THE PARTNERS
Each took a side of the fixed table;
it was the first time they had sat down at it together;
but now all sense of incongruity all memory of differences
was quite swept away by the presence of the common
ruin.
“Gentlemen,” said the
captain, after a pause, and with very much the air
of a chairman opening a board meeting, “we’re
sold.”
Huish broke out in laughter.
“Well, if this ain’t the ’ighest
old rig!” he cried. “And Dyvis ‘ere,
who thought he had got up so bloomin’ early
in the mornin’! We’ve stolen a cargo
of spring water! O, my crikey!” and he
squirmed with mirth.
The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.
“Here’s Old Man Destiny
again,” said he to Herrick, “but this time
I guess he’s kicked the door right in.”
Herrick only shook his head.
“O Lord, it’s rich!”
laughed Huish. “It would really be a scrumptious
lark if it ’ad ’appened to somebody else!
And what are we to do next? O, my eye! with this
bloomin’ schooner, too?”
“That’s the trouble,”
said Davis. “There’s only one thing
certain: it’s no use carting this old glass
and ballast to Peru. No, sir, we’re
in a hole.”
“O my, and the merchant!”
cried Huish; “the man that made this shipment!
He’ll get the news by the mail brigantine; and
he’ll think of course we’re making straight
for Sydney.”
“Yes, he’ll be a sick
merchant,” said the captain. “One
thing: this explains the Kanaka crew. If
you’re going to lose a ship, I would ask no
better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there’s
one thing it don’t explain; it don’t explain
why she came down Tahitiways.”
“W’y, to lose her, you byby!” said
Huish.
“A lot you know,” said
the captain. “Nobody wants to lose a schooner;
they want to lose her on her course, you skeericks!
You seem to think underwriters haven’t got enough
sense to come in out of the rain.”
“Well,” said Herrick,
“I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came so
far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned.
It seems these two unhappy devils, Wiseman and Wishart,
were drunk on the champagne from the beginning and
died drunk at the end.”
The captain looked on the table.
“They lay in their two bunks,
or sat here in this damned house,” he pursued,
with rising agitation, “filling their skins with
the accursed stuff, till sickness took them.
As they sickened and the fever rose, they drank the
more. They lay here howling and groaning, drunk
and dying, all in one. They didn’t know
where they were; they didn’t care. They
didn’t even take the sun, it seems.”
“Not take the sun?” cried
the captain, looking up. “Sacred Billy!
what a crowd!”
“Well, it don’t matter
to Joe!” said Huish. “Wot are Wiseman
and t’other buffer to us?”
“A good deal, too,” said
the captain. “We’re their heirs, I
guess.”
“It is a great inheritance,” said Herrick.
“Well, I don’t know about
that,” returned Davis. “Appears to
me as if it might be worse. ’Tain’t
worth what the cargo would have been, of course, at
least not money down. But I’ll tell you
what it appears to figure up to. Appears to me
as if it amounted to about the bottom dollar of the
man in ’Frisco.”
“’Old on,” said
Huish. “Give a fellow time; ’ow’s
this, umpire?”
“Well, my sons,” pursued
the captain, who seemed to have recovered his assurance,
“Wiseman and Wishart were to be paid for casting
away this old schooner and its cargo. We’re
going to cast away the schooner right enough; and
I’ll make it my private business to see that
we get paid. What were W. and W. to get?
That’s more’n I can tell. But W. and
W. went into this business themselves, they were on
the crook. Now we’re on the square,
we only stumbled into it; and that merchant
has just got to squeal, and I’m the man to see
that he squeals good. No, sir! there’s
some stuffing to this Farallone racket after
all.”
“Go it, cap’!” cried
Huish. “Yoicks! Forrard! ’Old
’ard! There’s your style for the
money! Blow me if I don’t prefer this to
the hother.”
“I do not understand,”
said Herrick. “I have to ask you to excuse
me; I do not understand.”
“Well, now, see here, Herrick,”
said Davis. “I’m going to have a word
with you anyway upon a different matter, and it’s
good that Huish should hear it too. We’re
done with this boozing business, and we ask your pardon
for it right here and now. We have to thank you
for all you did for us while we were making hogs of
ourselves; you’ll find me turn-to all right
in future; and as for the wine, which I grant we stole
from you, I’ll take stock and see you paid for
it. That’s good enough, I believe.
But what I want to point out to you is this. The
old game was a risky game. The new game’s
as safe as running a Vienna bakery. We just put
this Farallone before the wind, and run till
we’re well to looard of our port of departure,
and reasonably well up with some other place where
they have an American consul. Down goes the Farallone,
and good-bye to her! A day or so in the boat;
the consul packs us home, at Uncle Sam’s expense,
to ’Frisco; and if that merchant don’t
put the dollars down, you come to me!”
“But I thought ”
began Herrick; and then broke out: “O, let’s
get on to Peru!”
