The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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Boisterous shouts from the sailors attracted my attention. They had
all climbed to the top of the tall rail and were watching something
outboard. I followed their gaze and saw the amazing thing. That
long-eviscerated shark was not dead. It moved, it swam, it thrashed
about, and ever it strove to escape from the surface of the ocean.
Sometimes it swam down as deep as fifty or a hundred feet, and then,
still struggling to escape the surface, struggled involuntarily to
the surface. Each failure thus to escape fetched wild laughter from
the men. But why did they laugh? The thing was sublime, horrible,
but it was not humorous. I leave it to you. What is there laughable
in the sight of a pain-distraught fish rolling helplessly on the
surface of the sea and exposing to the sun all its essential
emptiness?

I was turning away, when renewed shouting drew my gaze. Half a dozen
other sharks had appeared, smaller ones, nine or ten feet long. They
attacked their helpless comrade. They tore him to pieces they
destroyed him, devoured him. I saw the last shred of him disappear
down their maws. He was gone, disintegrated, entombed in the living
bodies of his kind, and already entering into the processes of
digestion. And yet, there, in the shade on the pin-rail, that
unbelievable and monstrous heart beat on.

CHAPTER XXIV

The voyage is doomed to disaster and death. I know Mr. Pike, now,
and if ever he discovers the identity of Mr. Mellaire, murder will be
done. Mr. Mellaire is not Mr. Mellaire. He is not from Georgia. He
is from Virginia. His name is Waltham--Sidney Waltham. He is one of
the Walthams of Virginia, a black sheep, true, but a Waltham. Of
this I am convinced, just as utterly as I am convinced that Mr. Pike
will kill him if he learns who he is.

Let me tell how I have discovered all this. It was last night,
shortly before midnight, when I came up on the poop to enjoy a whiff
of the south-east trades in which we are now bowling along, close-
hauled in order to weather Cape San Roque. Mr. Pike had the watch,
and I paced up and down with him while he told me old pages of his
life. He has often done this, when not "sea-grouched," and often he
has mentioned with pride--yes, with reverence--a master with whom he
sailed five years. "Old Captain Somers," he called him--"the finest,
squarest, noblest man I ever sailed under, sir."

Well, last night our talk turned on lugubrious subjects, and Mr.
Pike, wicked old man that he is, descanted on the wickedness of the
world and on the wickedness of the man who had murdered Captain
Somers.

"He was an old man, over seventy years old," Mr. Pike went on. "And
they say he'd got a touch of palsy--I hadn't seen him for years. You
see, I'd had to clear out from the coast because of trouble. And
that devil of a second mate caught him in bed late at night and beat
him to death. It was terrible. They told me about it. Right in San
Francisco, on board the Jason Harrison, it happened, eleven years
ago.

"And do you know what they did? First, they gave the murderer life,
when he should have been hanged. His plea was insanity, from having
had his head chopped open a long time before by a crazy sea-cook.
And when he'd served seven years the governor pardoned him. He
wasn't any good, but his people were a powerful old Virginian family,
the Walthams--I guess you've heard of them--and they brought all
kinds of pressure to bear. His name was Sidney Waltham."

At this moment the warning bell, a single stroke fifteen minutes
before the change of watch, rang out from the wheel and was repeated
by the look-out on the forecastle head. Mr. Pike, under his stress
of feeling, had stopped walking, and we stood at the break of the
poop. As chance would have it, Mr. Mellaire was a quarter of an hour
ahead of time, and he climbed the poop-ladder and stood beside us
while the mate concluded his tale.

"I didn't mind it," Mr. Pike continued, "as long as he'd got life and
was serving his time. But when they pardoned him out after only
seven years I swore I'd get him. And I will. I don't believe in God
or devil, and it's a rotten crazy world anyway; but I do believe in
hunches. And I know I'm going to get him."

"What will you do?" I queried.

"Do?" Mr. Pike's voice was fraught with surprise that I should not
know. "Do? Well, what did he do to old Captain Somers? Yet he's
disappeared these last three years now. I've heard neither hide nor
hair of him. But he's a sailor, and he'll drift back to the sea, and
some day . . . "

In the illumination of a match with which the second mate was
lighting his pipe I saw Mr. Pike's gorilla arms and huge clenched
paws raised to heaven, and his face convulsed and working. Also, in
that brief moment of light, I saw that the second mate's hand which
held the match was shaking.

