The Mutiny of the Elsinore

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Miss West may be sea-sick, but she cannot be comatose, because at
frequent intervals she sends the steward to me with more cream of
tartar.

I have had a revelation to-day. I have discovered Captain West. He
is a Samurai.--You remember the Samurai that H. G. Wells describes in
his Modern Utopia--the superior breed of men who know things and are
masters of life and of their fellow-men in a super-benevolent, super-
wise way? Well, that is what Captain West is. Let me tell it to
you.

We had a shift of wind to-day. In the height of a south-west gale
the wind shifted, in the instant, eight points, which is equivalent
to a quarter of the circle. Imagine it! Imagine a gale howling from
out of the south-west. And then imagine the wind, in a heavier and
more violent gale, abruptly smiting you from the north-west. We had
been sailing through a circular storm, Captain West vouchsafed to me,
before the event, and the wind could be expected to box the compass.

Clad in sea-boots, oilskins and sou'wester, I had for some time been
hanging upon the rail at the break of the poop, staring down
fascinated at the poor devils of sailors, repeatedly up to their
necks in water, or submerged, or dashed like straws about the deck,
while they pulled and hauled, stupidly, blindly, and in evident fear,
under the orders of Mr. Pike.

Mr. Pike was with them, working them and working with them. He took
every chance they took, yet somehow he escaped being washed off his
feet, though several times I saw him entirely buried from view.
There was more than luck in the matter; for I saw him, twice, at the
head of a line of the men, himself next to the pin. And twice, in
this position, I saw the North Atlantic curl over the rail and fall
upon them. And each time he alone remained, holding the turn of the
rope on the pin, while the rest of them were rolled and sprawled
helplessly away.

Almost it seemed to me good fun, as at a circus, watching their
antics. But I did not apprehend the seriousness of the situation
until, the wind screaming higher than ever and the sea a-smoke and
white with wrath, two men did not get up from the deck. One was
carried away for'ard with a broken leg--it was Iare Jacobson, a dull-
witted Scandinavian; and the other, Kid Twist, was carried away,
unconscious, with a bleeding scalp.

In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did
not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to
escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the
high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing
the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain.

And all the time, slender, aristocratic, graceful in streaming
oilskins, in apparent unconcern, giving no orders, effortlessly
accommodating his body to the violent rolling of the Elsinore,
Captain West strolled up and down.

It was at this stage in the gale that he unbent sufficiently to tell
me that we were going through a circular storm and that the wind was
boxing the compass. I did notice that he kept his gaze pretty
steadily fixed on the overcast, cloud-driven sky. At last, when it
seemed the wind could not possibly blow more fiercely, he found in
the sky what he sought. It was then that I first heard his voice--a
sea-voice, clear as a bell, distinct as silver, and of an ineffable
sweetness and volume, as it might be the trump of Gabriel. That
voice!--effortless, dominating! The mighty threat of the storm, made
articulate by the resistance of the Elsinore, shouted in all the
stays, bellowed in the shrouds, thrummed the taut ropes against the
steel masts, and from the myriad tiny ropes far aloft evoked a
devil's chorus of shrill pipings and screechings. And yet, through
this bedlam of noise, came Captain West's voice, as of a spirit
visitant, distinct, unrelated, mellow as all music and mighty as an
archangel's call to judgment. And it carried understanding and
command to the man at the wheel, and to Mr. Pike, waist-deep in the
wash of sea below us. And the man at the wheel obeyed, and Mr. Pike
obeyed, barking and snarling orders to the poor wallowing devils who
wallowed on and obeyed him in turn. And as the voice was the face.
This face I had never seen before. It was the face of the spirit
visitant, chaste with wisdom, lighted by a splendour of power and
calm. Perhaps it was the calm that smote me most of all. It was as
the calm of one who had crossed chaos to bless poor sea-worn men with
the word that all was well. It was not the face of the fighter. To
my thrilled imagination it was the face of one who dwelt beyond all
strivings of the elements and broody dissensions of the blood.

The Samurai had arrived, in thunders and lightnings, riding the wings
of the storm, directing the gigantic, labouring Elsinore in all her
intricate massiveness, commanding the wisps of humans to his will,
which was the will of wisdom.

And then, that wonderful Gabriel voice of his, silent (while his
creatures laboured his will), unconcerned, detached and casual, more
slenderly tall and aristocratic than ever in his streaming oilskins,
Captain West touched my shoulder and pointed astern over our weather
quarter. I looked, and all that I could see was a vague smoke of sea
and air and a cloud-bank of sky that tore at the ocean's breast. And
at the same moment the gale from the south-west ceased. There was no
gale, no moving zephyrs, nothing but a vast quietude of air.

