Here he bounded for"ard past us with those incredible leaps of his.
"It would be good to set the mizzen-topgallant," I heard Captain West mutter in a weak, quavery voice. "Mr. Pathurst, will you please tell Mr.
Pike to set the mizzen-topgallant?"
And at that very instant Mr. Pike"s voice rang out from the break of the p.o.o.p:
"Mr. Mellaire!--the mizzen-topgallant!"
Captain West"s head drooped until his chin rested on his breast, and so low did he mutter that I leaned to hear.
"A very good officer," he said. "An excellent officer. Mr. Pathurst, if you will kindly favour me, I should like to go in. I . . . I haven"t got on my boots."
The muscular feat was to open the heavy iron door and hold it open in the rolls and plunges. This I accomplished; but when I had helped Captain West across the high threshold he thanked me and waived further services.
And I did not know even then he was dying.
Never was a Blackwood ship driven as was the _Elsinore_ during the next half-hour. The full-jib was also set, and, as it departed in shreds, the fore-topmast staysail was being hoisted. For"ard of the "midship-house it was made unlivable by the bursting seas. Mr. Mellaire, with half the crew, clung on somehow on top the "midship-house, while the rest of the crew was with us in the comparative safety of the p.o.o.p. Even Charles Davis, drenched and shivering, hung on beside me to the bra.s.s ring-handle of the chart-house door.
Such sailing! It was a madness of speed and motion, for the _Elsinore_ drove over and through and under those huge graybeards that thundered sh.o.r.e-ward. There were times, when rolls and gusts worked against her at the same moment, when I could have sworn the ends of her lower-yardarms swept the sea.
It was one chance in ten that we could claw off. All knew it, and all knew there was nothing more to do but await the issue. And we waited in silence. The only voice was that of the mate, intermittently cursing, threatening, and ordering Tom Spink and the Maltese c.o.c.kney at the wheel.
Between whiles, and all the while, he gauged the gusts, and ever his eyes lifted to the main-topgallant-yard. He wanted to set that one more sail.
A dozen times I saw him half-open his mouth to give the order he dared not give. And as I watched him, so all watched him. Hard-bitten, bitter- natured, sour-featured and snarling-mouthed, he was the one man, the henchman of the race, the master of the moment. "And where," was my thought, "O where was the Samurai?"
One chance in ten? It was one in a hundred as we fought to weather the last bold tooth of rock that gashed into sea and tempest between us and open ocean. So close were we that I looked to see our far-reeling skysail-yards strike the face of the rock. So close were we, no more than a biscuit toss from its iron b.u.t.tress, that as we sank down into the last great trough between two seas I can swear every one of us held breath and waited for the _Elsinore_ to strike.
Instead we drove free. And as if in very rage at our escape, the storm took that moment to deal us the mightiest buffet of all. The mate felt that monster sea coming, for he sprang to the wheel ere the blow fell. I looked for"ard, and I saw all for"ard blotted out by the mountain of water that fell aboard. The _Elsinore_ righted from the shock and reappeared to the eye, full of water from rail to rail. Then a gust caught her sails and heeled her over, spilling half the enormous burden outboard again.
Along the bridge came the relayed cry of "Man overboard!"
I glanced at the mate, who had just released the wheel to the helmsmen.
He shook his head, as if irritated by so trivial a happening, walked to the corner of the half-wheelhouse, and stared at the coast he had escaped, white and black and cold in the moonlight.
Mr. Mellaire came aft, and they met beside me in the lee of the chart- house.
"All hands, Mr. Mellaire," the mate said, "and get the mainsail off of her. After that, the mizzen-topgallant."
"Yes, sir," said the second.
"Who was it?" the mate asked, as Mr. Mellaire was turning away.
"Boney--he was no good, anyway," came the answer.
That was all. Boney the Splinter was gone, and all hands were answering the command of Mr. Mellaire to take in the mainsail. But they never took it in; for at that moment it started to blow away out of the bolt-ropes, and in but few moments all that was left of it was a few short, slatting ribbons.
"Mizzen-topgallant-sail!" Mr. Pike ordered. Then, and for the first time, he recognized my existence.
"Well rid of it," he growled. "It never did set properly. I was always aching to get my hands on the sail-maker that made it."
On my way below a glance into the chart-room gave me the cue to the Samurai"s blunder--if blunder it can be called, for no one will ever know. He lay on the floor in a loose heap, rolling w.i.l.l.y-nilly with every roll of the _Elsinore_.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
There is so much to write about all at once. In the first place, Captain West. Not entirely unexpected was his death. Margaret tells me that she was apprehensive from the start of the voyage--and even before. It was because of her apprehension that she so abruptly changed her plans and accompanied her father.
What really happened we do not know, but the agreed surmise is that it was some stroke of the heart. And yet, after the stroke, did he not come out on deck? Or could the first stroke have been followed by another and fatal one after I had helped him inside through the door? And even so, I have never heard of a heart-stroke being preceded hours before by a weakening of the mind. Captain West"s mind seemed quite clear, and must have been quite clear, that last afternoon when he wore the _Elsinore_ and started the lee-sh.o.r.e drift. In which case it was a blunder. The Samurai blundered, and his heart destroyed him when he became aware of the blunder.
At any rate the thought of blunder never enters Margaret"s head. She accepts, as a matter of course, that it was all a part of the oncoming termination of his sickness. And no one will ever undeceive her. Neither Mr. Pike, Mr. Mellaire, nor I, among ourselves, mention a whisper of what so narrowly missed causing disaster. In fact, Mr. Pike does not talk about the matter at all.--And then, again, might it not have been something different from heart disease? Or heart disease complicated with something else that obscured his mind that afternoon before his death? Well, no one knows, and I, for one, shall not sit, even in secret judgment, on the event.
