptom. It may end in God knows what trouble. The Narcissus was still a
peaceful ship, but mutual confidence was shaken. Donkin did not conceal
his delight. We were dismayed.
Then illogical Belfast reproached our nigger with great fury. James
Wait, with his elbow on the pillow, choked, gasped out:--"Did I ask
you to bone the dratted thing? Blow your blamed pie. It has made me
worse--you little Irish lunatic, you!" Belfast, with scarlet face and
trembling lips, made a dash at him. Every man in the forecastle rose
with a shout. There was a moment of wild tumult. Some one shrieked
piercingly:--"Easy, Belfast! Easy!..." We expected Belfast to strangle
Wait without more ado. Dust flew. We heard through it the nigger's
cough, metallic and explosive like a gong. Next moment we saw Belfast
hanging over him. He was saying plaintively:--"Don't! Don't, Jimmy!
Don't be like that. An angel couldn't put up with ye--sick as ye are."
He looked round at us from Jimmy's bedside, his comical mouth twitching,
and through tearful eyes; then he tried to put straight the disarranged
blankets. The unceasing whisper of the sea filled the forecastle. Was
James Wait frightened, or touched, or repentant? He lay on his back with
a hand to his side, and as motionless as if his expected visitor
had come at last. Belfast fumbled about his feet, repeating with
emotion:--"Yes. We know. Ye are bad, but.... Just say what ye want done,
and.... We all know ye are bad--very bad...." No! Decidedly James Wait
was not touched or repentant. Truth to say, he seemed rather startled.
He sat up with incredible suddenness and ease. "Ah! You think I am bad,
do you?" he said gloomily, in his clearest baritone voice (to hear him
speak sometimes you would never think there was anything wrong with that
man). "Do you?... Well, act according! Some of you haven't sense enough
to put a blanket shipshape over a sick man. There! Leave it alone! I
can die anyhow!" Belfast turned away limply with a gesture of
discouragement. In the silence of the forecastle, full of interested
men, Donkin pronounced distinctly:--"Well, I'm blowed!" and sniggered.
Wait looked at him. He looked at him in a quite friendly manner. Nobody
could tell what would please our incomprehensible invalid: but for us
the scorn of that snigger was hard to bear.
Donkin's position in the forecastle was distinguished but unsafe. He
stood on the bad eminence of a general dislike. He was left alone; and
in his isolation he could do nothing but think of the gales of the
Cape of Good Hope and envy us the possession of warm clothing and
waterproofs. Our sea-boots, our oilskin coats, our well-filled
sea-chests, were to him so many causes for bitter meditation: he had
none of those things, and he felt instinctively that no man, when
the need arose, would offer to share them with him. He was impudently
cringing to us and systematically insolent to the officers. He
anticipated the best results, for himself, from such a line of
conduct--and was mistaken. Such natures forget that under extreme
provocation men will be just--whether they want to be so or not. Donkin's
insolence to long-suffering Mr. Baker became at last intolerable to us,
and we rejoiced when the mate, one dark night, tamed him for good.
It was done neatly, with great decency and decorum, and with little
noise. We had been called--just before midnight--to trim the yards, and
Donkin--as usual--made insulting remarks. We stood sleepily in a row with
the forebrace in our hands waiting for the next order, and heard in the
darkness a scuffly trampling of feet, an exclamation of surprise, sounds
of cuffs and slaps, suppressed, hissing whispers:--"Ah! Will you!"...
"Don't!... Don't!"... "Then behave."... "Oh! Oh!..." Afterwards there
were soft thuds mixed with the rattle of iron things as if a man's body
had been tumbling helplessly amongst the main-pump rods. Before we
could realise the situation, Mr. Baker's voice was heard very near and
a little impatient:--"Haul away, men! Lay back on that rope!" And we did
lay back on the rope with great alacrity. As if nothing had happened,
the chief mate went on trimming the yards with his usual and
exasperating fastidiousness. We didn't at the time see anything of
Donkin, and did not care. Had the chief officer thrown him overboard,
no man would have said as much as "Hallo! he's gone!" But, in truth, no
great harm was done--even if Donkin did lose one of his front teeth. We
perceived this in the morning, and preserved a ceremonious silence: the
etiquette of the forecastle commanded us to be blind and dumb in such
a case, and we cherished the decencies of our life more than ordinary
landsmen respect theirs. Charley, with unpardonable want of savoir
vivre, yelled out:--"'Ave you been to your dentyst?... Hurt ye, didn't
it?" He got a box on the ear from one of his best friends. The boy was
surprised, and remained plunged in grief for at least three hours. We
were sorry for him, but youth requires even more discipline than age.
Donkin grinned venomously. From that day he became pitiless; told Jimmy
that he was a "black fraud"; hinted to us that we were an imbecile lot,
daily taken in by a vulgar nigger. And Jimmy seemed to like the fellow!
Singleton lived untouched by human emotions. Taciturn and unsmiling, he
breathed amongst us--in that alone resembling the rest of the crowd.
We were trying to be decent chaps, and found it jolly difficult; we
oscillated between the desire of virtue and the fear of ridicule; we
wished to save ourselves from the pain of remorse, but did not want
to be made the contemptible dupes of our sentiment. Jimmy's hateful
accomplice seemed to have blown with his impure breath undreamt of
subtleties into our hearts. We were disturbed and cowardly. That we
knew. Singleton seemed to know nothing, understand nothing. We had
thought him till then as wise as he looked, but now we dared, at times,
suspect him of being stupid--from old age. One day, however, at dinner,
as we sat on our boxes round a tin dish that stood on the deck within
the circle of our feet, Jimmy expressed his general disgust with men and
things in words that were particularly disgusting. Singleton lifted his
head. We became mute. The old man, addressing Jimmy, asked:--"Are you
dying?" Thus interrogated, James Wait appeared horribly startled and
confused. We all were startled. Mouths remained open; hearts thumped,
eyes blinked; a dropped tin fork rattled in the dish; a man rose as if
to go out, and stood still. In less than a minute Jimmy pulled himself
together:--"Why? Can't you see I am?" he answered shakily. Singleton
lifted a piece of soaked biscuit ("his teeth"--he declared--"had no edge
on them now") to his lips.--"Well, get on with your dying," he said with
venerable mildness; "don't raise a blamed fuss with us over that job.
We can't help you." Jimmy fell back in his bunk, and for a long time lay
very still wiping the perspiration off his chin. The dinner-tins were
put away quickly. On deck we discussed the incident in whispers. Some
showed a chuckling exultation. Many looked grave. Wamibo, after long
periods of staring dreaminess, attempted abortive smiles; and one of
the young Scandinavians, much tormented by doubt, ventured in the second
dog-watch to approach Singleton (the old man did not encourage us much
to speak to him) and ask sheepishly:--"You think he will die?" Singleton
looked up.--"Why, of course he will die," he said deliberately. This
seemed decisive. It was promptly imparted to every one by him who had
consulted the oracle. Shy and eager, he would step up and with averted
gaze recite his formula:--"Old Singleton says he will die." It was a
relief! At last we knew that our compassion would not be misplaced, and
we could again smile without misgivings--but we reckoned without Donkin.
Donkin "didn't want to 'ave no truck with 'em dirty furriners." When
Nilsen came to him with the news: "Singleton says he will die," he
answered him by a spiteful "And so will you--you fat-headed Dutchman.
Wish you Dutchmen were all dead--'stead comin' takin' our money inter
your starvin' country." We were appalled. We perceived that after all
Singleton's answer meant nothing. We began to hate him for making fun
of us. All our certitudes were going; we were on doubtful terms with
our officers; the cook had given us up for lost; we had overheard the
boatswain's opinion that "we were a crowd of softies." We suspected
Jimmy, one another, and even our very selves. We did not know what
to do. At every insignificant turn of our humble life we met Jimmy
overbearing and blocking the way, arm-in-arm with his awful and veiled
familiar. It was a weird servitude.
It began a week after leaving Bombay and came on us stealthily like any
other great misfortune. Every one had remarked that Jimmy from the first
was very slack at his work; but we thought it simply the outcome of his
philosophy of life. Donkin said:--"You put no more weight on a rope
than a bloody sparrer." He disdained him. Belfast, ready for a fight,
exclaimed provokingly:--"You don't kill yourself, old man!"--"Would you?"
he retorted with extreme, scorn--and Belfast retired. One morning, as
we were washing decks, Mr. Baker called to him:--"Bring your broom over
here, Wait." He strolled languidly.
"Move yourself! Ough!" grunted Mr. Baker; "what's the matter with your
hind legs?" He stopped dead short. He gazed slowly with eyes that bulged
out with an expression audacious and sad.--"It isn't my legs," he said,
"it's my lungs." Everybody listened.--"What's... Ough!... What's wrong
with them?" inquired Mr. Baker. All the watch stood around on the wet
deck, grinning, and with brooms or buckets in their hands. He said
mournfully:--"Going--or gone. Can't you see I'm a dying man? I know
it!" Mr. Baker was disgusted.--"Then why the devil did you ship aboard
here?"--"I must live till I die--mustn't I?" he replied. The grins became
audible.--"Go off my deck--get out of my sight," said Mr. Baker. He was
nonplussed. It was a unique experience. James Wait, obedient, dropped
his broom, and walked slowly forward. A burst of laughter followed him.
It was too funny. All hands laughed.... They laughed!... Alas!
He became the tormentor of all our moments; he was worse than a
nightmare. You couldn't see that there was anything wrong with him: a
nigger does not show. He was not very fat--certainly--but then he was no
leaner than other niggers we had known. He coughed often, but the most
prejudiced person could perceive that, mostly, he coughed when it suited
his purpose. He wouldn't, or couldn't, do his work--and he wouldn't
lie-up. One day he would skip aloft with the best of them, and next time
we would be obliged to risk our lives to get his limp body down. He
was reported, he was examined; he was remonstrated with, threatened,
cajoled, lectured. He was called into the cabin to interview the
captain. There were wild rumours. It was said he had cheeked the old
man; it was said he had frightened him. Charley maintained that the
"skipper, weepin,' 'as giv' 'im 'is blessin' an' a pot of jam." Knowles
had it from the steward that the unspeakable Jimmy had been reeling
against the cabin furniture; that he had groaned; that he had complained
of general brutality and disbelief; and had ended by coughing all over
the old man's meteorological journals which were then spread on the
table. At any rate, Wait returned forward supported by the steward, who,
in a pained and shocked voice, entreated us:--"Here! Catch hold of him,
one of you. He is to lie-up." Jimmy drank a tin mugful of coffee, and,
after bullying first one and then another, went to bed. He remained
there most of the time, but when it suited him would come on deck and
appear amongst us. He was scornful and brooding; he looked ahead upon
the sea, and no one could tell what was the meaning of that black man
sitting apart in a meditative attitude and as motionless as a carving.
He refused steadily all medicine; he threw sago and cornflour overboard
till the steward got tired of bringing it to him. He asked for
paregoric. They sent him a big bottle; enough to poison a wilderness
of babies. He kept it between his mattress and the deal lining of the
ship's side; and nobody ever saw him take a dose. Donkin abused him to
his face, jeered at him while he gasped; and the same day Wait would
lend him a warm jersey. Once Donkin reviled him for half an hour;
reproached him with the extra work his malingering gave to the watch;
and ended by calling him "a black-faced swine." Under the spell of our
accursed perversity we were horror-struck. But Jimmy positively seemed
to revel in that abuse. It made him look cheerful--and Donkin had a pair
of old sea boots thrown at him. "Here, you East-end trash," boomed Wait,
"you may have that."
At last Mr. Baker had to tell the captain that James Wait was disturbing
the peace of the ship. "Knock discipline on the head--he will, Ough,"
grunted Mr. Baker. As a matter of fact, the starboard watch came as near
as possible to refusing duty, when ordered one morning by the boatswain
to wash out their forecastle. It appears Jimmy objected to a wet
floor--and that morning we were in a compassionate mood. We thought
the boatswain a brute, and, practically, told him so. Only Mr. Baker's
delicate tact prevented an all-fired row: he refused to take us
seriously. He came bustling forward, and called us many unpolite names
but in such a hearty and seamanlike manner that we began to feel ashamed
of ourselves. In truth, we thought him much too good a sailor to annoy
him willingly: and after all Jimmy might have been a fraud--probably
was! The forecastle got a clean up that morning; but in the afternoon
a sick-bay was fitted up in the deck-house. It was a nice little
cabin opening on deck, and with two berths. Jimmy's belongings were
transported there, and then--notwithstanding his protests--Jimmy himself.
He said he couldn't walk. Four men carried him on a blanket. He
complained that he would have to die there alone, like a dog. We grieved
for him, and were delighted to have him removed from the forecastle. We
attended him as before. The galley was next door, and the cook looked in
many times a day. Wait became a little more cheerful. Knowles affirmed
having heard him laugh to himself in peals one day. Others had seen him
walking about on deck at night. His little place, with the door ajar
on a long hook, was always full of tobacco smoke. We spoke through the
crack cheerfully, sometimes abusively, as we passed by, intent on our
work. He fascinated us. He would never let doubt die. He overshadowed
the ship. Invulnerable in his promise of speedy corruption he trampled
on our self-respect, he demonstrated to us daily our want of moral
courage; he tainted our lives. Had we been a miserable gang of wretched
immortals, unhallowed alike by hope and fear, he could not have lorded
it over us with a more pitiless assertion of his sublime privilege.
CHAPTER THREE
Meantime the Narcissus, with square yards, ran out of the fair monsoon.
She drifted slowly, swinging round and round the compass, through a few
days of baffling light airs. Under the patter of short warm showers,
grumbling men whirled the heavy yards from side to side; they caught
hold of the soaked ropes with groans and sighs, while their officers,
sulky and dripping with rain water, unceasingly ordered them about in
wearied voices. During the short respites they looked with disgust
into the smarting palms of their stiff hands, and asked one another
bitterly:--"Who would be a sailor if he could be a farmer?" All the
tempers were spoilt, and no man cared what he said. One black night,
when the watch, panting in the heat and half-drowned with the rain,
had been through four mortal hours hunted from brace to brace, Belfast
declared that he would "chuck the sea for ever and go in a steamer."
This was excessive, no doubt. Captain Allistoun, with great
self-control, would mutter sadly to Mr. Baker:--"It is not so bad--not so
bad," when he had managed to shove, and dodge, and manoeuvre his smart
ship through sixty miles in twenty-four hours. From the doorstep of the
little cabin, Jimmy, chin in hand, watched our distasteful labours with
insolent and melancholy eyes. We spoke to him gently--and out of his
sight exchanged sour smiles.
Then, again, with a fair wind and under a clear sky, the ship went
on piling up the South Latitude. She passed outside Madagascar and
Mauritius without a glimpse of the land. Extra lashings were put on the
spare spars. Hatches were looked to. The steward in his leisure moments
and with a worried air tried to fit washboards to the cabin doors. Stout
canvas was bent with care. Anxious eyes looked to the westward, towards
the cape of storms. The ship began to dip into a southwest swell, and
the softly luminous sky of low latitudes took on a harder sheen from
day to day above our heads: it arched high above the ship vibrating and
pale, like an immense dome of steel, resonant with the deep voice of
freshening gales. The sunshine gleamed cold on the white curls of black
waves. Before the strong breath of westerly squalls the ship, with
reduced sail, lay slowly over, obstinate and yielding. She drove to and
fro in the unceasing endeavour to fight her way through the invisible
violence of the winds: she pitched headlong into dark smooth hollows;
she struggled upwards over the snowy ridges of great running seas; she
rolled, restless, from side to side, like a thing in pain. Enduring and
valiant, she answered to the call of men; and her slim spars waving for
ever in abrupt semicircles, seemed to beckon in vain for help towards
the stormy sky.
It was a bad winter off the Cape that year. The relieved helmsmen came
off flapping their arms, or ran stamping hard and blowing into swollen,
red fingers. The watch on deck dodged the sting of cold sprays or,
crouching in sheltered corners, watched dismally the high and merciless
seas boarding the ship time after time in unappeasable fury. Water
tumbled in cataracts over the forecastle doors. You had to dash through
a waterfall to get into your damp bed. The men turned in wet and turned
out stiff to face the redeeming and ruthless exactions of their glorious
and obscure fate. Far aft, and peering watchfully to windward, the
officers could be seen through the mist of squalls. They stood by the
weather-rail, holding on grimly, straight and glistening in their long
coats; and in the disordered plunges of the hard-driven ship, they
appeared high up, attentive, tossing violently above the grey line of a
clouded horizon in motionless attitudes.
They watched the weather and the ship as men on shore watch the
momentous chances of fortune. Captain Allistoun never left the deck,
as though he had been part of the ship's fittings. Now and then the
steward, shivering, but always in shirt sleeves, would struggle towards
him with some hot coffee, half of which the gale blew out of the cup
before it reached the master's lips. He drank what was left gravely in
one long gulp, while heavy sprays pattered loudly on his oilskin coat,
the seas swishing broke about his high boots; and he never took his eyes
off the ship. He kept his gaze riveted upon her as a loving man watches
the unselfish toil of a delicate woman upon the slender thread of whose
existence is hung the whole meaning and joy of the world. We all watched
her. She was beautiful and had a weakness. We loved her no less for
that. We admired her qualities aloud, we boasted of them to one another,
as though they had been our own, and the consciousness of her only fault
we kept buried in the silence of our profound affection. She was born
in the thundering peal of hammers beating upon iron, in black eddies of
smoke, under a grey sky, on the banks of the Clyde. The clamorous and
sombre stream gives birth to things of beauty that float away into the
sunshine of the world to be loved by men. The Narcissus was one of that
perfect brood. Less perfect than many perhaps, but she was ours, and,
consequently, incomparable. We were proud of her. In Bombay, ignorant
landlubbers alluded to her as that "pretty grey ship." Pretty! A scurvy
meed of commendation! We knew she was the most magnificent sea-boat ever
launched. We tried to forget that, like many good sea-boats, she was
at times rather crank. She was exacting. She wanted care in loading and
handling, and no one knew exactly how much care would be enough. Such
are the imperfections of mere men! The ship knew, and sometimes would
correct the presumptuous human ignorance by the wholesome discipline
of fear. We had heard ominous stories about past voyages. The cook
(technically a seaman, but in reality no sailor)--the cook, when unstrung
by some misfortune, such as the rolling over of a saucepan, would mutter
gloomily while he wiped the floor:--"There! Look at what she has done!
Some voy'ge she will drown all hands! You'll see if she won't." To which
the steward, snatching in the galley a moment to draw breath in the
hurry of his worried life, would remark philosophically:--"Those that see
won't tell, anyhow. I don't want to see it." We derided those fears. Our
hearts went out to the old man when he pressed her hard so as to make
her hold her own, hold to every inch gained to windward; when he made
her, under reefed sails, leap obliquely at enormous waves. The men,
knitted together aft into a ready group by the first sharp order of an
officer coming to take charge of the deck in bad weather:--"Keep handy
the watch," stood admiring her valiance. Their eyes blinked in the wind;
their dark faces were wet with drops of water more salt and bitter than
human tears; beards and moustaches, soaked, hung straight and dripping
like fine seaweed. They were fantastically misshapen; in high boots, in
hats like helmets, and swaying clumsily, stiff and bulky in glistening
oilskins, they resembled men strangely equipped for some fabulous
adventure. Whenever she rose easily to a towering green sea, elbows dug
ribs, faces brightened, lips murmured:--"Didn't she do it cleverly," and
all the heads turning like one watched with sardonic grins the foiled
wave go roaring to leeward, white with the foam of a monstrous rage.
But when she had not been quick enough and, struck heavily, lay over
trembling under the blow, we clutched at ropes, and looking up at the
narrow bands of drenched and strained sails waving desperately aloft, we
thought in our hearts:--"No wonder. Poor thing!"
The thirty-second day out of Bombay began inauspiciously. In the morning
a sea smashed one of the galley doors. We dashed in through lots of
steam and found the cook very wet and indignant with the ship:--"She's
getting worse every day. She's trying to drown me in front of my own
stove!" He was very angry. We pacified him, and the carpenter, though
washed away twice from there, managed to repair the door. Through that
accident our dinner was not ready till late, but it didn't matter in the
end because Knowles, who went to fetch it, got knocked down by a sea and
the dinner went over the side. Captain Allistoun, looking more hard and
thin-lipped than ever, hung on to full topsails and foresail, and would
not notice that the ship, asked to do too much, appeared to lose heart
altogether for the first time since we knew her. She refused to rise,
and bored her way sullenly through the seas. Twice running, as though
she had been blind or weary of life, she put her nose deliberately
into a big wave and swept the decks from end to end. As the boatswain
observed with marked annoyance, while we were splashing about in a body
to try and save a worthless wash-tub:--"Every blooming thing in the
ship is going overboard this afternoon." Venerable Singleton broke
his habitual silence and said with a glance aloft:--"The old man's in a
temper with the weather, but it's no good bein' angry with the winds
of heaven." Jimmy had shut his door, of course. We knew he was dry and
comfortable within his little cabin, and in our absurd way were pleased
one moment, exasperated the next, by that certitude. Donkin skulked
shamelessly, uneasy and miserable. He grumbled:--"I'm perishin' with cold
outside in bloomin' wet rags, an' that 'ere black sojer sits dry on a
blamed chest full of bloomin' clothes; blank his black soul!" We took no
notice of him; we hardly gave a thought to Jimmy and his bosom friend.
There was no leisure for idle probing of hearts. Sails blew adrift.
Things broke loose. Cold and wet, we were washed about the deck while
trying to repair damages. The ship tossed about, shaken furiously,
like a toy in the hand of a lunatic. Just at sunset there was a rush to
shorten sail before the menace of a sombre hail cloud. The hard gust
of wind came brutal like the blow of a fist. The ship relieved of her
canvas in time received it pluckily: she yielded reluctantly to the
violent onset; then coming up with a stately and irresistible motion,
brought her spars to windward in the teeth of the screeching squall. Out
of the abysmal darkness of the black cloud overhead white hail streamed
on her, rattled on the rigging, leaped in handfuls off the yards,
rebounded on the deck--round and gleaming in the murky turmoil like
a shower of pearls. It passed away. For a moment a livid sun shot
horizontally the last rays of sinister light between the hills of steep,
rolling waves. Then a wild night rushed in--stamped out in a great howl
that dismal remnant of a stormy day.
There was no sleep on board that night. Most seamen remember in their
life one or two such nights of a culminating gale. Nothing seems left
of the whole universe but darkness, clamour, fury--and the ship. And
like the last vestige of a shattered creation she drifts, bearing an
anguished remnant of sinful mankind, through the distress, tumult, and
pain of an avenging terror. No one slept in the forecastle. The tin
oil-lamp suspended on a long string, smoking, described wide circles;
wet clothing made dark heaps on the glistening floor; a thin layer of
water rushed to and fro. In the bed-places men lay booted, resting on
elbows and with open eyes. Hung-up suits of oilskin swung out and
in, lively and disquieting like reckless ghosts of decapitated seamen
dancing in a tempest. No one spoke and all listened. Outside the night
moaned and sobbed to the accompaniment of a continuous loud tremor as
of innumerable drums beating far off. Shrieks passed through the air.
Tremendous dull blows made the ship tremble while she rolled under the
weight of the seas toppling on her deck. At times she soared up swiftly
as if to leave this earth for ever, then during interminable moments
fell through a void with all the hearts on board of her standing still,
till a frightful shock, expected and sudden, started them off again with
a big thump. After every dislocating jerk of the ship, Wamibo, stretched
full length, his face on the pillow, groaned slightly with the pain of
his tormented universe. Now and then, for the fraction of an intolerable
second, the ship, in the fiercer burst of a terrible uproar, remained on
her side, vibrating and still, with a stillness more appalling than the
wildest motion. Then upon all those prone bodies a stir would pass, a
shiver of suspense. A man would protrude his anxious head and a pair
of eyes glistened in the sway of light glaring wildly. Some moved their
legs a little as if making ready to jump out. But several, motionless on
their backs and with one hand gripping hard the edge of the bunk, smoked
nervously with quick puffs, staring upwards; immobilised in a great
craving for peace.
At midnight, orders were given to furl the fore and mizen topsails. With
immense efforts men crawled aloft through a merciless buffeting, saved
the canvas and crawled down almost exhausted, to bear in panting silence
the cruel battering of the seas. Perhaps for the first time in the
history of the merchant service the watch, told to go below, did not
leave the deck, as if compelled to remain there by the fascination of a
venomous violence. At every heavy gust men, huddled together, whispered
to one another, "It can blow no harder," and presently the gale would
give them the lie with a piercing shriek, and drive their breath back
into their throats. A fierce squall seemed to burst asunder the thick
mass of sooty vapours; and above the wrack of torn clouds glimpses could
be caught of the high moon rushing backwards with frightful speed over
the sky, right into the wind's eye. Many hung their heads, muttering
that it "turned their inwards out" to look at it. Soon the clouds closed
up and the world again became a raging, blind darkness that howled,
flinging at the lonely ship salt sprays and sleet.
About half-past seven the pitchy obscurity round us turned a ghastly
grey, and we knew that the sun had risen. This unnatural and threatening
daylight, in which we could see one another's wild eyes and drawn faces,
was only an added tax on our endurance. The horizon seemed to have come
on all sides within arm's length of the ship. Into that narrowed circle
furious seas leaped in, struck, and leaped out. A rain of salt heavy
drops flew aslant like mist. The main-topsail had to be goose-winged,
and with stolid resignation every one prepared to go aloft once more;
but the officers yelled, pushed back, and at last we understood that
no more men would be allowed to go on the yard than were absolutely
necessary for the work. As at any moment the masts were likely to be
jumped out or blown overboard, we concluded that the captain didn't want
to see all his crowd go over the side at once. That was reasonable.
