The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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"Why did you swear it before?" I queried.

"It was on the Nahoma, sir, four years ago. Two hundred and thirty
days from Liverpool to 'Frisco. Think of it, sir. Two hundred and
thirty days! And we was loaded with cement and creosote, and the
creosote got loose. We buried the captain right here off the Horn.
The grub gave out. Most of us nearly died of scurvy. Every man Jack
of us was carted to hospital in 'Frisco. It was plain hell, sir,
that's what it was, an' two hundred and thirty days of it."

"Yet here you are," I laughed; "signed on another Horn voyage."

And this morning Tom Spink confided the following tome:

"If only we'd lost the carpenter, sir, instead of Boney."

I did not catch his drift for the moment; then I remembered. The
carpenter was the Finn, the Jonah, the warlock who played tricks with
the winds and despitefully used poor sailormen.

Yes, and I make free to confess that I have grown well weary of this
eternal buffeting by the Great West Wind. Nor are we alone in our
travail on this desolate ocean. Never a day does the gray thin, or
the snow-squalls cease that we do not sight ships, west-bound like
ourselves, hove-to and trying to hold on to the meagre westing they
possess. And occasionally, when the gray clears and lifts, we see a
lucky ship, bound east, running before it and reeling off the miles.
I saw Mr. Pike, yesterday, shaking his fist in a fury of hatred at
one such craft that flew insolently past us not a quarter of a mile
away.

And the men are jumping. Mr. Pike is driving with those block-square
fists of his, as many a man's face attests. So weak are they, and so
terrible is he, that I swear he could whip either watch single-
handed. I cannot help but note that Mr. Mellaire refuses to take
part in this driving. Yet I know that he is a trained driver, and
that he was not averse to driving at the outset of the voyage. But
now he seems bent on keeping on good terms with the crew. I should
like to know what Mr. Pike thinks of it, for he cannot possibly be
blind to what is going on; but I am too well aware of what would
happen if I raised the question. He would insult me, snap my head
off, and indulge in a three-days' sea-grouch. Things are sad and
monotonous enough for Margaret and me in the cabin and at table,
without invoking the blight of the mate's displeasure.

CHAPTER XL

Another brutal sea-superstition vindicated. From now on and for
always these imbeciles of ours will believe that Finns are Jonahs.
We are west of the Diego de Ramirez Rocks, and we are running west at
a twelve-knot clip with an easterly gale at our backs. And the
carpenter is gone. His passing, and the coming of the easterly wind,
were coincidental.

It was yesterday morning, as he helped me to dress, that I was struck
by the solemnity of Wada's face. He shook his head lugubriously as
he broke the news. The carpenter was missing. The ship had been
searched for him high and low. There just was no carpenter.

"What does the steward think?" I asked. "What does Louis think?--and
Yatsuda?"

"The sailors, they kill 'm carpenter sure," was the answer. "Very
bad ship this. Very bad hearts. Just the same pig, just the same
dog. All the time kill. All the time kill. Bime-by everybody kill.
You see."

The old steward, at work in his pantry, grinned at me when I
mentioned the matter.

"They make fool with me, I fix 'em," he said vindictively. "Mebbe
they kill me, all right; but I kill some, too."

He threw back his coat, and I saw, strapped to the left side of his
body, in a canvas sheath, so that the handle was ready to hand, a
meat knife of the heavy sort that butchers hack with. He drew it
forth- it was fully two feet long--and, to demonstrate its razor-
edge, sliced a sheet of newspaper into many ribbons.

"Huh!" he laughed sardonically. "I am Chink, monkey, damn fool, eh?-
-no good, eh? all rotten damn to hell. I fix 'em, they make fool
with me."

And yet there is not the slightest evidence of foul play. Nobody
knows what happened to the carpenter. There are no clues, no traces.
The night was calm and snowy. No seas broke on board. Without doubt
the clumsy, big-footed, over-grown giant of a boy is overside and
dead. The question is: did he go over of his own accord, or was he
put over?

At eight o'clock Mr. Pike proceeded to interrogate the watches. He
stood at the break of the poop, in the high place, leaning on the
rail and gazing down at the crew assembled on the main deck beneath
him.

Man after man he questioned, and from each man came the one story.
They knew no more about it than did we--or so they averred.

"I suppose you'll be chargin' next that I hove that big lummux
overboard with me own hands," Mulligan Jacobs snarled, when he was
questioned. "An' mebbe I did, bein' that husky an' rampagin' bull-
like."

The mate's face grew more forbidding and sour, but without comment he
passed on to John Hackey, the San Francisco hoodlum.

