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_ The ship's head was laid to clear Eimeo to the north, and the captain
sat down in the cabin, with a chart, a ruler, and an epitome.
'East a half no'the,' said he, raising his face from his labours. 'Mr
Hay, you'll have to watch your dead reckoning; I want every yard she
makes on every hair's-breadth of a course. I'm going to knock a hole
right straight through the Paumotus, and that's always a near touch.
Now, if this South East Trade ever blew out of the S.E., which it don't,
we might hope to lie within half a point of our course. Say we lie
within a point of it. That'll just about weather Fakarava. Yes, sir,
that's what we've got to do, if we tack for it. Brings us through this
slush of little islands in the cleanest place: see?' And he showed
where his ruler intersected the wide-lying labyrinth of the Dangerous
Archipelago. 'I wish it was night, and I could put her about right now;
we're losing time and easting. Well, we'll do our best. And if we don't
fetch Peru, we'll bring up to Ecuador. All one, I guess. Depreciated
dollars down, and no questions asked. A remarkable fine institootion,
the South American don.'
Tahiti was already some way astern, the Diadem rising from among broken
mountains--Eimeo was already close aboard, and stood black and strange
against the golden splendour of the west--when the captain took his
departure from the two islands, and the patent log was set.
Some twenty minutes later, Sally Day, who was continually leaving
the wheel to peer in at the cabin clock, announced in a shrill cry
'Fo'bell,' and the cook was to be seen carrying the soup into the cabin.
'I guess I'll sit down and have a pick with you,' said Davis to Herrick.
'By the time I've done, it'll be dark, and we'll clap the hooker on the
wind for South America.'
In the cabin at one corner of the table, immediately below the lamp, and
on the lee side of a bottle of champagne, sat Huish. 'What's this? Where
did that come from?' asked the captain.
'It's fizz, and it came from the after-'old, if you want to know,' said
Huish, and drained his mug.
'This'll never do,' exclaimed Davis, the merchant seaman's horror of
breaking into cargo showing incongruously forth on board that stolen
ship. 'There was never any good came of games like that.'
'You byby!' said Huish. 'A fellow would think (to 'ear him) we were
on the square! And look 'ere, you've put this job up 'ansomely for me,
'aven't you? I'm to go on deck and steer while you two sit and guzzle,
and I'm to go by nickname, and got to call you "sir" and "mister." Well,
you look here, my bloke: I'll have fizz ad lib., or it won't wash. I
tell you that. And you know mighty well, you ain't got any man-of-war to
signal now.'
Davis was staggered. 'I'd give fifty dollars this had never happened,'
he said weakly.
'Well, it 'as 'appened, you see,' returned Huish. 'Try some; it's
devilish good.'
The Rubicon was crossed without another struggle. The captain filled a
mug and drank.
'I wish it was beer,' he said with a sigh. 'But there's no denying it's
the genuine stuff and cheap at the money. Now, Huish, you clear out and
take your wheel.'
The little wretch had gained a point, and he was gay. 'Ay, ay, sir,'
said he, and left the others to their meal.
'Pea soup!' exclaimed the captain. 'Blamed if I thought I should taste
pea soup again!'
Herrick sat inert and silent. It was impossible after these months of
hopeless want to smell the rough, high-spiced sea victuals without
lust, and his mouth watered with desire of the champagne. It was no less
impossible to have assisted at the scene between Huish and the captain,
and not to perceive, with sudden bluntness, the gulf where he had
fallen. He was a thief among thieves. He said it to himself. He could
not touch the soup. If he had moved at all, it must have been to leave
the table, throw himself overboard, and drown--an honest man.
'Here,' said the captain, 'you look sick, old man; have a drop of this.'
The champagne creamed and bubbled in the mug; its bright colour, its
lively effervescence, seized his eye. 'It is too late to hesitate,'
he thought; his hand took the mug instinctively; he drank, with
unquenchable pleasure and desire of more; drained the vessel dry, and
set it down with sparkling eyes.
'There is something in life after all!' he cried. 'I had forgot what it
was like. Yes, even this is worth while. Wine, food, dry clothes--why,
they're worth dying, worth hanging, for! Captain, tell me one thing: why
aren't all the poor folk foot-pads?'
'Give it up,' said the captain.
'They must be damned good,' cried Herrick. 'There's something here
beyond me. Think of that calaboose! Suppose we were sent suddenly back.'
He shuddered as though stung by a convulsion, and buried his face in his
clutching hands.
'Here, what's wrong with you?' cried the captain. There was no reply;
only Herrick's shoulders heaved, so that the table was shaken. 'Take
some more of this. Here, drink this. I order you to. Don't start crying
when you're out of the wood.'