The watch then on duty, led by Mr. Creighton, began to struggle up the
rigging. The wind flattened them against the ratlines; then, easing
a little, would let them ascend a couple of steps; and again, with a
sudden gust, pin all up the shrouds the whole crawling line in attitudes
of crucifixion. The other watch plunged down on the main deck to haul
up the sail. Men's heads bobbed up as the water flung them irresistibly
from side to side. Mr. Baker grunted encouragingly in our midst,
spluttering and blowing amongst the tangled ropes like an energetic
porpoise. Favoured by an ominous and untrustworthy lull, the work was
done without any one being lost either off the deck or from the yard.
For the moment the gale seemed to take off, and the ship, as if grateful
for our efforts, plucked up heart and made better weather of it.
At eight the men off duty, watching their chance, ran forward over the
flooded deck to get some rest. The other half of the crew remained aft
for their turn of "seeing her through her trouble," as they expressed
it. The two mates urged the master to go below. Mr. Baker grunted in his
ear:--"Ough! surely now... Ough!... confidence in us... nothing more to
do... she must lay it out or go. Ough! Ough!" Tall young Mr. Creighton
smiled down at him cheerfully:--"...She's as right as a trivet! Take a
spell, sir." He looked at them stonily with bloodshot, sleepless eyes.
The rims of his eyelids were scarlet, and he moved his jaws unceasingly
with a slow effort, as though he had been masticating a lump of india-
rubber. He shook his head. He repeated:--"Never mind me. I must see it
out--I must see it out," but he consented to sit down for a moment on
the skylight, with his hard face turned unflinchingly to windward. The
sea spat at it--and stoical, it streamed with water as though he had
been weeping. On the weather side of the poop the watch, hanging on to
the mizen rigging and to one another, tried to exchange encouraging
words. Singleton, at the wheel, yelled out:--"Look out for yourselves!"
His voice reached them in a warning whisper. They were startled.
A big, foaming sea came out of the mist; it made for the ship, roaring
wildly, and in its rush it looked as mischievous and discomposing as
a madman with an axe. One or two, shouting, scrambled up the rigging;
most, with a convulsive catch of the breath, held on where they stood.
Singleton dug his knees under the wheel-box, and carefully eased the
helm to the headlong pitch of the ship, but without taking his eyes
off the coming wave. It towered close-to and high, like a wall of green
glass topped with snow. The ship rose to it as though she had soared on
wings, and for a moment rested poised upon the foaming crest as if she
had been a great sea-bird. Before we could draw breath a heavy gust
struck her, another roller took her unfairly under the weather bow, she
gave a toppling lurch, and filled her decks. Captain Allistoun leaped
up, and fell; Archie rolled over him, screaming:--"She will rise!"
She gave another lurch to leeward; the lower deadeyes dipped heavily;
the men's feet flew from under them, and they hung kicking above the
slanting poop. They could see the ship putting her side in the water,
and shouted all together:--"She's going!" Forward the forecastle doors
flew open, and the watch below were seen leaping out one after another,
throwing their arms up; and, falling on hands and knees, scrambled aft
on all fours along the high side of the deck, sloping more than the
roof of a house. From leeward the seas rose, pursuing them; they looked
wretched in a hopeless struggle, like vermin fleeing before a flood;
they fought up the weather ladder of the poop one after another, half
naked and staring wildly; and as soon as they got up they shot to
leeward in clusters, with closed eyes, till they brought up heavily with
their ribs against the iron stanchions of the rail; then, groaning, they
rolled in a confused mass. The immense volume of water thrown forward
by the last scend of the ship had burst the lee door of the forecastle.
They could see their chests, pillows, blankets, clothing, come out
floating upon the sea. While they struggled back to windward they
looked in dismay. The straw beds swam high, the blankets, spread out,
undulated; while the chests, waterlogged and with a heavy list, pitched
heavily like dismasted hulks, before they sank; Archie's big coat passed
with outspread arms, resembling a drowned seaman floating with his head
under water. Men were slipping down while trying to dig their fingers
into the planks; others, jammed in corners, rolled enormous eyes. They
all yelled unceasingly:--"The masts! Cut! Cut!..." A black squall howled
low over the ship, that lay on her side with the weather yard-arms
pointing to the clouds; while the tall masts, inclined nearly to the
horizon, seemed to be of an immeasurable length. The carpenter let go
his hold, rolled against the skylight, and began to crawl to the cabin
entrance, where a big axe was kept ready for just such an emergency.
At that moment the topsail sheet parted, the end of the heavy chain
racketed aloft, and sparks of red fire streamed down through the flying
sprays. The sail flapped once with a jerk that seemed to tear our hearts
out through our teeth, and instantly changed into a bunch of fluttering
narrow ribbons that tied themselves into knots and became quiet along
the yard. Captain Allistoun struggled, managed to stand up with his
face near the deck, upon which men swung on the ends of ropes, like nest
robbers upon a cliff. One of his feet was on somebody's chest; his
face was purple; his lips moved. He yelled also; he yelled, bending
down:--"No! No!" Mr. Baker, one leg over the binnacle-stand, roared
out:--"Did you say no? Not cut?" He shook his head madly. "No! No!"
Between his legs the crawling carpenter heard, collapsed at once,
and lay full length in the angle of the skylight. Voices took up the
shout--"No! No!" Then all became still. They waited for the ship to turn
over altogether, and shake them out into the sea; and upon the terrific
noise of wind and sea not a murmur of remonstrance came out from those
men, who each would have given ever so many years of life to see "them
damned sticks go overboard!" They all believed it their only chance; but
a little hard-faced man shook his grey head and shouted "No!" without
giving them as much as a glance. They were silent, and gasped. They
gripped rails, they had wound ropes'-ends under their arms; they
clutched ringbolts, they crawled in heaps where there was foothold; they
held on with both arms, hooked themselves to anything to windward with
elbows, with chins, almost with their teeth: and some, unable to crawl
away from where they had been flung, felt the sea leap up, striking
against their backs as they struggled upwards. Singleton had stuck to
the wheel. His hair flew out in the wind; the gale seemed to take its
life-long adversary by the beard and shake his old head. He wouldn't let
go, and, with his knees forced between the spokes, flew up and down like
a man on a bough. As Death appeared unready, they began to look about.
Donkin, caught by one foot in a loop of some rope, hung, head down,
below us, and yelled, with his face to the deck:--"Cut! Cut!" Two men
lowered themselves cautiously to him; others hauled on the rope. They
caught him up, shoved him into a safer place, held him. He shouted
curses at the master, shook his fist at him with horrible blasphemies,
called upon us in filthy words to "Cut! Don't mind that murdering fool!
Cut, some of you!" One of his rescuers struck him a back-handed blow
over the mouth; his head banged on the deck, and he became suddenly very
quiet, with a white face, breathing hard, and with a few drops of blood
trickling from his cut lip. On the lee side another man could be seen
stretched out as if stunned; only the washboard prevented him from going
over the side. It was the steward. We had to sling him up like a bale,
for he was paralysed with fright. He had rushed up out of the pantry
when he felt the ship go over, and had rolled down helplessly, clutching
a china mug. It was not broken. With difficulty we tore it away from
him, and when he saw it in our hands he was amazed. "Where did you get
that thing?" he kept on asking us in a trembling voice. His shirt was
blown to shreds; the ripped sleeves flapped like wings. Two men made him
fast, and, doubled over the rope that held him, he resembled a bundle of
wet rags. Mr. Baker crawled along the line of men, asking:--"Are you
all there?" and looking them over. Some blinked vacantly, others
shook convulsively; Wamibo's head hung over his breast; and in painful
attitudes, cut by lashings, exhausted with clutching, screwed up in
corners, they breathed heavily. Their lips twitched, and at every
sickening heave of the overturned ship they opened them wide as if to
shout. The cook, embracing a wooden stanchion, unconsciously repeated a
prayer. In every short interval of the fiendish noises around he could
be heard there, without cap or slippers, imploring in that storm the
Master of our lives not to lead him into temptation. Soon he also became
silent. In all that crowd of cold and hungry men, waiting wearily for
a violent death, not a voice was heard; they were mute, and in sombre
thoughtfulness listened to the horrible imprecations of the gale.
Hours passed. They were sheltered by the heavy inclination of the ship
from the wind that rushed in one long unbroken moan above their heads,
but cold rain showers fell at times into the uneasy calm of their
refuge. Under the torment of that new infliction a pair of shoulders
would writhe a little. Teeth chattered. The sky was clearing, and bright
sunshine gleamed over the ship. After every burst of battering seas,
vivid and fleeting rainbows arched over the drifting hull in the flick
of sprays. The gale was ending in a clear blow, which gleamed and cut
like a knife. Between two bearded shellbacks Charley, fastened with
somebody's long muffler to a deck ring-bolt, wept quietly, with rare
tears wrung out by bewilderment, cold, hunger, and general misery. One
of his neighbours punched him in the ribs asking roughly:--"What's
the matter with your cheek? In fine weather there's no holding you,
youngster." Turning about with prudence he worked himself out of
his coat and threw it over the boy. The other man closed up,
muttering:--"'Twill make a bloomin' man of you, sonny." They flung their
arms over and pressed against him. Charley drew his feet up and his
eyelids dropped. Sighs were heard, as men, perceiving that they were not
to be "drowned in a hurry," tried easier positions. Mr. Creighton, who
had hurt his leg, lay amongst us with compressed lips. Some fellows
belonging to his watch set about securing him better. Without a word
or a glance he lifted his arms one after another to facilitate the
operation, and not a muscle moved in his stern, young face. They
asked him with solicitude:--"Easier now, sir?" He answered with a
curt:--"That'll do." He was a hard young officer, but many of his
watch used to say they liked him well enough because he had "such a
gentlemanly way of damning us up and down the deck." Others unable to
discern such fine shades of refinement, respected him for his smartness.
For the first time since the ship had gone on her beam ends Captain
Allistoun gave a short glance down at his men. He was almost upright--one
foot against the side of the skylight, one knee on the deck; and with
the end of the vang round his waist swung back and forth with his gaze
fixed ahead, watchful, like a man looking out for a sign. Before his
eyes the ship, with half her deck below water, rose and fell on heavy
seas that rushed from under her flashing in the cold sunshine. We began
to think she was wonderfully buoyant--considering. Confident voices were
heard shouting:--"She'll do, boys!" Belfast exclaimed with fervour:--"I
would giv' a month's pay for a draw at a pipe!" One or two, passing dry
tongues on their salt lips, muttered something about a "drink of water."
The cook, as if inspired, scrambled up with his breast against the poop
water-cask and looked in. There was a little at the bottom. He yelled,
waving his arms, and two men began to crawl backwards and forwards with
the mug. We had a good mouthful all round. The master shook his head
impatiently, refusing. When it came to Charley one of his neighbours
shouted:--"That bloom-in' boy's asleep." He slept as though he had been
dosed with narcotics. They let him be. Singleton held to the wheel with
one hand while he drank, bending down to shelter his lips from the wind.
Wamibo had to be poked and yelled at before he saw the mug held before
his eyes. Knowles said sagaciously:--"It's better'n a tot o' rum." Mr.
Baker grunted:--"Thank ye." Mr. Creighton drank and nodded. Donkin
gulped greedily, glaring over the rim. Belfast made us laugh when with
grimacing mouth he shouted:--"Pass it this way. We're all taytottlers
here." The master, presented with the mug again by a crouching man, who
screamed up at him:--"We all had a drink, captain," groped for it without
ceasing to look ahead, and handed it back stiffly as though he could not
spare half a glance away from the ship. Faces brightened. We shouted
to the cook:--"Well done, doctor!" He sat to leeward, propped by the
water-cask and yelled back abundantly, but the seas were breaking
in thunder just then, and we only caught snatches that sounded like:
"Providence" and "born again." He was at his old game of preaching. We
made friendly but derisive gestures at him, and from below he lifted
one arm, holding on with the other, moved his lips; he beamed up to us,
straining his voice--earnest, and ducking his head before the sprays.
Suddenly some one cried:--"Where's Jimmy?" and we were appalled once
more. On the end of the row the boatswain shouted hoarsely:--"Has any one
seed him come out?" Voices exclaimed dismally:--"Drowned--is he?... No!
In his cabin!... Good Lord!... Caught like a bloomin' rat in a trap....
Couldn't open his door... Aye! She went over too quick and the water
jammed it... Poor beggar!... No help for 'im.... Let's go and see..."
"Damn him, who could go?" screamed Donkin.--"Nobody expects you to,"
growled the man next to him: "you're only a thing."--"Is there half
a chance to get at 'im?" inquired two or three men together. Belfast
untied himself with blind impetuosity, and all at once shot down to
leeward quicker than a flash of lightning. We shouted all together with
dismay; but with his legs overboard he held and yelled for a rope. In
our extremity nothing could be terrible; so we judged him funny kicking
there, and with his scared face. Some one began to laugh, and, as if
hysterically infected with screaming merriment, all those haggard men
went off laughing, wild-eyed, like a lot of maniacs tied up on a wall.
Mr. Baker swung off the binnacle-stand and tendered him one leg. He
scrambled up rather scared, and consigning us with abominable words to
the "divvle." "You are.... Ough! You're a foul-mouthed beggar, Craik,"
grunted Mr. Baker. He answered, stuttering with indignation:--"Look at
'em, sorr. The bloomin dirty images! laughing at a chum going overboard.
Call themselves men, too." But from the break of the poop the boatswain
called out:--"Come along," and Belfast crawled away in a hurry to join
him. The five men, poised and gazing over the edge of the poop, looked
for the best way to get forward. They seemed to hesitate. The others,
twisting in their lashings, turning painfull, stared with open lips.
Captain Allistoun saw nothing; he seemed with his eyes to hold the ship
up in a superhuman concentration of effort. The wind screamed loud
in sunshine; columns of spray rose straight up; and in the glitter of
rainbows bursting over the trembling hull the men went over cautiously,
disappearing from sight with deliberate movements.
They went swinging from belaying pin to cleat above the seas that beat
the half-submerged deck. Their toes scraped the planks. Lumps of green
cold water toppled over the bulwark and on their heads. They hung for a
moment on strained arms, with the breath knocked out of them, and with
closed eyes--then, letting go with one hand, balanced with lolling heads,
trying to grab some rope or stanchion further forward. The long-armed
and athletic boatswain swung quickly, gripping things with a fist hard
as iron, and remembering suddenly snatches of the last letter from his
"old woman." Little Belfast scrambled in a rage spluttering "cursed
nigger." Wamibo's tongue hung out with excitement; and Archie, intrepid
and calm, watched his chance to move with intelligent coolness.
When above the side of the house, they let go one after another, and
falling heavily, sprawled, pressing their palms to the smooth teak wood.
Round them the backwash of waves seethed white and hissing. All the
doors had become trap-doors, of course. The first was the galley door.
The galley extended from side to side, and they could hear the sea
splashing with hollow noises in there. The next door was that of the
carpenter's shop. They lifted it, and looked down. The room seemed to
have been devastated by an earthquake. Everything in it had tumbled on
the bulkhead facing the door, and on the other side of that bulkhead
there was Jimmy dead or alive. The bench, a half-finished meat-safe,
saws, chisels, wire rods, axes, crowbars, lay in a heap besprinkled
with loose nails. A sharp adze stuck up with a shining edge that
gleamed dangerously down there like a wicked smile. The men clung to one
another, peering. A sickening, sly lurch of the ship nearly sent them
overboard in a body. Belfast howled "Here goes!" and leaped down. Archie
followed cannily, catching at shelves that gave way with him, and eased
himself in a great crash of ripped wood. There was hardly room for
three men to move. And in the sunshiny blue square of the door, the
boatswain's face, bearded and dark, Wamibo's face, wild and pale, hung
over--watching.
Together they shouted: "Jimmy! Jim!" From above the boatswain
contributed a deep growl: "You. Wait!" In a pause, Belfast entreated:
"Jimmy, darlin', are ye aloive?" The boatswain said: "Again! All
together, boys!" All yelled excitedly. Wamibo made noises resembling
loud barks. Belfast drummed on the side of the bulkhead with a piece of
iron. All ceased suddenly. The sound of screaming and hammering went
on thin and distinct--like a solo after a chorus. He was alive. He was
screaming and knocking below us with the hurry of a man prematurely
shut up in a coffin. We went to work. We attacked with desperation the
abominable heap of things heavy, of things sharp, of things clumsy to
handle. The boatswain crawled away to find somewhere a flying end of
a rope; and Wamibo, held back by shouts:--"Don't jump!... Don't come in
here, muddle-head!"--remained glaring above us--all shining eyes, gleaming
fangs, tumbled hair; resembling an amazed and half-witted fiend gloating
over the extraordinary agitation of the damned. The boatswain adjured
us to "bear a hand," and a rope descended. We made things fast to it and
they went up spinning, never to be seen by man again. A rage to fling
things overboard possessed us. We worked fiercely, cutting our hands and
speaking brutally to one another. Jimmy kept up a distracting row; he
screamed piercingly, without drawing breath, like a tortured woman; he
banged with hands and feet. The agony of his fear wrung our hearts so
terribly that we longed to abandon him, to get out of that place deep as
a well and swaying like a tree, to get out of his hearing, back on the
poop where we could wait passively for death in incomparable repose. We
shouted to him to "shut up, for God's sake." He redoubled his cries.
He must have fancied we could not hear him. Probably he heard his own
clamour but faintly. We could picture him crouching on the edge of the
upper berth, letting out with both fists at the wood, in the dark, and
with his mouth wide open for that unceasing cry. Those were loathsome
moments. A cloud driving across the sun would darken the doorway
menacingly. Every movement of the ship was pain. We scrambled about with
no room to breathe, and felt frightfully sick. The boatswain yelled down
at us:--"Bear a hand! Bear a hand! We two will be washed away from here
directly if you ain't quick!" Three times a sea leaped over the high
side and flung bucketfuls of water on our heads. Then Jimmy, startled
by the shock, would stop his noise for a moment--waiting for the ship to
sink, perhaps--and began again, distressingly loud, as if invigorated by
the gust of fear. At the bottom the nails lay in a layer several inches
thick. It was ghastly. Every nail in the world, not driven in firmly
somewhere, seemed to have found its way into that carpenter's shop.
There they were, of all kinds, the remnants of stores from seven
voyages. Tin-tacks, copper tacks (sharp as needles); pump nails with
big heads, like tiny iron mushrooms; nails without any heads (horrible);
French nails polished and slim. They lay in a solid mass more
inabordable than a hedgehog. We hesitated, yearning for a shovel, while
Jimmy below us yelled as though he had been flayed. Groaning, we dug our
fingers in, and very much hurt, shook our hands, scattering nails and
drops of blood. We passed up our hats full of assorted nails to the
boatswain, who, as if performing a mysterious and appeasing rite, cast
them wide upon a raging sea.
We got to the bulkhead at last. Those were stout planks. She was a ship,
well finished in every detail--the Narcissus was. They were the stoutest
planks ever put into a ship's bulkhead--we thought--and then we perceived
that, in our hurry, we had sent all the tools overboard. Absurd little
Belfast wanted to break it down with his own weight, and with both feet
leaped straight up like a springbok, cursing the Clyde shipwrights for
not scamping their work. Incidentally he reviled all North Britain,
the rest of the earth, the sea--and all his companions. He swore, as
he alighted heavily on his heels, that he would never, never any more
associate with any fool that "hadn't savee enough to know his knee from
his elbow." He managed by his thumping to scare the last remnant of wits
out of Jimmy. We could hear the object of our exasperated solicitude
darting to and fro under the planks. He had cracked his voice at last,
and could only squeak miserably. His back or else his head rubbed the
planks, now here, now there, in a puzzling manner. He squeaked as he
dodged the invisible blows. It was more heartrending even than his
yells. Suddenly Archie produced a crowbar. He had kept it back; also a
small hatchet. We howled with satisfaction. He struck a mighty blow and
small chips flew at our eyes. The boatswain above shouted:--"Look out!
Look out there. Don't kill the man. Easy does it!" Wamibo, maddened with
excitement, hung head down and insanely urged us:--"Hoo! Strook'im! Hoo!
Hoo!" We were afraid he would fall in and kill one of us and, hurriedly,
we entreated the boatswain to "shove the blamed Finn overboard." Then,
all together, we yelled down at the planks:--"Stand from under! Get
forward," and listened. We only heard the deep hum and moan of the
wind above us, the mingled roar and hiss of the seas. The ship, as if
overcome with despair, wallowed lifelessly, and our heads swam with that
unnatural motion. Belfast clamoured:--"For the love of God, Jimmy, where
are ye?... Knock! Jimmy darlint!... Knock! You bloody black beast!
Knock!" He was as quiet as a dead man inside a grave; and, like men
standing above a grave, we were on the verge of tears--but with vexation,
the strain, the fatigue; with the great longing to be done with it, to
get away, and lie down to rest somewhere where we could see our danger
and breathe. Archie shouted:--"Gi'e me room!" We crouched behind him,
guarding our heads, and he struck time after time in the joint of
planks. They cracked. Suddenly the crowbar went halfway in through a
splintered oblong hole. It must have missed Jimmy's head by less than an
inch. Archie withdrew it quickly, and that infamous nigger rushed at
the hole, put his lips to it, and whispered "Help" in an almost extinct
voice; he pressed his head to it, trying madly to get out through that
opening one inch wide and three inches long. In our disturbed state we
were absolutely paralysed by his incredible action. It seemed impossible
to drive him away. Even Archie at last lost his composure. "If ye don't
clear oot I'll drive the crowbar thro' your head," he shouted in a
determined voice. He meant what he said, and his earnestness seemed
to make an impression on Jimmy. He disappeared suddenly, and we set to
prising and tearing at the planks with the eagerness of men trying to
get at a mortal enemy, and spurred by the desire to tear him limb from
limb. The wood split, cracked, gave way. Belfast plunged in head and
shoulders and groped viciously. "I've got 'im! Got 'im," he shouted.
"Oh! There!... He's gone; I've got 'im!... Pull at my legs!... Pull!"
Wamibo hooted unceasingly. The boatswain shouted directions:--"Catch
hold of his hair, Belfast; pull straight up, you two!... Pull fair!"
We pulled fair. We pulled Belfast out with a jerk, and dropped him
with disgust. In a sitting posture, purple-faced, he sobbed
despairingly:--"How can I hold on to 'is blooming short wool?" Suddenly
Jimmy's head and shoulders appeared. He stuck halfway, and with rolling
eyes foamed at our feet. We flew at him with brutal impatience, we tore
the shirt off his back, we tugged at his ears, we panted over him; and
all at once he came away in our hands as though somebody had let go
his legs. With the same movement, without a pause, we swung him up. His
breath whistled, he kicked our upturned faces, he grasped two pairs of
arms above his head, and he squirmed up with such precipitation that he
seemed positively to escape from our hands like a bladder full of gas.
Streaming with perspiration, we swarmed up the rope, and, coming into
the blast of cold wind, gasped like men plunged into icy water. With
burning faces we shivered to the very marrow of our bones. Never before
had the gale seemed to us more furious, the sea more mad, the sunshine
more merciless and mocking, and the position of the ship more hopeless
and appalling. Every movement of her was ominous of the end of her agony
and of the beginning of ours. We staggered away from the door, and,
alarmed by a sudden roll, fell down in a bunch. It appeared to us that
the side of the house was more smooth than glass and more slippery
than ice. There was nothing to hang on to but a long brass hook used
sometimes to keep back an open door. Wamibo held on to it and we held on
to Wamibo, clutching our Jimmy. He had completely collapsed now. He did
not seem to have the strength to close his hand. We stuck to him blindly
in our fear. We were not afraid of Wamibo letting go (we remembered
that the brute was stronger than any three men in the ship), but we were
afraid of the hook giving way, and we also believed that the ship had
made up her mind to turn over at last. But she didn't. A sea swept over
us. The boatswain spluttered:--"Up and away. There's a lull. Away aft
with you, or we will all go to the devil here." We stood up surrounding
Jimmy. We begged him to hold up, to hold on, at least. He glared with
his bulging eyes, mute as a fish, and with all the stiffening knocked
out of him. He wouldn't stand; he wouldn't even as much as clutch at our
necks; he was only a cold black skin loosely stuffed with soft cotton
wool; his arms and legs swung jointless and pliable; his head rolled
about; the lower lip hung down, enormous and heavy. We pressed round
him, bothered and dismayed; sheltering him we swung here and there in
a body; and on the very brink of eternity we tottered all together with
concealing and absurd gestures, like a lot of drunken men embarrassed
with a stolen corpse.
Something had to be done. We had to get him aft. A rope was tied slack
under his armpits, and, reaching up at the risk of our lives, we
hung him on the fore-sheet cleet. He emitted no sound; he looked as
ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost half its sawdust, and we
started on our perilous journey over the main deck, dragging along
with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden. He was not very
heavy, but had he weighed a ton he could not have been more awkward to
handle. We literally passed him from hand to hand. Now and then we had
to hang him up on a handy belaying-pin, to draw a breath and reform
the line. Had the pin broken he would have irretrievably gone into
the Southern Ocean, but he had to take his chance of that; and after a
little while, becoming apparently aware of it, he groaned slightly, and
with a great effort whispered a few words. We listened eagerly. He was
reproaching us with our carelessness in letting him run such risks:
"Now, after I got myself out from there," he breathed out weakly.
"There" was his cabin. And he got himself out. We had nothing to do with
it apparently!... No matter.... We went on and let him take his chances,
simply because we could not help it; for though at that time we hated
him more than ever--more than anything under heaven--we did not want to
lose him. We had so far saved him; and it had become a personal
matter between us and the sea. We meant to stick to him. Had we (by an
incredible hypothesis) undergone similar toil and trouble for an empty
cask, that cask would have become as precious to us as Jimmy was. More
precious, in fact, because we would have had no reason to hate the cask.
And we hated James Wait. We could not get rid of the monstrous suspicion
that this astounding black-man was shamming sick, had been malingering
heartlessly in the face of our toil, of our scorn, of our patience--and
now was malingering in the face of our devotion--in the face of death.