It was an unforgettable scene--the mate in the high place, the men,
sullen and irresponsive, grouped beneath. A gentle snow drifted
straight down through the windless air, while the Elsinore, with
hollow thunder from her sails, rolled down on the quiet swells so
that the ocean lapped the mouths of her scuppers with long-drawn,
shuddering sucks and sobs. And all the men swayed in unison to the
rolls, their hands in mittens, their feet in sack-wrapped sea-boots,
their faces worn and sick. And the three dreamers with the topaz
eyes stood and swayed and dreamed together, incurious of setting and
situation.

And then it came--the hint of easterly air. The mate noted it first.
I saw him start and turn his cheek to the almost imperceptible
draught. Then I felt it. A minute longer he waited, until assured,
when, the dead carpenter forgotten, he burst out with orders to the
wheel and the crew. And the men jumped, though in their weakness the
climb aloft was slow and toilsome; and when the gaskets were off the
topgallant-sails and the men on deck were hoisting yards and sheeting
home, those aloft were loosing the royals.

While this work went on, and while the yards were being braced
around, the Elsinore, her bow pointing to the west, began moving
through the water before the first fair wind in a month and a half.

Slowly that light air fanned to a gentle breeze while all the time
the snow fell steadily. The barometer, down to 28.80, continued to
fall, and the breeze continued to grow upon itself. Tom Spink,
passing by me on the poop to lend a hand at the final finicky
trimming of the mizzen-yards, gave me a triumphant look.
Superstition was vindicated. Events had proved him right. Fair wind
had come with the going of the carpenter, which said warlock had
incontestably taken with him overside his bag of wind-tricks.

Mr. Pike strode up and down the poop, rubbing his hands, which he was
too disdainfully happy to mitten, chuckling and grinning to himself,
glancing at the draw of every sail, stealing adoring looks astern
into the gray of snow out of which blew the favouring wind. He even
paused beside me to gossip for a moment about the French restaurants
of San Francisco and how, therein, the delectable California fashion
of cooking wild duck obtained.

"Throw 'em through the fire," he chanted. "That's the way--throw 'em
through the fire--a hot oven, sixteen minutes--I take mine fourteen,
to the second--an' squeeze the carcasses."

By midday the snow had ceased and we were bowling along before a
stiff breeze. At three in the afternoon we were running before a
growing gale. It was across a mad ocean we tore, for the mounting
sea that made from eastward bucked into the West End Drift and
battled and battered down the huge south-westerly swell. And the big
grinning dolt of a Finnish carpenter, already food for fish and bird,
was astern there somewhere in the freezing rack and drive.

Make westing! We ripped it off across these narrowing degrees of
longitude at the southern tip of the planet where one mile counts for
two. And Mr. Pike, staring at his bending topgallant-yards, swore
that they could carry away for all he cared ere he eased an inch of
canvas. More he did. He set the huge crojack, biggest of all sails,
and challenged God or Satan to start a seam of it or all its seams.

He simply could not go below. In such auspicious occasions all
watches were his, and he strode the poop perpetually with all age-lag
banished from his legs. Margaret and I were with him in the chart-
room when he hurrahed the barometer, down to 28.55 and falling. And
we were near him, on the poop, when he drove by an east-bound lime-
juicer, hove-to under upper-topsails. We were a biscuit-toss away,
and he sprang upon the rail at the jigger-shrouds and danced a war-
dance and waved his free arm, and yelled his scorn and joy at their
discomfiture to the several oilskinned figures on the stranger
vessel's poop.

Through the pitch-black night we continued to drive. The crew was
sadly frightened, and I sought in vain, in the two dog-watches, for
Tom Spink, to ask him if he thought the carpenter, astern, had opened
wide the bag-mouth and loosed all his tricks. For the first time I
saw the steward apprehensive.

"Too much," he told me, with ominous rolling head. "Too much sail,
rotten bad damn all to hell. Bime-by, pretty quick, all finish. You
see."

"They talk about running the easting down," Mr. Pike chortled to me,
as we clung to the poop-rail to keep from fetching away and breaking
ribs and necks. "Well, this is running your westing down if anybody
should ride up in a go-devil and ask you."

It was a wretched, glorious night. Sleep was impossible--for me, at
any rate. Nor was there even the comfort of warmth. Something had
gone wrong with the big cabin stove, due to our wild running, I
fancy, and the steward was compelled to let the fire go out. So we
are getting a taste of the hardship of the forecastle, though in our
case everything is dry instead of soggy or afloat. The kerosene
stoves burned in our state room, but so smelly was mine that I
preferred the cold.