'I'm not crying,' said Herrick, raising his face and showing his dry
eyes. 'It's worse than crying. It's the horror of that grave that we've
escaped from.'
'Come now, you tackle your soup; that'll fix you,' said Davis kindly.
'I told you you were all broken up. You couldn't have stood out another
week.'
'That's the dreadful part of it!' cried Herrick. 'Another week and I'd
have murdered someone for a dollar! God! and I know that? And I'm still
living? It's some beastly dream.'
'Quietly, quietly! Quietly does it, my son. Take your pea soup. Food,
that's what you want,' said Davis.
The soup strengthened and quieted Herrick's nerves; another glass of
wine, and a piece of pickled pork and fried banana completed what the
soup began; and he was able once more to look the captain in the face.
'I didn't know I was so much run down,' he said.
'Well,' said Davis, 'you were as steady as a rock all day: now you've
had a little lunch, you'll be as steady as a rock again.'
'Yes,'was the reply, 'I'm steady enough now, but I'm a queer kind of a
first officer.'
'Shucks!' cried the captain. 'You've only got to mind the ship's course,
and keep your slate to half a point. A babby could do that, let alone
a college graduate like you. There ain't nothing TO sailoring, when you
come to look it in the face. And now we'll go and put her about. Bring
the slate; we'll have to start our dead reckoning right away.'
The distance run since the departure was read off the log by the
binnacle light and entered on the slate.
'Ready about,' said the captain. 'Give me the wheel, White Man, and you
stand by the mainsheet. Boom tackle, Mr Hay, please, and then you can
jump forward and attend head sails.'
'Ay, ay, sir,' responded Herrick.
'All clear forward?' asked Davis.
'All clear, sir.'
'Hard a-lee!' cried the captain. 'Haul in your slack as she comes,' he
called to Huish. 'Haul in your slack, put your back into it; keep your
feet out of the coils.' A sudden blow sent Huish flat along the deck,
and the captain was in his place. 'Pick yourself up and keep the wheel
hard over!' he roared. 'You wooden fool, you wanted to get killed, I
guess. Draw the jib,' he cried a moment later; and then to Huish, 'Give
me the wheel again, and see if you can coil that sheet.'
But Huish stood and looked at Davis with an evil countenance. 'Do you
know you struck me?' said he.
'Do you know I saved your life?' returned the other, not deigning to
look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the compass and the
sails. 'Where would you have been, if that boom had swung out and
you bundled in the clack? No, SIR, we'll have no more of you at the
mainsheet. Seaport towns are full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one
leg, my son, what's left of them, and the rest are dead. (Set your boom
tackle, Mr Hay.) Struck you, did I? Lucky for you I did.'
'Well,' said Huish slowly, 'I daresay there may be somethink in that.
'Ope there is.' He turned his back elaborately on the captain, and
entered the house, where the speedy explosion of a champagne cork showed
he was attending to his comfort.
Herrick came aft to the captain. 'How is she doing now?' he asked.
'East and by no'the a half no'the,' said Davis. 'It's about as good as I
expected.'
'What'll the hands think of it?' said Herrick.
'Oh, they don't think. They ain't paid to,' says the captain.
'There was something wrong, was there not? between you and--' Herrick
paused.
'That's a nasty little beast, that's a biter,' replied the captain,
shaking his head. 'But so long as you and me hang in, it don't matter.'
Herrick lay down in the weather alleyway; the night was cloudless, the
movement of the ship cradled him, he was oppressed besides by the first
generous meal after so long a time of famine; and he was recalled from
deep sleep by the voice of Davis singing out: 'Eight bells!'
He rose stupidly, and staggered aft, where the captain gave him the
wheel.
'By the wind,' said the captain. 'It comes a little puffy; when you get
a heavy puff, steal all you can to windward, but keep her a good full.'
He stepped towards the house, paused and hailed the forecastle.
'Got such a thing as a concertina forward?' said he. 'Bully for you,
Uncle Ned. Fetch it aft, will you?'
The schooner steered very easy; and Herrick, watching the moon-whitened
sails, was overpowered by drowsiness. A sharp report from the cabin
startled him; a third bottle had been opened; and Herrick remembered
the Sea Ranger and Fourteen Island Group. Presently the notes of the
accordion sounded, and then the captain's voice:
'O honey, with our pockets full of money,
We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay,
And I will dance with Kate, and Tom will dance with Sall,
When we're all back from South Amerikee.'