Our vague and imperfect morality rose with disgust at his unmanly lie.
But he stuck to it manfully--amazingly. No! It couldn't be. He was at all
extremity. His cantankerous temper was only the result of the provoking
invincible-ness of that death he felt by his side. Any man may be angry
with such a masterful chum. But, then, what kind of men were we--with
our thoughts! Indignation and doubt grappled within us in a scuffle that
trampled upon the finest of our feelings. And we hated him because of
the suspicion; we detested him because of the doubt. We could not scorn
him safely--neither could we pity him without risk to our dignity. So
we hated him and passed him carefully from hand to hand. We cried, "Got
him?"--"Yes. All right. Let go."
And he swung from one enemy to another, showing about as much life as an
old bolster would do. His eyes made two narrow white slits in the black
face. The air escaped through his lips with a noise like the sound
of bellows. We reached the poop ladder at last, and it being a
comparatively safe place, we lay for a moment in an exhausted heap to
rest a little. He began to mutter. We were always incurably anxious to
hear what he had to say. This time he mumbled peevishly, "It took you
some time to come! I began to think the whole smart lot of you had been
washed overboard. What kept you back? Hey? Funk?" We said nothing. With
sighs we started again to drag him up. The secret and ardent desire of
our hearts was the desire to beat him viciously with our fists about
the head; and we handled him as tenderly as though he had been made of
glass....
The return on the poop was like the return of wanderers after many years
amongst people marked by the desolation of time. Eyes were turned slowly
in their sockets, glancing at us. Faint murmurs were heard, "Have you
got 'im after all?" The well-known faces looked strange and familiar;
they seemed faded and grimy; they had a mingled expression of fatigue
and eagerness. They seemed to have become much thinner during our
absence, as if all these men had been starving for a long time in their
abandoned attitudes. The captain, with a round turn of a rope on his
wrist, and kneeling on one knee, swung with a face cold and stiff; but
with living eyes he was still holding the ship up, heeding no one, as
if lost in the unearthly effort of that endeavour. We fastened up James
Wait in a safe place. Mr. Baker scrambled along to lend a hand. Mr.
Creighton, on his back, and very pale, muttered, "Well done," and gave
us, Jimmy and the sky, a scornful glance, then closed his eyes slowly.
Here and there a man stirred a little, but most of them remained
apathetic, in cramped positions, muttering between shivers. The sun was
setting. A sun enormous, unclouded and red, declining low as if bending
down to look into their faces. The wind whistled across long sunbeams
that, resplendent and cold, struck full on the dilated pupils of staring
eyes without making them wink. The wisps of hair and the tangled beards
were grey with the salt of the sea. The faces were earthy, and the dark
patches under the eyes extended to the ears, smudged into the hollows of
sunken cheeks. The lips were livid and thin, and when they moved it
was with difficulty, as though they had been glued to the teeth. Some
grinned sadly in the sunlight, shaking with cold. Others were sad and
still. Charley, subdued by the sudden disclosure of the insignificance
of his youth, darted fearful glances. The two smooth-faced Norwegians
resembled decrepit children, staring stupidly. To leeward, on the edge
of the horizon, black seas leaped up towards the glowing sun. It sank
slowly, round and blazing, and the crests of waves splashed on the edge
of the luminous circle. One of the Norwegians appeared to catch sight
of it, and, after giving a violent start, began to speak. His voice,
startling the others, made them stir. They moved their heads stiffly, or
turning with difficulty, looked at him with surprise, with fear, or in
grave silence. He chattered at the setting sun, nodding his head, while
the big seas began to roll across the crimson disc; and over miles of
turbulent waters the shadows of high waves swept with a running darkness
the faces of men. A crested roller broke with a loud hissing roar, and
the sun, as if put out, disappeared. The chattering voice faltered, went
out together with the light. There were sighs. In the sudden lull that
follows the crash of a broken sea a man said wearily, "Here's that
blooming Dutchman gone off his chump." A seaman, lashed by the middle,
tapped the deck with his open hand with unceasing quick flaps. In the
gathering greyness of twilight a bulky form was seen rising aft, and
began marching on all fours with the movements of some big cautious
beast. It was Mr. Baker passing along the line of men. He grunted
encouragingly over every one, felt their fastenings. Some, with
half-open eyes, puffed like men oppressed by heat; others mechanically
and in dreamy voices answered him, "Aye! aye! sir!" He went from one to
another grunting, "Ough!... See her through it yet;" and unexpectedly,
with loud angry outbursts, blew up Knowles for cutting off a long
piece from the fall of the relieving tackle. "Ough!------Ashamed of
yourself------Relieving tackle------Don't you know better!------Ough!------Able
seaman! Ough!" The lame man was crushed. He muttered, "Get som'think for
a lashing for myself, sir."--"Ough! Lashing------yourself. Are you a tinker
or a sailor------What? Ough!------May want that tackle directly------Ough!------More
use to the ship than your lame carcass. Ough!------Keep it!------Keep it, now
you've done it."
He crawled away slowly, muttering to himself about some men being "worse
than children." It had been a comforting row. Low exclamations were
heard: "Hallo... Hallo."... Those who had been painfully dozing asked
with convulsive starts, "What's up?... What is it?" The answers came
with unexpected cheerfulness: "The mate is going bald-headed for lame
Jack about something or other." "No!".... "What 'as he done?" Some one
even chuckled. It was like a whiff of hope, like a reminder of safe
days. Donkin, who had been stupefied with fear, revived suddenly and
began to shout:--"'Ear 'im; that's the way they tawlk to us. Vy donch 'ee
'it 'im--one ov yer? 'It 'im. 'It 'im! Comin' the mate over us. We are
as good men as 'ee! We're all goin' to 'ell now. We 'ave been starved
in this rotten ship, an' now we're goin' to be drowned for them black
'earted bullies! 'It 'im!" He shrieked in the deepening gloom, he
blubbered and sobbed, screaming:--"'It 'im! 'It 'im!" The rage and fear
of his disregarded right to live tried the steadfastness of hearts
more than the menacing shadows of the night that advanced through the
unceasing clamour of the gale. From aft Mr. Baker was heard:--"Is one
of you men going to stop him--must I come along?" "Shut up!"... "Keep
quiet!" cried various voices, exasperated, trembling with cold.--"You'll
get one across the mug from me directly," said an invisible seaman, in
a weary tone, "I won't let the mate have the trouble." He ceased and lay
still with the silence of despair. On the black sky the stars, coming
out, gleamed over an inky sea that, speckled with foam, flashed back at
them the evanescent and pale light of a dazzling whiteness born from the
black turmoil of the waves. Remote in the eternal calm they glittered
hard and cold above the uproar of the earth; they surrounded the
vanquished and tormented ship on all sides: more pitiless than the eyes
of a triumphant mob, and as unapproachable as the hearts of men.
The icy south wind howled exultingly under the sombre splendour of the
sky. The cold shook the men with a resistless violence as though it had
tried to shake them to pieces. Short moans were swept unheard off the
stiff lips. Some complained in mutters of "not feeling themselves below
the waist;" while those who had closed their eyes, imagined they had a
block of ice on their chests. Others, alarmed at not feeling any pain
in their fingers, beat the deck feebly with their hands--obstinate and
exhausted. Wamibo stared vacant and dreamy. The Scandinavians kept on a
meaningless mutter through chattering teeth. The spare Scotchmen, with
determined efforts, kept their lower jaws still. The West-country men
lay big and stolid in an invulnerable surliness. A man yawned and swore
in turns. Another breathed with a rattle in his throat. Two elderly
hard-weather shellbacks, fast side by side, whispered dismally to one
another about the landlady of a boarding-house in Sunderland, whom they
both knew. They extolled her motherliness and her liberality; they
tried to talk about the joint of beef and the big fire in the downstairs
kitchen. The words dying faintly on their lips, ended in light sighs.
A sudden voice cried into the cold night, "O Lord!" No one changed
his position or took any notice of the cry. One or two passed, with a
repeated and vague gesture, their hand over their faces, but most of
them kept very still. In the benumbed immobility of their bodies they
were excessively wearied by their thoughts, which rushed with the
rapidity and vividness of dreams. Now and then, by an abrupt and
startling exclamation, they answered the weird hail of some illusion;
then, again, in silence contemplated the vision of known faces and
familiar things. They recalled the aspect of forgotten shipmates and
heard the voice of dead and gone skippers. They remembered the noise of
gaslit streets, the steamy heat of tap-rooms or the scorching sunshine
of calm days at sea.
Mr. Baker left his insecure place, and crawled, with stoppages, along
the poop. In the dark and on all fours he resembled some carnivorous
animal prowling amongst corpses. At the break, propped to windward of
a stanchion, he looked down on the main deck. It seemed to him that
the ship had a tendency to stand up a little more. The wind had eased
a little, he thought, but the sea ran as high as ever. The waves foamed
viciously, and the lee side of the deck disappeared under a hissing
whiteness as of boiling milk, while the rigging sang steadily with a
deep vibrating note, and, at every upward swing of the ship, the wind
rushed with a long-drawn clamour amongst the spars. Mr. Baker watched
very still. A man near him began to make a blabbing noise with his
lips, all at once and very loud, as though the cold had broken brutally
through him. He went on:--"Ba--ba--ba--brrr--brr--ba--ba."--"Stop that!" cried
Mr. Baker, groping in the dark. "Stop it!" He went on shaking the leg he
found under his hand.--"What is it, sir?" called out Belfast, in the tone
of a man awakened suddenly; "we are looking after that 'ere Jimmy."--"Are
you? Ough! Don't make that row then. Who's that near you?"--"It's me--the
boatswain, sir," growled the West-country man; "we are trying to keep
life in that poor devil."--"Aye, aye!" said Mr. Baker. "Do it quietly,
can't you?"--"He wants us to hold him up above the rail," went on the
boatswain, with irritation, "says he can't breathe here under our
jackets."--"If we lift 'im, we drop 'im overboard," said another voice,
"we can't feel our hands with cold."--"I don't care. I am choking!"
exclaimed James Wait in a clear tone.--"Oh, no, my son," said the
boatswain, desperately, "you don't go till we all go on this
fine night."--"You will see yet many a worse," said Mr. Baker,
cheerfully.--"It's no child's play, sir!" answered the boatswain. "Some
of us further aft, here, are in a pretty bad way."--"If the blamed sticks
had been cut out of her she would be running along on her bottom now
like any decent ship, an' giv' us all a chance," said some one, with a
sigh.--"The old man wouldn't have it... much he cares for us," whispered
another.--"Care for you!" exclaimed Mr. Baker, angrily. "Why should he
care for you? Are you a lot of women passengers to be taken care of?
We are here to take care of the ship--and some of you ain't up to that.
Ough!... What have you done so very smart to be taken care of?
Ough!... Some of you can't stand a bit of a breeze without crying over
it."--"Come, sorr. We ain't so bad," protested Belfast, in a voice shaken
by shivers; "we ain't... brr..."--"Again," shouted the mate, grabbing at
the shadowy form; "again!... Why, you're in your shirt! What have you
done?"--"I've put my oilskin and jacket over that half-dead nayggur--and
he says he chokes," said Belfast, complainingly.--"You wouldn't call
me nigger if I wasn't half dead, you Irish beggar!" boomed James Wait,
vigorously.--"You... brrr... You wouldn't be white if you were ever so
well... I will fight you... brrrr... in fine weather... brrr ... with
one hand tied behind my back... brrrrrr..."--"I don't want your rags--I
want air," gasped out the other faintly, as if suddenly exhausted.
The sprays swept over whistling and pattering. Men disturbed in their
peaceful torpor by the pain of quarrelsome shouts, moaned, muttering
curses. Mr. Baker crawled off a little way to leeward where a water-cask
loomed up big, with something white against it. "Is it you, Podmore?"
asked Mr. Baker, He had to repeat the question twice before the cook
turned, coughing feebly.--"Yes, sir. I've been praying in my mind for a
quick deliverance; for I am prepared for any call.... I------"--"Look here,
cook," interrupted Mr. Baker, "the men are perishing with cold."--"Cold!"
said the cook, mournfully; "they will be warm enough before
long."--"What?" asked Mr. Baker, looking along the deck into the faint
sheen of frothing water.--"They are a wicked lot," continued the cook
solemnly, but in an unsteady voice, "about as wicked as any ship's
company in this sinful world! Now, I"--he trembled so that he could
hardly speak; his was an exposed place, and in a cotton shirt, a thin
pair of trousers, and with his knees under his nose, he received,
quaking, the flicks of stinging, salt drops; his voice sounded
exhausted--"now. I--any time... My eldest youngster, Mr. Baker... a clever
boy... last Sunday on shore before this voyage he wouldn't go to church,
sir. Says I, 'You go and clean yourself, or I'll know the reason why!'
What does he do?... Pond, Mr. Baker--fell into the pond in his best rig,
sir!... Accident?... 'Nothing will save you, fine scholar though you
are!' says I.... Accident!... I whopped him, sir, till I couldn't lift
my arm...." His voice faltered. "I whopped 'im!" he repeated, rattling
his teeth; then, after a while, let out a mournful sound that was half
a groan, half a snore. Mr. Baker shook him by the shoulders. "Hey! Cook!
Hold up, Podmore! Tell me--is there any fresh water in the galley tank?
The ship is lying along less, I think; I would try to get forward. A
little water would do them good. Hallo! Look out! Look out!" The cook
struggled.--"Not you, sir--not you!" He began to scramble to windward.
"Galley!... my business!" he shouted.--"Cook's going crazy now," said
several voices. He yelled:--"Crazy, am I? I am more ready to die than any
of you, officers incloosive--there! As long as she swims I will cook! I
will get you coffee."--"Cook, ye are a gentleman!" cried Belfast. But the
cook was already going over the weather-ladder. He stopped for a moment
to shout back on the poop:--"As long as she swims I will cook!" and
disappeared as though he had gone overboard. The men who had heard sent
after him a cheer that sounded like a wail of sick children. An hour or
more afterwards some one said distinctly: "He's gone for good."--"Very
likely," assented the boatswain; "even in fine weather he was as smart
about the deck as a milch-cow on her first voyage. We ought to go and
see." Nobody moved. As the hours dragged slowly through the darkness
Mr. Baker crawled back and forth along the poop several times. Some men
fancied they had heard him exchange murmurs with the master, but at that
time the memories were incomparably more vivid than anything actual, and
they were not certain whether the murmurs were heard now or many years
ago. They did not try to find out. A mutter more or less did not matter.
It was too cold for curiosity, and almost for hope. They could not spare
a moment or a thought from the great mental occupation of wishing to
live. And the desire of life kept them alive, apathetic and enduring,
under the cruel persistence of wind and cold; while the bestarred black
dome of the sky revolved slowly above the ship, that drifted, bearing
their patience and their suffering, through the stormy solitude of the
sea.
Huddled close to one another, they fancied themselves utterly alone.
They heard sustained loud noises, and again bore the pain of existence
through long hours of profound silence. In the night they saw sunshine,
felt warmth, and suddenly, with a start, thought that the sun would
never rise upon a freezing world. Some heard laughter, listened to
songs; others, near the end of the poop, could hear loud human shrieks,
and opening their eyes, were surprised to hear them still, though very
faint, and far away. The boatswain said:--"Why, it's the cook, hailing
from forward, I think." He hardly believed his own words or recognised
his own voice. It was a long time before the man next to him gave a
sign of life. He punched hard his other neighbour and said:--"The cook's
shouting!" Many did not understand, others did not care; the majority
further aft did not believe. But the boatswain and another man had the
pluck to crawl away forward to see. They seemed to have been gone for
hours, and were very soon forgotten. Then suddenly men who had been
plunged in a hopeless resignation became as if possessed with a desire
to hurt. They belaboured one another with fists. In the darkness they
struck persistently anything soft they could feel near, and, with a
greater effort than for a shout, whispered excitedly:--"They've got some
hot coffee.... Boss'en got it...." "No!... Where?".... "It's coming!
Cook made it." James Wait moaned. Donkin scrambled viciously, caring not
where he kicked, and anxious that the officers should have none of it.
It came in a pot, and they drank in turns. It was hot, and while it
blistered the greedy palates, it seemed incredible. The men sighed out
parting with the mug:--"How 'as he done it?" Some cried weakly:--"Bully
for you, doctor!"
He had done it somehow. Afterwards Archie declared that the thing
was "meeraculous." For many days we wondered, and it was the one
ever-interesting subject of conversation to the end of the voyage.
We asked the cook, in fine weather, how he felt when he saw his stove
"reared up on end." We inquired, in the north-east trade and on serene
evenings, whether he had to stand on his head to put things right
somewhat. We suggested he had used his bread-board for a raft, and from
there comfortably had stoked his grate; and we did our best to conceal
our admiration under the wit of fine irony. He affirmed not to know
anything about it, rebuked our levity, declared himself, with solemn
animation, to have been the object of a special mercy for the saving of
our unholy lives. Fundamentally he was right, no doubt; but he need not
have been so offensively positive about it--he need not have hinted
so often that it would have gone hard with us had he not been there,
meritorious and pure, to receive the inspiration and the strength for
the work of grace. Had we been saved by his recklessness or his agility,
we could have at length become reconciled to the fact; but to admit our
obligation to anybody's virtue and holiness alone was as difficult
for us as for any other handful of mankind. Like many benefactors of
humanity, the cook took himself too seriously, and reaped the reward of
irreverence. We were not un-ungrateful, however. He remained heroic. His
saying--the saying of his life--became proverbial in the mouth of men as
are the sayings of conquerors or sages. Later, whenever one of us was
puzzled by a task and advised to relinquish it, he would express his
determination to persevere and to succeed by the words:--"As long as she
swims I will cook!"
The hot drink helped us through the bleak hours that precede the dawn.
The sky low by the horizon took on the delicate tints of pink and yellow
like the inside of a rare shell. And higher, where it glowed with a
pearly sheen, a small black cloud appeared, like a forgotten fragment of
the night set in a border of dazzling gold. The beams of light skipped
on the crests of waves. The eyes of men turned to the eastward. The
sunlight flooded their weary faces. They were giving themselves up to
fatigue as though they had done for ever with their work. On Singleton's
black oilskin coat the dried salt glistened like hoar frost. He hung
on by the wheel, with open and lifeless eyes. Captain Allistoun,
unblinking, faced the rising sun. His lips stirred, opened for the first
time in twenty-four hours, and with a fresh firm voice he cried, "Wear
ship!"
The commanding sharp tones made all these torpid men start like a sudden
flick of a whip. Then again, motionless where they lay, the force of
habit made some of them repeat the order in hardly audible murmurs.
Captain Allistoun glanced down at his crew, and several, with fumbling
fingers and hopeless movements, tried to cast themselves adrift. He
repeated impatiently, "Wear ship. Now then, Mr. Baker, get the men
along. What's the matter with them?"--"Wear ship. Do you hear there?--Wear
ship!" thundered out the boatswain suddenly. His voice seemed to
break through a deadly spell. Men began to stir and crawl.--"I want the
fore-topmast staysail run up smartly," said the master, very loudly;
"if you can't manage it standing up you must do it lying down--that's
all. Bear a hand!"--"Come along! Let's give the old girl a chance," urged
the boatswain.--"Aye! aye! Wear ship!" exclaimed quavering voices. The
forecastle men, with reluctant faces, prepared to go forward. Mr. Baker
pushed ahead, grunting, on all fours to show the way, and they followed
him over the break. The others lay still with a vile hope in their
hearts of not being required to move till they got saved or drowned in
peace.
After some time they could be seen forward appearing on the forecastle
head, one by one in unsafe attitudes; hanging on to the rails,
clambering over the anchors; embracing the cross-head of the windlass
or hugging the fore-capstan. They were restless with strange exertions,
waved their arms, knelt, lay flat down, staggered up, seemed to strive
their hardest to go overboard. Suddenly a small white piece of canvas
fluttered amongst them, grew larger, beating. Its narrow head rose
in jerks--and at last it stood distended and triangular in the
sunshine.--"They have done it!" cried the voices aft. Captain Allistoun
let go the rope he had round his wrist and rolled to leeward headlong.
He could be seen casting the lee main braces off the pins while the
backwash of waves splashed over him.--"Square the main yard!" he shouted
up to us--who stared at him in wonder. We hesitated to stir. "The
main brace, men. Haul! haul anyhow! Lay on your backs and haul!" he
screeched, half drowned down there. We did not believe we could move the
main yard, but the strongest and the less discouraged tried to execute
the order. Others assisted half-heartedly. Singleton's eyes blazed
suddenly as he took a fresh grip of the spokes. Captain Allistoun fought
his way up to windward.--"Haul, men! Try to move it! Haul, and help the
ship." His hard face worked suffused and furious. "Is she going off,
Singleton?" he cried.--"Not a move yet, sir," croaked the old seaman in
a horribly hoarse voice.--"Watch the helm, Singleton," spluttered the
master. "Haul, men! Have you no more strength than rats? Haul, and earn
your salt." Mr. Creighton, on his back, with a swollen leg and a face as
white as a piece of paper, blinked his eyes; his bluish lips twitched.
In the wild scramble men grabbed at him, crawled over his hurt leg,
knelt on his chest. He kept perfectly still, setting his teeth without a
moan, without a sigh. The master's ardour, the cries of that silent man
inspired us. We hauled and hung in bunches on the rope. We heard him say
with violence to Donkin, who sprawled abjectly on his stomach,--"I will
brain you with this belaying pin if you don't catch hold of the brace,"
and that victim of men's injustice, cowardly and cheeky, whimpered:--"Are
you goin' to murder us now?" while with sudden desperation he gripped
the rope. Men sighed, shouted, hissed meaningless words, groaned. The
yards moved, came slowly square against the wind, that hummed loudly
on the yard-arms.--"Going off, sir," shouted Singleton, "she's just
started."--"Catch a turn with that brace. Catch a turn!" clamoured the
master. Mr. Creighton, nearly suffocated and unable to move, made a
mighty effort, and with his left hand managed to nip the rope.
--"All fast!" cried some one. He closed his eyes as if going off into
a swoon, while huddled together about the brace we watched with scared
looks what the ship would do now.
She went off slowly as though she had been weary and disheartened like
the men she carried. She paid off very gradually, making us hold our
breath till we choked, and as soon as she had brought the wind abaft the
beam she started to move, and fluttered our hearts. It was awful to see
her, nearly overturned, begin to gather way and drag her submerged side
through the water. The dead-eyes of the rigging churned the breaking
seas. The lower half of the deck was full of mad whirlpools and eddies;
and the long line of the lee rail could be seen showing black now and
then in the swirls of a field of foam as dazzling and white as a field
of snow. The wind sang shrilly amongst the spars; and at every slight
lurch we expected her to slip to the bottom sideways from under our
backs. When dead before it she made the first distinct attempt to stand
up, and we encouraged her with a feeble and discordant howl. A great sea
came running up aft and hung for a moment over us with a curling top;
then crashed down under the counter and spread out on both sides into
a great sheet of bursting froth. Above its fierce hiss we heard
Singleton's croak:--"She is steering!" He had both his feet now
planted firmly on the grating, and the wheel spun fast as he eased the
helm.--"Bring the wind on the port quarter and steady her!" called out
the master, staggering to his feet, the first man up from amongst our
prostrate heap. One or two screamed with excitement:--"She rises!" Far
away forward, Mr. Baker and three others were seen erect and black on
the clear sky, lifting their arms, and with open mouths as though they
had been shouting all together. The ship trembled, trying to lift her
side, lurched back, seemed to give up with a nerveless dip, and suddenly
with an unexpected jerk swung violently to windward, as though she had
torn herself out from a deadly grasp. The whole immense volume of water,
lifted by her deck, was thrown bodily across to starboard. Loud cracks
were heard. Iron ports breaking open thundered with ringing blows. The
water topped over the starboard rail with the rush of a river falling
over a dam. The sea on deck, and the seas on every side of her, mingled
together in a deafening roar. She rolled violently. We got up and were
helplessly run or flung about from side to side. Men, rolling over and
over, yelled,--"The house will go!"--"She clears herself!" Lifted by a
towering sea she ran along with it for a moment, spouting thick streams
of water through every opening of her wounded sides. The lee braces
having been carried away or washed off the pins, all the ponderous yards
on the fore swung from side to side and with appalling rapidity at every
roll. The men forward were seen crouching here and there with fearful
glances upwards at the enormous spars that whirled about over their
heads. The torn canvas and the ends of broken gear streamed in the
wind like wisps of hair. Through the clear sunshine, over the flashing
turmoil and uproar of the seas, the ship ran blindly, dishevelled
and headlong, as if fleeing for her life; and on the poop we spun, we
tottered about, distracted and noisy. We all spoke at once in a thin
babble; we had the aspect of invalids and the gestures of maniacs. Eyes
shone, large and haggard, in smiling, meagre faces that seemed to have
been dusted over with powdered chalk. We stamped, clapped our hands,
feeling ready to jump and do anything; but in reality hardly able to
keep on our feet.
Captain Allistoun, hard and slim, gesticulated madly from the poop at
Mr. Baker: "Steady these fore-yards! Steady them the best you can!" On
the main deck, men excited by his cries, splashed, dashing aimlessly,
here and there with the foam swirling up to their waists. Apart, far
aft, and alone by the helm, old Singleton had deliberately tucked his
white beard under the top button of his glistening coat. Swaying upon
the din and tumult of the seas, with the whole battered length of the
ship launched forward in a rolling rush before his steady old eyes, he
stood rigidly still, forgotten by all, and with an attentive face. In
front of his erect figure only the two arms moved crosswise with a swift
and sudden readiness, to check or urge again the rapid stir of circling
spokes. He steered with care.
