Chapter XV
How I have been sleeping! This relief of renewed normality is
delicious–thanks to Miss West. Now why did not Captain West, or Mr.
Pike, both experienced men, diagnose my trouble for me? And then there
was Wada. But no; it required Miss West. Again I contemplate the
problem of woman. It is just such an incident among a million others
that keeps the thinker’s gaze fixed on woman. They truly are the mothers
and the conservers of the race.
Rail as I will at Miss West’s red-blood complacency of life, yet I must
bow my head to her life-giving to me. Practical, sensible, hard-headed,
a comfort-maker and a nest-builder, possessing all the distressing
attributes of the blind-instinctive race-mother, nevertheless I must
confess I am most grateful that she is along. Had she not been on the
Elsinore, by this time I should have been so overwrought from lack of
sleep that I would be biting my veins and howling–as mad a hatter as any
of our cargo of mad hatters. And so we come to it–the everlasting
mystery of woman. One may not be able to get along with her; yet is it
patent, as of old time, that one cannot get along without her. But,
regarding Miss West, I do entertain one fervent hope, namely, that she is
not a suffragette. That would be too much.
Captain West may be a Samurai, but he is also human. He was really a bit
fluttery this morning, in his reserved, controlled way, when he regretted
the plague of vermin I had encountered in my rooms. It seems he has a
keen sense of hospitality, and that he is my host on the Elsinore, and
that, although he is oblivious of the existence of the crew, he is not
oblivious of my comfort. By his few expressions of regret it appears
that he cannot forgive himself for his careless acceptance of the
erroneous diagnosis of my affliction. Yes; Captain West is a real human
man. Is he not the father of the slender-faced, strapping-bodied Miss
West?
“Thank goodness that’s settled,” was Miss West’s exclamation this
morning, when we met on the poop and after I had told her how gloriously
I had slept.
And then, that nightmare episode dismissed because, forsooth, for all
practical purposes–it was settled, she next said:
“Come on and see the chickens.”
And I accompanied her along the spidery bridge to the top of the ‘midship-
house, to look at the one rooster and the four dozen fat hens in the
ship’s chicken-coop.
As I accompanied her, my eyes dwelling pleasurably on that vital gait of
hers as she preceded me, I could not help reflecting that, coming down on
the tug from Baltimore, she had promised not to bother me nor require to
be entertained.
Come and see the chickens!–Oh, the sheer female possessiveness of that
simple invitation! For effrontery of possessiveness is there anything
that can exceed the nest-making, planet-populating, female, human
woman?–Come and see the chickens! Oh, well, the sailors for’ard may
be hard-bitten, but I can promise Miss West that here, aft, is one male
passenger, unmarried and never married, who is an equally hard-bitten
adventurer on the sea of matrimony. When I go over the census I remember
at least several women, superior to Miss West, who trilled their song of
sex and failed to shipwreck me.
As I read over what I have written I notice how the terminology of the
sea has stolen into my mental processes. Involuntarily I think in terms
of the sea. Another thing I notice is my excessive use of superlatives.
But then, everything on board the Elsinore is superlative. I find
myself continually combing my vocabulary in quest of just and adequate
words. Yet am I aware of failure. For example, all the words of all the
dictionaries would fail to approximate the exceeding terribleness of
Mulligan Jacobs.
But to return to the chickens. Despite every precaution, it was evident
that they had had a hard time during the past days of storm. It was
equally evident that Miss West, even during her sea-sickness, had not
neglected them. Under her directions the steward had actually installed
a small oil-stove in the big coop, and she now beckoned him up to the top
of the house as he was passing for’ard to the galley. It was for the
purpose of instructing him further in the matter of feeding them.
Where were the grits? They needed grits. He didn’t know. The sack had
been lost among the miscellaneous stores, but Mr. Pike had promised a
couple of sailors that afternoon to overhaul the lazarette.
“Plenty of ashes,” she told the steward. “Remember. And if a sailor
doesn’t clean the coop each day, you report to me. And give them only
clean food–no spoiled scraps, mind. How many eggs yesterday?”
The steward’s eyes glistened with enthusiasm as he said he had got nine
the day before and expected fully a dozen to-day.
“The poor things,” said Miss West–to me. “You’ve no idea how bad
weather reduces their laying.” She turned back upon the steward. “Mind
now, you watch and find out which hens don’t lay, and kill them first.
