The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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Mr. Mellaire was quite different.

"It never happens," he told me. "No ship ever went around like this.
You watch her come. She always comes a-smoking out of the sou'west."

"But can't a vessel ever steal around?" I asked.

"The odds are mighty big against it, sir," he answered. "I'll give
you a line on them. I'll wager even, sir, just a nominal bet of a
pound of tobacco, that inside twenty-four hours we'll he hove to
under upper-topsails. I'll wager ten pounds to five that we're not
west of the Horn a week from now; and, fifty to fifty being the
passage, twenty pounds to five that two weeks from now we're not up
with fifty in the Pacific."

As for Captain West, the perils of Le Maire behind, he sat below, his
slippered feet stretched before him, smoking a cigar. He had nothing
to say whatever, although Margaret and I were jubilant and dared
duets through all of the second dog-watch.

And this morning, in a smooth sea and gentle breeze, the Horn bore
almost due north of us not more than six miles away. Here we were,
well abreast and reeling off westing.

"What price tobacco this morning?" I quizzed Mr. Mellaire.

"Going up," he came back. "Wish I had a thousand bets like the one
with you, sir."

I glanced about at sea and sky and gauged the speed of our way by the
foam, but failed to see anything that warranted his remark. It was
surely fine weather, and the steward, in token of the same, was
trying to catch fluttering Cape pigeons with a bent pin on a piece of
thread.

For'ard, on the poop, I encountered Mr. Pike. It WAS an encounter,
for his salutation was a grunt.

"Well, we're going right along," I ventured cheerily.

He made no reply, but turned and stared into the gray south-west with
an expression sourer than any I had ever seen on his face. He
mumbled something I failed to catch, and, on my asking him to repeat
it, he said:

"It's breeding weather. Can't you see it?"

I shook my head.

"What d'ye think we're taking off the kites for?" he growled.

I looked aloft. The skysails were already furled; men were furling
the royals; and the topgallant-yards were running down while
clewlines and buntlines bagged the canvas. Yet, if anything, our
northerly breeze fanned even more gently.

"Bless me if I can see any weather," I said.

"Then go and take a look at the barometer," he grunted, as he turned
on his heel and swung away from me.

In the chart-room was Captain West, pulling on his long sea-boots.
That would have told me had there been no barometer, though the
barometer was eloquent enough of itself. The night before it had
stood at 30.10. It was now 28.64. Even in the pampero it had not
been so low as that.

"The usual Cape Horn programme," Captain West smiled to me, as he
stood up in all his lean and slender gracefulness and reached for his
long oilskin coat.

Still I could scarcely believe.

"Is it very far away?" I inquired.

He shook his head, and forebore in the act of speaking to lift his
hand for me to listen. The Elsinore rolled uneasily, and from
without came the soft and hollow thunder of sails emptying themselves
against the masts and gear.

We had chatted a bare five minutes, when again he lifted his head.
This time the Elsinore heeled over slightly and remained heeled over,
while the sighing whistle of a rising breeze awoke in the rigging.

"It's beginning to make," he said, in the good old Anglo-Saxon of the
sea.

And then I heard Mr. Pike snarling out orders, and in my heart
discovered a growing respect for Cape Horn--Cape Stiff, as the
sailors call it.

An hour later we were hove to on the port tack under upper-topsails
and foresail. The wind had come out of the south-west, and our
leeway was setting us down upon the land. Captain West gave orders
to the mate to stand by to wear ship. Both watches had been taking
in sail, so that both watches were on deck for the manoeuvre.

It was astounding, the big sea that had arisen in so short a time.
The wind was blowing a gale that ever, in recurring gusts, increased
upon itself. Nothing was visible a hundred yards away. The day had
become black-gray. In the cabin lamps were burning. The view from
the poop, along the length of the great labouring ship, was
magnificent. Seas burst and surged across her weather-rail and kept
her deck half filled, despite the spouting ports and gushing
scuppers.

On each of the two houses and on the poop the ship's complement, all
in oilskins, was in groups. For'ard, Mr. Mellaire had charge. Mr.
Pike took charge of the 'midship-house and the poop. Captain West
strolled up and down, saw everything, said nothing; for it was the
mate's affair.