CHAPTER FOUR
On men reprieved by its disdainful mercy, the immortal sea confers in
its justice the full privilege of desired unrest. Through the perfect
wisdom of its grace they are not permitted to meditate at ease upon
the complicated and acrid savour of existence. They must without pause
justify their life to the eternal pity that commands toil to be hard
and unceasing, from sunrise to sunset, from sunset to sunrise; till the
weary succession of nights and days tainted by the obstinate clamour of
sages, demanding bliss and an empty heaven, is redeemed at last by the
vast silence of pain and labour, by the dumb fear and the dumb courage
of men obscure, forgetful, and enduring.
The master and Mr. Baker coming face to face stared for a moment, with
the intense and amazed looks of men meeting unexpectedly after years of
trouble. Their voices were gone, and they whispered desperately at
one another.--"Any one missing?" asked Captain Allistoun.--"No. All
there."--"Anybody hurt?"--"Only the second mate."--"I will look after
him directly. We're lucky."--"Very," articulated Mr. Baker, faintly. He
gripped the rail and rolled bloodshot eyes. The little grey man made an
effort to raise his voice above a dull mutter, and fixed his chief mate
with a cold gaze, piercing like a dart.--"Get sail on the ship," he said,
speaking authoritatively and with an inflexible snap of his thin lips.
"Get sail on her as soon as you can. This is a fair wind. At once,
sir--Don't give the men time to feel themselves. They will get done up
and stiff, and we will never... We must get her along now"... He reeled
to a long heavy roll; the rail dipped into the glancing, hissing water.
He caught a shroud, swung helplessly against the mate... "now we have
a fair wind at last------Make------sail." His head rolled from shoulder to
shoulder. His eyelids began to beat rapidly. "And the pumps------pumps, Mr.
Baker." He peered as though the face within a foot of his eyes had been
half a mile off. "Keep the men on the move to------to get her along," he
mumbled in a drowsy tone, like a man going off into a doze. He pulled
himself together suddenly. "Mustn't stand. Won't do," he said with a
painful attempt at a smile. He let go his hold, and, propelled by the
dip of the ship, ran aft unwillingly, with small steps, till he brought
up against the binnacle stand. Hanging on there he looked up in an
aimless manner at Singleton, who, unheeding him, watched anxiously the
end of the jib-boom--"Steering gear works all right?" he asked. There
was a noise in the old seaman's throat, as though the words had been
rattling together before they could come out.--"Steers... like a little
boat," he said, at last, with hoarse tenderness, without giving the
master as much as half a glance--then, watchfully, spun the wheel down,
steadied, flung it back again. Captain Allistoun tore himself away from
the delight of leaning against the binnacle, and began to walk the poop,
swaying and reeling to preserve his balance....
The pump-rods, clanking, stamped in short jumps while the fly-wheels
turned smoothly, with great speed, at the foot of the mainmast, flinging
back and forth with a regular impetuosity two limp clusters of men
clinging to the handles. They abandoned themselves, swaying from the hip
with twitching faces and stony eyes. The carpenter, sounding from time
to time, exclaimed mechanically: "Shake her up! Keep her going!" Mr.
Baker could not speak, but found his voice to shout; and under the goad
of his objurgations, men looked to the lashings, dragged out new
sails; and thinking themselves unable to move, carried heavy blocks
aloft--overhauled the gear. They went up the rigging with faltering and
desperate efforts. Their heads swam as they shifted their hold, stepped
blindly on the yards like men in the dark; or trusted themselves to the
first rope at hand with the negligence of exhausted strength. The narrow
escapes from falls did not disturb the languid beat of their hearts; the
roar of the seas seething far below them sounded continuous and faint
like an indistinct noise from another world: the wind filled their eyes
with tears, and with heavy gusts tried to push them off from where they
swayed in insecure positions. With streaming faces and blowing hair
they flew up and down between sky and water, bestriding the ends of
yard-arms, crouching on foot-ropes, embracing lifts to have their hands
free, or standing up against chain ties. Their thoughts floated vaguely
between the desire of rest and the desire of life, while their stiffened
fingers cast off head-earrings, fumbled for knives, or held with
tenacious grip against the violent shocks of beating canvas. They glared
savagely at one another, made frantic signs with one hand while they
held their life in the other, looked down on the narrow strip of flooded
deck, shouted along to leeward: "Light-to!"... "Haul out!"... "Make
fast!" Their lips moved, their eyes started, furious and eager with the
desire to be understood, but the wind tossed their words unheard upon
the disturbed sea. In an unendurable and unending strain they worked
like men driven by a merciless dream to toil in an atmosphere of ice or
flame. They burnt and shivered in turns. Their eyeballs smarted as if
in the smoke of a conflagration; their heads were ready to burst with
every shout. Hard fingers seemed to grip their throats. At every roll
they thought: Now I must let go. It will shake us all off--and thrown
about aloft they cried wildly: "Look out there--catch the end."...
"Reeve clear"... "Turn this block...." They nodded desperately; shook
infuriated faces, "No! No! From down up." They seemed to hate one
another with a deadly hate, The longing to be done with it all gnawed
their breasts, and the wish to do things well was a burning pain. They
cursed their fate, contemned their life, and wasted their breath in
deadly imprecations upon one another. The sailmaker, with his bald head
bared, worked feverishly, forgetting his intimacy with so many admirals.
The boatswain, climbing up with marlinspikes and bunches of spunyarn
rovings, or kneeling on the yard and ready to take a turn with the
midship-stop, had acute and fleeting visions of his old woman and the
youngsters in a moorland village. Mr. Baker, feeling very weak, tottered
here and there, grunting and inflexible, like a man of iron. He waylaid
those who, coming from aloft, stood gasping for breath. He ordered,
encouraged, scolded. "Now then--to the main topsail now! Tally on to that
gantline. Don't stand about there!"--"Is there no rest for us?" muttered
voices. He spun round fiercely, with a sinking heart.--"No! No rest till
the work is done. Work till you drop. That's what you're here for." A
bowed seaman at his elbow gave a short laugh.--"Do or die," he croaked
bitterly, then spat into his broad palms, swung up his long arms, and
grasping the rope high above his head sent out a mournful, wailing cry
for a pull all together. A sea boarded the quarter-deck and sent the
whole lot sprawling to leeward. Caps, handspikes floated. Clenched
hands, kicking legs, with here and there a spluttering face, stuck out
of the white hiss of foaming water. Mr. Baker, knocked down with the
rest, screamed--"Don't let go that rope! Hold on to it! Hold!" And sorely
bruised by the brutal fling, they held on to it, as though it had
been the fortune of their life. The ship ran, rolling heavily, and the
topping crests glanced past port and starboard flashing their white
heads. Pumps were freed. Braces were rove. The three topsails and
foresail were set. She spurted faster over the water, outpacing the
swift rush of waves. The menacing thunder of distanced seas rose behind
her--filled the air with the tremendous vibrations of its voice. And
devastated, battered, and wounded she drove foaming to the northward, as
though inspired by the courage of a high endeavour....
The forecastle was a place of damp desolation. They looked at their
dwelling with dismay. It was slimy, dripping; it hummed hollow with the
wind, and was strewn with shapeless wreckage like a half-tide cavern in
a rocky and exposed coast. Many had lost all they had in the world, but
most of the starboard watch had preserved their chests; thin streams of
water trickled out of them, however. The beds were soaked; the blankets
spread out and saved by some nail squashed under foot. They dragged wet
rags from evil-smelling corners, and wringing the water out, recognised
their property. Some smiled stiffly. Others looked round blank and mute.
There were cries of joy over old waistcoats, and groans of sorrow over
shapeless things found among the splinters of smashed bed boards. One
lamp was discovered jammed under the bowsprit. Charley whimpered a
little. Knowles stumped here and there, sniffing, examining dark places
for salvage. He poured dirty water out of a boot, and was concerned
to find the owner. Those who, overwhelmed by their losses, sat on the
forepeak hatch, remained elbows on knees, and, with a fist against each
cheek, disdained to look up. He pushed it under their noses. "Here's a
good boot. Yours?" They snarled, "No--get out." One snapped at him, "Take
it to hell out of this." He seemed surprised. "Why? It's a good boot,"
but remembering suddenly that he had lost every stitch of his clothing,
he dropped his find and began to swear. In the dim light cursing voices
clashed. A man came in and, dropping his arms, stood still, repeating
from the doorstep, "Here's a bloomin' old go! Here's a bloomin' old
go!" A few rooted anxiously in flooded chests for tobacco. They breathed
hard, clamoured with heads down. "Look at that Jack!"... "Here! Sam!
Here's my shore-going rig spoilt for ever." One blasphemed tearfully,
holding up a pair of dripping trousers. No one looked at him. The cat
came out from somewhere. He had an ovation. They snatched him from hand
to hand, caressed him in a murmur of pet names. They wondered where he
had "weathered it out;" disputed about it. A squabbling argument began.
Two men brought in a bucket of fresh water, and all crowded round it;
but Tom, lean and mewing, came up with every hair astir and had the
first drink. A couple of hands went aft for oil and biscuits.
Then in the yellow light and in the intervals of mopping the deck they
crunched hard bread, arranging to "worry through somehow." Men chummed
as to beds. Turns were settled for wearing boots and having the use of
oilskin coats. They called one another "old man" and "sonny" in cheery
voices. Friendly slaps resounded. Jokes were shouted. One or two
stretched on the wet deck, slept with heads pillowed on their bent arms,
and several, sitting on the hatch, smoked. Their weary faces appeared
through a thin blue haze, pacified and with sparkling eyes. The
boatswain put his head through the door. "Relieve the wheel, one of
you"--he shouted inside--"it's six. Blamme if that old Singleton hasn't
been there more'n thirty hours. You are a fine lot." He slammed the door
again. "Mate's watch on deck," said some one. "Hey, Donkin, it's your
relief!" shouted three or four together. He had crawled into an empty
bunk and on wet planks lay still. "Donkin, your wheel." He made no
sound. "Donkin's dead," guffawed some one, "Sell 'is bloomin' clothes,"
shouted another. "Donkin, if ye don't go to the bloomin' wheel they will
sell your clothes--d'ye hear?" jeered a third. He groaned from his
dark hole. He complained about pains in all his bones, he whimpered
pitifully. "He won't go," exclaimed a contemptuous voice, "your turn,
Davis." The young seaman rose painfully, squaring his shoulders. Donkin
stuck his head out, and it appeared in the yellow light, fragile
and ghastly. "I will giv' yer a pound of tobaccer," he whined in a
conciliating voice, "so soon as I draw it from aft. I will--s'elp me..."
Davis swung his arm backhanded and the head vanished. "I'll go," he
said, "but you will pay for it." He walked unsteady but resolute to
the door. "So I will," yelped Donkin, popping out behind him. "So I
will--s'elp me... a pound... three bob they chawrge." Davis flung the
door open. "You will pay my price... in fine weather," he shouted over
his shoulder. One of the men unbuttoned his wet coat rapidly, threw it
at his head. "Here, Taffy--take that, you thief!" "Thank you!" he cried
from the darkness above the swish of rolling water. He could be
heard splashing; a sea came on board with a thump. "He's got his bath
already," remarked a grim shellback. "Aye, aye!" grunted others. Then,
after a long silence, Wamibo made strange noises. "Hallo, what's up with
you?" said some one grumpily. "He says he would have gone for Davy,"
explained Archie, who was the Finn's interpreter generally. "I believe
him!" cried voices.... "Never mind, Dutchy... You'll do, muddle-head....
Your turn will come soon enough... You don't know when ye're well off."
They ceased, and all together turned their faces to the door. Singleton
stepped in, advanced two paces, and stood swaying slightly. The sea
hissed, flowed roaring past the bows, and the forecastle trembled, full
of deep murmurs; the lamp flared, swinging like a pendulum. He looked
with a dreamy and puzzled stare, as though he could not distinguish
the still men from their restless shadows. There were awestruck
exclamations:--"Hallo, hallo"... "How does it look outside now,
Singleton?" Those who sat on the hatch lifted their eyes in silence, and
the next oldest seaman in the ship (those two understood one another,
though they hardly exchanged three words in a day) gazed up at his
friend attentively for a moment, then taking a short clay pipe out of
his mouth, offered it without a word. Singleton put out his arm towards
it, missed, staggered, and suddenly fell forward, crashing down, stiff
and headlong like an uprooted tree. There was a swift rush. Men pushed,
crying:--"He's done!"... "Turn him over!"... "Stand clear there!" Under
a crowd of startled faces bending over him he lay on his back, staring
upwards in a continuous and intolerable manner. In the breathless
silence of a general consternation, he said in a grating murmur:--"I am
all right," and clutched with his hands. They helped him up. He mumbled
despondently:--"I am getting old... old."--"Not you," cried Belfast, with
ready tact. Supported on all sides, he hung his head.--"Are you better?"
they asked. He glared at them from under his eyebrows with large black
eyes, spreading over his chest the bushy whiteness of a beard long and
thick.--"Old! old!" he repeated sternly. Helped along, he reached his
bunk. There was in it a slimy soft heap of something that smelt, as does
at dead low water a muddy foreshore. It was his soaked straw bed. With
a convulsive effort he pitched himself on it, and in the darkness of
the narrow place could be heard growling angrily, like an irritated and
savage animal uneasy in its den:--"Bit of breeze... small thing... can't
stand up... old!" He slept at last, high-booted, sou'wester on head, and
his oilskin clothes rustled, when with a deep sighing groan he turned
over. Men conversed about him in quiet, concerned whispers. "This will
break'im up"... "Strong as a horse"... "Aye. But he ain't what he used
to be." In sad murmurs they gave him up. Yet at midnight he turned out
to duty as if nothing had been the matter, and answered to his name with
a mournful "Here!" He brooded alone more than ever, in an impenetrable
silence and with a saddened face. For many years he had heard himself
called "Old Singleton," and had serenely accepted the qualification,
taking it as a tribute of respect due to a man who through half a
century had measured his strength against the favours and the rages
of the sea. He had never given a thought to his mortal self. He lived
unscathed, as though he had been indestructible, surrendering to all the
temptations, weathering many gales. He had panted in sunshine, shivered
in the cold; suffered hunger, thirst, debauch; passed through many
trials--known all the furies. Old! It seemed to him he was broken at
last. And like a man bound treacherously while he sleeps, he woke up
fettered by the long chain of disregarded years. He had to take up at
once the burden of all his existence, and found it almost too heavy for
his strength. Old! He moved his arms, shook his head, felt his limbs.
Getting old... and then? He looked upon the immortal sea with the
awakened and groping perception of its heartless might; he saw it
unchanged, black and foaming under the eternal scrutiny of the stars;
he heard its impatient voice calling for him out of a pitiless vastness
full of unrest, of turmoil, and of terror. He looked afar upon it,
and he saw an immensity tormented and blind, moaning and furious, that
claimed all the days of his tenacious life, and, when life was over,
would claim the worn-out body of its slave....
This was the last of the breeze. It veered quickly, changed to a black
south-easter, and blew itself out, giving the ship a famous shove to the
northward into the joyous sunshine of the trade. Rapid and white she ran
homewards in a straight path, under a blue sky and upon the plain of a
blue sea. She carried Singleton's completed wisdom, Donkin's delicate
susceptibilities, and the conceited folly of us all. The hours of
ineffective turmoil were forgotten; the fear and anguish of these dark
moments were never mentioned in the glowing peace of fine days. Yet from
that time our life seemed to start afresh as though we had died and had
been resuscitated. All the first part of the voyage, the Indian Ocean
on the other side of the Cape, all that was lost in a haze, like an
ineradicable suspicion of some previous existence. It had ended--then
there were blank hours: a livid blurr--and again we lived! Singleton was
possessed of sinister truth; Mr. Creighton of a damaged leg; the cook of
fame--and shamefully abused the opportunities of his distinction. Donkin
had an added grievance. He went about repeating with insistence:--"'E
said 'e would brain me--did yer 'ear? They are goin' to murder us now for
the least little thing." We began at last to think it was rather awful.
And we were conceited! We boasted of our pluck, of our capacity for
work, of our energy. We remembered honourable episodes: our devotion,
our indomitable perseverance--and were proud of them as though they had
been the outcome of our unaided impulses. We remembered our danger,
our toil--and conveniently forgot our horrible scare. We decried our
officers--who had done nothing--and listened to the fascinating Donkin.
His care for our rights, his disinterested concern for our dignity, were
not discouraged by the invariable contumely of our words, by the disdain
of our looks. Our contempt for him was unbounded--and we could not but
listen with interest to that consummate artist. He told us we were good
men--a "bloomin' condemned lot of good men." Who thanked us? Who took any
notice of our wrongs? Didn't we lead a "dorg's loife for two poun' ten a
month?" Did we think that miserable pay enough to compensate us for the
risk to our lives and for the loss of our clothes? "We've lost every
rag!" he cried. He made us forget that he, at any rate, had lost nothing
of his own. The younger men listened, thinking--this 'ere Donkin's a
long-headed chap, though no kind of man, anyhow. The Scandinavians were
frightened at his audacities; Wamibo did not understand; and the older
seamen thoughtfully nodded their heads making the thin gold earrings
glitter in the fleshy lobes of hairy ears. Severe, sunburnt faces were
propped meditatively on tattooed forearms. Veined, brown fists held
in their knotted grip the dirty white clay of smouldering pipes. They
listened, impenetrable, broad-backed, with bent shoulders, and in
grim silence. He talked with ardour, despised and irrefutable. His
picturesque and filthy loquacity flowed like a troubled stream from a
poisoned source. His beady little eyes danced, glancing right and left,
ever on the watch for the approach of an officer. Sometimes Mr. Baker
going forward to take a look at the head sheets would roll with his
uncouth gait through the sudden stillness of the men; or Mr. Creighton
limped along, smooth-faced, youthful, and more stern than ever, piercing
our short silence with a keen glance of his clear eyes. Behind his back
Donkin would begin again darting stealthy, sidelong looks.--"'Ere's one
of 'em. Some of yer 'as made 'im fast that day. Much thanks yer got for
it. Ain't 'ee a-drivin' yer wusse'n ever?... Let 'im slip overboard....
Vy not? It would 'ave been less trouble. Vy not?" He advanced
confidentially, backed away with great effect; he whispered, he
screamed, waved his miserable arms no thicker than pipe-stems--stretched
his lean neck--spluttered--squinted. In the pauses of his impassioned
orations the wind sighed quietly aloft, the calm sea unheeded murmured
in a warning whisper along the ship's side. We abominated the creature
and could not deny the luminous truth of his contentions. It was all so
obvious. We were indubitably good men; our deserts were great and our
pay small. Through our exertions we had saved the ship and the skipper
would get the credit of it. What had he done? we wanted to know. Donkin
asked:--"What 'ee could do without hus?" and we could not answer. We were
oppressed by the injustice of the world, surprised to perceive how long
we had lived under its burden without realising our unfortunate state,
annoyed by the uneasy suspicion of our undiscerning stupidity. Donkin
assured us it was all our "good 'eartedness," but we would not be
consoled by such shallow sophistry. We were men enough to courageously
admit to ourselves our intellectual shortcomings; though from that time
we refrained from kicking him, tweaking his nose, or from accidentally
knocking him about, which last, after we had weathered the Cape, had
been rather a popular amusement. Davis ceased to talk at him provokingly
about black eyes and flattened noses. Charley, much subdued since the
gale, did not jeer at him. Knowles deferentially and with a crafty air
propounded questions such as:--"Could we all have the same grub as the
mates? Could we all stop ashore till we got it? What would be the next
thing to try for if we got that?" He answered readily with contemptuous
certitude; he strutted with assurance in clothes that were much too big
for him as though he had tried to disguise himself. These were Jimmy's
clothes mostly--though he would accept anything from anybody; but
nobody, except Jimmy, had anything to spare. His devotion to Jimmy was
unbounded. He was for ever dodging in the little cabin, ministering
to Jimmy's wants, humouring his whims, submitting to his exacting
peevishness, often laughing with him. Nothing could keep him away from
the pious work of visiting the sick, especially when there was some
heavy hauling to be done on deck. Mr. Baker had on two occasions jerked
him out from there by the scruff of the neck to our inexpressible
scandal. Was a sick chap to be left without attendance? Were we to be
ill-used for attending a shipmate?--"What?" growled Mr. Baker, turning
menacingly at the mutter, and the whole half-circle like one man stepped
back a pace. "Set the topmast stunsail. Away aloft, Donkin, overhaul
the gear," ordered the mate inflexibly. "Fetch the sail along; bend the
down-haul clear. Bear a hand." Then, the sail set, he would go slowly
aft and stand looking at the compass for a long time, careworn, pensive,
and breathing hard as if stifled by the taint of unaccountable ill-will
that pervaded the ship. "What's up amongst them?" he thought. "Can't
make out this hanging back and growling. A good crowd, too, as they go
nowadays." On deck the men exchanged bitter words, suggested by a silly
exasperation against something unjust and irremediable that would not be
denied, and would whisper into their ears long after Donkin had ceased
speaking. Our little world went on its curved and unswerving path
carrying a discontented and aspiring population. They found comfort of
a gloomy kind in an interminable and conscientious analysis of their
unappreciated worth; and inspired by Donkin's hopeful doctrines they
dreamed enthusiastically of the time when every lonely ship would travel
over a serene sea, manned by a wealthy and well-fed crew of satisfied
skippers.
It looked as if it would be a long passage. The south-east trades, light
and unsteady, were left behind; and then, on the equator and under a
low grey sky, the ship, in close heat, floated upon a smooth sea that
resembled a sheet of ground glass. Thunder squalls hung on the horizon,
circled round the ship, far off and growling angrily, like a troop of
wild beasts afraid to charge home. The invisible sun, sweeping above the
upright masts, made on the clouds a blurred stain of rayless light, and
a similar patch of faded radiance kept pace with it from east to
west over the unglittering level of the waters. At night, through the
impenetrable darkness of earth and heaven, broad sheets of flame waved
noiselessly; and for half a second the becalmed craft stood out with its
masts and rigging, with every sail and every rope distinct and black in
the centre of a fiery outburst, like a charred ship enclosed in a globe
of fire. And, again, for long hours she remained lost in a vast universe
of night and silence where gentle sighs wandering here and there like
forlorn souls, made the still sails flutter as in sudden fear, and the
ripple of a beshrouded ocean whisper its compassion afar--in a voice
mournful, immense, and faint....
When the lamp was put out, and the door thrown wide open, Jimmy,
turning on his pillow, could see vanishing beyond the straight line of
top-gallant rail, the quick, repeated visions of a fabulous world made
up of leaping fire and sleeping water. The lightning gleamed in his
big sad eyes that seemed in a red flicker to burn themselves out in his
black face, and then he would lie blinded and invisible in the midst of
an intense darkness. He could hear on the quiet deck soft footfalls, the
breathing of some man lounging on the doorstep; the low creak of swaying
masts; or the calm voice of the watch-officer reverberating aloft, hard
and loud, amongst the unstirring sails. He listened with avidity, taking
a rest in the attentive perception of the slightest sound from the
fatiguing wanderings of his sleeplessness. He was cheered by the
rattling of blocks, reassured by the stir and murmur of the watch,
soothed by the slow yawn of some sleepy and weary seaman settling
himself deliberately for a snooze on the planks. Life seemed an
indestructible thing. It went on in darkness, in sunshine, in sleep;
tireless, it hovered affectionately round the imposture of his ready
death. It was bright, like the twisted flare of lightning, and more full
of surprises than the dark night. It made him safe, and the calm of
its overpowering darkness was as precious as its restless and dangerous
light.
But in the evening, in the dog-watches, and even far into the first
night-watch, a knot of men could always be seen congregated before
Jimmy's cabin. They leaned on each side of the door peacefully
interested and with crossed legs; they stood astride the doorstep
discoursing, or sat in silent couples on his sea-chest; while against
the bulwark along the spare topmast, three or four in a row stared
meditatively, with their simple faces lit up by the projected glare of
Jimmy's lamp. The little place, repainted white, had, in the night,
the brilliance of a silver shrine where a black idol, reclining stiffly
under a blanket, blinked its weary eyes and received our homage. Donkin
officiated. He had the air of a demonstrator showing a phenomenon, a
manifestation bizarre, simple, and meritorious that, to the beholders,
should be a profound and an everlasting lesson. "Just look at 'im, 'ee
knows what's what--never fear!" he exclaimed now and then, flourishing
a hand hard and fleshless like the claw of a snipe. Jimmy, on his back,
smiled with reserve and without moving a limb. He affected the languor
of extreme weakness, so as to make it manifest to us that our delay in
hauling him out from his horrible confinement, and then that night spent
on the poop among our selfish neglect of his needs, had "done for
him." He rather liked to talk about it, and of course we were always
interested. He spoke spasmodically, in fast rushes with long pauses
between, as a tipsy man walks.... "Cook had just given me a pannikin of
hot coffee.... Slapped it down there, on my chest--banged the door to....
I felt a heavy roll coming; tried to save my coffee, burnt my fingers...
and fell out of my bunk.... She went over so quick.... Water came
in through the ventilator.... I couldn't move the door... dark as a
grave... tried to scramble up into the upper berth.... Rats... a rat
bit my finger as I got up.... I could hear him swimming below me.... I
thought you would never come... I thought you were all gone overboard...
of course... Could hear nothing but the wind.... Then you came... to
look for the corpse, I suppose. A little more and..."
"Man! But ye made a rare lot of noise in here," observed Archie,
thoughtfully.
"You chaps kicked up such a confounded row above.... Enough to scare
any one.... I didn't know what you were up to.... Bash in the blamed
planks... my head.... Just what a silly, scary gang of fools would
do.... Not much good to me anyhow.... Just as well... drown.... Pah."
