CHAPTER XXI
To-day, twenty-eight days out, in the early morning, while I was drinking my coffee, still carrying the north-east trade, we crossed the line. And Charles Davis signalized the event by murdering O’Sullivan. It was Boney, the lanky splinter of a youth in Mr. Mellaire’s watch, who brought the news. The second mate and I had just arrived in the hospital room, when Mr. Pike entered.
O’Sullivan’s troubles were over. The man in the upper bunk had completed the mad, sad span of his life with the marlin-spike.
I cannot understand this Charles Davis. He sat up calmly in his bunk, and calmly lighted his pipe ere he replied to Mr. Mellaire. He certainly is not insane. Yet deliberately, in cold blood, he has murdered a helpless man.
“What’d you do it for?” Mr. Mellaire demanded.
“Because, sir,” said Charles Davis, applying a second match to his pipe, “because” – puff, puff – “he bothered my sleep.” Here he caught Mr. Pike’s glowering eye. “Because” – puff, puff – “he annoyed me. The next time” – puff, puff – “I hope better judgment will be shown in what kind of a man is put in with me. Besides” – puff, puff – “this top bunk ain’t no place for me. It hurts me to get into it” – puff, puff – “an’ I’m gem’ back to that lower bunk as soon as you get O’Sullivan out of it.”
“But what’d you do it for?” Mr. Pike snarled.
“I told you, sir, because he annoyed me. I got tired of it, an’ so, this morning, I just put him out of his misery. An’ what are you goin’ to do about it? The man’s dead, ain’t he? An’ I killed ’m in self-defence. I know the law. What right’d you to put a ravin’ lunatic in with me, an’ me sick an’ helpless?”
“By God, Davis!” the mate burst forth. “You’ll never draw your pay-day in Seattle. I’ll fix you out for this, killing a crazy lashed down in his bunk an’ harmless. You’ll follow ’m overside, my hearty.”
“If I do, you’ll hang for it, sir,” Davis retorted. He turned his cool eyes on me. “An’ I call on you, sir, to witness the threats he’s made. An’ you’ll testify to them, too, in court. An’ he’ll hang as sure as I go over the side. Oh, I know his record. He’s afraid to face a court with it. He’s been up too many a time with charges of man-killin’ an’ brutality on the high seas. An’ a man could retire for life an live off the interest of the fines he’s paid, or his owners paid for him – ”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll knock it out of your face!” Mr. Pike roared, springing toward him with clenched, up-raised fist.
Davis involuntarily shrank away. His flesh was weak, but not so his spirit. He got himself promptly in hand and struck another match.
“You can’t get my goat, sir,” he sneered, under the shadow of the impending blow. “I ain’t scared to die. A man’s got to die once anyway, an’ it’s none so hard a trick to do when you can’t help it. O’Sullivan died so easy it was amazin’. Besides, I ain’t goin’ to die. I’m goin’ to finish this voyage, an’ sue the owners when I get to Seattle. I know my rights an’ the law. An’ I got witnesses.”
Truly, I was divided between admiration for the courage of this wretched sailor and sympathy for Mr. Pike thus bearded by a sick man he could not bring himself to strike.
Nevertheless he sprang upon the man with calculated fury, gripped him between the base of the neck and the shoulders with both gnarled paws, and shook him back and forth, violently and frightfully, for a full minute. It was a wonder the man’s neck was not dislocated.
“I call on you to witness, sir,” Davis gasped at me the instant he was free.
He coughed and strangled, felt his throat, and made wry neck-movements indicative of injury.
“The marks’ll begin to show in a few minutes,” he murmured complacently as his dizziness left him and his breath came back.
This was too much for Mr. Pike, who turned and left the room, growling and cursing incoherently, deep in his throat. When I made my departure, a moment later, Davis was refilling his pipe and telling Mr. Mellaire that he’d have him up for a witness in Seattle.