So it went to its quaint air; and the watch below lingered and listened
by the forward door, and Uncle Ned was to be seen in the moonlight
nodding time; and Herrick smiled at the wheel, his anxieties a while
forgotten. Song followed song; another cork exploded; there were voices
raised, as though the pair in the cabin were in disagreement; and
presently it seemed the breach was healed; for it was now the voice of
Huish that struck up, to the captain's accompaniment--
'Up in a balloon, boys,
Up in a balloon,
All among the little stars
And round about the moon.'
A wave of nausea overcame Herrick at the wheel. He wondered why the air,
the words (which were yet written with a certain knack), and the voice
and accent of the singer, should all jar his spirit like a file on a
man's teeth. He sickened at the thought of his two comrades drinking
away their reason upon stolen wine, quarrelling and hiccupping and
waking up, while the doors of the prison yawned for them in the near
future. 'Shall I have sold my honour for nothing?' he thought; and
a heat of rage and resolution glowed in his bosom--rage against his
comrades--resolution to carry through this business if it might be
carried; pluck profit out of shame, since the shame at least was now
inevitable; and come home, home from South America--how did the song
go?--'with his pockets full of money':
'O honey, with our pockets full of money,
We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay:'
so the words ran in his head; and the honey took on visible form, the
quay rose before him and he knew it for the lamplit Embankment, and
he saw the lights of Battersea bridge bestride the sullen river. All
through the remainder of his trick, he stood entranced, reviewing the
past. He had been always true to his love, but not always sedulous
to recall her. In the growing calamity of his life, she had swum
more distant, like the moon in mist. The letter of farewell, the
dishonourable hope that had surprised and corrupted him in his distress,
the changed scene, the sea, the night and the music--all stirred him
to the roots of manhood. 'I WILL win her,' he thought, and ground his
teeth. 'Fair or foul, what matters if I win her?'
'Fo' bell, matey. I think um fo' bell'--he was suddenly recalled by
these words in the voice of Uncle Ned.
'Look in at the clock, Uncle,' said he. He would not look himself, from
horror of the tipplers.
'Him past, matey,' repeated the Hawaiian.
'So much the better for you, Uncle,' he replied; and he gave up the
wheel, repeating the directions as he had received them.
He took two steps forward and remembered his dead reckoning. 'How has
she been heading?' he thought; and he flushed from head to foot. He had
not observed or had forgotten; here was the old incompetence; the slate
must be filled up by guess. 'Never again!' he vowed to himself in silent
fury, 'never again. It shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry.' And
for the remainder of his watch, he stood close by Uncle Ned, and read
the face of the compass as perhaps he had never read a letter from his
sweetheart.
All the time, and spurring him to the more attention, song, loud talk,
fleering laughter and the occasional popping of a cork, reached his ears
from the interior of the house; and when the port watch was relieved
at midnight, Huish and the captain appeared upon the quarter-deck with
flushed faces and uneven steps, the former laden with bottles, the
latter with two tin mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed
him in thick voices, he made no answer, they cursed him for a churl,
he paid no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He
closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker
in the cabin--not to sleep he thought--rather to think and to despair.
Yet he had scarce turned twice on his uneasy bed, before a drunken voice
hailed him in the ear, and he must go on deck again to stand the morning
watch.
The first evening set the model for those that were to follow. Two cases
of champagne scarce lasted the four-and-twenty hours, and almost the
whole was drunk by Huish and the captain. Huish seemed to thrive on the
excess; he was never sober, yet never wholly tipsy; the food and the sea
air had soon healed him of his disease, and he began to lay on flesh.
But with Davis things went worse. In the drooping, unbuttoned figure
that sprawled all day upon the lockers, tippling and reading novels;
in the fool who made of the evening watch a public carouse on the
quarter-deck, it would have been hard to recognise the vigorous seaman
of Papeete roads. He kept himself reasonably well in hand till he had
taken the sun and yawned and blotted through his calculations; but from
the moment he rolled up the chart, his hours were passed in slavish
self-indulgence or in hoggish slumber. Every other branch of his duty
was neglected, except maintaining a stern discipline about the dinner
table. Again and again Herrick would hear the cook called aft, and see
him running with fresh tins, or carrying away again a meal that had been
totally condemned. And the more the captain became sunk in drunkenness,
the more delicate his palate showed itself. Once, in the forenoon, he
had a bo'sun's chair rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers,
and went overboard with a pot of paint. 'I don't like the way this
schooner's painted,' said he, 'and I've taken a down upon her name.' But
he tired of it in half an hour, and the schooner went on her way with
an incongruous patch of colour on the stern, and the word Farallone part
obliterated and part looking through. He refused to stand either the
middle or the morning watch. It was fine-weather sailing, he said;
and asked, with a laugh, 'Who ever heard of the old man standing watch
himself?' To the dead reckoning which Herrick still tried to keep, he
would pay not the least attention nor afford the least assistance.
