The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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All this was new to the gangster--as it was to me--but Charles Davis
and the Maltese Cockney thoroughly apprehended the situation.

"Stand out from under!" I yelled sardonically; and the three of them
cowered and shrank away as their eyes sought aloft for what new spar
was thundering down upon them.

The lower-topsail, its sheets parted by the fall of the crojack-yard,
was tearing out of the bolt-ropes and ribboning away to leeward and
making such an uproar that they might well expect its yard to carry
away. Since this wreckage of our beautiful gear was all new to me, I
was quite prepared to see the thing happen.

The gangster-leader, no sailor, but, after months at sea, intelligent
enough and nervously strong enough to appreciate the danger, turned
his head and looked up at me. And I will do him the credit to say
that he took his time while all our world of gear aloft seemed
smashing to destruction.

"I guess we'll trim yards," he capitulated.

"Better get the skysails and royals off," Margaret said in my ear.

"While you're about it, get in the skysails and royals!" I shouted
down. "And make a decent job of the gasketing!"

Both Charles Davis and the Maltese Cockney advertised their relief in
their faces as they heard my words, and, at a nod from the gangster,
they started for'ard on the run to put the orders into effect.

Never, in the whole voyage, did our crew spring to it in more lively
fashion. And lively fashion was needed to save our gear. As it was,
they cut away the remnants of the mizzen-lower-topsail with their
sheath-knives, and they loosed the main-skysail out of its bolt-
ropes.

The first infraction of our agreement was on the main-lower-topsail.
This they attempted to furl. The carrying away of the crojack and
the blowing away of the mizzen-lower-topsail gave me freedom to see
and aim, and when the tiny messengers from my rifle began to spat
through the canvas and to spat against the steel of the yard, the men
strung along it desisted from passing the gaskets. I waved my will
to Bert Rhine, who acknowledged me and ordered the sail set again and
the yard trimmed.

"What is the use of running off-shore?" I said to Margaret, when the
kites were snugged down and all yards trimmed on the wind. "Three
hundred and fifty miles off the land is as good as thirty-five
hundred so far as starvation is concerned."

So, instead of making speed through the water toward deep sea, I hove
the Elsinore to on the starboard tack with no more than leeway
driftage to the west and south.

But our gallant mutineers had their will of us that very night. In
the darkness we could hear the work aloft going on as yards were run
down, sheets let go, and sails dewed up and gasketed. I did try a
few random shots, and all my reward was to hear the whine and creak
of ropes through sheaves and to receive an equally random fire of
revolver-shots.

It is a most curious situation. We of the high place are masters of
the steering of the Elsinore, while those for'ard are masters of the
motor power. The only sail that is wholly ours is the spanker. They
control absolutely--sheets, halyards, clewlines, buntlines, braces,
and down-hauls--every sail on the fore and main. We control the
braces on the mizzen, although they control the canvas on the mizzen.
For that matter, Margaret and I fail to comprehend why they do not go
aloft any dark night and sever the mizzen-braces at the yard-ends.
All that prevents this, we are decided, is laziness. For if they did
sever the braces that lead aft into our hands, they would be
compelled to rig new braces for'ard in some fashion, else, in the
rolling, would the mizzenmast be stripped of every spar.

And still the mutiny we are enduring is ridiculous and grotesque.
There was never a mutiny like it. It violates all standards and
precedents. In the old classic mutinies, long ere this, attacking
like tigers, the seamen should have swarmed over the poop and killed
most of us or been most of them killed.

Wherefore I sneer at our gallant mutineers, and recommend trained
nurses for them, quite in the manner of Mr. Pike. But Margaret
shakes her head and insists that human nature is human nature, and
that under similar circumstances human nature will express itself
similarly. In short, she points to the number of deaths that have
already occurred, and declares that on some dark night, sooner or
later, whenever the pinch of hunger sufficiently sharpens, we shall
see our rascals storming aft.

And in the meantime, except for the tenseness of it, and for the
incessant watchfulness which Margaret and I alone maintain, it is
more like a mild adventure, more like a page out of some book of
romance which ends happily.

It is surely romance, watch and watch for a man and a woman who love,
to relieve each other's watches. Each such relief is a love passage
and unforgettable. Never was there wooing like it--the muttered
surmises of wind and weather, the whispered councils, the kissed
commands in palms of hands, the dared contacts of the dark.

