The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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As I faced Mr. Mellaire, and talked with him, and smiled, and
exchanged amenities, I was aware of the feeling that comes to one in
the forest or jungle when he knows unseen wild eyes of hunting
animals are spying upon him. Frankly I was afraid of the thing
ambushed behind there in the skull of Mr. Mellaire. One so as a
matter of course identifies form and feature with the spirit within.
But I could not do this with the second mate. His face and form and
manner and suave ease were one thing, inside which he, an entirely
different thing, lay hid.

I noticed Wada standing in the cabin door, evidently waiting to ask
for instructions. I nodded, and prepared to follow him inside. Mr.
Pike looked at me quickly and said:

"Just a moment, Mr. Pathurst."

He gave some orders to the second mate, who turned on his heel and
started for'ard. I stood and waited for Mr. Pike's communication,
which he did not choose to make until he saw the second mate well out
of ear-shot. Then he leaned closely to me and said:

"Don't mention that little matter of my age to anybody. Each year I
sign on I sign my age one year younger. I am fifty-four, now, on the
articles."

"And you don't look a day older," I answered lightly, though I meant
it in all sincerity.

"And I don't feel it. I can outwork and outgame the huskiest of the
younglings. And don't let my age get to anybody's ears, Mr.
Pathurst. Skippers are not particular for mates getting around the
seventy mark. And owners neither. I've had my hopes for this ship,
and I'd a-got her, I think, except for the old man decidin' to go to
sea again. As if he needed the money! The old skinflint!"

"Is he well off?" I inquired.

"Well off! If I had a tenth of his money I could retire on a chicken
ranch in California and live like a fighting cock--yes, if I had a
fiftieth of what he's got salted away. Why, he owns more stock in
all the Blackwood ships . . . and they've always been lucky and
always earned money. I'm getting old, and it's about time I got a
command. But no; the old cuss has to take it into his head to go to
sea again just as the berth's ripe for me to fall into."

Again I started to enter the cabin, but was stopped by the mate.

"Mr. Pathurst? You won't mention about my age?"

"No, certainly not, Mr. Pike," I said.

CHAPTER III

Quite chilled through, I was immediately struck by the warm comfort
of the cabin. All the connecting doors were open, making what I
might call a large suite of rooms or a whale house. The main-deck
entrance, on the port side, was into a wide, well-carpeted hallway.
Into this hallway, from the port side, opened five rooms: first, on
entering, the mate's; next, the two state-rooms which had been
knocked into one for me; then the steward's room; and, adjoining his,
completing the row, a state-room which was used for the slop-chest.

Across the hall was a region with which I was not yet acquainted,
though I knew it contained the dining-room, the bath-rooms, the cabin
proper, which was in truth a spacious living-room, the captain's
quarters, and, undoubtedly, Miss West's quarters. I could hear her
humming some air as she bustled about with her unpacking. The
steward's pantry, separated by crosshalls and by the stairway leading
into the chart-room above on the poop, was placed strategically in
the centre of all its operations. Thus, on the starboard side of it
were the state-rooms of the captain and Miss West, for'ard of it were
the dining-room and main cabin; while on the port side of it was the
row of rooms I have described, two of which were mine.

I ventured down the hall toward the stern, and found it opened into
the stern of the Elsinore, forming a single large apartment at least
thirty-five feet from side to side and fifteen to eighteen feet in
depth, curved, of course, to the lines of the ship's stern. This
seemed a store-room. I noted wash-tubs, bolts of canvas, many
lockers, hams and bacon hanging, a step-ladder that led up through a
small hatch to the poop, and, in the floor, another hatch.

I spoke to the steward, an old Chinese, smooth-faced and brisk of
movement, whose name I never learned, but whose age on the articles
was fifty-six.

"What is down there?" I asked, pointing to the hatch in the floor.

"Him lazarette," he answered.

"And who eats there?" I indicated a table with two stationary sea-
chairs.

"Him second table. Second mate and carpenter him eat that table."

When I had finished giving instructions to Wada for the arranging of
my things I looked at my watch. It was early yet, only several
minutes after three so I went on deck again to witness the arrival of
the crew.

The actual coming on board from the tug I had missed, but for'ard of
the amidship house I encountered a few laggards who had not yet gone
into the forecastle. These were the worse for liquor, and a more
wretched, miserable, disgusting group of men I had never seen in any
slum. Their clothes were rags. Their faces were bloated, bloody,
and dirty. I won't say they were villainous. They were merely
filthy and vile. They were vile of appearance, of speech, and
action.