* * * * *
So we have had another burial at sea. Mr. Pike was vexed by it because the Elsinore, according to sea tradition, was going too fast through the water for a proper ceremony. Thus a few minutes of the voyage were lost by backing the Elsinore’s main-topsail and deadening her way while the service was read and O’Sullivan was slid overboard with the inevitable sack of coal at his feet.
“Hope the coal holds out,” Mr. Pike grumbled morosely at me five minutes later.
* * * * *
And we sit on the poop, Miss West and I, tended on by servants, sipping afternoon tea, sewing fancy work, discussing philosophy and art, while a few feet away from us, on this tiny floating world, all the grimy, sordid tragedy of sordid, malformed, brutish life plays itself out. And Captain West, remote, untroubled, sits dreaming in the twilight cabin while the draught of wind from the crojack blows upon him through the open ports. He has no doubts, no worries. He believes in God. All is settled and clear and well as he nears his far home. His serenity is vast and enviable. But I cannot shake from my eyes that vision of him when life forsook his veins, and his mouth slacked, and his eyelids closed, while his face took on the white transparency of death.
I wonder who will be the next to finish the game and depart with a sack of coal.
“Oh, this is nothing, sir,” Mr. Mellaire remarked to me cheerfully as we strolled the poop during the first watch. “I was once on a voyage on a tramp steamer loaded with four hundred Chinks – I beg your pardon, sir – Chinese. They were coolies, contract labourers, coming back from serving their time.
“And the cholera broke out. We hove over three hundred of them overboard, sir, along with both bosuns, most of the Lascar crew, and the captain, the mate, the third mate, and the first and third engineers. The second and one white oiler was all that was left below, and I was in command on deck, when we made port. The doctors wouldn’t come aboard. They made me anchor in the outer roads and told me to heave out my dead. There was some tall buryin’ about that time, Mr. Pathurst, and they went overboard without canvas, coal, or iron. They had to. I had nobody to help me, and the Chinks below wouldn’t lift a hand.
“I had to go down myself, drag the bodies on to the slings, then climb on deck and heave them up with the donkey. And each trip I took a drink. I was pretty drunk when the job was done.”
“And you never caught it yourself?” I queried. Mr. Mellaire held up his left hand. I had often noted that the index finger was missing.
“That’s all that happened to me, sir. The old man’d had a fox-terrier like yours. And after the old man passed out the puppy got real, chummy with me. Just as I was making the hoist of the last sling-load, what does the puppy do but jump on my leg and sniff my hand. I turned to pat him, and the next I knew my other hand had slipped into the gears and that finger wasn’t there any more.
“Heavens!” I cried. “What abominable luck to come through such a terrible experience like that and then lose your finger!”
“That’s what I thought, sir,” Mr. Mellaire agreed.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Oh, just held it up and looked at it, and said ‘My goodness gracious!’ and took another drink.”
“And you didn’t get the cholera afterwards?”
“No, sir. I reckon I was so full of alcohol the germs dropped dead before they could get to me.” He considered a moment. “Candidly, Mr. Pathurst, I don’t know about that alcohol theory. The old man and the mates died drunk, and so did the third engineer. But the chief was a teetotaller, and he died, too.”
* * * * *
Never again shall I wonder that the sea is hard. I walked apart from the second mate and stared up at the magnificent fabric of the Elsinore sweeping and swaying great blotting curves of darkness across the face of the starry sky.
CHAPTER XXII
Something has happened. But nobody knows, either fore or aft, except the interested persons, and they will not say anything. Yet the ship is abuzz with rumours and guesses.
This I do know: Mr. Pike has received a fearful blow on the head. At table, yesterday, at midday, I arrived late, and, passing behind his chair, I saw a prodigious lump on top of his head. When I was seated, facing him, I noted that his eyes seemed dazed; yes, and I could see pain in them. He took no part in the conversation, ate perfunctorily, behaved stupidly at times, and it was patent that he was controlling himself with an iron hand.
And nobody dares ask him what has happened. I know I don’t dare ask him, and I am a passenger, a privileged person. This redoubtable old sea-relic has inspired me with a respect for him that partakes half of timidity and half of awe.
