THE CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE
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 a 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 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 some one 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 slack?
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 dessay 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.
“O, 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 a 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 lamp-lit 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 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.”
“O, 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’thewest,
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 to-day.
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 ’ear 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 hea
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
small-pox; 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, ‘damn! 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 he 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 depressent 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° south, and between 134° and 135° 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
top-sail 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 fore-sheet
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 lee-ward; 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 to 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 a glass to my lips again till we’re
ashore, I give you leave to put a 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 prizing 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 Huish. “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 gilded 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
of the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.
A second bottle was broached.
There were two cases standing ready in a state-room;
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.