'What do we want of dead reckoning?' he asked. 'We get the sun all
right, don't we?'
'We mayn't get it always though,' objected Herrick. 'And you told me
yourself you weren't sure of the chronometer.'
'Oh, there ain't no flies in the chronometer!' cried Davis.
'Oblige me so far, captain,' said Herrick stiffly. 'I am anxious to keep
this reckoning, which is a part of my duty; I do not know what to allow
for current, nor how to allow for it. I am too inexperienced; and I beg
of you to help me.'
'Never discourage zealous officer,' said the captain, unrolling the
chart again, for Herrick had taken him over his day's work and while he
was still partly sober. 'Here it is: look for yourself; anything from
west to west no'the-west, and anyways from five to twenty-five miles.
That's what the A'm'ralty chart says; I guess you don't expect to get on
ahead of your own Britishers?'
'I am trying to do my duty, Captain Brown,' said Herrick, with a dark
flush, 'and I have the honour to inform you that I don't enjoy being
trifled with.'
'What in thunder do you want?' roared Davis. 'Go and look at the blamed
wake. If you're trying to do your duty, why don't you go and do it? I
guess it's no business of mine to go and stick my head over the ship's
rump? I guess it's yours. And I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellow,
I'll trouble you not to come the dude over me. You're insolent, that's
what's wrong with you. Don't you crowd me, Mr Herrick, Esquire.'
Herrick tore up his papers, threw them on the floor, and left the cabin.
'He's turned a bloomin' swot, ain't he?' sneered Huish.
'He thinks himself too good for his company, that's what ails Herrick,
Esquire,' raged the captain. 'He thinks I don't understand when he comes
the heavy swell. Won't sit down with us, won't he? won't say a civil
word? I'll serve the son of a gun as he deserves. By God, Huish, I'll
show him whether he's too good for John Davis!'
'Easy with the names, cap',' said Huish, who was always the more sober.
'Easy over the stones, my boy!'
'All right, I will. You're a good sort, Huish. I didn't take to you at
first, but I guess you're right enough. Let's open another bottle,'
said the captain; and that day, perhaps because he was excited by the
quarrel, he drank more recklessly, and by four o'clock was stretched
insensible upon the locker.
Herrick and Huish supped alone, one after the other, opposite his
flushed and snorting body. And if the sight killed Herrick's hunger, the
isolation weighed so heavily on the clerk's spirit, that he was scarce
risen from table ere he was currying favour with his former comrade.
Herrick was at the wheel when he approached, and Huish leaned
confidentially across the binnacle.
'I say, old chappie,' he said, 'you and me don't seem to be such pals
somehow.'
Herrick gave her a spoke or two in silence; his eye, as it skirted
from the needle to the luff of the foresail, passed the man by without
speculation. But Huish was really dull, a thing he could support with
difficulty, having no resources of his own. The idea of a private talk
with Herrick, at this stage of their relations, held out particular
inducements to a person of his character. Drink besides, as it renders
some men hyper-sensitive, made Huish callous. And it would almost have
required a blow to make him quit his purpose.
'Pretty business, ain't it?' he continued; 'Dyvis on the lush? Must say
I thought you gave it 'im A1 today. He didn't like it a bit; took on
hawful after you were gone.--"'Ere," says I, "'old on, easy on the
lush," I says. "'Errick was right, and you know it. Give 'im a chanst,"
I says.--"Uish," sezee, "don't you gimme no more of your jaw, or I'll
knock your bloomin' eyes out." Well, wot can I do, 'Errick? But I tell
you, I don't 'arf like it. It looks to me like the Sea Rynger over
again.'
Still Herrick was silent.
'Do you hear me speak?' asked Huish sharply. 'You're pleasant, ain't
you?'
'Stand away from that binnacle,' said Herrick.
The clerk looked at him, long and straight and black; his figure seemed
to writhe like that of a snake about to strike; then he turned on his
heel, went back to the cabin and opened a bottle of champagne. When
eight bells were cried, he slept on the floor beside the captain on the
locker; and of the whole starboard watch, only Sally Day appeared upon
the summons. The mate proposed to stand the watch with him, and let
Uncle Ned lie down; it would make twelve hours on deck, and probably
sixteen, but in this fair-weather sailing, he might safely sleep between
his tricks of wheel, leaving orders to be called on any sign of squalls.