He acts as if he were suffering from concussion of the brain. His pain is evident, not alone in his eyes and the strained expression of his face, but by his conduct when he thinks he is unobserved. Last night, just for a breath of air and a moment’s gaze at the stars, I came out of the cabin door and stood on the main deck under the break of the poop. From directly over my head came a low and persistent groaning. My curiosity was aroused, and I retreated into the cabin, came out softly on to the poop by way of the chart-house, and strolled noiselessly for’ard in my slippers. It was Mr. Pike. He was leaning collapsed on the rail, his head resting on his arms. He was giving voice in secret to the pain that racked him. A dozen feet away he could not be heard. But, close to his shoulder, I could hear his steady, smothered groaning that seemed to take the form of a chant. Also, at regular intervals, he would mutter:
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” Always he repeated the phrase five times, then returned to his groaning. I stole away as silently as I had come.
Yet he resolutely stands his watches and performs all his duties of chief officer. Oh, I forgot. Miss West dared to quiz him, and he replied that he had a toothache, and that if it didn’t get better he’d pull it out.
Wada cannot learn what has happened. There were no eye-witnesses. He says that the Asiatic clique, discussing the affair in the cook’s room, thinks the three gangsters are responsible. Bert Rhine is carrying a lame shoulder. Nosey Murphy is limping as from some injury in the hips. And Kid Twist has been so badly beaten that he has not left his bunk for two days. And that is all the data to build on. The gangsters are as close-mouthed as Mr. Pike. The Asiatic clique has decided that murder was attempted and that all that saved the mate was his hard skull.
Last evening, in the second dog-watch, I got another proof that Captain West is not so oblivious of what goes on aboard the Elsinore as he seems. I had gone for’ard along the bridge to the mizzen-mast, in the shadow of which I was leaning. From the main deck, in the alley-way between the ’midship-house and the rail, came the voices of Bert Rhine, Nosey Murphy, and Mr. Mellaire. It was not ship’s work. They were having a friendly, even sociable chat, for their voices hummed genially, and now and again one or another laughed, and sometimes all laughed.
I remembered Wada’s reports on this unseamanlike intimacy of the second mate with the gangsters, and tried to make out the nature of the conversation. But the gangsters were low-voiced, and all I could catch was the tone of friendliness and good-nature.
Suddenly, from the poop, came Captain West’s voice. It was the voice, not of the Samurai riding the storm, but of the Samurai calm and cold. It was clear, soft, and mellow as the mellowest bell ever cast by eastern artificers of old time to call worshippers to prayer. I know I slightly chilled to it – it was so exquisitely sweet and yet as passionless as the ring of steel on a frosty night. And I knew the effect on the men beneath me was electrical. I could feel them stiffen and chill to it as I had stiffened and chilled. And yet all he said was:
“Mr. Mellaire.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mr. Mellaire, after a moment of tense silence.
“Come aft here,” came Captain West’s voice.
I heard the second mate move along the deck beneath me and stop at the foot of the poop-ladder.
“Your place is aft on the poop, Mr. Mellaire,” said the cold, passionless voice.
“Yes, sir,” answered the second mate.
That was all. Not another word was spoken. Captain West resumed his stroll on the weather side of the poop, and Mr. Mellaire, ascending the ladder, went to pacing up and down the lee side.
I continued along the bridge to the forecastle head and purposely remained there half an hour ere I returned to the cabin by way of the main deck. Although I did not analyze my motive, I knew I did not desire any one to know that I had overheard the occurrence.
* * * * *
I have made a discovery. Ninety per cent. of our crew is brunette. Aft, with the exception of Wada and the steward, who are our servants, we are all blonds. What led me to this discovery was Woodruff’s Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, which I am just reading. Major Woodruff’s thesis is that the white-skinned, blue-eyed Aryan, born to government and command, ever leaving his primeval, overcast and foggy home, ever commands and governs the rest of the world and ever perishes because of the too-white light he encounters. It is a very tenable hypothesis, and will bear looking into.