"Come! Come! Get your dunnage into the fo'c's'le!"

Mr. Pike uttered these words sharply from the bridge above. A light
and graceful bridge of steel rods and planking ran the full length of
the Elsinore, starting from the poop, crossing the amidship house and
the forecastle, and connecting with the forecastle-head at the very
bow of the ship.

At the mate's command the men reeled about and glowered up at him,
one or two starting clumsily to obey. The others ceased their
drunken yammerings and regarded the mate sullenly. One of them, with
a face mashed by some mad god in the making, and who was afterwards
to be known by me as Larry, burst into a guffaw, and spat insolently
on the deck. Then, with utmost deliberation, he turned to his
fellows and demanded loudly and huskily:

"Who in hell's the old stiff, anyways?"

I saw Mr. Pike's huge form tense convulsively and involuntarily, and
I noted the way his huge hands strained in their clutch on the
bridge-railing. Beyond that he controlled himself.

"Go on, you," he said. "I'll have nothing out of you. Get into the
fo'c's'le."

And then, to my surprise, he turned and walked aft along the bridge
to where the tug was casting off its lines. So this was all his high
and mighty talk of kill and drive, I thought. Not until afterwards
did I recollect, as I turned aft down the deck, that I saw Captain
West leaning on the rail at the break of the poop and gazing for'ard.

The tug's lines were being cast off, and I was interested in watching
the manoeuvre until she had backed clear of the ship, at which
moment, from for'ard, arose a queer babel of howling and yelping, as
numbers of drunken voices cried out that a man was overboard. The
second mate sprang down the poop-ladder and darted past me along the
deck. The mate, still on the slender, white-painted bridge, that
seemed no more than a spider thread, surprised me by the activity
with which he dashed along the bridge to the 'midship house, leaped
upon the canvas-covered long-boat, and swung outboard where he might
see. Before the men could clamber upon the rail the second mate was
among them, and it was he who flung a coil of line overboard.

What impressed me particularly was the mental and muscular
superiority of these two officers. Despite their age--the mate
sixty-nine and the second mate at least fifty--their minds and their
bodies had acted with the swiftness and accuracy of steel springs.
They were potent. They were iron. They were perceivers, willers,
and doers. They were as of another species compared with the sailors
under them. While the latter, witnesses of the happening and
directly on the spot, had been crying out in befuddled helplessness,
and with slow wits and slower bodies been climbing upon the rail, the
second mate had descended the steep ladder from the poop, covered two
hundred feet of deck, sprung upon the rail, grasped the instant need
of the situation, and cast the coil of line into the water.

And of the same nature and quality had been the actions of Mr. Pike.
He and Mr. Mellaire were masters over the wretched creatures of
sailors by virtue of this remarkable difference of efficiency and
will. Truly, they were more widely differentiated from the men under
them than were the men under them differentiated from Hottentots--ay,
and from monkeys.

I, too, by this time, was standing on the big hawser-bitts in a
position to see a man in the water who seemed deliberately swimming
away from the ship. He was a dark-skinned Mediterranean of some
sort, and his face, in a clear glimpse I caught of it, was distorted
by frenzy. His black eyes were maniacal. The line was so accurately
flung by the second mate that it fell across the man's shoulders, and
for several strokes his arms tangled in it ere he could swim clear.
This accomplished, he proceeded to scream some wild harangue and
once, as he uptossed his arms for emphasis, I saw in his hand the
blade of a long knife.

Bells were jangling on the tug as it started to the rescue. I stole
a look up at Captain West. He had walked to the port side of the
poop, where, hands in pockets, he was glancing, now for'ard at the
struggling man, now aft at the tug. He gave no orders, betrayed no
excitement, and appeared, I may well say, the most casual of
spectators.

The creature in the water seemed now engaged in taking off his
clothes. I saw one bare arm, and then the other, appear. In his
struggles he sometimes sank beneath the surface, but always he
emerged, flourishing the knife and screaming his addled harangue. He
even tried to escape the tug by diving and swimming underneath.