"And I ain't never seen even a photo of him," Mr. Pike added. "But
I've got a general idea of his looks, and he's got a mark
unmistakable. I could know him by it in the dark. All I'd have to
do is feel it. Some day I'll stick my fingers into that mark."

"What did you say, sir, was the captain's name?" Mr. Mellaire asked
casually.

"Somers--old Captain Somers," Mr. Pike answered.

Mr. Mellaire repeated the name aloud several times, and then
hazarded:

"Didn't he command the Lammermoor thirty years ago?"

"That's the man."

"I thought I recognized him. I lay at anchor in a ship next to his
in Table Bay that time ago."

"Oh, the wickedness of the world, the wickedness of the world," Mr.
Pike muttered as he turned and strode away.

I said good-night to the second mate and had started to go below,
when he called to me in a low voice, "Mr. Pathurst!"

I stopped, and then he said, hurriedly and confusedly:

"Never mind, sir . . . I beg your pardon . . . I--I changed my mind."

Below, lying in my bunk, I found myself unable to read. My mind was
bent on returning to what had just occurred on deck, and, against my
will, the most gruesome speculations kept suggesting themselves.

And then came Mr. Mellaire. He had slipped down the booby hatch into
the big after-room and thence through the hallway to my room. He
entered noiselessly, on clumsy tiptoes, and pressed his finger
warningly to his lips. Not until he was beside my bunk did he speak,
and then it was in a whisper.

"I beg your pardon, sir, Mr. Pathurst . . . I--I beg your pardon;
but, you see, sir, I was just passing, and seeing you awake I . . . I
thought it would not inconvenience you to . . . you see, I thought I
might just as well prefer a small favour . . . seeing that I would
not inconvenience you, sir . . . I . . . I . . . "

I waited for him to proceed, and in the pause that ensued, while he
licked his dry lips with his tongue, the thing ambushed in his skull
peered at me through his eyes and seemed almost on the verge of
leaping out and pouncing upon me.

"Well, sir," he began again, this time more coherently, "it's just a
little thing--foolish on my part, of course--a whim, so to say--but
you will remember, near the beginning of the voyage, I showed you a
scar on my head . . . a really small affair, sir, which I contracted
in a misadventure. It amounts to a deformity, which it is my fancy
to conceal. Not for worlds, sir, would I care to have Miss West, for
instance, know that I carried such a deformity. A man is a man, sir-
-you understand--and you have not spoken of it to her?"

"No," I replied. "It just happens that I have not."

"Nor to anybody else?--to, say, Captain West?--or, say, Mr. Pike?"

"No, I haven't mentioned it to anybody," I averred.

He could not conceal the relief he experienced. The perturbation
went out of his face and manner, and the ambushed thing drew back
deeper into the recess of his skull.

"The favour, sir, Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will
not mention that little matter to anybody. I suppose" (he smiled,
and his voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part--you
understand, I am sure."

I nodded, and made a restless movement with my book as evidence that
I desired to resume my reading.

"I can depend upon you for that, Mr. Pathurst?" His whole voice and
manner had changed. It was practically a command, and I could almost
see fangs, bared and menacing, sprouting in the jaws of that thing I
fancied dwelt behind his eyes.

"Certainly," I answered coldly.

"Thank you, sir--I thank you," he said, and, without more ado,
tiptoed from the room.

Of course I did not read. How could I? Nor did I sleep. My mind
ran on, and on, and not until the steward brought my coffee, shortly
before five, did I sink into my first doze.

One thing is very evident. Mr. Pike does not dream that the murderer
of Captain Somers is on board the Elsinore. He has never glimpsed
that prodigious fissure that clefts Mr. Mellaire's, or, rather,
Sidney Waltham's, skull. And I, for one, shall never tell Mr. Pike.
And I know, now, why from the very first I disliked the second mate.
And I understand that live thing, that other thing, that lurks within
and peers out through the eyes. I have recognized the same thing in
the three gangsters for'ard. Like the second mate, they are prison
birds. The restraint, the secrecy, and iron control of prison life
has developed in all of them terrible other selves.

Yes, and another thing is very evident. On board this ship, driving
now through the South Atlantic for the winter passage of Cape Horn,
are all the elements of sea tragedy and horror. We are freighted
with human dynamite that is liable at any moment to blow our tiny
floating world to fragments.