So far he could trust the men, between whom and himself a close relation
had sprung up. With Uncle Ned he held long nocturnal conversations, and
the old man told him his simple and hard story of exile, suffering, and
injustice among cruel whites. The cook, when he found Herrick messed
alone, produced for him unexpected and sometimes unpalatable dainties,
of which he forced himself to eat. And one day, when he was forward,
he was surprised to feel a caressing hand run down his shoulder, and to
hear the voice of Sally Day crooning in his ear: 'You gootch man!' He
turned, and, choking down a sob, shook hands with the negrito. They were
kindly, cheery, childish souls. Upon the Sunday each brought forth
his separate Bible--for they were all men of alien speech even to each
other, and Sally Day communicated with his mates in English only, each
read or made believe to read his chapter, Uncle Ned with spectacles on
his nose; and they would all join together in the singing of missionary
hymns. It was thus a cutting reproof to compare the islanders and the
whites aboard the Farallone. Shame ran in Herrick's blood to remember
what employment he was on, and to see these poor souls--and even Sally
Day, the child of cannibals, in all likelihood a cannibal himself--so
faithful to what they knew of good. The fact that he was held in
grateful favour by these innocents served like blinders to his
conscience, and there were times when he was inclined, with Sally Day,
to call himself a good man. But the height of his favour was only now to
appear. With one voice, the crew protested; ere Herrick knew what they
were doing, the cook was aroused and came a willing volunteer; all hands
clustered about their mate with expostulations and caresses; and he was
bidden to lie down and take his customary rest without alarm.
'He tell you tlue,' said Uncle Ned. 'You sleep. Evely man hae he do all
light. Evely man he like you too much.'
Herrick struggled, and gave way; choked upon some trivial words of
gratitude; and walked to the side of the house, against which he leaned,
struggling with emotion.
Uncle Ned presently followed him and begged him to lie down.
'It's no use, Uncle Ned,' he replied. 'I couldn't sleep. I'm knocked
over with all your goodness.'
'Ah, no call me Uncle Ned no mo'!' cried the old man. 'No my name! My
name Taveeta, all-e-same Taveeta King of Islael. Wat for he call that
Hawaii? I think no savvy nothing--all-e-same Wise-a-mana.'
It was the first time the name of the late captain had been mentioned,
and Herrick grasped the occasion. The reader shall be spared Uncle Ned's
unwieldy dialect, and learn in less embarrassing English, the sum of
what he now communicated. The ship had scarce cleared the Golden Gates
before the captain and mate had entered on a career of drunkenness,
which was scarcely interrupted by their malady and only closed by death.
For days and weeks they had encountered neither land nor ship; and
seeing themselves lost on the huge deep with their insane conductors,
the natives had drunk deep of terror.
At length they made a low island, and went in; and Wiseman and Wishart
landed in the boat.
There was a great village, a very fine village, and plenty Kanakas in
that place; but all mighty serious; and from every here and there in
the back parts of the settlement, Taveeta heard the sounds of island
lamentation. 'I no savvy TALK that island,' said he. 'I savvy hear
um CLY. I think, Hum! too many people die here!' But upon Wiseman and
Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of
bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls
who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken
voices) in the death wail, and at last (on what they took to be
an invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a
considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the
eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came forth again with
changed faces and silent tongues; and as the press severed to make way
for them, Taveeta was able to perceive, in the deep shadow of the house,
the sick man raising from his mat a head already defeatured by disease.
The two tragic triflers fled without hesitation for their boat,
screaming on Taveeta to make haste; they came aboard with all speed
of oars, raised anchor and crowded sail upon the ship with blows and
curses, and were at sea again--and again drunk--before sunset. A week
after, and the last of the two had been committed to the deep. Herrick
asked Taveeta where that island was, and he replied that, by what he
gathered of folks' talk as they went up together from the beach, he
supposed it must be one of the Paumotus. This was in itself probable
enough, for the Dangerous Archipelago had been swept that year from east
to west by devastating smallpox; but Herrick thought it a strange course
to lie from Sydney. Then he remembered the drink.
'Were they not surprised when they made the island?' he asked.
'Wise-a-mana he say "dam! what this?"' was the reply.
'O, that's it then,' said Herrick. 'I don't believe they knew where they
were.'
'I think so too,' said Uncle Ned. 'I think no savvy. This one mo'
betta,' he added, pointing to the house where the drunken captain
slumbered: 'Take-a-sun all-e-time.'