He groaned, snapped his big white teeth, and gazed with scorn. Belfast
lifted a pair of dolorous eyes, with a broken-hearted smile, clenched
his fists stealthily; blue-eyed Archie caressed his red whiskers with
a hesitating hand; the boatswain at the door stared a moment, and
brusquely went away with a loud guffaw. Wamibo dreamed.... Donkin
felt all over his sterile chin for the few rare hairs, and said,
triumphantly, with a sidelong glance at Jimmy:--"Look at 'im! Wish I
was 'arf has 'ealthy as 'ee is--I do." He jerked a short thumb over his
shoulder towards the after end of the ship. "That's the blooming way to
do 'em!" he yelped, with forced heartiness. Jimmy said:--"Don't be a dam'
fool," in a pleasant voice. Knowles, rubbing his shoulder against the
doorpost, remarked shrewdly:--"We can't all go an' be took sick--it would
be mutiny."--"Mutiny--gawn!" jeered Donkin, "there's no bloomin' law
against bein' sick."--"There's six weeks' hard for refoosing dooty,"
argued Knowles, "I mind I once seed in Cardiff the crew of an overloaded
ship--leastways she weren't overloaded, only a fatherly old gentleman
with a white beard and an umbreller came along the quay and talked to
the hands. Said as how it was crool hard to be drownded in winter just
for the sake of a few pounds more for the owner--he said. Nearly cried
over them--he did; and he had a square mainsail coat, and a gaff-topsail
hat too--all proper. So they chaps they said they wouldn't go to be
drownded in winter--depending upon that 'ere Plimsoll man to see 'em
through the court. They thought to have a bloomin' lark and two or
three days' spree. And the beak giv' 'em six weeks--coss the ship warn't
overloaded. Anyways they made it out in court that she wasn't. There
wasn't one overloaded ship in Penarth Dock at all. 'Pears that old coon
he was only on pay and allowance from some kind people, under orders
to look for overloaded ships, and he couldn't see no further than the
length of his umbreller. Some of us in the boarding-house, where I
live when I'm looking for a ship in Cardiff, stood by to duck that old
weeping spunger in the dock. We kept a good look-out, too--but he topped
his boom directly he was outside the court.... Yes. They got six weeks'
hard...."
They listened, full of curiosity, nodding in the pauses their rough
pensive faces. Donkin opened his mouth once or twice, but restrained
himself. Jimmy lay still with open eyes and not at all interested. A
seaman emitted the opinion that after a verdict of atrocious partiality
"the bloomin' beaks go an' drink at the skipper's expense." Others
assented. It was clear, of course. Donkin said:--"Well, six weeks ain't
much trouble. You sleep all night in, reg'lar, in chokey. Do it on my
'ead." "You are used to it ainch'ee, Donkin?" asked somebody. Jimmy
condescended to laugh. It cheered up every one wonderfully. Knowles,
with surprising mental agility, shifted his ground. "If we all went sick
what would become of the ship? eh?" He posed the problem and grinned
all round.--"Let 'er go to 'ell," sneered Donkin. "Damn 'er. She ain't
yourn."--"What? Just let her drift?" insisted Knowles in a tone of
unbelief.--"Aye! Drift, an' be blowed," affirmed Donkin with fine
recklessness. The other did not see it--meditated.--"The stores would run
out," he muttered, "and... never get anywhere... and what about payday?"
he added with greater assurance.--"Jack likes a good pay-day," exclaimed
a listener on the doorstep. "Aye, because then the girls put one arm
round his neck an' t'other in his pocket, and call him ducky. Don't
they, Jack?"--"Jack, you're a terror with the gals."--"He takes three of
'em in tow to once, like one of 'em Watkinses two-funnel tugs waddling
away with three schooners behind."--"Jack, you're a lame scamp."--"Jack,
tell us about that one with a blue eye and a black eye. Do."--"There's
plenty of girls with one black eye along the Highway by..."
--"No, that's a speshul one--come, Jack." Donkin looked severe and
disgusted; Jimmy very bored; a grey-haired sea-dog shook his head
slightly, smiling at the bowl of his pipe, discreetly amused.
Knowles turned about bewildered; stammered first at one, then at
another.--"No!... I never!... can't talk sensible sense midst you....
Always on the kid." He retired bashfully--muttering and pleased. They
laughed, hooting in the crude light, around Jimmy's bed, where on a
white pillow his hollowed black face moved to and fro restlessly. A puff
of wind came, made the flame of the lamp leap, and outside, high up,
the sails fluttered, while near by the block of the foresheet struck
a ringing blow on the iron bulwark. A voice far off cried, "Helm up!"
another, more faint, answered, "Hard-up, sir!" They became silent--waited
expectantly. The grey-haired seaman knocked his pipe on the doorstep and
stood up. The ship leaned over gently and the sea seemed to wake up,
murmuring drowsily. "Here's a little wind comin'," said some one very
low. Jimmy turned over slowly to face the breeze. The voice in the night
cried loud and commanding:--"Haul the spanker out." The group before the
door vanished out of the light. They could be heard tramping aft while
they repeated with varied intonations:--"Spanker out!"... "Out spanker,
sir!" Donkin remained alone with Jimmy. There was a silence. Jimmy
opened and shut his lips several times as if swallowing draughts of
fresher air; Donkin moved the toes of his bare feet and looked at them
thoughtfully.
"Ain't you going to give them a hand with the sail?" asked Jimmy.
"No. If six ov 'em ain't 'nough beef to set that blamed, rotten spanker,
they ain't fit to live," answered Donkin in a bored, far-away voice, as
though he had been talking from the bottom of a hole. Jimmy considered
the conical, fowl-like profile with a queer kind of interest; he was
leaning out of his bunk with the calculating, uncertain expression of
a man who reflects how best to lay hold of some strange creature that
looks as though it could sting or bite. But he said only:--"The mate will
miss you--and there will be ructions."
Donkin got up to go. "I will do for 'im some dark night; see if I
don't," he said over his shoulder.
Jimmy went on quickly:--"You're like a poll-parrot, like a screechin'
poll-parrot." Donkin stopped and cocked his head attentively on one
side. His big ears stood out, transparent and veined, resembling the
thin wings of a bat.
"Yuss?" he said, with his back towards Jimmy.
"Yes! Chatter out all you know--like... like a dirty white cockatoo."
Donkin waited. He could hear the other's breathing, long and slow; the
breathing of a man with a hundredweight or so on the breastbone. Then he
asked calmly:--"What do I know?"
"What?... What I tell you... not much. What do you want... to talk about
my health so..."
"It's a blooming imposyshun. A bloomin', stinkin', first-class
imposyshun--but it don't tyke me in. Not it."
Jimmy kept still. Donkin put his hands in his pockets, and in one
slouching stride came up to the bunk.
"I talk--what's the odds. They ain't men 'ere--sheep they are. A driven
lot of sheep. I 'old you up... Vy not? You're well orf."
"I am... I don't say anything about that...."
"Well. Let 'em see it. Let 'em larn what a man can do. I am a man, I
know all about yer...." Jimmy threw himself further away on the pillow;
the other stretched out his skinny neck, jerked his bird face down at
him as though pecking at the eyes. "I am a man. I've seen the inside of
every chokey in the Colonies rather'n give up my rights...."
"You are a jail-prop," said Jimmy, weakly.
"I am... an' proud of it, too. You! You 'aven't the bloomin' nerve--so
you inventyd this 'ere dodge...." He paused; then with marked
afterthought accentuated slowly:--"Yer ain't sick--are yer?"
"No," said Jimmy, firmly. "Been out of sorts now and again this year,"
he mumbled with a sudden drop in his voice.
Donkin closed one eye, amicable and confidential. He whispered:--"Ye 'ave
done this afore'aven'tchee?" Jimmy smiled--then as if unable to hold back
he let himself go:--"Last ship--yes. I was out of sorts on the passage.
See? It was easy. They paid me off in Calcutta, and the skipper made no
bones about it either.... I got my money all right. Laid up fifty-eight
days! The fools! O Lord! The fools! Paid right off." He laughed
spasmodically. Donkin chimed in giggling. Then Jimmy coughed violently.
"I am as well as ever," he said, as soon as he could draw breath.
Donkin made a derisive gesture. "In course," he said, profoundly, "any
one can see that."--"They don't," said Jimmy, gasping like a fish.--"They
would swallow any yarn," affirmed Donkin.--"Don't you let on too
much," admonished Jimmy in an exhausted voice.--"Your little gyme? Eh?"
commented Donkin, jovially. Then with sudden disgust: "Yer all for
yerself, s'long as ye're right..."
So charged with egoism James Wait pulled the blanket up to his chin and
lay still for a while. His heavy lips protruded in an everlasting black
pout. "Why are you so hot on making trouble?" he asked without much
interest.
"'Cos it's a bloomin' shayme. We are put upon... bad food, bad pay... I
want us to kick up a bloomin' row; a blamed 'owling row that would make
'em remember! Knocking people about... brain us indeed! Ain't we men?"
His altruistic indignation blazed. Then he said calmly:--"I've been
airing yer clothes."--"All right," said Jimmy, languidly, "bring them
in."--"Giv' us the key of your chest, I'll put 'em away for yer," said
Donkin with friendly eagerness.--"Bring 'em in, I will put them away
myself," answered James Wait with severity. Donkin looked down,
muttering.... "What d'you say? What d'you say?" inquired Wait
anxiously.--"Nothink. The night's dry, let 'em 'ang out till the
morning," said Donkin, in a strangely trembling voice, as though
restraining laughter or rage. Jimmy seemed satisfied.--"Give me a little
water for the night in my mug--there," he said. Donkin took a stride over
the doorstep.--"Git it yerself," he replied in a surly tone. "You can do
it, unless you are sick."--"Of course I can do it," said Wait, "only...
"--"Well, then, do it," said Donkin, viciously, "if yer can look after
yer clothes, yer can look after yerself." He went on deck without a look
back.
Jimmy reached out for the mug. Not a drop. He put it back gently with
a faint sigh--and closed his eyes. He thought:--That lunatic Belfast will
bring me some water if I ask. Fool. I am very thirsty.... It was very
hot in the cabin, and it seemed to turn slowly round, detach itself from
the ship, and swing out smoothly into a luminous, arid space where
a black sun shone, spinning very fast. A place without any water! No
water! A policeman with the face of Donkin drank a glass of beer by the
side of an empty well, and flew away flapping vigorously. A ship
whose mastheads protruded through the sky and could not be seen, was
discharging grain, and the wind whirled the dry husks in spirals along
the quay of a dock with no water in it. He whirled along with the
husks--very tired and light. All his inside was gone. He felt lighter
than the husks--and more dry. He expanded his hollow chest. The air
streamed in, carrying away in its rush a lot of strange things that
resembled houses, trees, people, lamp-posts.... No more! There was no
more air--and he had not finished drawing his long breath. But he was
in jail! They were locking him up. A door slammed. They turned the key
twice, flung a bucket of water over him--Phoo! What for?
He opened his eyes, thinking the fall had been very heavy for an empty
man--empty--empty. He was in his cabin. Ah! All right! His face was
streaming with perspiration, his arms heavier than lead. He saw the
cook standing in the doorway, a brass key in one hand and a bright tin
hook-pot in the other.
"I have locked up the galley for the night," said the cook, beaming
benevolently. "Eight bells just gone. I brought you a pot of cold tea
for your night's drinking, Jimmy. I sweetened it with some white cabin
sugar, too. Well--it won't break the ship."
He came in, hung the pot on the edge of the bunk, asked perfunctorily,
"How goes it?" and sat down on the box.--"H'm," grunted Wait,
inhospitably. The cook wiped his face with a dirty cotton rag, which,
afterwards, he tied round his neck.--"That's how them firemen do in
steamboats," he said, serenely, and much pleased with himself. "My work
is as heavy as theirs--I'm thinking--and longer hours. Did you ever see
them down the stokehold? Like fiends they look--firing--firing--firing--down
there."
He pointed his forefinger at the deck. Some gloomy thought darkened his
shining face, fleeting, like the shadow of a travelling cloud over the
light of a peaceful sea. The relieved watch tramped noisily forward,
passing in a body across the sheen of the doorway. Some one cried,
"Good-night!" Belfast stopped for a moment and looked at Jimmy,
quivering and speechless with repressed emotion. He gave the cook a
glance charged with dismal foreboding, and vanished. The cook cleared
his throat. Jimmy stared upwards and kept as still as a man in hiding.
The night was clear, with a gentle breeze. Above the mastheads the
resplendent curve of the Milky Way spanned the sky like a triumphal
arch of eternal light, thrown over the dark pathway of the earth. On the
forecastle head a man whistled with loud precision a lively jig, while
another could be heard faintly, shuffling and stamping in time. There
came from forward a confused murmur of voices, laughter--snatches of
song. The cook shook his head, glanced obliquely at Jimmy, and began to
mutter. "Aye. Dance and sing. That's all they think of. I am surprised
that Providence don't get tired.... They forget the day that's sure to
come... but you...."
Jimmy drank a gulp of tea, hurriedly, as though he had stolen it, and
shrank under his blanket, edging away towards the bulkhead. The cook got
up, closed the door, then sat down again and said distinctly:--
"Whenever I poke my galley fire I think of you chaps--swearing, stealing,
lying, and worse--as if there was no such thing as another world.... Not
bad fellows, either, in a way," he conceded, slowly; then, after a pause
of regretful musing, he went on in a resigned tone:--"Well, well. They
will have a hot time of it. Hot! Did I say? The furnaces of one of them
White Star boats ain't nothing to it."
He kept very quiet for a while. There was a great stir in his brain; an
addled vision of bright outlines; an exciting row of rousing songs
and groans of pain. He suffered, enjoyed, admired, approved. He was
delighted, frightened, exalted--as on that evening (the only time in his
life--twenty-seven years ago; he loved to recall the number of
years) when as a young man he had--through keeping bad company--become
intoxicated in an East-end music-hall. A tide of sudden feeling swept
him clean out of his body. He soared. He contemplated the secret of the
hereafter. It commended itself to him. It was excellent; he loved it,
himself, all hands, and Jimmy. His heart overflowed with tenderness,
with comprehension, with the desire to meddle, with anxiety for the
soul of that black man, with the pride of possessed eternity, with the
feeling of might. Snatch him up in his arms and pitch him right into
the middle of salvation... The black soul--blacker--body--rot--Devil. No!
Talk--strength--Samson.... There was a great din as of cymbals in his
ears; he flashed through an ecstatic jumble of shining faces, lilies,
prayer-books, unearthly joy, white skirts, gold harps, black coats,
wings. He saw flowing garments, clean shaved faces, a sea of light--a
lake of pitch. There were sweet scents, a smell of sulphur--red tongues
of flame licking a white mist. An awesome voice thundered!... It lasted
three seconds.
"Jimmy!" he cried in an inspired tone. Then he hesitated. A spark
of human pity glimmered yet through the infernal fog of his supreme
conceit.
"What?" said James Wait, unwillingly. There was a silence. He turned his
head just the least bit, and stole a cautious glance. The cook's lips
moved without a sound; his face was rapt, his eyes turned up. He seemed
to be mentally imploring deck beams, the brass hook of the lamp, two
cockroaches.
"Look here," said Wait, "I want to go to sleep. I think I could."
"This is no time for sleep!" exclaimed the cook, very loud. He had
prayerfully divested himself of the last vestige of his humanity. He was
a voice--a fleshless and sublime thing, as on that memorable night--the
night when he went walking over the sea to make coffee for perishing
sinners. "This is no time for sleeping," he repeated with exaltation. "I
can't sleep."
"Don't care damn," said Wait, with factitious energy. "I can. Go an'
turn in."
"Swear... in the very jaws!... In the very jaws! Don't you see the
everlasting fire... don't you feel it? Blind, chockfull of sin! Repent,
repent! I can't bear to think of you. I hear the call to save you. Night
and day. Jimmy, let me save you!" The words of entreaty and menace
broke out of him in a roaring torrent. The cockroaches ran away. Jimmy
perspired, wriggling stealthily under his blanket. The cook yelled....
"Your days are numbered!... "--"Get out of this," boomed Wait,
courageously.--"Pray with me!... "--"I won't!..." The little cabin was
as hot as an oven. It contained an immensity of fear and pain; an
atmosphere of shrieks and moans; prayers vociferated like blasphemies
and whispered curses. Outside, the men called by Charley, who informed
them in tones of delight that there was a holy row going on in Jimmy's
place, crowded before the closed door, too startled to open it. All
hands were there. The watch below had jumped out on deck in their
shirts, as after a collision. Men running up, asked:--"What is it?"
Others said:--"Listen!" The muffled screaming went on:--"On your knees! On
your knees!"--"Shut up!"--"Never! You are delivered into my hands.... Your
life has been saved.... Purpose.... Mercy.... Repent."--"You are a
crazy fool!..."--"Account of you... you... Never sleep in this world,
if I..."--"Leave off."--"No!... stokehold... only think!..." Then an
impassioned screeching babble where words pattered like hail.--"No!"
shouted Wait.--"Yes. You are!... No help.... Everybody says so."--"You
lie!"--"I see you dying this minnyt... before my eyes... as good as dead
already."--"Help!" shouted Jimmy, piercingly.--"Not in this valley....
look upwards," howled the other.--"Go away! Murder! Help!" clamoured
Jimmy. His voice broke. There were moanings, low mutters, a few sobs.
"What's the matter now?" said a seldom-heard voice.--"Fall back,
men! Fall back, there!" repeated Mr. Creighton, sternly, pushing
through.--"Here's the old man," whispered some.--"The cook's in there,
sir," exclaimed several, backing away. The door clattered open; a broad
stream of light darted out on wondering faces; a warm whiff of vitiated
air passed. The two mates towered head and shoulders above the spare,
grey-haired man who stood revealed between them, in shabby clothes,
stiff and angular, like a small carved figure, and with a thin, composed
face. The cook got up from his knees. Jimmy sat high in the bunk,
clasping his drawn-up legs. The tassel of the blue night-cap almost
imperceptibly trembled over his knees. They gazed astonished at his
long, curved back, while the white corner of one eye gleamed blindly
at them. He was afraid to turn his head, he shrank within himself; and
there was an aspect astounding and animal-like in the perfection of his
expectant immobility. A thing of instinct--the unthinking stillness of a
scared brute. "What are you doing here?" asked Mr. Baker, sharply.--"My
duty," said the cook, with ardour.--"Your... what?" began the mate.
Captain Allistoun touched his arm lightly.--"I know his caper," he said,
in a low voice. "Come out of that, Podmore," he ordered, aloud.
The cook wrung his hands, shook his fists above his head, and his
arms dropped as if too heavy. For a moment he stood distracted and
speechless.--"Never," he stammered, "I... he I."--
"What--do--you--say?" pronounced Captain Allistoun. "Come out at
once--or..."--"I am going," said the cook, with a hasty and sombre
resignation. He strode over the doorstep firmly--hesitated--made a few
steps. They looked at him in silence.--"I make you responsible!" he
cried, desperately, turning half round. "That man is dying. I make you..
"--"You there yet?" called the master in a threatening tone.--"No, sir,"
he exclaimed, hurriedly, in a startled voice. The boatswain led him
away by the arm; some one laughed; Jimmy lifted his head for a stealthy
glance, and in one unexpected leap sprang out of his bunk; Mr. Baker
made a clever catch and felt him very limp in his arms; the group at
the door grunted with surprise.--"He lies," gasped Wait, "he talked about
black devils--he is a devil--a white devil--I am all right." He stiffened
himself, and Mr. Baker, experimentally, let him go. He staggered a pace
or two; Captain Allistoun watched him with a quiet and penetrating gaze;
Belfast ran to his support. He did not appear to be aware of any one
near him; he stood silent for a moment, battling single-handed with a
legion of nameless terrors, amidst the eager looks of excited men who
watched him far off, utterly alone in the impenetrable solitude of his
fear. The sea gurgled through the scuppers as the ship heeled over to a
short puff of wind.
"Keep him away from me," said James Wait at last in his fine baritone
voice, and leaning with all his weight on Belfast's neck. "I've been
better this last week:... I am well... I was going back to duty...
to-morrow--now if you like--Captain." Belfast hitched his shoulders to
keep him upright.
"No," said the master, looking at him, fixedly. Under Jimmy's armpit
Belfast's red face moved uneasily. A row of eyes gleaming stared on the
edge of light. They pushed one another with elbows, turned their heads,
whispered. Wait let his chin fall on his breast and, with lowered
eyelids, looked round in a suspicious manner.
"Why not?" cried a voice from the shadows, "the man's all right, sir."
"I am all right," said Wait, with eagerness. "Been sick... better...
turn-to now." He sighed.--"Howly Mother!" exclaimed Belfast with a heave
of the shoulders, "stand up, Jimmy."--"Keep away from me then," said
Wait, giving Belfast a petulant push, and reeling fetched against the
doorpost. His cheekbones glistened as though they had been varnished. He
snatched off his night-cap, wiped his perspiring face with it, flung it
on the deck. "I am coming out," he declared without stirring.
"No. You don't," said the master, curtly. Bare feet shuffled,
disapproving voices murmured all round; he went on as if he had not
heard:--"You have been skulking nearly all the passage and now you want
to come out. You think you are near enough to the pay-table now. Smell
the shore, hey?"
"I've been sick... now--better," mumbled Wait, glaring in the light.--"You
have been shamming sick," retorted Captain Allistoun with severity;
"Why..." he hesitated for less than half a second. "Why, anybody can see
that. There's nothing the matter with you, but you choose to lie-up to
please yourself--and now you shall lie-up to please me. Mr. Baker, my
orders are that this man is not to be allowed on deck to the end of the
passage."
There were exclamations of surprise, triumph, indignation. The dark
group of men swung across the light. "What for?" "Told you so..."
"Bloomin' shame..."--"We've got to say somethink about that," screeched
Donkin from the rear.--"Never mind, Jim--we will see you righted," cried
several together. An elderly seaman stepped to the front. "D'ye mean to
say, sir," he asked, ominously, "that a sick chap ain't allowed to get
well in this 'ere hooker?" Behind him Donkin whispered excitedly amongst
a staring crowd where no one spared him a glance, but Captain Allistoun
shook a forefinger at the angry bronzed face of the speaker.--"You--you
hold your tongue," he said, warningly.--"This isn't the way," clamoured
two or three younger men.--"Are we bloomin' masheens?" inquired Donkin
in a piercing tone, and dived under the elbows of the front rank.--"Soon
show 'im we ain't boys..."--"The man's a man if he is black."--"We
ain't goin' to work this bloomin' ship shorthanded if Snowball's all
right..."--"He says he is."--"Well then, strike, boys, strike!"--"That's
the bloomin' ticket." Captain Allistoun said sharply to the second mate:
"Keep quiet, Mr. Creighton," and stood composed in the tumult, listening
with profound attention to mixed growls and screeches, to every
exclamation and every curse of the sudden outbreak. Somebody slammed the
cabin door to with a kick; the darkness full of menacing mutters leaped
with a short clatter over the streak of light, and the men became
gesticulating shadows that growled, hissed, laughed excitedly. Mr. Baker
whispered:--"Get away from them, sir." The big shape of Mr. Creighton
hovered silently about the slight figure of the master.--"We have been
hymposed upon all this voyage," said a gruff voice, "but this 'ere fancy
takes the cake."--"That man is a shipmate."--"Are we bloomin' kids?"--"The
port watch will refuse duty." Charley carried away by his feeling
whistled shrilly, then yelped:--"Giv' us our Jimmy!" This seemed to cause
a variation in the disturbance. There was a fresh burst of squabbling
uproar. A lot of quarrels were set going at once.--"Yes."--"No."--"Never
been sick."--"Go for them to once."--"Shut yer mouth, youngster---this is
men's work."--"Is it?" muttered Captain Allistoun, bitterly. Mr. Baker
grunted: "Ough! They're gone silly. They've been simmering for the
last month."--"I did notice," said the master.--"They have started a row
amongst themselves now," said Mr. Creighton with disdain, "better get
aft, sir. We will soothe them.--"Keep your temper, Creighton," said the
master. And the three men began to move slowly towards the cabin door.
In the shadows of the fore rigging a dark mass stamped, eddied,
advanced, retreated. There were words of reproach, encouragement,
unbelief, execration. The elder seamen, bewildered and angry, growled
their determination to go through with something or other; but the
younger school of advanced thought exposed their and Jimmy's wrongs with
confused shouts, arguing amongst themselves. They clustered round that
moribund carcass, the fit emblem of their aspirations, and encouraging
one another they swayed, they tramped on one spot, shouting that they
would not be "put upon." Inside the cabin, Belfast, helping Jimmy into
his bunk, twitched all over in his desire not to miss all the row, and
with difficulty restrained the tears of his facile emotion. James Wait,
flat on his back under the blanket, gasped complaints.--"We will back you
up, never fear," assured Belfast, busy about his feet.--
"I'll come out to-morrow morning------take my chance-------you fellows
must------" mumbled Wait, "I come out to-morrow------skipper or no skipper."
He lifted one arm with great difficulty, passed the hand over his face;
"Don't you let that cook..." he breathed out.--"No, no," said Belfast,
turning his back on the bunk, "I will put a head on him if he comes near
you."--"I will smash his mug!" exclaimed faintly Wait, enraged and weak;
"I don't want to kill a man, but..." He panted fast like a dog after a
run in sunshine. Some one just outside the door shouted, "He's as fit
as any ov us!" Belfast put his hand on the door-handle.--"Here!" called
James Wait, hurriedly, and in such a clear voice that the other spun
round with a start. James Wait, stretched out black and deathlike in
the dazzling light, turned his head on the pillow. His eyes stared at
Belfast, appealing and impudent. "I am rather weak from lying-up so
long," he said, distinctly. Belfast nodded. "Getting quite well now,"
insisted Wait.--"Yes. I noticed you getting better this... last month,"
said Belfast, looking down. "Hallo! What's this?" he shouted and ran
out.
He was flattened directly against the side of the house by two men who
lurched against him. A lot of disputes seemed to be going on all round.