But to return. Every one of us who sits aft in the high place is a blond Aryan. For’ard, leavened with a ten per cent, of degenerate blonds, the remaining ninety per cent, of the slaves that toil for us are brunettes. They will not perish. According to Woodruff, they will inherit the earth, not because of their capacity for mastery and government, but because of their skin-pigmentation which enables their tissues to resist the ravages of the sun.
And I look at the four of us at table – Captain West, his daughter, Mr. Pike, and myself – all fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and perishing, yet mastering and commanding, like our fathers before us, to the end of our type on the earth. Ah, well, ours is a lordly history, and though we may be doomed to pass, in our time we shall have trod on the faces of all peoples, disciplined them to obedience, taught them government, and dwelt in the palaces we have compelled them by the weight of our own right arms to build for us.
The Elsinore depicts this in miniature. The best of the food and all spacious and beautiful accommodation is ours. For’ard is a pig-sty and a slave-pen.
As a king, Captain West sits above all. As a captain of soldiers, Mr. Pike enforces his king’s will. Miss West is a princess of the royal house. And I? Am I not an honourable, noble-lineaged pensioner on the deeds and achievements of my father, who, in his day, compelled thousands of the lesser types to the building of the fortune I enjoy?
CHAPTER XXIII
The north-west trade carried us almost into the south-east trade, and then left us for several days to roll and swelter in the doldrums.
During this time I have discovered that I have a genius for rifle-shooting. Mr. Pike swore I must have had long practice; and I confess I was myself startled by the ease of the thing. Of course, it’s the knack; but one must be so made, I suppose, in order to be able to acquire the knack.
By the end of half an hour, standing on the heaving deck and shooting at bottles floating on the rolling swell, I found that I broke each bottle at the first shot. The supply of empty bottles giving out, Mr. Pike was so interested that he had the carpenter saw me a lot of small square blocks of hard wood. These were more satisfactory. A well-aimed shot threw them out of the water and spinning into the air, and I could use a single block until it had drifted out of range. In an hour’s time I could, shooting quickly and at short range, empty my magazine at a block and hit it nine times, and, on occasion, ten times, out of eleven.
I might not have judged my aptitude as unusual, had I not induced Miss West and Wada to try their hands. Neither had luck like mine. I finally persuaded Mr. Pike, and he went behind the wheel-house so that none of the crew might see how poor a shot he was. He was never able to hit the mark, and was guilty of the most ludicrous misses.
“I never could get the hang of rifle-shooting,” he announced disgustedly, “but when it comes to close range with a gat I’m right there. I guess I might as well overhaul mine and limber it up.”
He went below and came back with a huge ’44 automatic pistol and a handful of loaded clips.
“Anywhere from right against the body up to ten or twelve feet away, holding for the stomach, it’s astonishing, Mr. Pathurst, what you can do with a weapon like this. Now you can’t use a rifle in a mix-up. I’ve been down and under, with a bunch giving me the boot, when I turned loose with this. Talk about damage! It ranged them the full length of their bodies. One of them’d just landed his brogans on my face when I let’m have it. The bullet entered just above his knee, smashed the collarbone, where it came out, and then clipped off an ear. I guess that bullet’s still going. It took more than a full-sized man to stop it. So I say, give me a good handy gat when something’s doing.”
“Ain’t you afraid you’ll use all your ammunition up?” he asked anxiously half an hour later, as I continued to crack away with my new toy.
He was quite reassured when I told him Wada had brought along fifty thousand rounds for me.
In the midst of the shooting, two sharks came swimming around. They were quite large, Mr. Pike said, and he estimated their length at fifteen feet. It was Sunday morning, so that the crew, except for working the ship, had its time to itself, and soon the carpenter, with a rope for a fish-line and a great iron hook baited with a chunk of salt pork the size of my head, captured first one, and then the other, of the monsters. They were hoisted in on the main deck. And then I saw a spectacle of the cruelty of the sea.