The implied last touch completed Herrick's picture of the life and death
of his two predecessors; of their prolonged, sordid, sodden sensuality
as they sailed, they knew not whither, on their last cruise. He held but
a twinkling and unsure belief in any future state; the thought of one
of punishment he derided; yet for him (as for all) there dwelt a horror
about the end of the brutish man. Sickness fell upon him at the image
thus called up; and when he compared it with the scene in which himself
was acting, and considered the doom that seemed to brood upon the
schooner, a horror that was almost superstitious fell upon him. And
yet the strange thing was, he did not falter. He who had proved his
incapacity in so many fields, being now falsely placed amid duties
which he did not understand, without help, and it might be said without
countenance, had hitherto surpassed expectation; and even the shameful
misconduct and shocking disclosures of that night seemed but to nerve
and strengthen him. He had sold his honour; he vowed it should not be in
vain; 'it shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry,' he repeated. And
in his heart he wondered at himself. Living rage no doubt supported him;
no doubt also, the sense of the last cast, of the ships burned, of all
doors closed but one, which is so strong a tonic to the merely weak, and
so deadly a depressant to the merely cowardly.
For some time the voyage went otherwise well. They weathered Fakarava
with one board; and the wind holding well to the southward and
blowing fresh, they passed between Ranaka and Ratiu, and ran some days
north-east by east-half-east under the lee of Takume and Honden, neither
of which they made. In about 14 degrees South and between 134 and 135
degrees West, it fell a dead calm with rather a heavy sea. The captain
refused to take in sail, the helm was lashed, no watch was set, and the
Farallone rolled and banged for three days, according to observation, in
almost the same place. The fourth morning, a little before day, a breeze
sprang up and rapidly freshened. The captain had drunk hard the night
before; he was far from sober when he was roused; and when he came on
deck for the first time at half-past eight, it was plain he had already
drunk deep again at breakfast. Herrick avoided his eye; and resigned the
deck with indignation to a man more than half-seas over.
By the loud commands of the captain and the singing out of fellows at
the ropes, he could judge from the house that sail was being crowded on
the ship; relinquished his half-eaten breakfast; and came on deck again,
to find the main and the jib topsails set, and both watches and the cook
turned out to hand the staysail. The Farallone lay already far over;
the sky was obscured with misty scud; and from the windward an ominous
squall came flying up, broadening and blackening as it rose.
Fear thrilled in Herrick's vitals. He saw death hard by; and if not
death, sure ruin. For if the Farallone lived through the coming squall,
she must surely be dismasted. With that their enterprise was at an end,
and they themselves bound prisoners to the very evidence of their crime.
The greatness of the peril and his own alarm sufficed to silence him.
Pride, wrath, and shame raged without issue in his mind; and he shut his
teeth and folded his arms close.
The captain sat in the boat to windward, bellowing orders and insults,
his eyes glazed, his face deeply congested; a bottle set between his
knees, a glass in his hand half empty. His back was to the squall, and
he was at first intent upon the setting of the sail. When that was done,
and the great trapezium of canvas had begun to draw and to trail the
lee-rail of the Farallone level with the foam, he laughed out an empty
laugh, drained his glass, sprawled back among the lumber in the boat,
and fetched out a crumpled novel.
Herrick watched him, and his indignation glowed red hot. He glanced to
windward where the squall already whitened the near sea and heralded its
coming with a singular and dismal sound. He glanced at the steersman,
and saw him clinging to the spokes with a face of a sickly blue. He saw
the crew were running to their stations without orders. And it seemed
as if something broke in his brain; and the passion of anger, so long
restrained, so long eaten in secret, burst suddenly loose and shook him
like a sail. He stepped across to the captain and smote his hand heavily
on the drunkard's shoulder.
'You brute,' he said, in a voice that tottered, 'look behind you!'
'Wha's that?' cried Davis, bounding in the boat and upsetting the
champagne.
'You lost the Sea Ranger because you were a drunken sot,' said Herrick.
'Now you're going to lose the Farallone. You're going to drown here the
same way as you drowned others, and be damned. And your daughter shall
walk the streets, and your sons be thieves like their father.'
For the moment, the words struck the captain white and foolish. 'My
God!' he cried, looking at Herrick as upon a ghost; 'my God, Herrick!'
'Look behind you, then!' reiterated the assailant.
The wretched man, already partly sobered, did as he was told, and in the
same breath of time leaped to his feet. 'Down staysail!' he trumpeted.
The hands were thrilling for the order, and the great sail came with
a run, and fell half overboard among the racing foam. 'Jib
topsail-halyards! Let the stays'l be,' he said again.