And you ask me each time before you kill one.”
I found myself neglected, out there on top the draughty house, while Miss
West talked chickens with the Chinese ex-smuggler. But it gave me
opportunity to observe her. It is the length of her eyes that
accentuates their steadiness of gaze–helped, of course, by the dark
brows and lashes. I noted again the warm gray of her eyes. And I began
to identify her, to locate her. She is a physical type of the best of
the womanhood of old New England. Nothing spare nor meagre, nor bred
out, but generously strong, and yet not quite what one would call robust.
When I said she was strapping-bodied I erred. I must fall back on my
other word, which will have to be the last: Miss West is vital-bodied.
That is the key-word.
When we had regained the poop, and Miss West had gone below, I ventured
my customary pleasantry with Mr. Mellaire of:
“And has O’Sullivan bought Andy Fay’s sea-boots yet?”
“Not yet, Mr. Pathurst,” was the reply, “though he nearly got them early
this morning. Come on along, sir, and I’ll show you.”
Vouchsafing no further information, the second mate led the way along the
bridge, across the ‘midship-house and the for’ard-house. From the edge
of the latter, looking down on Number One hatch, I saw two Japanese, with
sail-needles and twine, sewing up a canvas-swathed bundle that
unmistakably contained a human body.
“O’Sullivan used a razor,” said Mr. Mellaire.
“And that is Andy Fay?” I cried.
“No, sir, not Andy. That’s a Dutchman. Christian Jespersen was his name
on the articles. He got in O’Sullivan’s way when O’Sullivan went after
the boots. That’s what saved Andy. Andy was more active. Jespersen
couldn’t get out of his own way, much less out of O’Sullivan’s. There’s
Andy sitting over there.”
I followed Mr. Mellaire’s gaze, and saw the burnt-out, aged little
Scotchman squatted on a spare spar and sucking a pipe. One arm was in a
sling and his head was bandaged. Beside him squatted Mulligan Jacobs.
They were a pair. Both were blue-eyed, and both were malevolent-eyed.
And they were equally emaciated. It was easy to see that they had
discovered early in the voyage their kinship of bitterness. Andy Fay, I
knew, was sixty-three years old, although he looked a hundred; and
Mulligan Jacobs, who was only about fifty, made up for the difference by
the furnace-heat of hatred that burned in his face and eyes. I wondered
if he sat beside the injured bitter one in some sense of sympathy, or if
he were there in order to gloat.
Around the corner of the house strolled Shorty, flinging up to me his
inevitable clown-grin. One hand was swathed in bandages.
“Must have kept Mr. Pike busy,” was my comment to Mr. Mellaire.
“He was sewing up cripples about all his watch from four till eight.”
“What?” I asked. “Are there any more?”
“One more, sir, a sheeny. I didn’t know his name before, but Mr. Pike
got it–Isaac B. Chantz. I never saw in all my life at sea as many
sheenies as are on board the Elsinore right now. Sheenies don’t take
to the sea as a rule. We’ve certainly got more than our share of them.
Chantz isn’t badly hurt, but you ought to hear him whimper.”
“Where’s O’Sullivan?” I inquired.
“In the ‘midship-house with Davis, and without a mark. Mr. Pike got into
the rumpus and put him to sleep with one on the jaw. And now he’s lashed
down and talking in a trance. He’s thrown the fear of God into Davis.
Davis is sitting up in his bunk with a marlin-spike, threatening to brain
O’Sullivan if he starts to break loose, and complaining that it’s no way
to run a hospital. He’d have padded cells, straitjackets, night and day
nurses, and violent wards, I suppose–and a convalescents’ home in a
Queen Anne cottage on the poop.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Mr. Mellaire sighed. “This is the funniest voyage
and the funniest crew I’ve ever tackled. It’s not going to come to a
good end. Anybody can see that with half an eye. It’ll be dead of
winter off the Horn, and a fo’c’s’le full of lunatics and cripples to do
the work.–Just take a look at that one. Crazy as a bedbug. He’s likely
to go overboard any time.”
I followed his glance and saw Tony the Greek, the one who had sprung
overboard the first day. He had just come around the corner of the
house, and, beyond one arm in a sling, seemed in good condition. He
walked easily and with strength, a testimonial to the virtues of Mr.
Pike’s rough surgery.