I strolled for'ard, and arrived in time to see him hoisted in over
the rail of the Elsinore. He was stark naked, covered with blood,
and raving. He had cut and slashed himself in a score of places.
From one wound in the wrist the blood spurted with each beat of the
pulse. He was a loathsome, non-human thing. I have seen a scared
orang in a zoo, and for all the world this bestial-faced, mowing,
gibbering thing reminded me of the orang. The sailors surrounded
him, laying hands on him, withstraining him, the while they guffawed
and cheered. Right and left the two mates shoved them away, and
dragged the lunatic down the deck and into a room in the 'midship
house. I could not help marking the strength of Mr. Pike and Mr.
Mellaire. I had heard of the superhuman strength of madmen, but this
particular madman was as a wisp of straw in their hands. Once into
the bunk, Mr. Pike held down the struggling fool easily with one hand
while he dispatched the second mate for marlin with which to tie the
fellow's arms.

"Bughouse," Mr. Pike grinned at me. "I've seen some bughouse crews
in my time, but this one's the limit."

"What are you going to do?" I asked. "The man will bleed to death."

"And good riddance," he answered promptly. "We'll have our hands
full of him until we can lose him somehow. When he gets easy I'll
sew him up, that's all, if I have to ease him with a clout of the
jaw."

I glanced at the mate's huge paw and appreciated its anaesthetic
qualities. Out on deck again, I saw Captain West on the poop, hands
still in pockets, quite uninterested, gazing at a blue break in the
sky to the north-east. More than the mates and the maniac, more than
the drunken callousness of the men, did this quiet figure, hands in
pockets, impress upon me that I was in a different world from any I
had known.

Wada broke in upon my thoughts by telling me he had been sent to say
that Miss West was serving tea in the cabin.

CHAPTER IV

The contrast, as I entered the cabin, was startling. All contrasts
aboard the Elsinore promised to be startling. Instead of the cold,
hard deck my feet sank into soft carpet. In place of the mean and
narrow room, built of naked iron, where I had left the lunatic, I was
in a spacious and beautiful apartment. With the bawling of the men's
voices still in my ears, and with the pictures of their drink-puffed
and filthy faces still vivid under my eyelids, I found myself greeted
by a delicate-faced, prettily-gowned woman who sat beside a lacquered
oriental table on which rested an exquisite tea-service of Canton
china. All was repose and calm. The steward, noiseless-footed,
expressionless, was a shadow, scarcely noticed, that drifted into the
room on some service and drifted out again.

Not at once could I relax, and Miss West, serving my tea, laughed and
said:

"You look as if you had been seeing things. The steward tells me a
man has been overboard. I fancy the cold water must have sobered
him."

I resented her unconcern.

"The man is a lunatic," I said. "This ship is no place for him. He
should be sent ashore to some hospital."

"I am afraid, if we begin that, we'd have to send two-thirds of our
complement ashore--one lump?

"Yes, please," I answered. "But the man has terribly wounded
himself. He is liable to bleed to death."

She looked at me for a moment, her gray eyes serious and
scrutinizing, as she passed me my cup; then laughter welled up in her
eyes, and she shook her head reprovingly.

"Now please don't begin the voyage by being shocked, Mr. Pathurst.
Such things are very ordinary occurrences. You'll get used to them.
You must remember some queer creatures go down to the sea in ships.
The man is safe. Trust Mr. Pike to attend to his wounds. I've never
sailed with Mr. Pike, but I've heard enough about him. Mr. Pike is
quite a surgeon. Last voyage, they say, he performed a successful
amputation, and so elated was he that he turned his attention on the
carpenter, who happened to be suffering from some sort of
indigestion. Mr. Pike was so convinced of the correctness of his
diagnosis that he tried to bribe the carpenter into having his
appendix removed." She broke off to laugh heartily, then added:
"They say he offered the poor man just pounds and pounds of tobacco
to consent to the operation."

"But is it safe . . . for the . . . the working of the ship," I
urged, "to take such a lunatic along?"

She shrugged her shoulders, as if not intending to reply, then said:

"This incident is nothing. There are always several lunatics or
idiots in every ship's company. And they always come aboard filled
with whiskey and raving. I remember, once, when we sailed from
Seattle, a long time ago, one such madman. He showed no signs of
madness at all; just calmly seized two boarding-house runners and
sprang overboard with them. We sailed the same day, before the
bodies were recovered."

Again she shrugged her shoulders.

"What would you? The sea is hard, Mr. Pathurst. And for our sailors
we get the worst type of men. I sometimes wonder where they find
them. And we do our best with them, and somehow manage to make them
help us carry on our work in the world. But they are low . . . low."