To sail on one's nerve in an over-canvassed harbour cat-boat is all
the excitement any glutton can desire. But to sail, in the same
fashion, in a big ship off the Horn, is incredible and terrible. The
Great West Wind Drift, setting squarely into the teeth of the
easterly gale, kicked up a tideway sea that was monstrous. Two men
toiled at the wheel, relieving in pairs every half-hour, and in the
face of the cold they streamed with sweat long ere their half-hour
shift was up.

Mr. Pike is of the elder race of men. His endurance is prodigious.
Watch and watch, and all watches, he held the poop.

"I never dreamed of it," he told me, at midnight, as the great gusts
tore by and as we listened for our lighter spars to smash aloft and
crash upon the deck. "I thought my last whirling sailing was past.
And here we are! Here we are!

"Lord! Lord! I sailed third mate in the little Vampire before you
were born. Fifty-six men before the mast, and the last Jack of 'em
an able seaman. And there were eight boys, an' bosuns that was
bosuns, an' sail-makers an' carpenters an' stewards an' passengers to
jam the decks. An' three driving mates of us, an' Captain Brown, the
Little Wonder. He didn't weigh a hundredweight, an' he drove us--he
drove US, three drivin' mates that learned from him what drivin' was.

"It was knock down and drag out from the start. The first hour of
puttin' the men to fair perished our knuckles. I've got the smashed
joints yet to show. Every sea-chest broke open, every sea-bag turned
out, and whiskey bottles, knuckle-dusters, sling-shots, bowie-knives,
an' guns chucked overside by the armful. An' when we chose the
watches, each man of fifty-six of 'em laid his knife on the main-
hatch an' the carpenter broke the point square off.-Yes, an' the
little Vampire only eight hundred tons. The Elsinore could carry her
on her deck. But she was ship, all ship, an' them was men's days."

Margaret, save for inability to sleep, did not mind the driving,
although Mr. Mellaire, on the other hand, admitted apprehension.

"He's got my goat," he confided to me. "It isn't right to drive a
cargo-carrier this way. This isn't a ballasted yacht. It's a coal-
hulk. I know what driving was, but it was in ships made to drive.
Our iron-work aloft won't stand it. Mr. Pathurst, I tell you frankly
that it is criminal, it is sheer murder, to run the Elsinore with
that crojack on her. You can see yourself, sir. It's an after-sail.
All its tendency is to throw her stern off and her bow up to it. And
if it ever happens, sir, if she ever gets away from the wheel for two
seconds and broaches to . . . "

"Then what?" I asked, or, rather, shouted; for all conversation had
to be shouted close to ear in that blast of gale.

He shrugged his shoulders, and all of him was eloquent with the
unuttered, unmistakable word-finish."

At eight this morning Margaret and I struggled up to the poop. And
there was that indomitable, iron old man. He had never left the deck
all night. His eyes were bright, and he appeared in the pink of
well-being. He rubbed his hands and chuckled greeting to us, and
took up his reminiscences.

"In '51, on this same stretch, Miss West, the Flying Cloud, in
twenty-four hours, logged three hundred and seventy-four miles under
her topgallant-sails. That was sailing. She broke the record, that
day, for sail an' steam."

"And what are we averaging, Mr. Pike?" Margaret queried, while her
eyes were fixed on the main deck, where continually one rail and then
the other dipped under the ocean and filled across from rail to rail,
only to spill out and take in on the next roll.

"Thirteen for a fair average since five o'clock yesterday afternoon,"
he exulted. "In the squalls she makes all of sixteen, which is going
some, for the Elsinore."

"I'd take the crojack off if I had charge," Margaret criticised.

"So would I, so would I, Miss West," he replied; "if we hadn't been
six weeks already off the Horn."

She ran her eyes aloft, spar by spar, past the spars of hollow steel
to the wooden royals, which bent in the gusts like bows in some
invisible archer's hands.

"They're remarkably good sticks of timber," was her comment.

"Well may you say it, Miss West," he agreed. "I'd never a-believed
they'd a-stood it myself. But just look at 'm! Just look at 'm!"

There was no breakfast for the men. Three times the galley had been
washed out, and the men, in the forecastle awash, contented
themselves with hard tack and cold salt horse. Aft, with us, the
steward scalded himself twice ere he succeeded in making coffee over
a kerosene-burner.

At noon we picked up a ship ahead, a lime-juicer, travelling in the
same direction, under lower-topsails and one upper-topsail. The only
one of her courses set was the foresail.

The way that skipper's carryin' on is shocking," Mr. Pike sneered.
"He should be more cautious, and remember God, the owners, the
underwriters, and the Board of Trade."