CHAPTER XXV

The days slip by. The south-east trade is brisk and small splashes
of sea occasionally invade my open ports. Mr. Pike's room was soaked
yesterday. This is the most exciting thing that has happened for
some time. The gangsters rule in the forecastle. Larry and Shorty
have had a harmless FIGHT. The hooks continue to burn in Mulligan
Jacobs's brain. Charles Davis resides alone in his little steel
room, coming out only to get his food from the galley. Miss West
plays and sings, doctors Possum, launders, and is for ever otherwise
busy with her fancy work. Mr. Pike runs the phonograph every other
evening in the second dog-watch. Mr. Mellaire hides the cleft in his
head. I keep his secret. And Captain West, more remote than ever,
sits in the draught of wind in the twilight cabin.

We are now thirty-seven days at sea, in which time, until to-day, we
have not sighted a vessel. And to-day, at one time, no less than six
vessels were visible from the deck. Not until I saw these ships was
I able thoroughly to realize how lonely this ocean is.

Mr. Pike tells me we are several hundred miles off the South American
coast. And yet, only the other day, it seems, we were scarcely more
distant from Africa. A big velvety moth fluttered aboard this
morning, and we are filled with conjecture. How possibly could it
have come from the South American coast these hundreds of miles in
the teeth of the trades?

The Southern Cross has been visible, of course, for weeks; the North
Star has disappeared behind the bulge of the earth; and the Great
Bear, at its highest, is very low. Soon it, too, will be gone and we
shall be raising the Magellan Clouds.

I remember the fight between Larry and Shorty. Wada reports that Mr.
Pike watched it for some time, until, becoming incensed at their
awkwardness, he clouted both of them with his open hands and made
them stop, announcing that until they could make a better showing he
intended doing all the fighting on the Elsinore himself.

It is a feat beyond me to realize that he is sixty-nine years old.
And when I look at the tremendous build of him and at his fearful,
man-handling hands, I conjure up a vision of him avenging Captain
Somers's murder.

Life is cruel. Amongst the Elsinore's five thousand tons of coal are
thousands of rats. There is no way for them to get out of their
steel-walled prison, for all the ventilators are guarded with stout
wire-mesh. On her previous voyage, loaded with barley, they
increased and multiplied. Now they are imprisoned in the coal, and
cannibalism is what must occur among them. Mr. Pike says that when
we reach Seattle there will be a dozen or a score of survivors, huge
fellows, the strongest and fiercest. Sometimes, passing the mouth of
one ventilator that is in the after wall of the chart-house, I can
hear their plaintive squealing and crying from far beneath in the
coal.

Other and luckier rats are in the 'tween decks for'ard, where all the
spare suits of sails are stored. They come out and run about the
deck at night, steal food from the galley, and lap up the dew. Which
reminds me that Mr. Pike will no longer look at Possum. It seems,
under his suggestion, that Wada trapped a rat in the donkey-engine
room. Wada swears that it was the father of all rats, and that, by
actual measurement, it scaled eighteen inches from nose to the tip of
tail. Also, it seems that Mr. Pike and Wada, with the door shut in
the former's room, pitted the rat against Possum, and that Possum was
licked. They were compelled to kill the rat themselves, while
Possum, when all was over, lay down and had a fit.

Now Mr. Pike abhors a coward, and his disgust with Possum is
profound. He no longer plays with the puppy, nor even speaks to him,
and, whenever he passes him on the deck, glowers sourly at him.

I have been reading up the South Atlantic Sailing Directions, and I
find that we are now entering the most beautiful sunset region in the
world. And this evening we were favoured with a sample. I was in my
quarters, overhauling my books, when Miss West called to me from the
foot of the chart-house stairs:

"Mr. Pathurst!--Come quick! Oh, do come quick! You can't afford to
miss it!"

Half the sky, from the zenith to the western sea-line, was an
astonishing sheet of pure, pale, even gold. And through this sheen,
on the horizon, burned the sun, a disc of richer gold. The gold of
the sky grew more golden, then tarnished before our eyes and began to
glow faintly with red. As the red deepened, a mist spread over the
whole sheet of gold and the burning yellow sun. Turner was never
guilty of so audacious an orgy in gold-mist.

Presently, along the horizon, entirely completing the circle of sea
and sky, the tight-packed shapes of the trade wind clouds began to
show through the mist; and as they took form they spilled with rose-
colour at their upper edges, while their bases were a pulsing,
bluish-white. I say it advisedly. All the colours of this display
PULSED.

As the gold-mist continued to clear away, the colours became garish,
bold; the turquoises went into greens and the roses turned to the red
of blood. And the purple and indigo of the long swells of sea were
bronzed with the colour-riot in the sky, while across the water, like
gigantic serpents, crawled red and green sky-reflections. And then
all the gorgeousness quickly dulled, and the warm, tropic darkness
drew about us.