Oh, truly, I have often, since this voyage began, told the books to
go hang. And yet the books are at the back of the race-life of me.
I am what I am out of ten thousand generations of my kind. Of that
there is no discussion. And yet my midnight philosophy stands the
test of my breed. I must have selected my books out of the ten
thousand generations that compose me. I have killed a man--Steve
Roberts. As a perishing blond without an alphabet I should have done
this unwaveringly. As a perishing blond with an alphabet, plus the
contents in my brain of the philosophizing of all philosophers, I
have killed this same man with the same unwaveringness. Culture has
not emasculated me. I am quite unaffected. It was in the day's
work, and my kind have always been day-workers, doing the day's work,
whatever it might be, in high adventure or dull ploddingness, and
always doing it.

Never would I ask to set back the dial of time or event. I would
kill Steve Roberts again, under the same circumstances, as a matter
of course. When I say I am unaffected by this happening I do not
quite mean it. I am affected. I am aware that the spirit of me is
informed with a sober elation of efficiency. I have done something
that had to be done, as any man will do what has to be done in the
course of the day's work.

Yes, I am a perishing blond, and a man, and I sit in the high place
and bend the stupid ones to my will; and I am a lover, loving a royal
woman of my own perishing breed, and together we occupy, and shall
occupy, the high place of government and command until our kind
perish from the earth.

CHAPTER XLVII

Margaret was right. The mutiny is not violating standards and
precedents. We have had our hands full for days and nights. Ditman
Olansen, the crank-eyed Berserker, has been killed by Wada, and the
training-ship boy, the one lone cadet of our breed, has gone overside
with the regulation sack of coal at his feet. The poop has been
rushed. My illuminating invention has proved a success. The men are
getting hungry, and we still sit in command in the high place.

First of all the attack on the poop, two nights ago, in Margaret's
watch. No; first, I have made another invention. Assisted by the
old steward, who knows, as a Chinese ought, a deal about fireworks,
and getting my materials from our signal rockets and Roman candles, I
manufactured half a dozen bombs. I don't really think they are very
deadly, and I know our extemporized fuses are slower than our voyage
is at the present time; but nevertheless the bombs have served the
purpose, as you shall see.

And now to the attempt to rush the poop. It was in Margaret's watch,
from midnight till four in the morning, when the attack was made.
Sleeping on the deck by the cabin skylight, I was very close to her
when her revolver went off, and continued to go off.

My first spring was to the tripping-lines on my illuminators. The
igniting and releasing devices worked cleverly. I pulled two of the
tripping-lines, and two of the contraptions exploded into light and
noise and at the same time ran automatically down the jigger-trysail-
stays, and automatically fetched up at the ends of their lines. The
illumination was instantaneous and gorgeous. Henry, the two sail-
makers, and the steward--at least three of them awakened from sound
sleep, I am sure--ran to join us along the break of the poop. All
the advantage lay with us, for we were in the dark, while our foes
were outlined against the light behind them.

But such light! The powder crackled, fizzed, and spluttered and
spilled out the excess of gasolene from the flaming oakum balls so
that streams of fire dripped down on the main deck beneath. And the
stuff of the signal-flares dripped red light and blue and green.

There was not much of a fight, for the mutineers were shocked by our
fireworks. Margaret fired her revolver haphazardly, while I held my
rifle for any that gained the poop. But the attack faded away as
quickly as it had come. I did see Margaret overshoot some man,
scaling the poop from the port-rail, and the next moment I saw Wada,
charging like a buffalo, jab him in the chest with the spear he had
made and thrust the boarder back and down.

That was all. The rest retreated for'ard on the dead run, while the
three trysails, furled at the foot of the stays next to the mizzen
and set on fire by the dripping gasolene, went up in flame and burned
entirely away and out without setting the rest of the ship on fire.
That is one of the virtues of a ship steel-masted and steel-stayed.

And on the deck beneath us, crumpled, twisted, face hidden so that we
could not identify him, lay the man whom Wada had speared.

And now I come to a phase of adventure that is new to me. I have
never found it in the books. In short, it is carelessness coupled
with laziness, or vice versa. I had used two of my illuminators.
Only one remained. An hour later, convinced of the movement aft of
men along the deck, I let go the third and last and with its
brightness sent them scurrying for'ard. Whether they were attacking
the poop tentatively to learn whether or not I had exhausted my
illuminators, or whether or not they were trying to rescue Ditman
Olansen, we shall never know. The point is: they did come aft; they
were compelled to retreat by my illuminator; and it was my last
illuminator. And yet I did not start in, there and then, to
manufacture fresh ones. This was carelessness. It was laziness.
And I hazarded our lives, perhaps, if you please, on a psychological
guess that I had convinced our mutineers that we had an inexhaustible
stock of illuminators in reserve.