When Mr. Pike ordered the wheel hard up, he slacked off all the
mizzen-yards, and followed it with a partial slacking of the main-
yards, so that the after-pressures were eased. The foresail and
fore-lower- and-upper-topsails remained flat in order to pay the head
off before the wind. All this took time. The men were slow, not
strong, and without snap. They reminded me of dull oxen by the way
they moved and pulled. And the gale, ever snorting harder, now
snorted diabolically. Only at intervals could I glimpse the group on
top the for'ard-house. Again and again, leaning to it and holding
their heads down, the men on the 'midship-house were obliterated by
the drive of crested seas that burst against the rail, spouted to the
lower-yards, and swept in horizontal volumes across to leeward. And
Mr. Pike, like an enormous spider in a wind-tossed web, went back and
forth along the slender bridge that was itself a shaken thread in the
blast of the storm.

So tremendous were the gusts that for the time the Elsinore refused
to answer. She lay down to it; she was swept and racked by it; but
her head did not pay off before it, and all the while we drove down
upon that bitter, iron coast. And the world was black-gray, and
violent, and very cold, with the flying spray freezing to ice in
every lodgment.

We waited. The groups of men, head down to it, waited. Mr. Pike,
restless, angry, his blue eyes as bitter as the cold, his mouth as
much a-snarl as the snarl of the elements with which he fought,
waited. The Samurai waited, tranquil, casual, remote. And Cape Horn
waited, there on our lee, for the bones of our ship and us.

And then the Elsinore's bow paid off. The angle of the beat of the
gale changed, and soon, with dreadful speed, we were dashing straight
before it and straight toward the rocks we could not see. But all
doubt was over. The success of the manoeuvre was assured. Mr.
Mellaire, informed by messenger along the bridge from Mr. Pike,
slacked off the head-yards. Mr. Pike, his eye on the helmsman, his
hand signalling the order, had the wheel put over to port to check
the Elsinore's rush into the wind as she came up on the starboard
tack. All was activity. Main- and mizzen-yards were braced up, and
the Elsinore, snugged down and hove to, had a lee of thousands of
miles of Southern Ocean.

And all this had been accomplished in the stamping ground of storm,
at the end of the world, by a handful of wretched weaklings, under
the drive of two strong mates, with behind them the placid will of
the Samurai.

It had taken thirty minutes to wear ship, and I had learned how the
best of shipmasters can lose their ships without reproach. Suppose
the Elsinore had persisted in her refusal to payoff? Suppose
anything had carried away? And right here enters Mr. Pike. It is
his task ever to see that every rope and block and all the myriad
other things in the vast and complicated gear of the Elsinore are in
strength not to carry away. Always have the masters of our race
required henchmen like Mr. Pike, and it seems the race has well
supplied those henchmen.

Ere I went below I heard Captain West tell Mr. Pike that while both
watches were on deck it would be just as well to put a reef in the
foresail before they furled it. The mainsail and the crojack being
off, I could see the men black on the fore-yard. For half-an-hour I
lingered, watching them. They seemed to make no progress with the
reef. Mr. Mellaire was with them, having direct supervision of the
job, while Mr. Pike, on the poop, growled and grumbled and spat
endless blasphemies into the flying air.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Two watches on a single yardarm and unable to put a reef in a
handkerchief like that!" he snorted. "What'll it be if we're off
here a month?"

"A month!" I cried.

"A month isn't anything for Cape Stiff," he said grimly. "I've been
off here seven weeks and then turned tail and run around the other
way."

"Around the world?" I gasped.

"It was the only way to get to 'Frisco," he answered. "The Horn's
the Horn, and there's no summer seas that I've ever noticed in this
neighbourhood."

My fingers were numb and I was chilled through when I took a last
look at the wretched men on the fore-yard and went below to warm up.

A little later, as I went in to table, through a cabin port I stole a
look for'ard between seas and saw the men still struggling on the
freezing yard.

The four of us were at table, and it was very comfortable, in spite
of the Elsinore's violent antics. The room was warm. The storm-
racks on the table kept each dish in its place. The steward served
and moved about with ease and apparent unconcern, although I noticed
an occasional anxious gleam in his eyes when he poised some dish at a
moment when the ship pitched and flung with unusual wildness.

And now and again I thought of the poor devils on the yard. Well,
they belonged there by right, just as we belonged here by right in
this oasis of the cabin. I looked at Mr. Pike and wagered to myself
that half-a-dozen like him could master that stubborn foresail. As
for the Samurai, I was convinced that alone, not moving from his
seat, by a tranquil exertion of will, he could accomplish the same
thing.