But before it was well uttered, the squall shouted aloud and fell, in
a solid mass of wind and rain commingled, on the Farallone; and she
stooped under the blow, and lay like a thing dead. From the mind of
Herrick reason fled; he clung in the weather rigging, exulting; he was
done with life, and he gloried in the release; he gloried in the wild
noises of the wind and the choking onslaught of the rain; he gloried to
die so, and now, amid this coil of the elements. And meanwhile, in the
waist up to his knees in water--so low the schooner lay--the captain
was hacking at the foresheet with a pocket knife. It was a question of
seconds, for the Farallone drank deep of the encroaching seas. But the
hand of the captain had the advance; the foresail boom tore apart the
last strands of the sheet and crashed to leeward; the Farallone leaped
up into the wind and righted; and the peak and throat halyards, which
had long been let go, began to run at the same instant.
For some ten minutes more she careered under the impulse of the squall;
but the captain was now master of himself and of his ship, and all
danger at an end. And then, sudden as a trick change upon the stage, the
squall blew by, the wind dropped into light airs, the sun beamed forth
again upon the tattered schooner; and the captain, having secured the
foresail boom and set a couple of hands to the pump, walked aft, sober,
a little pale, and with the sodden end of a cigar still stuck between
his teeth even as the squall had found it. Herrick followed him; he
could scarce recall the violence of his late emotions, but he felt
there was a scene to go through, and he was anxious and even eager to go
through with it.
The captain, turning at the house end, met him face to face, and averted
his eyes. 'We've lost the two tops'ls and the stays'l,' he gabbled.
'Good business, we didn't lose any sticks. I guess you think we're all
the better without the kites.'
'That's not what I'm thinking,' said Herrick, in a voice strangely
quiet, that yet echoed confusion in the captain's mind.
'I know that,' he cried, holding up his hand. 'I know what you're
thinking. No use to say it now. I'm sober.'
'I have to say it, though,' returned Herrick.
'Hold on, Herrick; you've said enough,' said Davis. 'You've said what I
would take from no man breathing but yourself; only I know it's true.'
'I have to tell you, Captain Brown,' pursued Herrick, 'that I resign my
position as mate. You can put me in irons or shoot me, as you please; I
will make no resistance--only, I decline in any way to help or to obey
you; and I suggest you should put Mr Huish in my place. He will make a
worthy first officer to your captain, sir.' He smiled, bowed, and turned
to walk forward.
'Where are you going, Herrick?' cried the captain, detaining him by the
shoulder.
'To berth forward with the men, sir,' replied Herrick, with the same
hateful smile. 'I've been long enough aft here with you--gentlemen.
'You're wrong there,' said Davis. 'Don't you be too quick with me; there
ain't nothing wrong but the drink--it's the old story, man! Let me get
sober once, and then you'll see,' he pleaded.
'Excuse me, I desire to see no more of you,' said Herrick.
The captain groaned aloud. 'You know what you said about my children?'
he broke out.
'By rote. In case you wish me to say it you again?' asked Herrick.
'Don't!' cried the captain, clapping his hands to his ears. 'Don't make
me kill a man I care for! Herrick, if you see me put glass to my lips
again till we're ashore, I give you leave to put bullet through me;
I beg you to do it! You're the only man aboard whose carcase is worth
losing; do you think I don't know that? do you think I ever went back on
you? I always knew you were in the right of it--drunk or sober, I knew
that. What do you want?--an oath? Man, you're clever enough to see that
this is sure-enough earnest.'
'Do you mean there shall be no more drinking?' asked Herrick, 'neither
by you nor Huish? that you won't go on stealing my profits and drinking
my champagne that I gave my honour for? and that you'll attend to your
duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the
ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman,
and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what
you mean? If it is, be so good as to say it categorically.'
'You put these things in a way hard for a gentleman to swallow,' said
the captain. 'You wouldn't have me say I was ashamed of myself? Trust me
this once; I'll do the square thing, and there's my hand on it.'
'Well, I'll try it once,' said Herrick. 'Fail me again...'
'No more now!' interrupted Davis. 'No more, old man! Enough said. You've
a riling tongue when your back's up, Herrick. Just be glad we're friends
again, the same as what I am; and go tender on the raws; I'll see as you
don't repent it. We've been mighty near death this day--don't say whose
fault it was!--pretty near hell, too, I guess. We're in a mighty bad
line of life, us two, and ought to go easy with each other.'
He was maundering; yet it seemed as if he were maundering with some
design, beating about the bush of some communication that he feared to
make, or perhaps only talking against time in terror of what Herrick
might say next. But Herrick had now spat his venom; his was a kindly
nature, and, content with his triumph, he had now begun to pity. With
a few soothing words, he sought to conclude the interview, and proposed
that they should change their clothes.