He got clear and saw three indistinct figures standing along in the
fainter darkness under the arched foot of the mainsail, that rose above
their heads like a convex wall of a high edifice. Donkin hissed:--"Go for
them... it's dark!" The crowd took a short run aft in a body--then there
was a check. Donkin, agile and thin, flitted past with his right
arm going like a windmill--and then stood still suddenly with his arm
pointing rigidly above his head. The hurtling flight of some heavy
object was heard; it passed between the heads of the two mates, bounded
heavily along the deck, struck the after hatch with a ponderous and
deadened blow. The bulky shape of Mr. Baker grew distinct. "Come to your
senses, men!" he cried, advancing at the arrested crowd. "Come back, Mr.
Baker!" called the master's quiet voice. He obeyed unwillingly. There
was a minute of silence, then a deafening hubbub arose. Above it Archie
was heard energetically:--"If ye do oot ageen I wull tell!" There were
shouts. "Don't!" "Drop it!"--"We ain't that kind!" The black cluster of
human forms reeled against the bulwark, back again towards the house.
Ringbolts rang under stumbling feet.--"Drop it!" "Let me!"--"No!"--"Curse
you... hah!" Then sounds as of some one's face being slapped; a piece
of iron fell on the deck; a short scuffle, and some one's shadowy body
scuttled rapidly across the main hatch before the shadow of a kick.
A raging voice sobbed out a torrent of filthy language...--"Throwing
things--good God!" grunted Mr. Baker in dismay.--"That was meant for me,"
said the master, quietly; "I felt the wind of that thing; what was it--an
iron belaying-pin?"--"By Jove!" muttered Mr. Creighton. The confused
voices of men talking amidships mingled with the wash of the sea,
ascended between the silent and distended sails seemed to flow away
into the night, further than the horizon, higher than the sky. The stars
burned steadily over the inclined mastheads. Trails of light lay on
the water, broke before the advancing hull, and, after she had passed,
trembled for a long time as if in awe of the murmuring sea.
Meantime the helmsman, anxious to know what the row was about, had let
go the wheel, and, bent double, ran with long, stealthy footsteps to the
break of the poop. The Narcissus, left to herself, came up gently in to
the wind without any one being aware of it. She gave a slight roll, and
the sleeping sails woke suddenly, coming all together with a mighty
flap against the masts, then filled again one after another in a quick
succession of loud reports that ran down the lofty spars, till the
collapsed mainsail flew out last with a violent jerk. The ship trembled
from trucks to keel; the sails kept on rattling like a discharge of
musketry; the chain sheets and loose shackles jingled aloft in a thin
peal; the gin blocks groaned. It was as if an invisible hand had given
the ship an angry shake to recall the men that peopled her decks to
the sense of reality, vigilance, and duty.--"Helm up!" cried the master,
sharply. "Run aft, Mr. Creighton, and see what that fool there is up
to."--"Flatten in the head sheets. Stand by the weather fore-braces,"
growled Mr. Baker. Startled men ran swiftly repeating the orders. The
watch below, abandoned all at once by the watch on deck, drifted towards
the forecastle in twos and threes, arguing noisily as they went--"We
shall see to-morrow!" cried a loud voice, as if to cover with a menacing
hint an inglorious retreat. And then only orders were heard, the falling
of heavy coils of rope, the rattling of blocks. Singleton's white head
flitted here and there in the night, high above the deck, like the
ghost of a bird.--"Going off, sir!" shouted Mr. Creighton from aft.--"Full
again."--"All right... "--"Ease off the head sheets. That will do the
braces. Coil the ropes up," grunted Mr. Baker, bustling about.
Gradually the tramping noises, the confused sound of voices, died out,
and the officers, coming together on the poop, discussed the events. Mr.
Baker was bewildered and grunted; Mr. Creighton was calmly furious;
but Captain Allistoun was composed and thoughtful. He listened to Mr.
Baker's growling argumentation, to Creighton's interjected and severe
remarks, while looking down on the deck he weighed in his hand the iron
belaying-pin--that a moment ago had just missed his head--as if it had been
the only tangible fact of the whole transaction. He was one of those
commanders who speak little, seem to hear nothing, look at no one--and
know everything, hear every whisper, see every fleeting shadow of their
ship's life. His two big officers towered above his lean, short figure;
they talked over his head; they were dismayed, surprised, and angry,
while between them the little quiet man seemed to have found his
taciturn serenity in the profound depths of a larger experience. Lights
were burning in the forecastle; now and then a loud gust of babbling
chatter came from forward, swept over the decks, and became faint, as if
the unconscious ship, gliding gently through the great peace of the sea,
had left behind and for ever the foolish noise of turbulent mankind. But
it was renewed again and again. Gesticulating arms, profiles of heads
with open mouths appeared for a moment in the illuminated squares of
doorways; black fists darted--withdrew... "Yes. It was most damnable to
have such an unprovoked row sprung on one," assented the master. ... A
tumult of yells rose in the light, abruptly ceased.... He didn't think
there would be any further trouble just then.... A bell was struck aft,
another, forward, answered in a deeper tone, and the clamour of ringing
metal spread round the ship in a circle of wide vibrations that ebbed
away into the immeasurable night of an empty sea.... Didn't he know
them! Didn't he! In past years. Better men, too. Real men to stand by
one in a tight place. Worse than devils too sometimes--downright, horned
devils. Pah! This--nothing. A miss as good as a mile.... The wheel was
being relieved in the usual way.--"Full and by," said, very loud, the
man going off.--"Full and by," repeated the other, catching hold of the
spokes.--"This head wind is my trouble," exclaimed the master, stamping
his foot in sudden anger; "head wind! all the rest is nothing." He was
calm again in a moment. "Keep them on the move to-night, gentlemen; just
to let them feel we've got hold all the time--quietly, you know. Mind you
keep your hands off them, Creighton. To-morrow I will talk to them like
a Dutch Uncle. A crazy crowd of tinkers! Yes, tinkers! I could count the
real sailors amongst them on the fingers of one hand. Nothing will do
but a row--if--you--please." He paused. "Did you think I had gone wrong
there, Mr. Baker?" He tapped his forehead, laughed short. "When I saw
him standing there, three parts dead and so scared--black amongst that
gaping lot--no grit to face what's coming to us all--the notion came to me
all at once, before I could think. Sorry for him--like you would be for a
sick brute. If ever creature was in a mortal funk to die!... I thought
I would let him go out in his own way. Kind of impulse. It never came
into my head, those fools.... H'm! Stand to it now--of course." He
stuck the belaying-pin in his pocket, seemed ashamed of himself, then
sharply:--"If you see Podmore at his tricks again tell him I will have
him put under the pump. Had to do it once before. The fellow breaks out
like that now and then. Good cook tho'." He walked away quickly, came
back to the companion. The two mates followed him through the starlight
with amazed eyes. He went down three steps, and changing his tone, spoke
with his head near the deck:--"I shan't turn in to-night, in case of
anything; just call out if... Did you see the eyes of that sick nigger,
Mr. Baker? I fancied he begged me for something. What? Past all help.
One lone black beggar amongst the lot of us, and he seemed to look
through me into the very hell. Fancy, this wretched Podmore! Well, let
him die in peace. I am master here after all. Let him be. He might
have been half a man once... Keep a good look-out." He disappeared down
below, leaving his mates facing one another, and more impressed than if
they had seen a stone image shed a miraculous tear of compassion over
the incertitudes of life and death....
In the blue mist spreading from twisted threads that stood upright in
the bowls of pipes, the forecastle appeared as vast as a hall. Between
the beams a heavy cloud stagnated; and the lamps surrounded by halos
burned each at the core of a purple glow in two lifeless flames without
rays. Wreaths drifted in denser wisps. Men sprawled about on the deck,
sat in negligent poses, or, bending a knee, drooped with one shoulder
against a bulkhead. Lips moved, eyes flashed, waving arms made sudden
eddies in the smoke. The murmur of voices seemed to pile itself higher
and higher as if unable to run out quick enough through the narrow
doors. The watch below in their shirts, and striding on long white legs,
resembled raving somnambulists; while now and then one of the watch on
deck would rush in, looking strangely over-dressed, listen a moment,
fling a rapid sentence into the noise and run out again; but a few
remained near the door, fascinated, and with one ear turned to the deck.
"Stick together, boys," roared Davis. Belfast tried to make himself
heard. Knowles grinned in a slow, dazed way. A short fellow with a
thick clipped beard kept on yelling periodically:--"Who's afeard? Who's
afeard?" Another one jumped up, excited, with blazing eyes, sent out
a string of unattached curses and sat down quietly. Two men discussed
familiarly, striking one another's breast in turn, to clinch arguments.
Three others, with their heads in a bunch, spoke all together with a
confidential air, and at the top of their voices. It was a stormy chaos
of speech where intelligible fragments tossing, struck the ear. One
could hear:--"In the last ship"--"Who cares? Try it on any one of us
if-------."
"Knock under"--"Not a hand's turn"--"He says he is all right"--"I always
thought"--"Never mind...." Donkin, crouching all in a heap against the
bowsprit, hunched his shoulderblades as high as his ears, and hanging
a peaked nose, resembled a sick vulture with ruffled plumes. Belfast,
straddling his legs, had a face red with yelling, and with arms thrown
up, figured a Maltese cross. The two Scandinavians, in a corner, had
the dumbfounded and distracted aspect of men gazing at a cataclysm. And,
beyond the light, Singleton stood in the smoke, monumental, indistinct,
with his head touching the beam; like a statue of heroic size in the
gloom of a crypt.
He stepped forward, impassive and big. The noise subsided like a broken
wave: but Belfast cried once more with uplifted arms:--"The man is
dying I tell ye!" then sat down suddenly on the hatch and took his head
between his hands. All looked at Singleton, gazing upwards from the
deck, staring out of dark corners, or turning their heads with curious
glances. They were expectant and appeased as if that old man, who looked
at no one, had possessed the secret of their uneasy indignations and
desires, a sharper vision, a clearer knowledge. And indeed standing
there amongst them, he had the uninterested appearance of one who had
seen multitudes of ships, had listened many times to voices such as
theirs, had already seen all that could happen on the wide seas. They
heard his voice rumble in his broad chest as though the words had been
rolling towards them out of a rugged past. "What do you want to do?" he
asked. No one answered. Only Knowles muttered--"Aye, aye," and somebody
said low:--"It's a bloomin' shame." He waited, made a contemptuous
gesture.--"I have seen rows aboard ship before some of you were born,"
he said, slowly, "for something or nothing; but never for such a
thing."--"The man is dying, I tell ye," repeated Belfast, woefully,
sitting at Singleton's feet.--"And a black fellow, too," went on the old
seaman, "I have seen them die like flies." He stopped, thoughtful, as
if trying to recollect gruesome things, details of horrors, hecatombs
of niggers. They looked at him fascinated. He was old enough to remember
slavers, bloody mutinies, pirates perhaps; who could tell through what
violences and terrors he had lived! What would he say? He said:--"You
can't help him; die he must." He made another pause. His moustache and
beard stirred. He chewed words, mumbled behind tangled white hairs;
incomprehensible and exciting, like an oracle behind a veil....--"Stop
ashore------sick.-------Instead------bringing all this head wind. Afraid. The
sea will have her own.------Die in sight of land. Always so. They know
it------long passage------more days, more dollars.------You----"
He seemed to wake up from a dream. "You can't help yourselves," he
said, austerely, "Skipper's no fool. He has something in his mind. Look
out--say! I know 'em!" With eyes fixed in front he turned his head from
right to left, from left to right, as if inspecting a long row of astute
skippers.--"'Ee said 'ee would brain me!" cried Donkin in a heartrending
tone. Singleton peered downwards with puzzled attention, as though
he couldn't find him.--"Damn you!" he said, vaguely, giving it up.
He radiated unspeakable wisdom, hard unconcern, the chilling air
of resignation. Round him all the listeners felt themselves somehow
completely enlightened by their disappointment, and mute, they lolled
about with the careless ease of men who can discern perfectly the
irremediable aspect of their existence. He, profound and unconscious,
waved his arm once, and strode out on deck without another word.
Belfast was lost in a round-eyed meditation. One or two vaulted heavily
into upper berths, and, once there, sighed; others dived head first
inside lower bunks--swift, and turning round instantly upon themselves,
like animals going into lairs. The grating of a knife scraping burnt
clay was heard. Knowles grinned no more. Davis said, in a tone of ardent
conviction: "Then our skipper's looney." Archie muttered: "My faith!
we haven't heard the last of it yet!" Four bells were struck.--"Half our
watch below gone!" cried Knowles in alarm, then reflected. "Well, two
hours' sleep is something towards a rest," he observed, consolingly.
Some already pretended to slumber; and Charley, sound asleep, suddenly
said a few slurred words in an arbitrary, blank voice.--"This blamed
boy has worrums!" commented Knowles from under a blanket, in a learned
manner. Belfast got up and approached Archie's berth.--"We pulled
him out," he whispered, sadly.--"What?" said the other, with sleepy
discontent.--"And now we will have to chuck him overboard," went on
Belfast, whose lower lip trembled.--"Chuck what?" asked Archie.--"Poor
Jimmy," breathed out Belfast.--"He be blowed!" said Archie with
untruthful brutality, and sat up in his bunk; "It's all through him.
If it hadn't been for me, there would have been murder on board this
ship!"--"'Tain't his fault, is it?" argued Belfast, in a murmur; "I've
put him to bed... an' he ain't no heavier than an empty beef-cask,"
he added, with tears in his eyes. Archie looked at him steadily, then
turned his nose to the ship's side with determination. Belfast wandered
about as though he had lost his way in the dim forecastle, and nearly
fell over Donkin. He contemplated him from on high for a while. "Ain't
ye going to turn in?" he asked. Donkin looked up hopelessly.--"That
black'earted Scotch son of a thief kicked me!" he whispered from the
floor, in a tone of utter desolation.--"And a good job, too!" said
Belfast, still very depressed; "You were as near hanging as damn-it
to-night, sonny. Don't you play any of your murthering games around my
Jimmy! You haven't pulled him out. You just mind! 'Cos if I start to
kick you"--he brightened up a bit--"if I start to kick you, it will be
Yankee fashion--to break something!" He tapped lightly with his knuckles
the top of the bowed head. "You moind that, my bhoy!" he concluded,
cheerily. Donkin let it pass.--"Will they split on me?" he asked, with
pained anxiety.--"Who--split?" hissed Belfast, coming back a step. "I
would split your nose this minyt if I hadn't Jimmy to look after! Who
d'ye think we are?" Donkin rose and watched Belfast's back lurch through
the doorway. On all sides invisible men slept, breathing calmly. He
seemed to draw courage and fury from the peace around him. Venomous and
thin-faced, he glared from the ample misfit of borrowed clothes as if
looking for something he could smash. His heart leaped wildly in his
narrow chest. They slept! He wanted to wring necks, gouge eyes, spit
on faces. He shook a dirty pair of meagre fists at the smoking lights.
"Ye're no men!" he cried, in a deadened tone. No one moved. "Yer 'aven't
the pluck of a mouse!" His voice rose to a husky screech. Wamibo darted
out a dishevelled head, and looked at him wildly. "Ye're sweepings
ov ships! I 'ope you will all rot before you die!" Wamibo blinked,
uncomprehending but interested. Donkin sat down heavily; he blew with
force through quivering nostrils, he ground and snapped his teeth, and,
with the chin pressed hard against the breast, he seemed busy gnawing
his way through it, as if to get at the heart within....
In the morning the ship, beginning another day of her wandering life,
had an aspect of sumptuous freshness, like the spring-time of the earth.
The washed decks glistened in a long clear stretch; the oblique sunlight
struck the yellow brasses in dazzling splashes, darted over the polished
rods in lines of gold, and the single drops of salt water forgotten here
and there along the rail were as limpid as drops of dew, and sparkled
more than scattered diamonds. The sails slept, hushed by a gentle
breeze. The sun, rising lonely and splendid in the blue sky, saw a
solitary ship gliding close-hauled on the blue sea.
The men pressed three deep abreast of the mainmast and opposite the
cabin-door. They shuffled, pushed, had an irresolute mien and stolid
faces. At every slight movement Knowles lurched heavily on his short
leg. Donkin glided behind backs, restless and anxious, like a man
looking for an ambush. Captain Allistoun came out on the quarter-deck
suddenly. He walked to and fro before the front. He was grey, slight,
alert, shabby in the sunshine, and as hard as adamant. He had his right
hand in the side-pocket of his jacket, and also something heavy in there
that made folds all down that side. One of the seamen cleared his throat
ominously.--"I haven't till now found fault with you men," said the
master, stopping short. He faced them with his worn, steely gaze, that
by a universal illusion looked straight into every individual pair of
the twenty pairs of eyes before his face. At his back Mr. Baker, gloomy
and bull-necked, grunted low; Mr. Creighton, fresh as paint, had rosy
cheeks and a ready, resolute bearing. "And I don't now," continued the
master; "but I am here to drive this ship and keep every man-jack aboard
of her up to the mark. If you knew your work as well as I do mine,
there would be no trouble. You've been braying in the dark about 'See
to-morrow morning!' Well, you see me now. What do you want?" He waited,
stepping quickly to and fro, giving them searching glances. What did
they want? They shifted from foot to foot, they balanced their bodies;
some, pushing back their caps, scratched their heads. What did they
want? Jimmy was forgotten; no one thought of him, alone forward in
his cabin, fighting great shadows, clinging to brazen lies, chuckling
painfully over his transparent deceptions. No, not Jimmy; he was more
forgotten than if he had been dead. They wanted great things. And
suddenly all the simple words they knew seemed to be lost for ever in
the immensity of their vague and burning desire. They knew what they
wanted, but they could not find anything worth saying. They stirred on
one spot, swinging, at the end of muscular arms, big tarry hands with
crooked fingers. A murmur died out.--"What is it--food?" asked the master,
"you know the stores have been spoiled off the Cape."--"We know that,
sir," said a bearded shell-back in the front rank.--"Work too hard--eh?
Too much for your strength?" he asked again. There was an offended
silence.--"We don't want to go shorthanded, sir," began at last Davis in
a wavering voice, "and this 'ere black...."--"Enough!" cried the master.
He stood scanning them for a moment, then walking a few steps this way
and that began to storm at them coldly, in gusts violent and cutting
like the gales of those icy seas that had known his youth.--"Tell you
what's the matter? Too big for your boots. Think yourselves damn good
men. Know half your work. Do half your duty. Think it too much. If you
did ten times as much it wouldn't be enough."--"We did our best by her,
sir," cried some one with shaky exasperation.--"Your best," stormed on
the master; "You hear a lot on shore, don't you? They don't tell you
there your best isn't much to boast of. I tell you--your best is no
better than bad."
"You can do no more? No, I know, and say nothing. But you stop your
caper or I will stop it for you. I am ready for you! Stop it!" He shook
a finger at the crowd. "As to that man," he raised his voice very much;
"as to that man, if he puts his nose out on deck without my leave I will
clap him in irons. There!" The cook heard him forward, ran out of the
galley lifting his arms, horrified, unbelieving, amazed, and ran in
again. There was a moment of profound silence during which a bow-legged
seaman, stepping aside, expectorated decorously into the scupper. "There
is another thing," said the master, calmly. He made a quick stride and
with a swing took an iron belaying-pin out of his pocket. "This!" His
movement was so unexpected and sudden that the crowd stepped back. He
gazed fixedly at their faces, and some at once put on a surprised air as
though they had never seen a belaying-pin before. He held it up. "This
is my affair. I don't ask you any questions, but you all know it; it has
got to go where it came from." His eyes became angry. The crowd stirred
uneasily. They looked away from the piece of iron, they appeared shy,
they were embarrassed and shocked as though it had been something
horrid, scandalous, or indelicate, that in common decency should not
have been flourished like this in broad daylight. The master watched
them attentively. "Donkin," he called out in a short, sharp tone.
Donkin dodged behind one, then behind another, but they looked over
their shoulders and moved aside. The ranks kept on opening before him,
closing behind, till at last he appeared alone before the master as
though he had come up through the deck. Captain Allistoun moved close to
him. They were much of a size, and at short range the master exchanged a
deadly glance with the beady eyes. They wavered.--"You know this?"
asked the master.--"No, I don't," answered the other, with cheeky
trepidation.--"You are a cur. Take it," ordered the master. Donkin's arms
seemed glued to his thighs; he stood, eyes front, as if drawn on parade.
"Take it," repeated the master, and stepped closer; they breathed on
one another. "Take it," said Captain Allistoun again, making a menacing
gesture. Donkin tore away one arm from his side.--"Vy are yer down
on me?" he mumbled with effort and as if his mouth had been full of
dough.--"If you don't..." began the master. Donkin snatched at the pin
as though his intention had been to run away with it, and remained stock
still holding it like a candle. "Put it back where you took it from,"
said Captain Allistoun, looking at him fiercely. Donkin stepped back
opening wide eyes. "Go, you blackguard, or I will make you," cried the
master, driving him slowly backwards by a menacing advance. He dodged,
and with the dangerous iron tried to guard his head from a threatening
fist. Mr. Baker ceased grunting for a moment.--"Good! By Jove," murmured
appreciatively Mr. Creighton in the tone of a connoisseur.--"Don't tech
me," snarled Donkin, backing away.--"Then go. Go faster."--"Don't yer 'it
me.... I will pull yer up afore the magistryt.... I'll show yer up."
Captain Allistoun made a long stride, and Donkin, turning his back
fairly, ran off a little, then stopped and over his shoulder showed
yellow teeth.--"Further on, fore-rigging," urged the master, pointing
with his arm.--"Are yer goin' to stand by and see me bullied?" screamed
Donkin at the silent crowd that watched him. Captain Allistoun walked
at him smartly. He started off again with a leap, dashed at the
fore-rigging, rammed the pin into its hole violently. "I'll be even
with yer yet," he screamed at the ship at large and vanished beyond
the foremast. Captain Allistoun spun round and walked back aft with a
composed face, as though he had already forgotten the scene. Men moved
out of his way. He looked at no one.--"That will do, Mr. Baker. Send the
watch below," he said, quietly. "And you men try to walk straight for
the future," he added in a calm voice. He looked pensively for a
while at the backs of the impressed and retreating crowd. "Breakfast,
steward," he called in a tone of relief through the cabin door.--"I
didn't like to see you--Ough!--give that pin to that chap, sir," observed
Mr. Baker; "he could have bust--Ough!--bust your head like an eggshell
with it."--"O! he!" muttered the master, absently. "Queer lot," he went
on in a low voice. "I suppose it's all right now. Can never tell tho'
nowadays, with such a... Years ago; I was a young master then--one China
voyage I had a mutiny; real mutiny, Baker. Different men tho'. I knew
what they wanted: they wanted to broach the cargo and get at the liquor.
Very simple.... We knocked them about for two days, and when they had
enough--gentle as lambs. Good crew. And a smart trip I made." He glanced
aloft at the yards braced sharp up. "Head wind day after day,"
he exclaimed, bitterly. "Shall we never get a decent slant this
passage?"--"Ready, sir," said the steward, appearing before them as if by
magic and with a stained napkin in his hand.--"Ah! All right. Come along,
Mr. Baker--it's late--with all this nonsense."
CHAPTER FIVE
A heavy atmosphere of oppressive quietude pervaded the ship. In the
afternoon men went about washing clothes and hanging them out to dry
in the unprosperous breeze with the meditative languor of disenchanted
philosophers. Very little was said. The problem of life seemed too
voluminous for the narrow limits of human speech, and by common consent
it was abandoned to the great sea that had from the beginning enfolded
it in its immense grip; to the sea that knew all, and would in time
infallibly unveil to each the wisdom hidden in all the errors, the
certitude that lurks in doubts, the realm of safety and peace beyond the
frontiers of sorrow and fear. And in the confused current of impotent
thoughts that set unceasingly this way and that through bodies of men,
Jimmy bobbed up upon the surface, compelling attention, like a black
buoy chained to the bottom of a muddy stream. Falsehood triumphed.
It triumphed through doubt, through stupidity, through pity, through
sentimentalism. We set ourselves to bolster it up from compassion,
from recklessness, from a sense of fun. Jimmy's steadfastness to
his untruthful attitude in the face of the inevitable truth had
the proportions of a colossal enigma--of a manifestation grand and
incomprehensible that at times inspired a wondering awe; and there was
also, to many, something exquisitely droll in fooling him thus to the
top of his bent. The latent egoism of tenderness to suffering
appeared in the developing anxiety not to see him die. His obstinate
non-recognition of the only certitude whose approach we could watch from
day to day was as disquieting as the failure of some law of nature. He
was so utterly wrong about himself that one could not but suspect him of
having access to some source of supernatural knowledge. He was absurd
to the point of inspiration. He was unique, and as fascinating as only
something inhuman could be; he seemed to shout his denials already from
beyond the awful border. He was becoming immaterial like an apparition;
his cheekbones rose, the forehead slanted more; the face was all
hollows, patches of shade; and the fleshless head resembled a
disinterred black skull, fitted with two restless globes of silver in
the sockets of eyes. He was demoralising. Through him we were becoming
highly humanised, tender, complex, excessively decadent: we understood
the subtlety of his fear, sympathised with all his repulsions,
shrinkings, evasions, delusions--as though we had been over-civilised,
and rotten, and without any knowledge of the meaning of life. We had the
air of being initiated in some infamous mysteries; we had the profound
grimaces of conspirators, exchanged meaning glances, significant short
words. We were inexpressibly vile and very much pleased with ourselves.
We lied to him with gravity, with emotion, with unction, as if
performing some moral trick with a view to an eternal reward. We made a
chorus of affirmation to his wildest assertions, as though he had been
a millionaire, a politician, or a reformer--and we a crowd of ambitious
lubbers. When we ventured to question his statements we did it after
the manner of obsequious sycophants, to the end that his glory should be
augmented by the flattery of our dissent. He influenced the moral tone
of our world as though he had it in his power to distribute honours,
treasures, or pain; and he could give us nothing but his contempt. It
was immense; it seemed to grow gradually larger, as his body day by
day shrank a little more, while we looked. It was the only thing about
him--of him--that gave the impression of durability and vigour. It lived
within him with an unquenchable life. It spoke through the eternal pout
of his black lips; it looked at us through the impertinent mournfulness
of his languid and enormous stare. We watched him intently. He seemed
unwilling to move, as if distrustful of his own solidity. The slightest
gesture must have disclosed to him (it could not surely be otherwise)
his bodily weakness, and caused a pang of mental suffering. He was chary
of movements. He lay stretched out, chin on blanket, in a kind of
sly, cautious immobility. Only his eyes roamed over faces: his eyes
disdainful, penetrating and sad.