As I listened, and studied her face, contrasting her woman's
sensitivity and her soft pretty dress with the brute faces and rags
of the men I had noticed, I could not help being convinced
intellectually of the rightness of her position. Nevertheless, I was
hurt sentimentally,--chiefly, I do believe, because of the very
hardness and unconcern with which she enunciated her view. It was
because she was a woman, and so different from the sea-creatures,
that I resented her having received such harsh education in the
school of the sea.

"I could not help remarking your father's--er, er sang froid during
the occurrence." I ventured.

"He never took his hands from his pockets!" she cried.

Her eyes sparkled as I nodded confirmation.

"I knew it! It's his way. I've seen it so often. I remember when I
was twelve years old--mother was alone--we were running into San
Francisco. It was in the Dixie, a ship almost as big as this. There
was a strong fair wind blowing, and father did not take a tug. We
sailed right through the Golden Gate and up the San Francisco water-
front. There was a swift flood tide, too; and the men, both watches,
were taking in sail as fast as they could.

"Now the fault was the steamboat captain's. He miscalculated our
speed and tried to cross our bow. Then came the collision, and the
Dixie's bow cut through that steamboat, cabin and hull. There were
hundreds of passengers, men, women, and children. Father never took
his hands from his pockets. He sent the mate for'ard to superintend
rescuing the passengers, who were already climbing on to our bowsprit
and forecastle-head, and in a voice no different from what he'd use
to ask some one to pass the butter he told the second mate to set all
sail. And he told him which sails to begin with."

"But why set more sails?" I interrupted.

"Because he could see the situation. Don't you see, the steamboat
was cut wide open. All that kept her from sinking instantly was the
bow of the Dixie jammed into her side. By setting more sail and
keeping before the wind, he continued to keep the bow of the Dixie
jammed.

"I was terribly frightened. People who had sprung or fallen
overboard were drowning on each side of us, right in my sight, as we
sailed along up the water-front. But when I looked at father, there
he was, just as I had always known him, hands in pockets, walking
slowly up and down, now giving an order to the wheel--you see, he had
to direct the Dixie's course through all the shipping--now watching
the passengers swarming over our bow and along our deck, now looking
ahead to see his way through the ships at anchor. Sometimes he did
glance at the poor, drowning ones, but he was not concerned with
them.

"Of course, there were numbers drowned, but by keeping his hands in
his pockets and his head cool he saved hundreds of lives. Not until
the last person was off the steamboat--he sent men aboard to make
sure--did he take off the press of sail. And the steamboat sank at
once."

She ceased, and looked at me with shining eyes for approbation.

"It was splendid," I acknowledged. "I admire the quiet man of power,
though I confess that such quietness under stress seems to me almost
unearthly and beyond human. I can't conceive of myself acting that
way, and I am confident that I was suffering more while that poor
devil was in the water than all the rest of the onlookers put
together."

"Father suffers!" she defended loyally. "Only he does not show it."

I bowed, for I felt she had missed my point.

CHAPTER V

I came out from tea in the cabin to find the tug Britannia in sight.
She was the craft that was to tow us down Chesapeake Bay to sea.
Strolling for'ard I noted the sailors being routed out of the
forecastle by Sundry Buyers, for ever tenderly pressing his abdomen
with his hands. Another man was helping Sundry Buyers at routing out
the sailors. I asked Mr. Pike who the man was.

"Nancy--my bosun; ain't he a peach?" was the answer I got, and from
the mate's manner of enunciation I was quite aware that "Nancy" had
been used derisively.

Nancy could not have been more than thirty, though he looked as if he
had lived a very long time. He was toothless and sad and weary of
movement. His eyes were slate-coloured and muddy, his shaven face
was sickly yellow. Narrow-shouldered, sunken-chested, with cheeks
cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of
consumption. Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even
less life. And these were bosuns!--bosuns of the fine American
sailing-ship Elsinore! Never had any illusion of mine taken a more
distressing cropper.

It was plain to me that the pair of them, spineless and spunkless,
were afraid of the men they were supposed to boss. And the men!
Dore could never have conjured a more delectable hell's broth. For
the first time I saw them all, and I could not blame the two bosuns
for being afraid of them. They did not walk. They slouched and
shambled, some even tottered, as from weakness or drink.