The rest of Margaret's watch, which I shared with her, was
undisturbed. At four I insisted that she go below and turn in, but
she compromised by taking my own bed behind the skylight.

At break of day I was able to make out the body, still lying as last
I had seen it. At seven o'clock, before breakfast, and while
Margaret still slept, I sent the two boys, Henry and Buckwheat, down
to the body. I stood above them, at the rail, rifle in hand and
ready. But from for'ard came no signs of life; and the lads, between
them, rolled the crank-eyed Norwegian over so that we could recognize
him, carried him to the rail, and shoved him stiffly across and into
the sea. Wada's spear-thrust had gone clear through him.

But before twenty-four hours were up the mutineers evened the score
handsomely. They more than evened it, for we are so few that we
cannot so well afford the loss of one as they can. To begin with--
and a thing I had anticipated and for which I had prepared my bombs--
while Margaret and I ate a deck-breakfast in the shelter of the
jiggermast a number of the men sneaked aft and got under the overhang
of the poop. Buckwheat saw them coming and yelled the alarm, but it
was too late. There was no direct way to get them out. The moment I
put my head over the rail to fire at them, I knew they would fire up
at me with all the advantage in their favour. They were hidden. I
had to expose myself.

Two steel doors, tight-fastened and caulked against the Cape Horn
seas, opened under the overhang of the poop from the cabin on to the
main deck. These doors the men proceeded to attack with sledge-
hammers, while the rest of the gang, sheltered by the 'midship-house,
showed that it stood ready for the rush when the doors were battered
down.

Inside, the steward guarded one door with his hacking knife, while
with his spear Wada guarded the other door. Nor, while I had
dispatched them to this duty, was I idle. Behind the jiggermast I
lighted the fuse of one of my extemporized bombs. When it was
sputtering nicely I ran across the poop to the break and dropped the
bomb to the main deck beneath, at the same time making an effort to
toss it in under the overhang where the men battered at the port-
door. But this effort was distracted and made futile by a popping of
several revolver shots from the gangways amidships. One IS jumpy
when soft-nosed bullets putt-putt around him. As a result, the bomb
rolled about on the open deck.

Nevertheless, the illuminators had earned the respect of the
mutineers for my fireworks. The sputtering and fizzling of the fuse
were too much for them, and from under the poop they ran for'ard like
so many scuttling rabbits. I know I could have got a couple with my
rifle had I not been occupied with lighting the fuse of a second
bomb. Margaret managed three wild shots with her revolver, and the
poop was immediately peppered by a scattering revolver fire from
for'ard.

Being provident (and lazy, for I have learned that it takes time and
labour to manufacture home-made bombs), I pinched off the live end of
the fuse in my hand. But the fuse of the first bomb, rolling about
on the main deck, merely fizzled on; and as I waited I resolved to
shorten my remaining fuses. Any of the men who fled, had he had the
courage, could have pinched off the fuse, or tossed the bomb
overboard, or, better yet, he could have tossed it up amongst us on
the poop.

It took fully five minutes for that blessed fuse to burn its slow
length, and when the bomb did go off it was a sad disappointment. I
swear it could have been sat upon with nothing more than a jar to
one's nerves. And yet, in so far as the intimidation goes, it did
its work. The men have not since ventured under the overhang of the
poop.

That the mutineers were getting short of food was patent. The
Elsinore, sailless, drifted about that morning, the sport of wind and
wave; and the gang put many lines overboard for the catching of
molly-hawks and albatrosses. Oh, I worried the hungry fishers with
my rifle. No man could show himself for'ard without having a bullet
whop against the iron-work perilously near him. And still they
caught birds--not, however, without danger to themselves, and not
without numerous losses of birds due to my rifle.

Their procedure was to toss their hooks and bait over the rail from
shelter and slowly to pay the lines out as the slight windage of the
Elsinore's hull, spars, and rigging drifted her through the water.
When a bird was hooked they hauled in the line, still from shelter,
till it was alongside. This was the ticklish moment. The hook,
merely a hollow and acute-angled triangle of sheet-copper floating on
a piece of board at the end of the line, held the bird by pinching
its curved beak into the acute angle. The moment the line slacked
the bird was released. So, when alongside, this was the problem: to
lift the bird out of the water, straight up the side of the ship,
without once jamming and easing and slacking. When they tried to do
this from shelter invariably they lost the bird.