The lighted sea-lamps swung and leaped in their gimbals, ever
battling with the dancing shadows in the murky gray. The wood-work
creaked and groaned. The jiggermast, a huge cylinder of hollow steel
that perforated the apartment through deck above and floor beneath,
was hideously vocal with the storm. Far above, taut ropes beat
against it so that it clanged like a boiler-shop. There was a
perpetual thunder of seas falling on our deck and crash of water
against our for'ard wall; while the ten thousand ropes and gears
aloft bellowed and screamed as the storm smote them.

And yet all this was from without. Here, at this well-appointed
table, was no draught nor breath of wind, no drive of spray nor wash
of sea. We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the
storm. Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the
clang of the jiggermast. Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well
enough to attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the
inefficients futilely freezing on the yard. As for me, I looked
about at the four of us--blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and
royal blond--and somehow it seemed that I had long since lived this,
and that with me and in me were all my ancestors, and that their
lives and memories were mine, and that all this vexation of the sea
and air and labouring ship was of old time and a thousand times
before.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"How are you for a climb?" Margaret asked me, shortly after we had
left the table.

She stood challengingly at my open door, in oilskins, sou'wester, and
sea-boots.

"I've never seen you with a foot above the deck since we sailed," she
went on. "Have you a good head?"

I marked my book, rolled out of my bunk in which I had been wedged,
and clapped my hands for Wada.

"Will you?" she cried eagerly.

"If you let me lead," I answered airily, "and if you will promise to
hold on tight. Whither away?"

"Into the top of the jigger. It's the easiest. As for holding on,
please remember that I have often done it. It is with you the doubt
rests."

"Very well," I retorted; "do you lead then. I shall hold on tight."

"I have seen many a landsman funk it," she teased. "There are no
lubber-holes in our tops."

"And most likely I shall," I agreed. "I've never been aloft in my
life, and since there is no hole for a lubber."

She looked at me, half believing my confession of weakness, while I
extended my arms for the oilskin which Wada struggled on to me.

On the poop it was magnificent, and terrible, and sombre. The
universe was very immediately about us. It blanketed us in storming
wind and flying spray and grayness. Our main deck was impassable,
and the relief of the wheel came aft along the bridge. It was two
o'clock, and for over two hours the frozen wretches had laid out upon
the fore-yard. They were still there, weak, feeble, hopeless.
Captain West, stepping out in the lee of the chart-house, gazed at
them for several minutes.

"We'll have to give up that reef," he said to Mr. Pike. "Just make
the sail fast. Better put on double gaskets."

And with lagging feet, from time to time pausing and holding on as
spray and the tops of waves swept over him, the mate went for'ard
along the bridge to vent his scorn on the two watches of a four-
masted ship that could not reef a foresail.

It is true. They could not do it, despite their willingness, for
this I have learned: THE MEN DO THEIR WEAK BEST WHENEVER THE ORDER
IS GIVEN TO SHORTEN SAIL. It must be that they are afraid. They
lack the iron of Mr. Pike, the wisdom and the iron of Captain West.
Always, have I noticed, with all the alacrity of which they are
capable, do they respond to any order to shorten down. That is why
they are for'ard, in that pigsty of a forecastle, because they lack
the iron. Well, I can say only this: If nothing else could have
prevented the funk hinted at by Margaret, the sorry spectacle of
these ironless, spineless creatures was sufficient safeguard. How
could I funk in the face of their weakness--I, who lived aft in the
high place?

Margaret did not disdain the aid of my hand as she climbed upon the
pin-rail at the foot of the weather jigger-rigging. But it was
merely the recognition of a courtesy on her part, for the next moment
she released her mittened hand from mine, swung boldly outboard into
the face of the gale, and around against the ratlines. Then she
began to climb. I followed, almost unaware of the ticklishness of
the exploit to a tyro, so buoyed up was I by her example and by my
scorn of the weaklings for'ard. Where men could go, I could go.
What men could do, I could do. And no daughter of the Samurai could
out-game me.

Yet it was slow work. In the windward rolls against the storm-gusts
one was pinned helplessly, like a butterfly, against the rigging. At
such times, so great was the pressure one could not lift hand nor
foot. Also, there was no need for holding on. As I have said, one
was pinned against the rigging by the wind.

Through the snow beginning to drive the deck grew small beneath me,
until a fall meant a broken back or death, unless one landed in the
sea, in which case the result would be frigid drowning. And still
Margaret climbed. Without pause she went out under the overhanging
platform of the top, shifted her holds to the rigging that went aloft
from it, and swung around this rigging, easily, carelessly, timing
the action to the roll, and stood safely upon the top.