It was at that time that Belfast's devotion--and also his
pugnacity--secured universal respect. He spent every moment of his spare
time in Jimmy's cabin. He tended him, talked to him; was as gentle as
a woman, as tenderly gay as an old philanthropist, as sentimentally
careful of his nigger as a model slave-owner. But outside he was
irritable, explosive as gunpowder, sombre, suspicious, and never more
brutal than when most sorrowful. With him it was a tear and a blow:
a tear for Jimmy, a blow for any one who did not seem to take a
scrupulously orthodox view of Jimmy's case. We talked about nothing
else. The two Scandinavians, even, discussed the situation--but it was
impossible to know in what spirit, because they quarrelled in their
own language. Belfast suspected one of them of irreverence, and in this
incertitude thought that there was no option but to fight them both.
They became very much terrified by his truculence, and henceforth
lived amongst us, dejected, like a pair of mutes. Wamibo never spoke
intelligibly, but he was as smileless as an animal--seemed to know much
less about it all than the cat--and consequently was safe. Moreover,
he had belonged to the chosen band of Jimmy's rescuers, and was above
suspicion. Archie was silent generally, but often spent an hour or so
talking to Jimmy quietly with an air of proprietorship. At any time of
the day and often through the night some man could be seen sitting
on Jimmy's box. In the evening, between six and eight, the cabin was
crowded, and there was an interested group at the door. Every one stared
at the nigger.
He basked in the warmth of our interest. His eye gleamed ironically, and
in a weak voice he reproached us with our cowardice. He would say, "If
you fellows had stuck out for me I would be now on deck." We hung our
heads. "Yes, but if you think I am going to let them put me in irons
just to show you sport.... Well, no.... It ruins my health, this
lying-up, it does. You don't care." We were as abashed as if it had
been true. His superb impudence carried all before it. We would not have
dared to revolt. We didn't want to, really. We wanted to keep him alive
till home--to the end of the voyage.
Singleton as usual held aloof, appearing to scorn the insignificant
events of an ended life. Once only he came along, and unexpectedly
stopped in the doorway. He peered at Jimmy in profound silence, as if
desirous to add that black image to the crowd of Shades that peopled
his old memory. We kept very quiet, and for a long time Singleton stood
there as though he had come by appointment to call for some one, or to
see some important event. James Wait lay perfectly still, and apparently
not aware of the gaze scrutinising him with a steadiness full of
expectation. There was a sense of a contest in the air. We felt the
inward strain of men watching a wrestling bout. At last Jimmy with
perceptible apprehension turned his head on the pillow.--"Good evening,"
he said in a conciliating tone.--"H'm," answered the old seaman,
grumpily. For a moment longer he looked at Jimmy with severe fixity,
then suddenly went away. It was a long time before any one spoke in
the little cabin, though we all breathed more freely as men do after an
escape from some dangerous situation. We all knew the old man's ideas
about Jimmy, and nobody dared to combat them. They were unsettling, they
caused pain; and, what was worse, they might have been true for all
we knew. Only once did he condescend to explain them fully, but the
impression was lasting. He said that Jimmy was the cause of head winds.
Mortally sick men--he maintained--linger till the first sight of land, and
then die; and Jimmy knew that the very first land would draw his life
from him. It is so in every ship. Didn't we know it? He asked us with
austere contempt: what did we know? What would we doubt next? Jimmy's
desire encouraged by us and aided by Wamibo's (he was a Finn--wasn't he?
Very well!) by Wamibo's spells delayed the ship in the open sea. Only
lubberly fools couldn't see it. Whoever heard of such a run of calms and
head winds? It wasn't natural.... We could not deny that it was strange.
We felt uneasy. The common saying, "More days, more dollars," did not
give the usual comfort because the stores were running short. Much had
been spoiled off the Cape, and we were on half allowance of biscuit.
Peas, sugar and tea had been finished long ago. Salt meat was giving
out. We had plenty of coffee but very little water to make it with.
We took up another hole in our belts and went on scraping, polishing,
painting the ship from morning to night. And soon she looked as though
she had come out of a band-box; but hunger lived on board of her. Not
dead starvation, but steady, living hunger that stalked about the decks,
slept in the forecastle; the tormentor of waking moments, the disturber
of dreams. We looked to windward for signs of change. Every few hours of
night and day we put her round with the hope that she would come up
on that tack at last! She didn't. She seemed to have forgotten the way
home; she rushed to and fro, heading northwest, heading east; she ran
backwards and forwards, distracted, like a timid creature at the foot of
a wall. Sometimes, as if tired to death, she would wallow languidly for
a day in the smooth swell of an unruffled sea. All up the swinging masts
the sails thrashed furiously through the hot stillness of the calm. We
were weary, hungry, thirsty; we commenced to believe Singleton, but
with unshaken fidelity dissembled to Jimmy. We spoke to him with jocose
allusiveness, like cheerful accomplices in a clever plot; but we looked
to the westward over the rail with longing eyes for a sign of hope, for
a sign of fair wind; even if its first breath should bring death to our
reluctant Jimmy. In vain! The universe conspired with James Wait. Light
airs from the northward sprang up again; the sky remained clear; and
round our weariness the glittering sea, touched by the breeze, basked
voluptuously in the great sunshine, as though it had forgotten our life
and trouble.
Donkin looked out for a fair wind along with the rest. No one knew the
venom of his thoughts now. He was silent, and appeared thinner, as if
consumed slowly by an inward rage at the injustice of men and of fate.
He was ignored by all and spoke to no one, but his hate for every man
dwelt in his furtive eyes. He talked with the cook only, having somehow
persuaded the good man that he--Donkin--was a much calumniated and
persecuted person. Together they bewailed the immorality of the ship's
company. There could be no greater criminals than we, who by our lies
conspired to send the unprepared soul of a poor ignorant black man
to everlasting perdition. Podmore cooked what there was to cook,
remorsefully, and felt all the time that by preparing the food of such
sinners he imperilled his own salvation. As to the Captain--he had sailed
with him for seven years, now, he said, and would not have believed it
possible that such a man... "Well. Well... There it was... Can't get out
of it. Judgment capsized all in a minute... Struck in all his pride...
More like a sudden visitation than anything else." Donkin, perched
sullenly on the coal-locker, swung his legs and concurred. He paid in
the coin of spurious assent for the privilege to sit in the galley; he
was disheartened and scandalised; he agreed with the cook; could find
no words severe enough to criticise our conduct; and when in the heat of
reprobation he swore at us, Podmore, who would have liked to swear also
if it hadn't been for his principles, pretended not to hear. So Donkin,
unrebuked, cursed enough for two, cadged for matches, borrowed tobacco,
and loafed for hours, very much at home, before the stove. From there he
could hear us on the other side of the bulkhead, talking to Jimmy.
The cook knocked the saucepans about, slammed the oven door, muttered
prophesies of damnation for all the ship's company; and Donkin, who did
not admit of any hereafter (except for purposes of blasphemy) listened,
concentrated and angry, gloating fiercely over a called-up image of
infinite torment--as men gloat over the accursed images of cruelty and
revenge, of greed, and of power....
On clear evenings the silent ship, under the cold sheen of the dead
moon, took on a false aspect of passionless repose resembling the winter
of the earth. Under her a long band of gold barred the black disc of
the sea. Footsteps echoed on her quiet decks. The moonlight clung to her
like a frosted mist, and the white sails stood out in dazzling cones
as of stainless snow. In the magnificence of the phantom rays the ship
appeared pure like a vision of ideal beauty, illusive like a tender
dream of serene peace. And nothing in her was real, nothing was distinct
and solid but the heavy shadows that filled her decks with their
unceasing and noiseless stir: the shadows darker than the night and more
restless than the thoughts of men.
Donkin prowled spiteful and alone amongst the shadows, thinking that
Jimmy too long delayed to die. That evening land had been reported from
aloft, and the master, while adjusting the tubes of the long glass, had
observed with quiet bitterness to Mr. Baker that, after fighting our way
inch by inch to the Western Islands, there was nothing to expect now
but a spell of calm. The sky was clear and the barometer high. The light
breeze dropped with the sun, and an enormous stillness, forerunner of
a night without wind, descended upon the heated waters of the ocean.
As long as daylight lasted, the hands collected on the forecastle-head
watched on the eastern sky the island of Flores, that rose above the
level expanse of the sea with irregular and broken outlines like a
sombre ruin upon a vast and deserted plain. It was the first land seen
for nearly four months. Charley was excited, and in the midst of general
indulgence took liberties with his betters. Men strangely elated without
knowing why, talked in groups, and pointed with bared arms. For the
first time that voyage Jimmy's sham existence seemed for a moment
forgotten in the face of a solid reality. We had got so far anyhow.
Belfast discoursed, quoting imaginary examples of short homeward runs
from the Islands. "Them smart fruit schooners do it in five days,"
he affirmed. "What do you want?--only a good little breeze." Archie
maintained that seven days was the record passage, and they disputed
amicably with insulting words. Knowles declared he could already smell
home from there, and with a heavy list on his short leg laughed fit to
split his sides. A group of grizzled sea-dogs looked out for a time in
silence and with grim absorbed faces. One said suddenly--"'Tain't far
to London now."--"My first night ashore, blamme if I haven't steak and
onions for supper... and a pint of bitter," said another.--"A barrel ye
mean," shouted someone.--"Ham an' eggs three times a day. That's the way
I live!" cried an excited voice. There was a stir, appreciative murmurs;
eyes began to shine; jaws champed; short, nervous laughs were heard.
Archie smiled with reserve all to himself. Singleton came up, gave a
careless glance, and went down again without saying a word, indifferent,
like a man who had seen Flores an incalculable number of times. The
night travelling from the East blotted out of the limpid sky the purple
stain of the high land. "Dead calm," said somebody quietly. The murmur
of lively talk suddenly wavered, died out; the clusters broke up; men
began to drift away one by one, descending the ladders slowly and with
serious faces as if sobered by that reminder of their dependence upon
the invisible. And when the big yellow moon ascended gently above
the sharp rim of the clear horizon it found the ship wrapped up in a
breathless silence; a fearless ship that seemed to sleep profoundly,
dreamlessly on the bosom of the sleeping and terrible sea.
Donkin chafed at the peace--at the ship--at the sea that stretching away
on all sides merged into the illimitable silence of all creation. He
felt himself pulled up sharp by unrecognised grievances. He had been
physically cowed, but his injured dignity remained indomitable, and
nothing could heal his lacerated feelings. Here was land already--home
very soon--a bad pay-day--no clothes--more hard work. How offensive all
this was. Land. The land that draws away life from sick sailors. That
nigger there had money--clothes--easy times; and would not die. Land draws
life away.... He felt tempted to go and see whether it did. Perhaps
already.. It would be a bit of luck. There was money in the beggar's
chest. He stepped briskly out of the shadows into the moonlight, and,
instantly, his craving, hungry face from sallow became livid. He opened
the door of the cabin and had a shock. Sure enough, Jimmy was dead! He
moved no more than a recumbent figure with clasped hands, carved on the
lid of a stone coffin. Donkin glared with avidity. Then Jimmy, without
stirring, blinked his eyelids, and Donkin had another shock. Those eyes
were rather startling. He shut the door behind his back with gentle
care, looking intently the while at James Wait as though he had come
in there at a great risk to tell some secret of startling im-portance.
Jimmy did not move but glanced languidly out of the corners of his
eyes.--"Calm?" he asked.--"Yuss," said Donkin, very disappointed, and sat
down on the box.
Jimmy was used to such visits at all times of night of day. Men
succeeded one another. They spoke in clear voices, pronounced cheerful
words, repeated old jokes, listened to him; and each, going out, seemed
to leave behind a little of his own vitality, surrender some of his own
strength, renew the assurance of life--the indestructible thing! He did
not like to be alone in his cabin, because, when he was alone, it seemed
to him as if he hadn't been there at all. There was nothing. No pain.
Not now. Perfectly right--but he couldn't enjoy his healthful repose
unless some one was by to see it. This man would do as well as anybody.
Donkin watched him stealthily:--"Soon home now," observed Wait.--"Vy d'yer
whisper?" asked Donkin with interest, "can't yer speak up?" Jimmy looked
annoyed and said nothing for a while; then in a lifeless, unringing
voice:--"Why should I shout? You ain't deaf that I know."--"Oh! I can 'ear
right enough," answered Donkin in a low tone, and looked down. He was
thinking sadly of going out when Jimmy spoke again.--"Time we did get
home... to get something decent to eat... I am always hungry." Donkin
felt angry all of a sudden.--"What about me," he hissed, "I am 'ungry too
an' got ter work. You, 'ungry!"--"Your work won't kill you," commented
Wait, feebly; "there's a couple of biscuits in the lower bunk there--you
may have one. I can't eat them." Donkin dived in, groped in the corner
and when he came up again his mouth was full. He munched with ardour.
Jimmy seemed to doze with open eyes. Donkin finished his hard bread and
got up.--"You're not going?" asked Jimmy, staring at the ceiling.--"No,"
said Donkin, impulsively, and instead of going out leaned his back
against the closed door. He looked at James Wait, and saw him long,
lean, dried up, as though all his flesh had shrivelled on his bones
in the heat of a white furnace; the meagre fingers of one hand moved
lightly upon the edge of the bunk playing an endless tune. To look at
him was irritating and fatiguing; he could last like this for days; he
was outrageous--belonging wholly neither to death nor life, and perfectly
invulnerable in his apparent ignorance of both. Donkin felt tempted to
enlighten him.--"What are yer thinkin' of?" he asked, surlily. James Wait
had a grimacing smile that passed over the deathlike impassiveness of
his bony face, incredible and frightful as would, in a dream, have been
the sudden smile of a corpse.
"There is a girl," whispered Wait.... "Canton Street girl.------She chucked
a third engineer of a Rennie boat------for me. Cooks oysters just as I
like... She says------she would chuck------any toff------louder."
Donkin could hardly believe his ears. He was scandalised--"Would she? Yer
wouldn't be any good to 'er," he said with unrestrained disgust. Wait
was not there to hear him. He was swaggering up the East India
Dock Road; saying kindly, "Come along for a treat," pushing glass
swing-doors, posing with superb assurance in the gaslight above a
mahogany counter.--"D'yer think yer will ever get ashore?" asked Donkin,
angrily. Wait came back with a start.--"Ten days," he said, promptly, and
returned at once to the regions of memory that know nothing of time. He
felt untired, calm, and safely withdrawn within himself beyond the reach
of every grave incertitude. There was something of the immutable quality
of eternity in the slow moments of his complete restfulness. He was very
quiet and easy amongst his vivid reminiscences which he mistook joyfully
for images of an undoubted future. He cared for no one. Donkin felt this
vaguely like a blind man feeling in his darkness the fatal antagonism
of all the surrounding existences, that to him shall for ever remain
irrealisable, unseen and enviable. He had a desire to assert his
importance, to break, to crush; to be even with everybody for
everything; to tear the veil, unmask, expose, leave no refuge--a
perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking splutter and
said:
"Ten days. Strike me blind if ever!... You will be dead by this time
to-morrow p'r'aps. Ten days!" He waited for a while. "D'ye 'ear me?
Blamme if yer don't look dead already."
Wait must have been collecting his strength, for he said almost
aloud--"You're a stinking, cadging liar. Every one knows you." And
sitting up, against all probability, startled his visitor horribly. But
very soon Donkin recovered himself. He blustered, "What? What? Who's a
liar? You are--the crowd are--the skipper--everybody. I ain't! Putting on
airs! Who's yer?" He nearly choked himself with indignation. "Who's
yer to put on airs," he repeated, trembling. "'Ave one--'ave one, says
'ee--an' cawn't eat 'em 'isself. Now I'll 'ave both. By Gawd--I will! Yer
nobody!"
He plunged into the lower bunk, rooted in there and brought to light
another dusty biscuit. He held it up before Jimmy--then took a bite
defiantly.
"What now?" he asked with feverish impudence. "Yer may take one--says
yer. Why not giv' me both? No. I'm a mangy dorg. One fur a mangy dorg.
I'll tyke both. Can yer stop me? Try. Come on. Try."
Jimmy was clasping his legs and hiding his face on the knees. His shirt
clung to him. Every rib was visible. His emaciated back was shaken in
repeated jerks by the panting catches of his breath.
"Yer won't? Yer can't! What did I say?" went on Donkin, fiercely. He
swallowed another dry mouthful with a hasty effort. The other's silent
helplessness, his weakness, his shrinking attitude exasperated him.
"Ye're done!" he cried. "Who's yer to be lied to; to be waited on 'and
an' foot like a bloomin' ymperor. Yer nobody. Yer no one at all!" he
spluttered with such a strength of unerring conviction that it shook him
from head to foot in coming out, and left him vibrating like a released
string.
James Wait rallied again. He lifted his head and turned bravely at
Donkin, who saw a strange face, an unknown face, a fantastic and
grimacing mask of despair and fury. Its lips moved rapidly; and hollow,
moaning, whistling sounds filled the cabin with a vague mutter full of
menace, complaint and desolation, like the far-off murmur of a
rising wind. Wait shook his head; rolled his eyes; he denied, cursed,
threatened--and not a word had the strength to pass beyond the sorrowful
pout of those black lips. It was incomprehensible and disturbing;
a gibberish of emotions, a frantic dumb show of speech pleading for
impossible things, promising a shadowy vengeance. It sobered Donkin into
a scrutinising watchfulness.
"Yer can't oller. See? What did I tell yer?" he said, slowly, after a
moment of attentive examination. The other kept on headlong and unheard,
nodding passionately, grinning with grotesque and appalling flashes
of big white teeth. Donkin, as if fascinated by the dumb eloquence and
anger of that black phantom, approached, stretching his neck out with
distrustful curiosity; and it seemed to him suddenly that he was looking
only at the shadow of a man crouching high in the bunk on the level with
his eyes.--"What? What?" he said. He seemed to catch the shape of some
words in the continuous panting hiss. "Yer will tell Belfast! Will yer?
Are yer a bloomin' kid?" He trembled with alarm and rage, "Tell yer
gran'mother! Yer afeard! Who's yer ter be afeard more'n any one?" His
passionate sense of his own importance ran away with a last remnant of
caution. "Tell an' be damned! Tell, if yer can!" he cried. "I've been
treated worser'n a dorg by your blooming back-lickers. They 'as set me
on, only to turn aginst me. I am the only man 'ere. They clouted me,
kicked me--an' yer laffed--yer black, rotten incumbrance, you! You will
pay fur it. They giv' yer their grub, their water--yer will pay fur it
to me, by Gawd! Who axed me ter 'ave a drink of water? They put their
bloomin' rags on yer that night, an' what did they giv' ter me--a clout
on the bloomin' mouth--blast their... S'elp me!... Yer will pay fur it
with yer money. I'm goin' ter 'ave it in a minyte; as soon has ye're
dead, yer bloomin' useless fraud. That's the man I am. An' ye're a
thing--a bloody thing. Yah--you corpse!" He flung at Jimmy's head the
biscuit he had been all the time clutching hard, but it only grazed, and
striking with a loud crack the bulkhead beyond burst like a hand-grenade
into flying pieces. James Wait, as if wounded mortally, fell back on the
pillow. His lips ceased to move and the rolling eyes became quiet
and stared upwards with an intense and steady persistence. Donkin was
surprised; he sat suddenly on the chest, and looked down, exhausted
and gloomy. After a moment, he began to mutter to himself, "Die, you
beggar--die. Somebody'll come in... I wish I was drunk... Ten days...
oysters..." He looked up and spoke louder. "No... No more for yer... no
more bloomin' gals that cook oysters... Who's yer? It's my turn now... I
wish I was drunk; I would soon giv' you a leg up. That's where yer bound
to go. Feet fust, through a port... Splash! Never see yer any more.
Overboard! Good 'nuff fur yer." Jimmy's head moved slightly and he
turned his eyes to Donkin's face; a gaze unbelieving, desolated and
appealing, of a child frightened by the menace of being shut up alone
in the dark. Donkin observed him from the chest with hopeful eyes; then,
without rising, tried the lid. Locked. "I wish I was drunk," he muttered
and getting up listened anxiously to the distant sound of footsteps
on the deck. They approached--ceased. Some one yawned interminably just
outside the door, and the footsteps went away shuffling lazily. Donkin's
fluttering heart eased its pace, and when he looked towards the bunk
again Jimmy was staring as before at the white beam.--"'Ow d'yer feel
now?" he asked.--"Bad," breathed out Jimmy.
Donkin sat down patient and purposeful. Every half-hour the bells spoke
to one another ringing along the whole length of the ship. Jimmy's
respiration was so rapid that it couldn't be counted, so faint that it
couldn't be heard. His eyes were terrified as though he had been looking
at unspeakable horrors; and by his face one could see that he was
thinking of abominable things. Suddenly with an incredibly strong and
heartbreaking voice he sobbed out:
"Overboard!... I!... My God!" Donkin writhed a little on the box.
He looked unwillingly. James Wait was mute. His two long bony hands
smoothed the blanket upwards, as though he had wished to gather it all
up under his chin. A tear, a big solitary tear, escaped from the corner
of his eye and, without touching the hollow cheek, fell on the pillow.
His throat rattled faintly.
And Donkin, watching the end of that hateful nigger, felt the anguishing
grasp of a great sorrow on his heart at the thought that he himself,
some day, would have to go through it all--just like this--perhaps! His
eyes became moist. "Poor beggar," he murmured. The night seemed to go
by in a flash; it seemed to him he could hear the irremediable rush of
precious minutes. How long would this blooming affair last? Too long
surely. No luck. He could not restrain himself. He got up and approached
the bunk. Wait did not stir. Only his eyes appeared alive and his
hands continued their smoothing movement with a horrible and tireless
industry. Donkin bent over.
"Jimmy," he called low. There was no answer, but the rattle stopped.
"D'yer see me?" he asked, trembling. Jimmy's chest heaved. Donkin,
looking away, bent his ear to Jimmy's lips, and heard a sound like the
rustle of a single dry leaf driven along the smooth sand of a beach. It
shaped itself.
"Light... the lamp... and... go," breathed out Wait.
Donkin, instinctively, glanced over his shoulder at the brilliant flame;
then, still looking away, felt under the pillow for a key. He got it
at once and for the next few minutes remained on his knees shakily but
swiftly busy inside the box. When he got up, his face--for the first time
in his life--had a pink flush--perhaps of triumph.
He slipped the key under the pillow again, avoiding to glance at Jimmy,
who had not moved. He turned his back squarely from the bunk, and
started to the door as though he were going to walk a mile. At his
second stride he had his nose against it. He clutched the handle
cautiously, but at that moment he received the irresistible impression
of something happening behind his back. He spun round as though he had
been tapped on the shoulder. He was just in time to see Wait's eyes
blaze up and go out at once, like two lamps overturned together by a
sweeping blow. Something resembling a scarlet thread hung down his chin
out of the corner of his lips--and he had ceased to breathe.
Donkin closed the door behind him gently but firmly. Sleeping men,
huddled under jackets, made on the lighted deck shapeless dark mounds
that had the appearance of neglected graves. Nothing had been done all
through the night and he hadn't been missed. He stood motionless and
perfectly astounded to find the world outside as he had left it; there
was the sea, the ship--sleeping men; and he wondered absurdly at it, as
though he had expected to find the men dead, familiar things gone for
ever: as though, like a wanderer returning after many years, he had
expected to see bewildering changes. He shuddered a little in the
penetrating freshness of the air, and hugged himself forlornly. The
declining moon drooped sadly in the western board as if withered by
the cold touch of a pale dawn. The ship slept. And the immortal
sea stretched away immense and hazy, like the image of life, with a
glittering surface and lightless depths. Donkin gave it a defiant
glance and slunk off noiselessly as if judged and cast out by the august
silence of its might.
Jimmy's death, after all, came as a tremendous surprise. We did not know
till then how much faith we had put in his delusions. We had taken his
chances of life so much at his own valuation that his death, like the
death of an old belief, shook the foundations of our society. A
common bond was gone; the strong, effective and respectable bond of a
sentimental lie. All that day we mooned at our work, with suspicious
looks and a disabused air. In our hearts we thought that in the matter
of his departure Jimmy had acted in a perverse and unfriendly manner.
He didn't back us up, as a shipmate should. In going he took away with
himself the gloomy and solemn shadow in which our folly had posed, with
humane satisfaction, as a tender arbiter of fate. And now we saw it was
no such thing. It was just common foolishness; a silly and ineffectual
meddling with issues of majestic import--that is, if Podmore was right.
Perhaps he was? Doubt survived Jimmy; and, like a community of banded
criminals disintegrated by a touch of grace, we were profoundly
scandalised with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best chums.
Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised.
"Dead--is he? Of course," he said, pointing at the island right abeam:
for the calm still held the ship spell-bound within sight of Flores.
Dead--of course. He wasn't surprised. Here was the land, and there, on
the fore-hatch and waiting for the sailmaker--there was that corpse.
Cause and effect. And for the first time that voyage, the old seaman
became quite cheery and garrulous, explaining and illustrating from the
stores of experience how, in sickness, the sight of an island (even a
very small one) is generally more fatal than the view of a continent.
But he couldn't explain why.
Jimmy was to be buried at five, and it was a long day till then--a day of
mental disquiet and even of physical disturbance. We took no interest in
our work and, very properly, were rebuked for it. This, in our constant
state of hungry irritation, was exasperating. Donkin worked with his
brow bound in a dirty rag, and looked so ghastly that Mr. Baker was
touched with compassion at the sight of this plucky suffering.--"Ough!