They worked out a method. When the bird was alongside the several
men with revolvers turned loose on me, while one man, overhauling and
keeping the line taut, leaped to the rail and quickly hove the bird
up and over and inboard. I know this long-distance revolver fire
seriously bothered me. One cannot help jumping when death, in the
form of a piece of flying lead, hits the rail beside him, or the mast
over his head, or whines away in a ricochet from the steel shrouds.
Nevertheless, I managed with my rifle to bother the exposed men on
the rail to the extent that they lost one hooked bird out of two.
And twenty-six men require a quantity of albatrosses and mollyhawks
every twenty-four hours, while they can fish only in the daylight.

As the day wore along I improved on my obstructive tactics. When the
Elsinore was up in the eye of the wind, and making sternway, I found
that by putting the wheel sharply over, one way or the other, I could
swing her bow off. Then, when she had paid off till the wind was
abeam, by reversing the wheel hard across to the opposite hard-over I
could take advantage of her momentum away from the wind and work her
off squarely before it. This made all the wood-floated triangles of
bird-snares tow aft along her sides.

The first time I was ready for them. With hooks and sinkers on our
own lines aft, we tossed out, grappled, captured, and broke off nine
of their lines. But the next time, so slow is the movement of so
large a ship, the mutineers hauled all their lines safely inboard ere
they towed aft within striking distance of my grapnels.

Still I improved. As long as I kept the Elsinore before the wind
they could not fish. I experimented. Once before it, by means of a
winged-out spanker coupled with patient and careful steering, I could
keep her before it. This I did, hour by hour one of my men relieving
another at the wheel. As a result all fishing ceased.

Margaret was holding the first dog-watch, four to six. Henry was at
the wheel steering. Wada and Louis were below cooking the evening
meal over the big coal-stove and the oil-burners. I had just come up
from below and was standing beside the sounding-machine, not half a
dozen feet from Henry at the wheel. Some obscure sound from the
ventilator must have attracted me, for I was gazing at it when the
thing happened.

But first, the ventilator. This is a steel shaft that leads up from
the coal-carrying bowels of the ship beneath the lazarette and that
wins to the outside-world via the after-wall of the chart-house. In
fact, it occupies the hollow inside of the double walls of the
afterwall of the chart-house. Its opening, at the height of a man's
head, is screened with iron bars so closely set that no mature-bodied
rat can squeeze between. Also, this opening commands the wheel,
which is a scant fifteen feet away and directly across the booby-
hatch. Some mutineer, crawling along the space between the coal and
the deck of the lower hold, had climbed the ventilator shaft and was
able to take aim through the slits between the bars.

Practically simultaneously, I saw the out-rush of smoke and heard the
report. I heard a grunt from Henry, and, turning my head, saw him
cling to the spokes and turn the wheel half a revolution as he sank
to the deck. It must have been a lucky shot. The boy was perforated
through the heart or very near to the heart--we have no time for
post-mortems on the Elsinore.

Tom Spink and the second sail-maker, Uchino, sprang to Henry's side.
The revolver continued to go off through the ventilator slits, and
the bullets thudded into the front of the half wheel-house all about
them. Fortunately they were not hit, and they immediately scrambled
out of range. The boy quivered for the space of a few seconds, and
ceased to move; and one more cadet of the perishing breed perished as
he did his day's work at the wheel of the Elsinore off the west coast
of South America, bound from Baltimore to Seattle with a cargo of
coal.

CHAPTER XLVIII

The situation is hopelessly grotesque. We in the high place command
the food of the Elsinore, but the mutineers have captured her
steering-gear. That is to say, they have captured it without coming
into possession of it. They cannot steer, neither can we. The poop,
which is the high place, is ours. The wheel is on the poop, yet we
cannot touch the wheel. From that slitted opening in the ventilator-
shaft they are able to shoot down any man who approaches the wheel.
And with that steel wall of the chart-house as a shield they laugh at
us as from a conning tower.

I have a plan, but it is not worth while putting into execution
unless its need becomes imperative. In the darkness of night it
would be an easy trick to disconnect the steering-gear from the short
tiller on the rudder-head, and then, by re-rigging the preventer
tackles, steer from both sides of the poop well enough for'ard to be
out of the range of the ventilator.