Such was our speed that in almost no time we were up with the
stranger vessel and passing her. Mr. Pike was like a boy just loosed
from school. He altered our course so that we passed her a hundred
yards away. She was a gallant sight, but, such was our speed, she
appeared standing still. Mr. Pike jumped upon the rail and insulted
those on her poop by extending a rope's end in invitation to take a
tow.

Margaret shook her head privily to me as she gazed at our bending
royal-yards, but was caught in the act by Mr. Pike, who cried out:

"What kites she won't carry she can drag!"

An hour later I caught Tom Spink, just relieved from his shift at the
wheel and weak from exhaustion.

"What do you think now of the carpenter and his bag of tricks?" I
queried.

"Lord lumme, it should a-ben the mate, sir," was his reply.

By five in the afternoon we had logged 314 miles since five the
previous day, which was two over an average of thirteen knots for
twenty-four consecutive hours.

"Now take Captain Brown of the little Vampire," Mr. Pike grinned to
me, for our sailing made him good-natured. "He never would take in
until the kites an' stu'n'sails was about his ears. An' when she was
blown' her worst an' we was half-fairly shortened down, he'd turn in
for a snooze, an' say to us, 'Call me if she moderates.' Yes, and
I'll never forget the night when I called him an' told him that
everything on top the houses had gone adrift, an' that two of the
boats had been swept aft and was kindling-wood against the break of
the cabin. 'Very well, Mr. Pike,' he says, battin' his eyes and
turnin' over to go to sleep again. 'Very well, Mr. Pike,' says he.
'Watch her. An' Mr. Pike . . .' 'Yes, sir,' says I. 'Give me a
call, Mr. Pike, when the windlass shows signs of comin' aft.' That's
what he said, his very words, an' the next moment, damme, he was
snorin'."

It is now midnight, and, cunningly wedged into my bunk, unable to
sleep, I am writing these lines with flying dabs of pencil at my pad.
And no more shall I write, I swear, until this gale is blown out, or
we are blown to Kingdom Come.

CHAPTER XLI

The days have passed and I have broken my resolve; for here I am
again writing while the Elsinore surges along across a magnificent,
smoky, dusty sea. But I have two reasons for breaking my word.
First, and minor, we had a real dawn this morning. The gray of the
sea showed a streaky blue, and the cloud-masses were actually pink-
tipped by a really and truly sun.

Second, and major, WE ARE AROUND THE HORN! We are north of 50 in the
Pacific, in Longitude 80.49, with Cape Pillar and the Straits of
Magellan already south of east from us, and we are heading north-
north-west. WE ARE AROUND THE HORN! The profound significance of
this can be appreciated only by one who has wind-jammed around from
east to west. Blow high, blow low, nothing can happen to thwart us.
No ship north of 50 was ever blown back. From now on it is plain
sailing, and Seattle suddenly seems quite near.

All the ship's company, with the exception of Margaret, is better
spirited. She is quiet, and a little down, though she is anything
but prone to the wastage of grief. In her robust, vital philosophy
God's always in heaven. I may describe her as being merely subdued,
and gentle, and tender. And she is very wistful to receive gentle
consideration and tenderness from me. She is, after all, the genuine
woman. She wants the strength that man has to give, and I flatter
myself that I am ten times a stronger man than I was when the voyage
began, because I am a thousand times a more human man since I told
the books to go hang and began to revel in the human maleness of the
man that loves a woman and is loved.

Returning to the ship's company. The rounding of the Horn, the
better weather that is continually growing better, the easement of
hardship and toil and danger, with the promise of the tropics and of
the balmy south-east trades before them--all these factors contribute
to pick up our men again. The temperature has already so moderated
that the men are beginning to shed their surplusage of clothing, and
they no longer wrap sacking about their sea-boots. Last evening, in
the second dog-watch, I heard a man actually singing.

The steward has discarded the huge, hacking knife and relaxed to the
extent of engaging in an occasional sober romp with Possum. Wada's
face is no longer solemnly long, and Louis' Oxford accent is more
mellifluous than ever. Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay are the same
venomous scorpions they have always been. The three gangsters, with
the clique they lead, have again asserted their tyrrany and thrashed
all the weaklings and feeblings in the forecastle. Charles Davis
resolutely refuses to die, though how he survived that wet and
freezing room of iron through all the weeks off the Horn has elicited
wonder even from Mr. Pike, who has a most accurate knowledge of what
men can stand and what they cannot stand.

How Nietzsche, with his eternal slogan of "Be hard! Be hard!" would
have delighted in Mr. Pike!