CHAPTER XXVI

The Elsinore is truly the ship of souls, the world in miniature; and,
because she is such a small world, cleaving this vastitude of ocean
as our larger world cleaves space, the strange juxtapositions that
continually occur are startling.

For instance, this afternoon on the poop. Let me describe it. Here
was Miss West, in a crisp duck sailor suit, immaculately white, open
at the throat, where, under the broad collar, was knotted a man-of-
war black silk neckerchief. Her smooth-groomed hair, a trifle
rebellious in the breeze, was glorious. And here was I, in white
ducks, white shoes, and white silk shirt, as immaculate and well-
tended as she. The steward was just bringing the pretty tea-service
for Miss West, and in the background Wada hovered.

We had been discussing philosophy--or, rather, I had been feeling her
out; and from a sketch of Spinoza's anticipations of the modern mind,
through the speculative interpretations of the latest achievements in
physics of Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Ramsay, I had come, as
usual, to De Casseres, whom I was quoting, when Mr. Pike snarled
orders to the watch.

"'In this rise into the azure of pure perception, attainable only by
a very few human beings, the spectacular sense is born,'." I was
quoting. "'Life is no longer good or evil. It is a perpetual play
of forces without beginning or end. The freed Intellect merges
itself with the World-Will and partakes of its essence, which is not
a moral essence but an aesthetic essence . . . "

And at this moment the watch swarmed on to the poop to haul on the
port-braces of the mizzen-sky-sail, royal and topgallant-sail. The
sailors passed us, or toiled close to us, with lowered eyes. They
did not look at us, so far removed from them were we. It was this
contrast that caught my fancy. Here were the high and low, slaves
and masters, beauty and ugliness, cleanness and filth. Their feet
were bare and scaled with patches of tar and pitch. Their unbathed
bodies were garmented in the meanest of clothes, dingy, dirty,
ragged, and sparse. Each one had on but two garments--dungaree
trousers and a shoddy cotton shirt.

And we, in our comfortable deck-chairs, our two servants at our
backs, the quintessence of elegant leisure, sipped delicate tea from
beautiful, fragile cups, and looked on at these wretched ones whose
labour made possible the journey of our little world. We did not
speak to them, nor recognize their existence, any more than would
they have dared speak to us.

And Miss West, with the appraising eye of a plantation mistress for
the condition of her field slaves, looked them over.

"You see how they have fleshed up," she said, as they coiled the last
turns of the ropes over the pins and faded away for'ard off the poop.
"It is the regular hours, the good weather, the hard work, the open
air, the sufficient food, and the absence of whisky. And they will
keep in this fettle until they get off the Horn. And then you will
see them go down from day to day. A winter passage of the Horn is
always a severe strain on the men.

"But then, once we are around and in the good weather of the Pacific,
you will see them gain again from day to day. And when we reach
Seattle they will be in splendid shape. Only they will go ashore,
drink up their wages in several days, and ship away on other vessels
in precisely the same sodden, miserable condition that they were in
when they sailed with us from Baltimore."

And just then Captain West came out the chart-house door, strolled by
for a single turn up and down, and with a smile and a word for us and
an all-observant eye for the ship, the trim of her sails, the wind,
and the sky, and the weather promise, went back through the chart-
house door--the blond Aryan master, the king, the Samurai.

And I finished sipping my tea of delicious and most expensive aroma,
and our slant-eyed, dark-skinned servitors carried the pretty gear
away, and I read, continuing De Casseres:

"'Instinct wills, creates, carries on the work of the species. The
Intellect destroys, negatives, satirizes and ends in pure nihilism,
instinct creates life, endlessly, hurling forth profusely and blindly
its clowns, tragedians and comedians. Intellect remains the eternal
spectator of the play. It participates at will, but never gives
itself wholly to the fine sport. The Intellect, freed from the
trammels of the personal will, soars into the ether of perception,
where Instinct follows it in a thousand disguises, seeking to draw it
down to earth.'"

CHAPTER XXVII

We are now south of Rio and working south. We are out of the
latitude of the trades, and the wind is capricious. Rain squalls and
wind squalls vex the Elsinore. One hour we may be rolling
sickeningly in a dead calm, and the next hour we may be dashing
fourteen knots through the water and taking off sail as fast as the
men can clew up and lower away. A night of calm, when sleep is well-
nigh impossible in the sultry, muggy air, may be followed by a day of
blazing sun and an oily swell from the south'ard, connoting great
gales in that area of ocean we are sailing toward--or all day long
the Elsinore, under an overcast sky, royals and sky sails furled, may
plunge and buck under wind-pressure into a short and choppy head-sea.

