The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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Ah, I must not forget. I have learned that it was no man-interest
(in me, if you please) that brought about her sudden interest to come
on the voyage. It was for her father that she came. Something is
the matter with Captain West. At rare moments I have observed her
gazing at him with a world of solicitude and anxiety in her eyes.

I was telling an amusing story at table yesterday midday, when my
glance chanced to rest upon Miss West. She was not listening. Her
food on her fork was suspended in the air a sheer instant as she
looked at her father with all her eyes. It was a stare of fear. She
realized that I was observing, and with superb control, slowly, quite
naturally, she lowered the fork and rested it on her plate, retaining
her hold on it and retaining her father's face in her look.

But I had seen. Yes; I had seen more than that. I had seen Captain
West's face a transparent white, while his eyelids fluttered down and
his lips moved noiselessly. Then the eyelids raised, the lips set
again with their habitual discipline, and the colour slowly returned
to his face. It was as if he had been away for a time and just
returned. But I had seen, and guessed her secret.

And yet it was this same Captain West, seven hours later, who
chastened the proud sailor spirit of Mr. Pike. It was in the second
dog-watch that evening, a dark night, and the watch was pulling away
on the main deck. I had just come out of the chart-house door and
seen Captain West pace by me, hands in pockets, toward the break of
the poop. Abruptly, from the mizzen-mast, came a snap of breakage
and crash of fabric. At the same instant the men fell backward and
sprawled over the deck.

A moment of silence followed, and then Captain West's voice went out:

"What carried away, Mr. Pike?"

"The halyards, sir," came the reply out of the darkness.

There was a pause. Again Captain West's voice went out.

"Next time slack away on your sheet first."

Now Mr. Pike is incontestably a splendid seaman. Yet in this
instance he had been wrong. I have come to know him, and I can well
imagine the hurt to his pride. And more--he has a wicked, resentful,
primitive nature, and though he answered respectfully enough, "Yes,
sir," I felt safe in predicting to myself that the poor devils under
him would receive the weight of his resentment in the later watches
of the night.

They evidently did; for this morning I noted a black eye on John
Hackey, a San Francisco hoodlum, and Guido Bombini was carrying a
freshly and outrageously swollen jaw. I asked Wada about the matter,
and he soon brought me the news. Quite a bit of beating up takes
place for'ard of the deck-houses in the night watches while we of the
after-guard peacefully slumber.

Even to-day Mr. Pike is going around sullen and morose, snarling at
the men more than usual, and barely polite to Miss West and me when
we chance to address him. His replies are grunted in monosyllables,
and his face is set in superlative sourness. Miss West who is
unaware of the occurrence, laughs and calls it a "sea grouch"--a
phenomenon with which she claims large experience.

But I know Mr. Pike now--the stubborn, wonderful old sea-dog. It
will be three days before he is himself again. He takes a terrible
pride in his seamanship, and what hurts him most is the knowledge
that he was guilty of the blunder.

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.

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