You, Donkin! Put down your work and go lay-up this watch. You look
ill."--"I am bad, sir--in my 'ead," he said in a subdued voice, and
vanished speedily. This annoyed many, and they thought the mate
"bloomin' soft to-day." Captain Allistoun could be seen on the poop
watching the sky to the southwest, and it soon got to be known about
the decks that the barometer had begun to fall in the night, and that a
breeze might be expected before long. This, by a subtle association
of ideas, led to violent quarrelling as to the exact moment of Jimmy's
death. Was it before or after "that 'ere glass started down?" It was
impossible to know, and it caused much contemptuous growling at one
another. All of a sudden there was a great tumult forward. Pacific
Knowles and good-tempered Davis had come to blows over it. The watch
below interfered with spirit, and for ten minutes there was a noisy
scrimmage round the hatch, where, in the balancing shade of the sails,
Jimmy's body, wrapped up in a white blanket, was watched over by the
sorrowful Belfast, who, in his desolation, disdained the fray. When the
noise had ceased, and the passions had calmed into surly silence, he
stood up at the head of the swathed body, lifting both arms on
high, cried with pained indignation:--"You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves!..." We were.
Belfast took his bereavement very hard. He gave proofs of
unextinguishable devotion. It was he, and no other man, who would help
the sailmaker to prepare what was left of Jimmy for a solemn surrender
to the insatiable sea. He arranged the weights carefully at the feet:
two holystones, an old anchor-shackle without its pin, some broken links
of a worn-out stream cable. He arranged them this way, then that. "Bless
my soul! you aren't afraid he will chafe his heel?" said the sailmaker,
who hated the job. He pushed the needle, purring furiously, with his
head in a cloud of tobacco smoke; he turned the flaps over, pulled at
the stitches, stretched at the canvas.--"Lift his shoulders.... Pull to
you a bit.... So--o--o. Steady." Belfast obeyed, pulled, lifted, overcome
with sorrow, dropping tears on the tarred twine.--. "Don't you drag
the canvas too taut over his poor face, Sails," he entreated,
tearfully.--"What are you fashing yourself for? He will be comfortable
enough," assured the sailmaker, cutting the thread after the last
stitch, which came about the middle of Jimmy's forehead. He rolled up
the remaining canvas, put away the needles. "What makes you take on so?"
he asked. Belfast looked down at the long package of grey sailcloth.--"I
pulled him out," he whispered, "and he did not want to go. If I had sat
up with him last night he would have kept alive for me... but something
made me tired." The sailmaker took vigorous draws at his pipe and
mumbled:--"When I... West India Station... In the Blanche frigate...
Yellow Jack... sewed in twenty men a week... Portsmouth--Devonport
men--townies--knew their fathers, mothers, sisters--the whole boiling of
'em. Thought nothing of it. And these niggers like this one--you don't
know where it comes from. Got nobody. No use to nobody. Who will miss
him?"--"I do--I pulled him out," mourned Belfast dismally.
On two planks nailed together and apparently resigned and still under
the folds of the Union Jack with a white border, James Wait, carried
aft by four men, was deposited slowly, with his feet pointing at an open
port. A swell had set in from the westward, and following on the roll of
the ship, the red ensign, at half-mast, darted out and collapsed again
on the grey sky, like a tongue of flickering fire; Charley tolled the
bell; and at every swing to starboard the whole vast semi-circle of
steely waters visible on that side seemed to come up with a rush to the
edge of the port, as if impatient to get at our Jimmy. Every one was
there but Donkin, who was too ill to come; the Captain and Mr. Creighton
stood bareheaded on the break of the poop; Mr. Baker, directed by the
master, who had said to him gravely:--"You know more about the prayer
book than I do," came out of the cabin door quickly and a little
embarrassed. All the caps went off. He began to read in a low tone, and
with his usual harmlessly menacing utterance, as though he had been for
the last time reproving confidentially that dead seaman at his feet. The
men listened in scattered groups; they leaned on the fife rail, gazing
on the deck; they held their chins in their hands thoughtfully, or, with
crossed arms and one knee slightly bent, hung their heads in an attitude
of upright meditation. Wamibo dreamed. Mr. Baker read on, grunting
reverently at the turn of every page. The words, missing the unsteady
hearts of men, rolled out to wander without a home upon the heartless
sea; and James Wait, silenced for ever, lay uncritical and passive under
the hoarse murmur of despair and hopes.
Two men made ready and waited for those words that send so many of our
brothers to their last plunge. Mr. Baker began the passage. "Stand by,"
muttered the boatswain. Mr. Baker read out: "To the deep," and paused.
The men lifted the inboard end of the planks, the boatswain snatched
off the Union Jack, and James Wait did not move.--"Higher," muttered
the boatswain angrily. All the heads were raised; every man stirred
uneasily, but James Wait gave no sign of going. In death and swathed up
for all eternity, he yet seemed to cling to the ship with the grip of
an undying fear. "Higher! Lift!" whispered the boatswain, fiercely.--"He
won't go," stammered one of the men, shakily, and both appeared ready
to drop everything. Mr. Baker waited, burying his face in the book, and
shuffling his feet nervously. All the men looked profoundly disturbed;
from their midst a faint humming noise spread out--growing louder....
"Jimmy!" cried Belfast in a wailing tone, and there was a second of
shuddering dismay.
"Jimmy, be a man!" he shrieked, passionately. Every mouth was wide open,
not an eyelid winked. He stared wildly, twitching all over; he bent
his body forward like a man peering at an horror. "Go!" he shouted, and
sprang out of the crowd with his arm extended. "Go, Jimmy!--Jimmy, go!
Go!" His fingers touched the head of the body, and the grey package
started reluctantly to whizz off the lifted planks all at once, with the
suddenness of a flash of lightning. The crowd stepped forward like one
man; a deep Ah--h--h! came out vibrating from the broad chests. The ship
rolled as if relieved of an unfair burden; the sails flapped. Belfast,
supported by Archie, gasped hysterically; and Charley, who anxious to
see Jimmy's last dive, leaped headlong on the rail, was too late to see
anything but the faint circle of a vanishing ripple.
Mr. Baker, perspiring abundantly, read out the last prayer in a deep
rumour of excited men and fluttering sails. "Amen!" he said in an
unsteady growl, and closed the book.
"Square the yards!" thundered a voice above his head. All hands gave a
jump; one or two dropped their caps; Mr. Baker looked up surprised.
The master, standing on the break of the poop, pointed to the westward.
"Breeze coming," he said, "Man the weather braces." Mr. Baker crammed
the book hurriedly into his pocket. "Forward, there--let go the
foretack!" he hailed joyfully, bareheaded and brisk; "Square the
foreyard, you port-watch!"--"Fair wind--fair wind," muttered the men going
to the braces.--"What did I tell you?" mumbled old Singleton, flinging
down coil after coil with hasty energy; "I knowed it--he's gone, and here
it comes."
It came with the sound of a lofty and powerful sigh. The sails filled,
the ship gathered way, and the waking sea began to murmur sleepily of
home to the ears of men.
That night, while the ship rushed foaming to the Northward before a
freshening gale, the boatswain unbosomed himself to the petty officers'
berth:--"The chap was nothing but trouble," he said, "from the moment he
came aboard--d'ye remember--that night in Bombay? Been bullying all
that softy crowd--cheeked the old man--we had to go fooling all over a
half-drowned ship to save him. Dam' nigh a mutiny all for him--and now
the mate abused me like a pickpocket for forgetting to dab a lump of
grease on them planks. So I did, but you ought to have known better,
too, than to leave a nail sticking up--hey, Chips?"
"And you ought to have known better than to chuck all my tools overboard
for 'im, like a skeary greenhorn," retorted the morose carpenter.
"Well--he's gone after 'em now," he added in an unforgiving tone.--"On the
China Station, I remember once, the Admiral he says to me..." began the
sailmaker.
A week afterwards the Narcissus entered the chops of the Channel.
Under white wings she skimmed low over the blue sea like a great tired
bird speeding to its nest. The clouds raced with her mastheads; they
rose astern enormous and white, soared to the zenith, flew past, and
falling down the wide curve of the sky, seemed to dash headlong into the
sea--the clouds swifter than the ship, more free, but without a home. The
coast to welcome her stepped out of space into the sunshine. The lofty
headlands trod masterfully into the sea; the wide bays smiled in the
light; the shadows of homeless clouds ran along the sunny plains, leaped
over valleys, without a check darted up the hills, rolled down
the slopes; and the sunshine pursued them with patches of running
brightness. On the brows of dark cliffs white lighthouses shone in
pillars of light. The Channel glittered like a blue mantle shot with
gold and starred by the silver of the capping seas. The Narcissus rushed
past the headlands and the bays. Outward-bound vessels crossed her
track, lying over, and with their masts stripped for a slogging fight
with the hard sou'wester. And, inshore, a string of smoking steamboats
waddled, hugging the coast, like migrating and amphibious monsters,
distrustful of the restless waves.
At night the headlands retreated, the bays advanced into one unbroken
line of gloom. The lights of the earth mingled with the lights of
heaven; and above the tossing lanterns of a trawling fleet a great
lighthouse shone steadily, like an enormous riding light burning above
a vessel of fabulous dimensions. Below its steady glow, the coast,
stretching away straight and black, resembled the high side of an
indestructible craft riding motionless upon the immortal and unresting
sea. The dark land lay alone in the midst of waters, like a mighty ship
bestarred with vigilant lights--a ship carrying the burden of millions
of lives--a ship freighted with dross and with jewels, with gold and with
steel. She towered up immense and strong, guarding priceless
traditions and untold suffering, sheltering glorious memories and base
forgetfulness, ignoble virtues and splendid transgressions. A great
ship! For ages had the ocean battered in vain her enduring sides; she
was there when the world was vaster and darker, when the sea was great
and mysterious, and ready to surrender the prize of fame to audacious
men. A ship mother of fleets and nations! The great flagship of the
race; stronger than the storms! and anchored in the open sea.
The Narcissus, heeling over to off-shore gusts, rounded the South
Foreland, passed through the Downs, and, in tow, entered the river.
Shorn of the glory of her white wings, she wound obediently after the
tug through the maze of invisible channels. As she passed them the
red-painted light-vessels, swung at their moorings, seemed for an
instant to sail with great speed in the rush of tide, and the next
moment were left hopelessly behind. The big buoys on the tails of banks
slipped past her sides very low, and, dropping in her wake, tugged at
their chains like fierce watchdogs. The reach narrowed; from both sides
the land approached the ship. She went steadily up the river. On the
riverside slopes the houses appeared in groups--seemed to stream down
the declivities at a run to see her pass, and, checked by the mud of the
foreshore, crowded on the banks. Further on, the tall factory chimneys
appeared in insolent bands and watched her go by, like a straggling
crowd of slim giants, swaggering and upright under the black plummets
of smoke, cavalierly aslant. She swept round the bends; an impure breeze
shrieked a welcome between her stripped spars; and the land, closing in,
stepped between the ship and the sea.
A low cloud hung before her--a great opalescent and tremulous cloud, that
seemed to rise from the steaming brows of millions of men. Long drifts
of smoky vapours soiled it with livid trails; it throbbed to the beat
of millions of hearts, and from it came an immense and lamentable
murmur--the murmur of millions of lips praying, cursing, sighing,
jeering--the undying murmur of folly, regret, and hope exhaled by the
crowds of the anxious earth. The Narcissus entered the cloud; the
shadows deepened; on all sides there was the clang of iron, the sound
of mighty blows, shrieks, yells. Black barges drifted stealthily on the
murky stream. A mad jumble of begrimed walls loomed up vaguely in the
smoke, bewildering and mournful, like a vision of disaster. The
tugs backed and filled in the stream, to hold the ship steady at the
dock-gates; from her bows two lines went through the air whistling, and
struck at the land viciously, like a pair of snakes. A bridge broke in
two before her, as if by enchantment; big hydraulic capstans began to
turn all by themselves, as though animated by a mysterious and unholy
spell. She moved through a narrow lane of water between two low walls
of granite, and men with check-ropes in their hands kept pace with her,
walking on the broad flagstones. A group waited impatiently on each side
of the vanished bridge: rough heavy men in caps; sallow-faced men in
high hats; two bareheaded women; ragged children, fascinated, and with
wide eyes. A cart coming at a jerky trot pulled up sharply. One of the
women screamed at the silent ship--"Hallo, Jack!" without looking at
any one in particular, and all hands looked at her from the forecastle
head.--"Stand clear! Stand clear of that rope!" cried the dockmen,
bending over stone posts. The crowd murmured, stamped where they
stood.--"Let go your quarter-checks! Let go!" sang out a ruddy-faced old
man on the quay. The ropes splashed heavily falling in the water, and
the Narcissus entered the dock.
The stony shores ran away right and left in straight lines, enclosing
a sombre and rectangular pool. Brick walls rose high above the
water!--soulless walls, staring through hundreds of windows as troubled
and dull as the eyes of over-fed brutes. At their base monstrous iron
cranes crouched, with chains hanging from their long necks, balancing
cruel-looking hooks over the decks of lifeless ships. A noise of wheels
rolling over stones, the thump of heavy things falling, the racket of
feverish winches, the grinding of strained chains, floated on the air.
Between high buildings the dust of all the continents soared in short
flights; and a penetrating smell of perfumes and dirt, of spices and
hides, of things costly and of things filthy, pervaded the space, made
for it an atmosphere precious and disgusting. The Narcissus came gently
into her berth; the shadows of soulless walls fell upon her, the dust
of all the continents leaped upon her deck, and a swarm of strange
men, clambering up her sides, took possession of her in the name of the
sordid earth. She had ceased to live.
A toff in a black coat and high hat scrambled with agility, came up to
the second mate, shook hands, and said:--"Hallo, Herbert." It was his
brother. A lady appeared suddenly. A real lady, in a black dress and
with a parasol. She looked extremely elegant in the midst of us, and as
strange as if she had fallen there from the sky. Mr. Baker touched his
cap to her. It was the master's wife. And very soon the Captain, dressed
very smartly and in a white shirt, went with her over the side. We
didn't recognise him at all till, turning on the quay, he called to Mr.
Baker:--"Don't forget to wind up the chronometers to-morrow morning." An
underhand lot of seedy-looking chaps with shifty eyes wandered in and
out of the forecastle looking for a job--they said.--"More likely for
something to steal," commented Knowles, cheerfully. Poor beggars. Who
cared? Weren't we home! But Mr. Baker went for one of them who had given
him some cheek, and we were delighted. Everything was delightful.--"I've
finished aft, sir," called out Mr. Creighton.--"No water in the well,
sir," reported for the last time the carpenter, sounding-rod in hand.
Mr. Baker glanced along the decks at the expectant group of sailors,
glanced aloft at the yards.--"Ough! That will do, men," he grunted. The
group broke up. The voyage was ended.
Rolled-up beds went flying over the rail; lashed chests went sliding
down the gangway--mighty few of both at that. "The rest is having a
cruise off the Cape," explained Knowles enigmatically to a dock-loafer
with whom he had struck a sudden friendship. Men ran, calling to one
another, hailing utter strangers to "lend a hand with the dunnage,"
then with sudden decorum approached the mate to shake hands before
going ashore.--"Good-bye, sir," they repeated in various tones. Mr. Baker
grasped hard palms, grunted in a friendly manner at every one, his eyes
twinkled.--"Take care of your money, Knowles. Ough! Soon get a nice wife
if you do." The lame man was delighted.--"Good-bye, sir," said Belfast,
with emotion, wringing the mate's hand, and looked up with swimming
eyes. "I thought I would take 'im ashore with me," he went on,
plaintively. Mr. Baker did not understand, but said kindly:--"Take
care of yourself, Craik," and the bereaved Belfast went over the rail
mourning and alone.
Mr. Baker, in the sudden peace of the ship, moved about solitary and
grunting, trying door-handles, peering into dark places, never done--a
model chief mate! No one waited for him ashore. Mother dead; father and
two brothers, Yarmouth fishermen, drowned together on the Dogger Bank;
sister married and unfriendly. Quite a lady. Married to the leading
tailor of a little town, and its leading politician, who did not think
his sailor brother-in-law quite respectable enough for him. Quite a
lady, quite a lady, he thought, sitting down for a moment's rest on the
quarter-hatch. Time enough to go ashore and get a bite and sup, and a
bed somewhere. He didn't like to part with a ship. No one to think about
then. The darkness of a misty evening fell, cold and damp, upon the
deserted deck; and Mr. Baker sat smoking, thinking of all the successive
ships to whom through many long years he had given the best of a
seaman's care. And never a command in sight. Not once!--"I haven't
somehow the cut of a skipper about me," he meditated, placidly, while
the shipkeeper (who had taken possession of the galley), a wizened
old man with bleared eyes, cursed him in whispers for "hanging about
so."--"Now, Creighton," he pursued the unenvious train of thought, "quite
a gentleman... swell friends... will get on. Fine young fellow... a
little more experience." He got up and shook himself. "I'll be back
first thing to-morrow morning for the hatches. Don't you let them touch
anything before I come, shipkeeper," he called out. Then, at last, he
also went ashore--a model chief mate!
The men scattered by the dissolving contact of the land came together
once more in the shipping office.---"The Narcissus pays off," shouted
outside a glazed door a brass-bound old fellow with a crown and the
capitals B. T. on his cap. A lot trooped in at once but many were late.
The room was large, white-washed, and bare; a counter surmounted by a
brass-wire grating fenced off a third of the dusty space, and behind the
grating a pasty-faced clerk, with his hair parted in the middle, had
the quick, glittering eyes and the vivacious, jerky movements of a caged
bird. Poor Captain Allistoun also in there, and sitting before a little
table with piles of gold and notes on it, appeared subdued by his
captivity. Another Board of Trade bird was perching on a high stool near
the door: an old bird that did not mind the chaff of elated sailors. The
crew of the Narcissus, broken up into knots, pushed in the corners. They
had new shore togs, smart jackets that looked as if they had been shaped
with an axe, glossy trousers that seemed made of crumpled sheet-iron,
collarless flannel shirts, shiny new boots. They tapped on shoulders,
button-holed one another, asked: "Where did you sleep last night?"
whispered gaily, slapped their thighs with bursts of subdued laughter.
Most had clean, radiant faces; only one or two turned up dishevelled
and sad; the two young Norwegians looked tidy, meek, and altogether of
a promising material for the kind ladies who patronise the Scandinavian
Home. Wamibo, still in his working clothes, dreamed, upright and burly
in the middle of the room, and, when Archie came in, woke up for a
smile. But the wide-awake clerk called out a name, and the paying-off
business began.
One by one they came up to the pay-table to get the wages of their
glorious and obscure toil. They swept the money with care into broad
palms, rammed it trustfully into trousers' pockets, or, turning their
backs on the table, reckoned with difficulty in the hollow of their
stiff hands.--"Money right? Sign the release. There--there," repeated
the clerk, impatiently. "How stupid those sailors are!" he thought.
Singleton came up, venerable--and uncertain as to daylight; brown
drops of tobacco juice hung in his white beard; his hands, that never
hesitated in the great light of the open sea, could hardly find the
small pile of gold in the profound darkness of the shore. "Can't write?"
said the clerk, shocked. "Make a mark, then." Singleton painfully
sketched in a heavy cross, blotted the page. "What a disgusting old
brute," muttered the clerk. Somebody opened the door for him, and the
patriarchal seaman passed through unsteadily, without as much as a
glance at any of us.
Archie displayed a pocket-book. He was chaffed. Belfast, who looked
wild, as though he had already luffed up through a public-house or two,
gave signs of emotion and wanted to speak to the Captain privately. The
master was surprised. They spoke through the wires, and we could hear
the Captain saying:--"I've given it up to the Board of Trade." "I should
've liked to get something of his," mumbled Belfast. "But you can't,
my man. It's given up, locked and sealed, to the Marine Office,"
expostulated the master; and Belfast stood back, with drooping mouth and
troubled eyes. In a pause of the business we heard the master and the
clerk talking. We caught: "James Wait--deceased--found no papers of any
kind--no relations--no trace--the Office must hold his wages then." Donkin
entered. He seemed out of breath, was grave, full of business. He went
straight to the desk, talked with animation to the clerk, who thought
him an intelligent man. They discussed the account, dropping h's against
one another as if for a wager--very friendly. Captain Allistoun paid. "I
give you a bad discharge," he said, quietly. Donkin raised his voice:--"I
don't want your bloomin' discharge--keep it. I'm goin' ter 'ave a job
ashore." He turned to us. "No more bloomin' sea fur me," he said, aloud.
All looked at him. He had better clothes, had an easy air, appeared more
at home than any of us; he stared with assurance, enjoying the effect of
his declaration. "Yuss. I 'ave friends well off. That's more'n you got.
But I am a man. Yer shipmates for all that. Who's comin fur a drink?"
No one moved. There was a silence; a silence of blank faces and stony
looks. He waited a moment, smiled bitterly, and went to the door. There
he faced round once more. "You won't? You bloomin' lot of yrpocrits. No?
What 'ave I done to yer? Did I bully yer? Did I 'urt yer? Did I?... You
won't drink?... No!... Then may ye die of thirst, every mother's son
of yer! Not one of yer 'as the sperrit of a bug. Ye're the scum of the
world. Work and starve!"
He went out, and slammed the door with such violence that the old Board
of Trade bird nearly fell off his perch.
"He's mad," declared Archie. "No! No! He's drunk," insisted Belfast,
lurching about, and in a maudlin tone. Captain Allistoun sat smiling
thoughtfully at the cleared pay-table.
Outside, on Tower Hill, they blinked, hesitated clumsily, as if blinded
by the strange quality of the hazy light, as if discomposed by the view
of so many men; and they who could hear one another in the howl of gales
seemed deafened and distracted by the dull roar of the busy earth.--"To
the Black Horse! To the Black Horse!" cried some. "Let us have a
drink together before we part." They crossed the road, clinging to one
another. Only Charley and Belfast wandered off alone. As I came up I saw
a red-faced, blowsy woman, in a grey shawl, and with dusty, fluffy hair,
fall on Charley's neck. It was his mother. She slobbered over him:--"O,
my boy! My boy!"--"Leggo of me," said Charley, "Leggo, mother!" I was
passing him at the time, and over the untidy head of the blubbering
woman he gave me a humorous smile and a glance ironic, courageous, and
profound, that seemed to put all my knowledge of life to shame. I nodded
and passed on, but heard him say again, good-naturedly:--"If you leggo
of me this minyt--ye shall 'ave a bob for a drink out of my pay." In
the next few steps I came upon Belfast. He caught my arm with tremulous
enthusiasm.--"I couldn't go wi' 'em," he stammered, indicating by a nod
our noisy crowd, that drifted slowly along the other sidewalk. "When
I think of Jimmy... Poor Jim! When I think of him I have no heart for
drink. You were his chum, too... but I pulled him out... didn't I? Short
wool he had.... Yes. And I stole the blooming pie.... He wouldn't
go.... He wouldn't go for nobody." He burst into tears. "I never touched
him--never--never!" he sobbed. "He went for me like... like ... a lamb."
I disengaged myself gently. Belfast's crying fits generally ended in
a fight with some one, and I wasn't anxious to stand the brunt of
his inconsolable sorrow. Moreover, two bulky policemen stood near by,
looking at us with a disapproving and incorruptible gaze.--"So long!" I
said, and went on my way.
But at the corner I stopped to take my last look at the crew of
the Narcissus. They were swaying irresolute and noisy on the broad
flagstones before the Mint. They were bound for the Black Horse, where
men, in fur caps with brutal faces and in shirt sleeves, dispense out
of varnished barrels the illusions of strength, mirth, happiness; the
illusion of splendour and poetry of life, to the paid-off crews of
southern-going ships. From afar I saw them discoursing, with jovial eyes
and clumsy gestures, while the sea of life thundered into their ears
ceaseless and unheeded. And swaying about there on the white stones,
surrounded by the hurry and clamour of men, they appeared to be
creatures of another kind--lost, alone, forgetful, and doomed; they were
like castaways, like reckless and joyous castaways, like mad castaways
making merry in the storm and upon an insecure ledge of a treacherous
rock. The roar of the town resembled the roar of topping breakers,
merciless and strong, with a loud voice and cruel purpose; but overhead
the clouds broke; a flood of sunshine streamed down the walls of grimy
houses. The dark knot of seamen drifted in sunshine. To the left of them
the trees in Tower Gardens sighed, the stones of the Tower gleaming,
seemed to stir in the play of light, as if remembering suddenly all the
great joys and sorrows of the past, the fighting prototypes of these
men; press-gangs; mutinous cries; the wailing of women by the riverside,
and the shouts of men welcoming victories. The sunshine of heaven fell
like a gift of grace on the mud of the earth, on the remembering and
mute stones, on greed, selfishness; on the anxious faces of forgetful
men. And to the right of the dark group the stained front of the Mint,
cleansed by the flood of light, stood out for a moment dazzling and
white like a marble palace in a fairy tale. The crew of the Narcissus
drifted out of sight.
I never saw them again. The sea took some, the steamers took others,
the graveyards of the earth will account for the rest. Singleton has
no doubt taken with him the long record of his faithful work into the
peaceful depths of an hospitable sea. And Donkin, who never did a decent
day's work in his life, no doubt earns his living by discoursing with
filthy eloquence upon the right of labour to live. So be it! Let the
earth and the sea each have its own.
A gone shipmate, like any other man, is gone for ever; and I never met
one of them again. But at times the spring-flood of memory sets with
force up the dark River of the Nine Bends. Then on the waters of the
forlorn stream drifts a ship--a shadowy ship manned by a crew of Shades.
They pass and make a sign, in a shadowy hail. Haven't we, together
and upon the immortal sea, wrung out a meaning from our sinful lives?
Good-bye, brothers! You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever
fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or
tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a
westerly gale.
THE END