At midday of the day we clawed off Tierra Del Fuego the _Elsinore_ was rolling in a dead calm, and all afternoon she rolled, not a score of miles off the land. Captain West was buried at four o"clock, and at eight bells that evening Mr. Pike a.s.sumed command and made a few remarks to both watches. They were straight-from-the-shoulder remarks, or, as he called them, they were "bra.s.s tacks."
Among other things he told the sailors that they had another boss, and that they would toe the mark as they never had before. Up to this time they had been loafing in an hotel, but from this time on they were going to work.
"On this hooker, from now on," he perorated, "it"s going to be like old times, when a man jumped the last day of the voyage as well as the first.
And G.o.d help the man that don"t jump. That"s all. Relieve the wheel and lookout."
And yet the men are in terribly wretched condition. I don"t see how they can jump. Another week of westerly gales, alternating with brief periods of calm, has elapsed, making a total of six weeks off the Horn. So weak are the men that they have no spirit left in them--not even the gangsters. And so afraid are they of the mate that they really do their best to jump when he drives them, and he drives them all the time. Mr.
Mellaire shakes his head.
"Wait till they get around and up into better weather," he astonished me by telling me the other afternoon. "Wait till they get dried out, and rested up, with more sleep, and their sores healed, and more flesh on their bones, and more s.p.u.n.k in their blood--then they won"t stand for this driving. Mr. Pike can"t realize that times have changed, sir, and laws have changed, and men have changed. He"s an old man, and I know what I am talking about."
"You mean you"ve been listening to the talk of the men?" I challenged rashly, all my gorge rising at the unofficerlike conduct of this ship"s officer.
The shot went home, for, in a flash, that suave and gentle film of light vanished from the surface of the eyes, and the watching, fearful thing that lurked behind inside the skull seemed almost to leap out at me, while the cruel gash of mouth drew thinner and crueller. And at the same time, on my inner sight, was grotesquely limned a picture of a brain pulsing savagely against the veneer of skin that covered that cleft of skull beneath the dripping sou"-wester. Then he controlled himself, the mouth-gash relaxed, and the suave and gentle film drew again across the eyes.
"I mean, sir," he said softly, "that I am speaking out of a long sea experience. Times have changed. The old driving days are gone. And I trust, Mr. Pathurst, that you will not misunderstand me in the matter, nor misinterpret what I have said."
Although the conversation drifted on to other and calmer topics, I could not ignore the fact that he had not denied listening to the talk of the men. And yet, even as Mr. Pike grudgingly admits, he is a good sailorman and second mate save for his unholy intimacy with the men for"ard--an intimacy which even the Chinese cook and the Chinese steward deplore as unseamanlike and perilous.
Even though men like the gangsters are so worn down by hardship that they have no heart of rebellion, there remain three of the frailest for"ard who will not die, and who are as s.p.u.n.ky as ever. They are Andy Fay, Mulligan Jacobs, and Charles Davis. What strange, abysmal vitality informs them is beyond all speculation. Of course, Charles Davis should have been overside with a sack of coal at his feet long ago. And Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs are only, and have always been, wrecked and emaciated wisps of men. Yet far stronger men than they have gone over the side, and far stronger men than they are laid up right now in absolute physical helplessness in the soggy forecastle bunks. And these two bitter flames of shreds of things stand all their watches and answer all calls for both watches.
Yes; and the chickens have something of this same s.p.u.n.k of life in them.
Featherless, semi-frozen despite the oil-stove, sprayed dripping on occasion by the frigid seas that pound by sheer weight through canvas tarpaulins, nevertheless not a chicken has died. Is it a matter of selection? Are these the iron-vigoured ones that survived the hardships from Baltimore to the Horn, and are fitted to survive anything? Then for a De Vries to take them, save them, and out of them found the hardiest breed of chickens on the planet! And after this I shall always query that phrase, most ancient in our language--"chicken-hearted." Measured by the _Elsinore"s_ chickens, it is a misnomer.
Nor are our three Horn Gypsies, the storm-visitors with the dreaming, topaz eyes, s.p.u.n.kless. Held in superst.i.tious abhorrence by the rest of the crew, aliens by lack of any word of common speech, nevertheless they are good sailors and are always first to spring into any enterprise of work or peril. They have gone into Mr. Mellaire"s watch, and they are quite apart from the rest of the sailors. And when there is a delay, or wait, with nothing to do for long minutes, they shoulder together, and stand and sway to the heave of deck, and dream far dreams in those pale, topaz eyes, of a country, I am sure, where mothers, with pale, topaz eyes and sandy hair, birth sons and daughters that breed true in terms of topaz eyes and sandy hair.
But the rest of the crew! Take the Maltese c.o.c.kney. He is too keenly intelligent, too sharply sensitive, successfully to endure. He is a shadow of his former self. His cheeks have fallen in. Dark circles of suffering are under his eyes, while his eyes, Latin and English intermingled, are cavernously sunken and as bright-burning as if aflame with fever.
Tom Spink, hard-fibred Anglo-Saxon, good seaman that he is, long tried and always proved, is quite wrecked in spirit. He is whining and fearful. So broken is he, though he still does his work, that he is prideless and shameless.
"I"ll never ship around the Horn again, sir," he began on me the other day when I greeted him good morning at the wheel. "I"ve sworn it before, but this time I mean it. Never again, sir. Never again."