“Well, if you’re going
to Peru for your health, I won’t say no!”
replied the captain. “But for what other
blame shadow of a reason you should want to go there
gets me clear. We don’t want to go there
with this cargo; I don’t know as old bottles
is a lively article anywheres; leastways, I’ll
go my bottom cent, it ain’t Peru. It was
always a doubt if we could sell the schooner; I never
rightly hoped to, and now I’m sure she ain’t
worth a hill of beans; what’s wrong with her
I don’t know; I only know it’s something,
or she wouldn’t be here with this truck in her
inside. Then again, if we lose her, and land in
Peru, where are we? We can’t declare the
loss, or how did we get to Peru? In that case
the merchant can’t touch the insurance; most
likely he’ll go bust; and don’t you think
you see the three of us on the beach of Callao?”
“There’s no extradition there,”
said Herrick.
“Well, my son, and we want to
be extraded,” said the captain. “What’s
our point? We want to have a consul extrade
us as far as San Francisco and that merchant’s
office door. My idea is that Samoa would be found
an eligible business centre. It’s dead
before the wind; the States have a consul there, and
’Frisco steamers call, so’s we could skip
right back and interview the merchant.”
“Samoa?” said Herrick.
“It will take us for ever to get there.”
“O, with a fair wind!” said the captain.
“No trouble about the log, eh?” asked
Huish.
“No, sir,” said
Davis. “Light airs and baffling winds.
Squalls and calms. D.R.: five miles.
No obs. Pumps attended. And fill in the barometer
and thermometer off of last year’s trip.
’Never saw such a voyage,’ says you to
the consul. ‘Thought I was going to run
short...’” He stopped in mid career. “’Say,”
he began again, and once more stopped. “Beg
your pardon, Herrick,” he added with undisguised
humility, “but did you keep the run of the stores?”
“Had I been told to do so it
should have been done, as the rest was done, to the
best of my little ability,” said Herrick.
“As it was, the cook helped himself to what
he pleased.”
Davis looked at the table.
“I drew it rather fine, you
see,” he said at last. “The great
thing was to clear right out of Papeete before the
consul could think better of it. Tell you what:
I guess I’ll take stock.”
And he rose from the table and disappeared
with a lamp in the lazarette.
“’Ere’s another screw loose,”
observed Huish.
“My man,” said Herrick,
with a sudden gleam of animosity, “it is still
your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?”
“You come the ’eavy swell,
don’t you, ducky?” said Huish. “Stand
away from that binnacle. Surely your w’eel,
my man. Yah.”
He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and
strolled into the waist with his hands in his pockets.
In a surprisingly short time the captain
reappeared; he did not look at Herrick, but called
Huish back and sat down.
“Well,” he began, “I’ve
taken stock roughly.” He paused
as if for somebody to help him out; and none doing
so, both gazing on him instead with manifest anxiety,
he yet more heavily resumed: “Well, it won’t
fight. We can’t do it; that’s the
bed-rock. I’m as sorry as what you can
be, and sorrier. But the game’s up.
We can’t look near Samoa. I don’t
know as we could get to Peru.”
“Wot-ju mean?” asked Huish brutally.
“I can’t ’most tell
myself,” replied the captain. “I drew
it fine; I said I did; but what’s been going
on here gets me! Appears as if the devil had
been around. That cook must be the holiest kind
of fraud. Only twelve days too! Seems like
craziness. I’ll own up square to one thing:
I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour.
But the rest my land! I’ll never
understand it! There’s been more waste on
this twopenny ship than what there is to an Atlantic
Liner.” He stole a glance at his companions:
nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark faces;
and he had recourse to rage. “You wait
till I interview that cook!” he roared, and
smote the table with his fist. “I’ll
interview the son of a gun so’s he’s never
been spoken to before. I’ll put a bead upon
the !”
“You will not lay a finger on
the man,” said Herrick. “The fault
is yours, and you know it. If you turn a savage
loose in your storeroom, you know what to expect.
I will not allow the man to be molested.”
It is hard to say how Davis might
have taken this defiance; but he was diverted to a
fresh assailant.
“Well,” drawled Huish,
“you’re a plummy captain, ain’t you?
You’re a blooming captain! Don’t
you set up any of your chat to me, John Dyvis:
I know you now; you ain’t any more use than
a blooming dawl! O, you ’don’t know,’
don’t you? O, it ‘gets you,’
do it? O, I dessay! W’y, weren’t
you ’owling for fresh tins every blessed day?
’Ow often ’ave I ’eard you
send the ‘olé bloomin’ dinner off
and tell the man to chuck it in the swill-tub?
And breakfast? O, my crikey! breakfast for ten,
and you ‘ollerin’ for more! And now
you ’can’t ‘most tell’!
Blow me if it ain’t enough to make a man write
an insultin’ letter to Gawd! You dror it
mild, John Dyvis: don’t ’andle me;
I’m dyngerous.”
Davis sat like one bemused; it might
even have been doubted if he heard, but the voice
of the clerk rang about the cabin like that of a cormorant
among the ledges of the cliff.
“That will do, Huish,” said Herrick.
“O, so you tyke his part, do
you? you stuck-up, sneerin’ snob. Tyke it
then. Come on, the pair of you. But as for
John Dyvis, let him look out! He struck me the
first night aboard, and I never took a blow yet but
wot I gave as good. Let him knuckle down on his
marrow-bones and beg my pardon. That’s
my last word.”