And all this means work for the men. Taking Mr. Pike's judgment,
they are very inadequate, though by this time they know the ropes.
He growls and grumbles, and snorts and sneers whenever he watches
them doing anything. To-day, at eleven in the morning, the wind was
so violent, continuing in greater gusts after having come in a great
gust, that Mr. Pike ordered the mainsail taken off. The great
crojack was already off. But the watch could not clew up the
mainsail, and, after much vain sing-songing and pull-hauling, the
watch below was routed out to bear a hand.

"My God!" Mr. Pike groaned to me. "Two watches for a rag like that
when half a decent watch could do it! Look at that preventer bosun
of mine!"

Poor Nancy! He looked the saddest, sickest, bleakest creature I had
ever seen. He was so wretched, so miserable, so helpless. And
Sundry Buyers was just as impotent. The expression on his face was
of pain and hopelessness, and as he pressed his abdomen he lumbered
futilely about, ever seeking something he might do and ever failing
to find it. He pottered. He would stand and stare at one rope for a
minute or so at a time, following it aloft with his eyes through the
maze of ropes and stabs and gears with all the intentness of a man
working out an intricate problem. Then, holding his hand against his
stomach, he would lumber on a few steps and select another rope for
study.

"Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Pike lamented. "How can one drive with
bosuns like that and a crew like that? Just the same, if I was
captain of this ship I'd drive 'em. I'd show 'em what drive was, if
I had to lose a few of them. And when they grow weak off the Horn
what'll we do? It'll be both watches all the time, which will weaken
them just that much the faster."

Evidently this winter passage of the Horn is all that one has been
led to expect from reading the narratives of the navigators. Iron
men like the two mates are very respectful of "Cape Stiff," as they
call that uttermost tip of the American continent. Speaking of the
two mates, iron-made and iron-mouthed that they are, it is amusing
that in really serious moments both of them curse with "Oh dear, oh
dear."

In the spells of calm I take great delight in the little rifle. I
have already fired away five thousand rounds, and have come to
consider myself an expert. Whatever the knack of shooting may be,
I've got it. When I get back I shall take up target practice. It is
a neat, deft sport.

Not only is Possum afraid of the sails and of rats, but he is afraid
of rifle-fire, and at the first discharge goes yelping and ki-yi-ing
below. The dislike Mr. Pike has developed for the poor little puppy
is ludicrous. He even told me that if it were his dog he'd throw it
overboard for a target. Just the same, he is an affectionate, heart-
warming little rascal, and has already crept so deep into my heart
that I am glad Miss West did not accept him.

And--oh!--he insists on sleeping with me on top the bedding; a
proceeding which has scandalized the mate. "I suppose he'll be using
your toothbrush next," Mr. Pike growled at me. But the puppy loves
my companionship, and is never happier than when on the bed with me.
Yet the bed is not entirely paradise, for Possum is badly frightened
when ours is the lee side and the seas pound and smash against the
glass ports. Then the little beggar, electric with fear to every
hair tip, crouches and snarls menacingly and almost at the same time
whimpers appeasingly at the storm-monster outside.

"Father KNOWS the sea," Miss West said to me this afternoon. "He
understands it, and he loves it."

"Or it may be habit," I ventured.

She shook her head.

"He does know it. And he loves it. That is why he has come back to
it. All his people before him were sea folk. His grandfather,
Anthony West, made forty-six voyages between 1801 and 1847. And his
father, Robert, sailed master to the north-west coast before the gold
days and was captain of some of the fastest Cape Horn clippers after
the gold discovery. Elijah West, father's great-grandfather, was a
privateersman in the Revolution. He commanded the armed brig New
Defence. And, even before that, Elijah's father, in turn, and
Elijah's father's father, were masters and owners on long-voyage
merchant adventures.

"Anthony West, in 1813 and 1814, commanded the David Bruce, with
letters of marque. He was half-owner, with Gracie & Sons as the
other half-owners. She was a two-hundred-ton schooner, built right
up in Maine. She carried a long eighteen-pounder, two ten-pounders,
and ten six-pounders, and she sailed like a witch. She ran the
blockade off Newport and got away to the English Channel and the Bay
of Biscay. And, do you know, though she only cost twelve thousand
dollars all told, she took over three hundred thousand dollars of
British prizes. A brother of his was on the Wasp.

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