'Not right yet,' said Davis. 'There's another thing I want to tell you
first. You know what you said about my children? I want to tell you why
it hit me so hard; I kind of think you'll feel bad about it too. It's
about my little Adar. You hadn't ought to have quite said that--but of
course I know you didn't know. She--she's dead, you see.'
'Why, Davis!' cried Herrick. 'You've told me a dozen times she was
alive! Clear your head, man! This must be the drink.'
'No, SIR,' said Davis. 'She's dead. Died of a bowel complaint. That was
when I was away in the brig Oregon. She lies in Portland, Maine. "Adar,
only daughter of Captain John Davis and Mariar his wife, aged five."
I had a doll for her on board. I never took the paper off'n that doll,
Herrick; it went down the way it was with the Sea Ranger, that day I was
damned.'
The Captain's eyes were fixed on the horizon, he talked with an
extraordinary softness but a complete composure; and Herrick looked upon
him with something that was almost terror.
'Don't think I'm crazy neither,' resumed Davis. 'I've all the cold sense
that I know what to do with. But I guess a man that's unhappy's like a
child; and this is a kind of a child's game of mine. I never could act
up to the plain-cut truth, you see; so I pretend. And I warn you square;
as soon as we're through with this talk, I'll start in again with
the pretending. Only, you see, she can't walk no streets,' added the
captain, 'couldn't even make out to live and get that doll!'
Herrick laid a tremulous hand upon the captain's shoulder.
'Don't do that,' cried Davis, recoiling from the touch. 'Can't you see
I'm all broken up the way it is? Come along, then; come along, old
man; you can put your trust in me right through; come along and get dry
clothes.'
They entered the cabin, and there was Huish on his knees prising open a
case of champagne.
''Vast, there!' cried the captain. 'No more of that. No more drinking on
this ship.'
'Turned teetotal, 'ave you?' inquired Hu'sh. 'I'm agreeable. About time,
eh? Bloomin' nearly lost another ship, I fancy.' He took out a bottle
and began calmly to burst the wire with the spike of a corkscrew.
'Do you hear me speak?' cried Davis.
'I suppose I do. You speak loud enough,' said Huish. 'The trouble is
that I don't care.'
Herrick plucked the captain's sleeve. 'Let him free now,' he said.
'We've had all we want this morning.'
'Let him have it then,' said the captain. 'It's his last.'
By this time the wire was open, the string was cut, the head of glided
paper was torn away; and Huish waited, mug in hand, expecting the usual
explosion. It did not follow. He eased the cork with his thumb; still
there was no result. At last he took the screw and drew it. It came out
very easy and with scarce a sound.
''Illo!'said Huish. ''Ere's a bad bottle.'
He poured some of the wine into the mug; it was colourless and still. He
smelt and tasted it.
'W'y, wot's this?' he said. 'It's water!'
If the voice of trumpets had suddenly sounded about the ship in the
midst of the sea, the three men in the house could scarcely have been
more stunned than by this incident. The mug passed round; each sipped,
each smelt of it; each stared at the bottle in its glory of gold paper
as Crusoe may have stared at the footprint; and their minds were swift
to fix upon a common apprehension. The difference between a bottle of
champagne and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one
or the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.
A second bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a
stateroom; these two were brought out, broken open, and tested. Still
with the same result: the contents were still colourless and tasteless,
and dead as the rain in a beached fishing-boat.
'Crikey!' said Huish.
'Here, let's sample the hold!' said the captain, mopping his brow with
a back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of the house, grim and
heavy-footed.
All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another
stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside
the coamings.
'Are you going to let the men know?' whispered Herrick.
'Damn the men!' said Davis. 'It's beyond that. We've got to know
ourselves.'
Three cases were sent on deck and sampled in turn; from each bottle,
as the captain smashed it with the axe, the champagne ran bubbling and
creaming.
'Go deeper, can't you?' cried Davis to the Kanakas in the hold.
The command gave the signal for a disastrous change. Case after case
came up, bottle after bottle was burst and bled mere water. Deeper
yet, and they came upon a layer where there was scarcely so much as
the intention to deceive; where the cases were no longer branded, the
bottles no longer wired or papered, where the fraud was manifest and
stared them in the face.
'Here's about enough of this foolery!' said Davis. 'Stow back the cases
in the hold, Uncle, and get the broken crockery overboard. Come with
me,' he added to his co-adventurers, and led the way back into the
cabin. _
Read next: PART I: CHAPTER 6. THE PARTNERS
Read previous: PART I: CHAPTER 4. THE YELLOW FLAG
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