“I stand by the captain,”
said Herrick. “That makes us two to one,
both good men; and the crew will all follow me.
I hope I shall die very soon; but I have not the least
objection to killing you before I go. I should
prefer it so; I should do it with no more remorse than
winking. Take care take care you
little cad!”
The animosity with which these words
were uttered was so marked in itself, and so remarkable
in the man who uttered them, that Huish stared, and
even the humiliated Davis reared up his head and gazed
at his defender. As for Herrick, the successive
agitations and disappointments of the day had left
him wholly reckless; he was conscious of a pleasant
glow, an agreeable excitement; his head seemed empty,
his eyeballs burned as he turned them, his throat was
dry as a biscuit; the least dangerous man by nature,
except in so far as the weak are always dangerous,
at that moment he was ready to slay or to be slain
with equal unconcern.
Here at least was the gage thrown
down, and battle offered; he who should speak next
would bring the matter to an issue there and then;
all knew it to be so and hung back; and for many seconds
by the cabin clock the trio sat motionless and silent.
Then came an interruption, welcome as the flowers
in May.
“Land ho!” sang out a voice on deck.
“Land a weatha bow!”
“Land!” cried Davis, springing
to his feet. “What’s this? There
ain’t no land here.”
And as men may run from the chamber
of a murdered corpse, the three ran forth out of the
house and left their quarrel behind them undecided.
The sky shaded down at the sea-level
to the white of opals; the sea itself, insolently,
inkily blue, drew all about them the uncompromising
wheel of the horizon. Search it as they pleased,
not even the practised eye of Captain Davis could
descry the smallest interruption. A few filmy
clouds were slowly melting overhead; and about the
schooner, as around the only point of interest, a
tropic bird, white as a snow-flake, hung, and circled,
and displayed, as it turned, the long vermilion feather
of its tail. Save the sea and the heaven, that
was all.
“Who sang out land?” asked
Davis. “If there’s any boy playing
funny-dog with me, I’ll teach him skylarking!”
But Uncle Ned contentedly pointed
to a part of the horizon where a greenish, filmy iridescence
could be discerned floating like smoke on the pale
heavens.
Davis applied his glass to it, and
then looked at the Kanaka. “Call that land?”
said he. “Well, it’s more than I do.”
“One time long ago,” said
Uncle Ned, “I see Anaa all-e-same that, four
five hours befo’ we come up. Capena he say
sun go down, sun go up again; he say lagoon all-e-same
milla.”
“All-e-same what?” asked Davis.
“Milla, sah,” said Uncle Ned.
“O, ah! mirror,” said
Davis. “I see; reflection from the lagoon.
Well, you know, it is just possible, though it’s
strange I never heard of it. Here, let’s
look at the chart.”
They went back to the cabin, and found
the position of the schooner well to windward of the
archipelago in the midst of a white field of paper.
“There! you see for yourselves,” said
Davis.
“And yet I don’t know,”
said Herrick; “I somehow think there’s
something in it. I’ll tell you one thing
too, captain: that’s all right about the
reflection; I heard it in Papeete.”
“Fetch up that Findlay, then!”
said Davis. “I’ll try it all ways.
An island wouldn’t come amiss the way we’re
fixed.”
The bulky volume was handed up to
him, broken-backed as is the way with Findlay; and
he turned to the place and began to run over the text,
muttering to himself and turning over the pages with
a wetted finger.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed.
“How’s this?” And he read aloud:
“’New Island. According to
M. Delille this island, which from private interests
would remain unknown, lies, it is said, in la°
49’ 10’’ S., lon° 6’
W. In addition to the position above given, Commander
Matthews, H.M.S. Scorpion, states that an island
exists in la° 0’ S., lon° 16’
W. This must be the same, if such an island exists,
which is very doubtful, and totally disbelieved in
by South Sea traders.’”
“Golly!” said Huish.
“It’s rather in the conditional mood,”
said Herrick.
“It’s anything you please,”
cried Davis, “only there it is! That’s
our place, and don’t you make any mistake.”
“‘Which from private interests
would remain unknown,’” read Herrick,
over his shoulder. “What may that mean?”
“It should mean pearls,”
said Davis. “A pearling island the Government
don’t know about. That sounds like real
estate. Or suppose it don’t mean anything.
Suppose it’s just an island; I guess we could
fill up with fish, and cocoa-nuts, and native stuff,
and carry out the Samoa scheme hand over fist.
How long did he say it was before they raised Anaa?
Five hours, I think?”
“Four or five,” said Herrick.
Davis stepped to the door. “What
breeze had you that time you made Anaa, Uncle Ned?”
said he.
“Six or seven knots,” was the reply.
“Thirty or thirty-five miles,”
said Davis. “High time we were shortening
sail, then. If it is an island, we don’t
want to be butting our head against it in the dark;
and if it isn’t an island, we can get through
it just as well by daylight. Ready about!”
he roared.
And the schooner’s head was
laid for that elusive glimmer in the sky, which began
already to pale in lustre and diminish in size, as
the stain of breath vanishes from a window pane.
At the same time she was reefed close down.