My eyes kept returning to the canvas-covered body of Christian Jespersen,
and to the Japanese who sewed with sail-twine his sailor’s shroud. One
of them had his right hand in a huge wrapping of cotton and bandage.
“Did he get hurt, too?” I asked.
“No, sir. He’s the sail-maker. They’re both sail-makers. He’s a good
one, too. Yatsuda is his name. But he’s just had blood-poisoning and
lain in hospital in New York for eighteen months. He flatly refused to
let them amputate. He’s all right now, but the hand is dead, all except
the thumb and fore-finger, and he’s teaching himself to sew with his left
hand. He’s as clever a sail-maker as you’ll find at sea.”
“A lunatic and a razor make a cruel combination,” I remarked.
“It’s put five men out of commission,” Mr. Mellaire sighed. “There’s
O’Sullivan himself, and Christian Jespersen gone, and Andy Fay, and
Shorty, and the sheeny. And the voyage not started yet. And there’s
Lars with the broken leg, and Davis laid off for keeps–why, sir, we’ll
soon be that weak it’ll take both watches to set a staysail.”
Nevertheless, while I talked in a matter-of-fact way with Mr. Mellaire, I
was shocked–no; not because death was aboard with us. I have stood by
my philosophic guns too long to be shocked by death, or by murder. What
affected me was the utter, stupid bestiality of the affair. Even
murder–murder for cause–I can understand. It is comprehensible that
men should kill one another in the passion of love, of hatred, of
patriotism, of religion. But this was different. Here was killing
without cause, an orgy of blind-brutishness, a thing monstrously
irrational.
Later on, strolling with Possum on the main deck, as I passed the open
door of the hospital I heard the muttering chant of O’Sullivan, and
peeped in. There he lay, lashed fast on his back in the lower bunk,
rolling his eyes and raving. In the top bunk, directly above, lay
Charles Davis, calmly smoking a pipe. I looked for the marlin-spike.
There it was, ready to hand, on the bedding beside him.
“It’s hell, ain’t it, sir?” was his greeting. “And how am I goin’ to get
any sleep with that baboon chattering away there. He never lets up–keeps
his chin-music goin’ right along when he’s asleep, only worse. The way
he grits his teeth is something awful. Now I leave it to you, sir, is it
right to put a crazy like that in with a sick man? And I am a sick man.”
While he talked the massive form of Mr. Pike loomed beside me and halted
just out of sight of the man in the bunk. And the man talked on.
“By rights, I oughta have that lower bunk. It hurts me to crawl up here.
It’s inhumanity, that’s what it is, and sailors at sea are better
protected by the law than they used to be. And I’ll have you for a
witness to this before the court when we get to Seattle.”
Mr. Pike stepped into the doorway.
“Shut up, you damned sea-lawyer, you,” he snarled. “Haven’t you played a
dirty trick enough comin’ on board this ship in your condition? And if I
have anything more out of you . . . ”
Mr. Pike was so angry that he could not complete the threat. After
spluttering for a moment he made a fresh attempt.
“You . . . you . . . well, you annoy me, that’s what you do.”
“I know the law, sir,” Davis answered promptly. “I worked full able
seaman on this here ship. All hands can testify to that. I was aloft
from the start. Yes, sir, and up to my neck in salt water day and night.
And you had me below trimmin’ coal. I did full duty and more, until this
sickness got me–”
“You were petrified and rotten before you ever saw this ship,” Mr. Pike
broke in.
“The court’ll decide that, sir,” replied the imperturbable Davis.
“And if you go to shoutin’ off your sea-lawyer mouth,” Mr. Pike
continued, “I’ll jerk you out of that and show you what real work is.”
“An’ lay the owners open for lovely damages when we get in,” Davis
sneered.
“Not if I bury you before we get in,” was the mate’s quick, grim retort.
“And let me tell you, Davis, you ain’t the first sea-lawyer I’ve dropped
over the side with a sack of coal to his feet.”
Mr. Pike turned, with a final “Damned sea-lawyer!” and started along the
deck. I was walking behind him when he stopped abruptly.
“Mr. Pathurst.”
Not as an officer to a passenger did he thus address me. His tone was
imperative, and I gave heed.
“Mr. Pathurst. From now on the less you see aboard this ship the better.
That is all.”
And again he turned on his heel and went his way.
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