But it was their faces. I could not help remembering what Miss West
had just told me--that ships always sailed with several lunatics or
idiots in their crews. But these looked as if they were all lunatic
or feeble-minded. And I, too, wondered where such a mass of human
wreckage could have been obtained. There was something wrong with
all of them. Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and
almost without exception they were under-sized. The several quite
fairly large men I marked were vacant-faced. One man, however, large
and unmistakably Irish, was also unmistakably mad. He was talking
and muttering to himself as he came out. A little, curved, lop-sided
man, with his head on one side and with the shrewdest and wickedest
of faces and pale blue eyes, addressed an obscene remark to the mad
Irishman, calling him O'Sullivan. But O'Sullivan took no notice and
muttered on. On the heels of the little lop-sided man appeared an
overgrown dolt of a fat youth, followed by another youth so tall and
emaciated of body that it seemed a marvel his flesh could hold his
frame together.

Next, after this perambulating skeleton, came the weirdest creature I
have ever beheld. He was a twisted oaf of a man. Face and body were
twisted as with the pain of a thousand years of torture. His was the
face of an ill-treated and feeble-minded faun. His large black eyes
were bright, eager, and filled with pain; and they flashed
questioningly from face to face and to everything about. They were
so pitifully alert, those eyes, as if for ever astrain to catch the
clue to some perplexing and threatening enigma. Not until afterwards
did I learn the cause of this. He was stone deaf, having had his
ear-drums destroyed in the boiler explosion which had wrecked the
rest of him.

I noticed the steward, standing at the galley door and watching the
men from a distance. His keen, Asiatic face, quick with
intelligence, was a relief to the eye, as was the vivid face of
Shorty, who came out of the forecastle with a leap and a gurgle of
laughter. But there was something wrong with him, too. He was a
dwarf, and, as I was to come to know, his high spirits and low
mentality united to make him a clown.

Mr. Pike stopped beside me a moment and while he watched the men I
watched him. The expression on his face was that of a cattle-buyer,
and it was plain that he was disgusted with the quality of cattle
delivered.

"Something the matter with the last mother's son of them," he
growled.

And still they came: one, pallid, furtive-eyed, that I instantly
adjudged a drug fiend; another, a tiny, wizened old man, pinch-faced
and wrinkled, with beady, malevolent blue eyes; a third, a small,
well-fleshed man, who seemed to my eye the most normal and least
unintelligent specimen that had yet appeared. But Mr. Pike's eye was
better trained than mine.

"What's the matter with YOU?" he snarled at the man.

"Nothing, sir," the fellow answered, stopping immediately.

"What's your name?"

Mr. Pike never spoke to a sailor save with a snarl.

"Charles Davis, sir."

"What are you limping about?"

"I ain't limpin', sir," the man answered respectfully, and, at a nod
of dismissal from the mate, marched off jauntily along the deck with
a heodlum swing to the shoulders.

"He's a sailor all right," the mate grumbled; "but I'll bet you a
pound of tobacco or a month's wages there's something wrong with
him."

The forecastle now seemed empty, but the mate turned on the bosuns
with his customary snarl.

"What in hell are you doing? Sleeping? Think this is a rest cure?
Get in there an' rustle 'em out!"

Sundry Buyers pressed his abdomen gingerly and hesitated, while
Nancy, his face one dogged, long-suffering bleakness, reluctantly
entered the forecastle. Then, from inside, we heard oaths, vile and
filthy, urgings and expostulations on the part of Nancy, meekly and
pleadingly uttered.

I noted the grim and savage look that came on Mr. Pike's face, and
was prepared for I knew not what awful monstrosities to emerge from
the forecastle. Instead, to my surprise, came three fellows who were
strikingly superior to the ruck that had preceded them. I looked to
see the mate's face soften to some sort of approval. On the
contrary, his blue eyes contracted to narrow slits, the snarl of his
voice was communicated to his lips, so that he seemed like a dog
about to bite.

But the three fellows. They were small men, all; and young men,
anywhere between twenty-five and thirty. Though roughly dressed,
they were well dressed, and under their clothes their bodily
movements showed physical well-being. Their faces were keen cut,
intelligent. And though I felt there was something queer about them,
I could not divine what it was.

Here were no ill-fed, whiskey-poisoned men, such as the rest of the
sailors, who, having drunk up their last pay-days, had starved ashore
until they had received and drunk up their advance money for the
present voyage. These three, on the other hand were supple and
vigorous. Their movements were spontaneously quick and accurate.
Perhaps it was the way they looked at me, with incurious yet
calculating eyes that nothing escaped. They seemed so worldly wise,
so indifferent, so sure of themselves. I was confident they were not
sailors. Yet, as shore-dwellers, I could not place them. They were
a type I had never encountered. Possibly I can give a better idea of
them by describing what occurred.

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