In the meantime, in this fine weather, the Elsinore drifts as she
lists, or as the windage of her lists and the sea-movement of waves
lists. And she can well drift. Let the mutineers starve. They can
best be brought to their senses through their stomachs.

And what are wits for, if not for use? I am breaking the men's
hungry hearts. It is great fun in its way. The mollyhawks and
albatrosses, after their fashion, have followed the Elsinore up out
of their own latitudes. This means that there are only so many of
them and that their numbers are not recruited. Syllogism: major
premise, a definite and limited amount of bird-meat; minor premise,
the only food the mutineers now have is bird-meat; conclusion,
destroy the available food and the mutineers will be compelled to
come back to duty.

I have acted on this bit of logic. I began experimentally by tossing
small chunks of fat pork and crusts of stale bread overside. When
the birds descended for the feast I shot them. Every carcass thus
left floating on the surface of the sea was so much less meat for the
mutineers.

But I bettered the method. Yesterday I overhauled the medicine-
chest, and I dosed my chunks of fat pork and bread with the contents
of every bottle that bore a label of skull and cross-bones. I even
added rough-on-rats to the deadliness of the mixture--this on the
suggestion of the steward.

And to-day, behold, there is no bird left in the sky. True, while I
played my game yesterday, the mutineers hooked a few of the birds;
but now the rest are gone, and that is bound to be the last food for
the men for'ard until they resume duty.

Yes; it is grotesque. It is a boy's game. It reads like Midshipman
Easy, like Frank Mildmay, like Frank Reade, Jr.; and yet, i' faith,
life and death's in the issue. I have just gone over the toll of our
dead since the voyage began.

First, was Christian Jespersen, killed by O'Sullivan when that maniac
aspired to throw overboard Andy Fay's sea-boots; then O'Sullivan,
because he interfered with Charles Davis' sleep, brained by that
worthy with a steel marlin-spike; next Petro Marinkovich, just ere we
began the passage of the Horn, murdered undoubtedly by the gangster
clique, his life cut out of him with knives, his carcass left lying
on deck to be found by us and be buried by us; and the Samurai,
Captain West, a sudden though not a violent death, albeit occurring
in the midst of all elemental violence as Mr. Pike clawed the
Elsinore off the lee-shore of the Horn; and Boney the Splinter,
following, washed overboard to drown as we cleared the sea-gashing
rock-tooth where the southern tip of the continent bit into the
storm-wrath of the Antarctic; and the big-footed, clumsy youth of a
Finnish carpenter, hove overside as a Jonah by his fellows who
believed that Finns control the winds; and Mike Cipriani and Bill
Quigley, Rome and Ireland, shot down on the poop and flung overboard
alive by Mr. Pike, still alive and clinging to the log-line, cut
adrift by the steward to be eaten alive by great-beaked albatrosses,
mollyhawks, and sooty-plumaged Cape hens; Steve Roberts, one-time
cowboy, shot by me as he tried to shoot me; Herman Lunkenheimer, his
throat cut before all of us by the hound Bombini as Kid Twist
stretched the throat taut from behind; the two mates, Mr. Pike and
Mr. Mellaire, mutually destroying each other in what must have been
an unwitnessed epic combat; Ditman Olansen, speared by Wada as he
charged Berserk at the head of the mutineers in the attempt to rush
the poop; and last, Henry, the cadet of the perishing house, shot at
the wheel, from the ventilator-shaft, in the course of his day's
work.

No; as I contemplate this roll-call of the dead which I have just
made I see that we are not playing a boy's game. Why, we have lost a
third of us, and the bloodiest battles of history have rarely
achieved such a percentage of mortality. Fourteen of us have gone
overside, and who can tell the end?

Nevertheless, here we are, masters of matter, adventurers in the
micro-organic, planet-weighers, sun-analysers, star-rovers, god-
dreamers, equipped with the human wisdom of all the ages, and yet,
quoting Mr. Pike, to come down to brass tacks, we are a lot of
primitive beasts, fighting bestially, slaying bestially, pursuing
bestially food and water, air for our lungs, a dry space above the
deep, and carcasses skin-covered and intact. And over this menagerie
of beasts Margaret and I, with our Asiatics under us, rule top-dog.
We are all dogs--there is no getting away from it. And we, the fair-
pigmented ones, by the seed of our ancestry rulers in the high place,
shall remain top-dog over the rest of the dogs. Oh, there is
material in plenty for the cogitation of any philosopher on a
windjammer in mutiny in this Year of our Lord 1913.

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