I followed. I breathed no prayers, knew no qualms, as I presented my
back to the deck and climbed out under the overhang, feeling with my
hands for holds I could not see. I was in an ecstasy. I could dare
anything. Had she sprung into the air, stretched out her arms, and
soared away on the breast of the gale, I should have unhesitatingly
followed her.

As my head outpassed the edge of the top so that she came into view,
I could see she was looking at me with storm-bright eyes. And as I
swung around the rigging lightly and joined her, I saw approval in
her eyes that was quickly routed by petulance.

"Oh, you've done this sort of thing before," she reproached, calling
loudly, so that I might hear, her lips close to my ear.

I shook a denial with my head that brightened her eyes again. She
nodded and smiled, and sat down, dangling her sea-boots into snow-
swirled space from the edge of the top. I sat beside her, looking
down into the snow that hid the deck while it exaggerated the depth
out of which we had climbed.

We were all alone there, a pair of storm petrels perched in mid air
on a steel stick that arose out of snow and that vanished above into
snow. We had come to the tip of the world, and even that tip had
ceased to be. But no. Out of the snow, down wind, with motionless
wings, driving fully eighty or ninety miles an hour, appeared a huge
albatross. He must have been fifteen feet from wing-tip to wing-tip.
He had seen his danger ere we saw him, and, tilting his body on the
blast, he carelessly veered clear of collision. His head and neck
were rimed with age or frost--we could not tell which--and his bright
bead-eye noted us as he passed and whirled away on a great circle
into the snow to leeward.

Margaret's hand shot out to mine.

"It alone was worth the climb!" she cried. And then the Elsinore
flung down, and Margaret's hand clutched tighter for holding, while
from the hidden depths arose the crash and thunder of the great west
wind drift upon our decks.

Quickly as the snow-squall had come, it passed with the same sharp
quickness, and as in a flash we could see the lean length of the ship
beneath us--the main deck full with boiling flood, the forecastle-
head buried in a bursting sea, the lookout, stationed for very life
back on top the for'ard-house, hanging on, head down, to the wind-
drive of ocean, and, directly under us, the streaming poop and Mr.
Mellaire, with a handful of men, rigging relieving tackles on the
tiller. And we saw the Samurai emerge in the lee of the chart-house,
swaying with casual surety on the mad deck, as he spoke what must
have been instructions to Mr. Pike.

The gray circle of the world had removed itself from us for several
hundred yards, and we could see the mighty sweep of sea. Shaggy
gray-beards, sixty feet from trough to crest, leapt out of the
windward murky gray, and in unending procession rushed upon the
Elsinore, one moment overtoppling her slender frailness, the next
moment splashing a hundred tons of water on her deck and flinging her
skyward as they passed beneath and foamed and crested from sight in
the murky gray to leeward. And the great albatrosses veered and
circled about us, beating up into the bitter violence of the gale and
sweeping grandly away before it far faster than it blew.

Margaret forbore from looking to challenge me with eloquent,
questioning eyes. With numb fingers inside my thick mitten, I drew
aside the ear-flap of her sou'wester and shouted:

"It is nothing new. I have been here before. In the lives of all my
fathers have I been here. The frost is on my cheek, the salt bites
my nostrils, the wind chants in my ears, and it is an old happening.
I know, now, that my forbears were Vikings. I was seed of them in
their own day. With them I have raided English coasts, dared the
Pillars of Hercules, forayed the Mediterranean, and sat in the high
place of government over the soft sun-warm peoples. I am Hengist and
Horsa; I am of the ancient heroes, even legendary to them. I have
bearded and bitten the frozen seas, and, aforetime of that, ere ever
the ice-ages came to be, I have dripped my shoulders in reindeer
gore, slain the mastodon and the sabre-tooth, scratched the record of
my prowess on the walls of deep-buried caves--ay, and suckled she-
wolves side by side with my brother-cubs, the scars of whose fangs
are now upon me."

She laughed deliciously, and a snow-squall drove upon us and cut our
cheeks, and the Elsinore flung over and down as if she would never
rise again, while we held on and swept through the air in a dizzying
arc. Margaret released a hand, still laughing, and pressed aside my
ear-flap.

"I don't know anything about it," she cried. "It sounds like poetry.
But I believe it. It has to be, for it has been. I have heard it
aforetime, when skin-clad men sang in fire-circles that pressed back
the frost and night."

"And the books?" she queried maliciously, as we prepared to descend.

"They can go hang, along with all the brain-sick, world-sick fools
that wrote them," I replied.