The full crew gathered about with sheath knives, hatchets, clubs, and big butcher knives borrowed from the galley. I shall not give the details, save that they gloated and lusted, and roared and bellowed their delight in the atrocities they committed. Finally, the first of the two fish was thrown back into the ocean with a pointed stake thrust into its upper and lower jaws so that it could not close its mouth. Inevitable and prolonged starvation was the fate thus meted out to it.
“I’ll show you something, boys,” Andy Fay cried, as they prepared to handle the second shark.
The Maltese Cockney had been a most capable master of ceremonies with the first one. More than anything else, I think, was I hardened against these brutes by what I saw them do. In the end, the maltreated fish thrashed about the deck entirely eviscerated. Nothing remained but the mere flesh-shell of the creature, yet it would not die. It was amazing the life that lingered when all the vital organs were gone. But more amazing things were to follow.
Mulligan Jacobs, his arms a butcher’s to the elbows, without as much as “by your leave,” suddenly thrust a hunk of meat into my hand. I sprang back, startled, and dropped it to the deck, while a gleeful howl went up from the two-score men. I was shamed, despite myself. These brutes held me in little respect; and, after all, human nature is so strange a compound that even a philosopher dislikes being held in disesteem by the brutes of his own species.
I looked at what I had dropped. It was the heart of the shark, and as I looked, there under my eyes, on the scorching deck where the pitch oozed from the seams, the heart pulsed with life.
And I dared. I would not permit these animals to laugh at any fastidiousness of mine. I stooped and picked up the heart, and while I concealed and conquered my qualms I held it in my hand and felt it beat in my hand.
At any rate, I had won a mild victory over Mulligan Jacobs; for he abandoned me for the more delectable diversion of torturing the shark that would not die. For several minutes it had been lying quite motionless. Mulligan Jacobs smote it a heavy blow on the nose with the flat of a hatchet, and as the thing galvanized into life and flung its body about the deck the little venomous man screamed in ecstasy:
“The hooks are in it! – the hooks are in it! – and burnin’ hot!”
He squirmed and writhed with fiendish delight, and again he struck it on the nose and made it leap.
This was too much, and I beat a retreat – feigning boredom, or cessation of interest, of course; and absently carrying the still throbbing heart in my hand.
As I came upon the poop I saw Miss West, with her sewing basket, emerging from the port door of the chart-house. The deck-chairs were on that side, so I stole around on the starboard side of the chart-house in order to fling overboard unobserved the dreadful thing I carried. But, drying on the surface in the tropic heat and still pulsing inside, it stuck to my hand, so that it was a bad cast. Instead of clearing the railing, it struck on the pin-rail and stuck there in the shade, and as I opened the door to go below and wash my hands, with a last glance I saw it pulse where it had fallen.
When I came back it was still pulsing. I heard a splash overside from the waist of the ship, and knew the carcass had been flung overboard. I did not go around the chart-house and join Miss West, but stood enthralled by the spectacle of that heart that beat in the tropic heat.
Boisterous shouts from the sailors attracted my attention. They had all climbed to the top of the tall rail and were watching something outboard. I followed their gaze and saw the amazing thing. That long-eviscerated shark was not dead. It moved, it swam, it thrashed about, and ever it strove to escape from the surface of the ocean. Sometimes it swam down as deep as fifty or a hundred feet, and then, still struggling to escape the surface, struggled involuntarily to the surface. Each failure thus to escape fetched wild laughter from the men. But why did they laugh? The thing was sublime, horrible, but it was not humorous. I leave it to you. What is there laughable in the sight of a pain-distraught fish rolling helplessly on the surface of the sea and exposing to the sun all its essential emptiness?
I was turning away, when renewed shouting drew my gaze. Half a dozen other sharks had appeared, smaller ones, nine or ten feet long. They attacked their helpless comrade. They tore him to pieces they destroyed him, devoured him. I saw the last shred of him disappear down their maws. He was gone, disintegrated, entombed in the living bodies of his kind, and already entering into the processes of digestion. And yet, there, in the shade on the pin-rail, that unbelievable and monstrous heart beat on.