And--oh!--Larry has had a tooth removed. For some days distressed
with a jumping toothache, he came aft to the mate for relief. Mr.
Pike refused to "monkey" with the "fangled" forceps in the medicine-
chest. He used a tenpenny nail and a hammer in the good old way to
which he was brought up. I vouch for this. I saw it done. One blow
of the hammer and the tooth was out, while Larry was jumping around
holding his jaw. It is a wonder it wasn't fractured. But Mr. Pike
avers he has removed hundreds of teeth by this method and never known
a fractured jaw. Also, he avers he once sailed with a skipper who
shaved every Sunday morning and never touched a razor, nor any
cutting-edge, to his face. What he used, according to Mr. Pike, was
a lighted candle and a damp towel. Another candidate for Nietzsche's
immortals who are hard!

As for Mr. Pike himself, he is the highest-spirited, best-conditioned
man on board. The driving to which he subjected the Elsinore was
meat and drink. He still rubs his hands and chuckles over the memory
of it.

"Huh!" he said to me, in reference to the crew; "I gave 'em a taste
of real old-fashioned sailing. They'll never forget this hooker--at
least them that don't take a sack of coal overside before we reach
port."

"You mean you think we'll have more sea-burials?" I inquired.

He turned squarely upon me, and squarely looked me in the eyes for
the matter of five long seconds.

"Huh!" he replied, as he turned on his heel. "Hell ain't begun to
pop on this hooker."

He still stands his mate's watch, alternating with Mr. Mellaire, for
he is firm in his conviction that there is no man for'ard fit to
stand a second mate's watch. Also, he has kept his old quarters.
Perhaps it is out of delicacy for Margaret; for I have learned that
it is the invariable custom for the mate to occupy the captain's
quarters when the latter dies. So Mr. Mellaire still eats by himself
in the big after-room, as he has done since the loss of the
carpenter, and bunks as before in the 'midship-house with Nancy.

CHAPTER XLII

Mr. Mellaire was right. The men would not accept the driving when
the Elsinore won to easier latitudes. Mr. Pike was right. Hell had
not begun to pop. But it has popped now, and men are overboard
without even the kindliness of a sack of coal at their feet. And yet
the men, though ripe for it, did not precipitate the trouble. It was
Mr. Mellaire. Or, rather, it was Ditman Olansen, the crank-eyed
Norwegian. Perhaps it was Possum. At any rate, it was an accident,
in which the several-named, including Possum, played their respective
parts.

To begin at the beginning. Two weeks have elapsed since we crossed
50, and we are now in 37--the same latitude as San Francisco, or, to
be correct, we are as far south of the equator as San Francisco is
north of it. The trouble was precipitated yesterday morning shortly
after nine o'clock, and Possum started the chain of events that
culminated in downright mutiny. It was Mr. Mellaire's watch, and he
was standing on the bridge, directly under the mizzen-top, giving
orders to Sundry Buyers, who, with Arthur Deacon and the Maltese
Cockney, was doing rigging work aloft.

Get the picture and the situation in all its ridiculousness. Mr.
Pike, thermometer in hand, was coming back along the bridge from
taking the temperature of the coal in the for'ard hold. Ditman
Olansen was just swinging into the mizzen-top as he went up with
several turns of rope over one shoulder. Also, in some way, to the
end of this rope was fastened a sizable block that might have weighed
ten pounds. Possum, running free, was fooling around the chicken-
coop on top the 'midship-house. And the chickens, featherless but
indomitable, were enjoying the milder weather as they pecked at the
grain and grits which the steward had just placed in their feeding-
trough. The tarpaulin that covered their pen had been off for
several days.

Now observe. I am at the break of the poop, leaning on the rail and
watching Ditman Olansen swing into the top with his cumbersome
burden. Mr. Pike, proceeding aft, has just passed Mr. Mellaire.
Possum, who, on account of the Horn weather and the tarpaulin, has
not seen the chickens for many weeks, is getting reacquainted, and is
investigating them with that keen nose of his. And a hen's beak,
equally though differently keen, impacts on Possum's nose, which is
as sensitive as it is keen.

I may well say, now that I think it over, that it was this particular
hen that started the mutiny. The men, well-driven by Mr. Pike, were
ripe for an explosion, and Possum and the hen laid the train.

Possum fell away backwards from the coop and loosed a wild cry of
pain and indignation. This attracted Ditman Olansen's attention. He
paused and craned his neck out in order to see, and, in this moment
of carelessness, the block he was carrying fetched away from him
along with the several turns of rope around his shoulder. Both the
mates sprang away to get out from under. The rope, fast to the block
and following it, lashed about like a blacksnake, and, though the
block fell clear of Mr. Mellaire, the bight of the rope snatched off
his cap.

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