Again she laughed deliciously, though the wind tore the sound away as
she swung out into space, muscled herself by her arms while she
caught footholds beneath her which she could not see, and passed out
of my sight under the perilous overhang of the top.

CHAPTER XXXV

"What price tobacco?" was Mr. Mellaire's greeting, when I came on
deck this morning, bruised and weary, aching in every bone and muscle
from sixty hours of being tossed about.

The wind had fallen to a dead calm toward morning, and the Elsinore,
her several spread sails booming and slatting, rolled more miserably
than ever. Mr. Mellaire pointed for'ard of our starboard beam. I
could make out a bleak land of white and jagged peaks.

"Staten Island, the easterly end of it," said Mr. Mellaire.

And I knew that we were in the position of a vessel just rounding
Staten Island preliminary to bucking the Horn. And, yet, four days
ago, we had run through the Straits of Le Maire and stolen along
toward the Horn. Three days ago we had been well abreast of the Horn
and even a few miles past. And here we were now, starting all over
again and far in the rear of where we had originally started.

The condition of the men is truly wretched. During the gale the
forecastle was washed out twice. This means that everything in it
was afloat and that every article of clothing, including mattresses
and blankets, is wet and will remain wet in this bitter weather until
we are around the Horn and well up in the good-weather latitudes.
The same is true of the 'midship-house. Every room in it, with the
exception of the cook's and the sail-makers' (which open for'ard on
Number Two hatch), is soaking. And they have no fires in their rooms
with which to dry things out.

I peeped into Charles Davis's room. It was terrible. He grinned to
me and nodded his head.

"It's just as well O'Sullivan wasn't here, sir," he said. "He'd a-
drowned in the lower bunk. And I want to tell you I was doing some
swimmin' before I could get into the top one. And salt water's bad
for my sores. I oughtn't to be in a hole like this in Cape Horn
weather. Look at the ice, there, on the floor. It's below freezin'
right now in this room, and my blankets are wet, and I'm a sick man,
as any man can tell that's got a nose."

"If you'd been decent to the mate you might have got decent treatment
in return," I said.

"Huh!" he sneered. "You needn't think you can lose me, sir. I can
grow fat on this sort of stuff. Why, sir, when I think of the court
doin's in Seattle I just couldn't die. An' if you'll listen to me,
sir, you'll cover the steward's money. You can't lose. I'm advisin'
you, sir, because you're a sort of decent sort. Anybody that bets on
my going over the side is a sure loser."

"How could you dare ship on a voyage like this in your condition?" I
demanded.

"Condition?" he queried with a fine assumption of innocence. "Why,
that is why I did ship. I was in tiptop shape when I sailed. All
this come out on me afterward. You remember seem' me aloft, an' up
to my neck in water. And I trimmed coal below, too. A sick man
couldn't do it. And remember, sir, you'll have to testify to how I
did my duty at the beginning before I took down."

"I'll bet with you myself if you think I'm goin' to die," he called
after me.

Already the sailors show marks of the hardship they are enduring. It
is surprising, in so short a time, how lean their faces have grown,
how lined and seamed. They must dry their underclothing with their
body heat. Their outer garments, under their oilskins, are soggy.
And yet, paradoxically, despite their lean, drawn faces, they have
grown very stout. Their walk is a waddle, and they bulge with
seaming corpulency. This is due to the amount of clothing they have
on. I noticed Larry, to-day, had on two vests, two coats, and an
overcoat, with his oilskin outside of that. They are elephantine in
their gait for, in addition to everything else, they have wrapped
their feet, outside their sea-boots, with gunny sacking.

It IS cold, although the deck thermometer stood at thirty-three to-
day at noon. I had Wada weigh the clothing I wear on deck. Omitting
oilskins and boots, it came to eighteen pounds. And yet I am not any
too warm in all this gear when the wind is blowing. How sailors,
after having once experienced the Horn, can ever sign on again for a
voyage around is beyond me. It but serves to show how stupid they
must be.

I feel sorry for Henry, the training-ship boy. He is more my own
kind, and some day he will make a henchman of the afterguard and a
mate like Mr. Pike. In the meantime, along with Buckwheat, the other
boy who berths in the 'midship-house with him, he suffers the same
hardship as the men. He is very fair-skinned, and I noticed this
afternoon, when he was pulling on a brace, that the sleeves of his
oil-skins, assisted by the salt water, have chafed his wrists till
they are raw and bleeding and breaking out in sea-boils. Mr.
Mellaire tells me that in another week there will be a plague of
these boils with all hands for'ard.

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