"What is it?" I gasped, out of equilibrium from the abrupt cessation
of wind.

"The shift," he said. "There she comes."

And it came, from the north-west, a blast of wind, a blow, an
atmospheric impact that bewildered and stunned and again made the
Elsinore harp protest. It forced me down on the rail. I was like a
windle-straw. As I faced this new abruptness of gale it drove the
air back into my lungs, so that I suffocated and turned my head aside
to breathe in the lee of the draught. The man at the wheel again
listened to the Gabriel voice; and Mr. Pike, on the deck below,
listened and repeated the will of the voice; and Captain West, in
slender and stately balance, leaned into the face of the wind and
slowly paced the deck.

It was magnificent. Now, and for the first time, I knew the sea, and
the men who overlord the sea. Captain West had vindicated himself,
exposited himself. At the height and crisis of storm he had taken
charge of the Elsinore, and Mr. Pike had become, what in truth was
all he was, the foreman of a gang of men, the slave-driver of slaves,
serving the one from beyond--the Samurai.

A minute or so longer Captain West strolled up and down, leaning
easily into the face of this new and abominable gale or resting his
back against it, and then he went below, pausing for a moment, his
hand on the knob of the chart-room door, to cast a last measuring
look at the storm-white sea and wrath-sombre sky he had mastered.

Ten minutes later, below, passing the open cabin door, I glanced in
and saw him. Sea-boots and storm-trappings were gone; his feet, in
carpet slippers, rested on a hassock; while he lay back in the big
leather chair smoking dreamily, his eyes wide open, absorbed, non-
seeing--or, if they saw, seeing things beyond the reeling cabin walls
and beyond my ken. I have developed an immense respect for Captain
West, though now I know him less than the little I thought I knew him
before.

CHAPTER XIII

Small wonder that Miss West remains sea-sick on an ocean like this,
which has become a factory where the veering gales manufacture the
selectest and most mountainous brands of cross-seas. The way the
poor Elsinore pitches, plunges, rolls, and shivers, with all her
lofty spars and masts and all her five thousand tons of dead-weight
cargo, is astonishing. To me she is the most erratic thing
imaginable; yet Mr. Pike, with whom I now pace the poop on occasion,
tells me that coal is a good cargo, and that the Elsinore is well-
loaded because he saw to it himself.

He will pause abruptly, in the midst of his interminable pacing, in
order to watch her in her maddest antics. The sight is very pleasant
to him, for his eyes glisten and a faint glow seems to irradiate his
face and impart to it a hint of ecstasy. The Elsinore has a snug
place in his heart, I am confident. He calls her behaviour
admirable, and at such times will repeat to me that it was he who saw
to her loading.

It is very curious, the habituation of this man, through a long life
on the sea, to the motion of the sea. There IS a rhythm to this
chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I
cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike KNOWS it. Again and again, as we
paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic
seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the
Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a
colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an
abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect as she began the corresponding roll
to windward. In vain I strove to learn how Mr. Pike forecasts these
antics, and I am driven to believe that he does not consciously
forecast them at all. He FEELS them; he knows them. They, and the
sea, are ingrained in him.

Toward the end of our little promenade I was guilty of impatiently
shaking off a sudden seizure of my arm in his big paw. If ever, in
an hour, the Elsinore had been less gymnastic than at that moment, I
had not noticed it. So I shook off the sustaining clutch, and the
next moment the Elsinore had smashed down and buried a couple of
hundred feet of her starboard rail beneath the sea, while I had shot
down the deck and smashed myself breathless against the wall of the
chart-house. My ribs and one shoulder are sore from it yet. Now how
did he know?

And he never staggers nor seems in danger of being rolled away. On
the contrary, such a surplus of surety of balance has he that time
and again he lent his surplus to me. I begin to have more respect,
not for the sea, but for the men of the sea, and not for the
sweepings of seamen that are as slaves on our decks, but for the real
seamen who are their masters--for Captain West, for Mr. Pike, yes,
and for Mr. Mellaire, dislike him as I do.

As early as three in the afternoon the wind, still a gale, went back
to the south-west. Mr. Mellaire had the deck, and he went below and
reported the change to Captain West.

"We'll wear ship at four, Mr. Pathurst," the second mate told me when
he came back. "You'll find it an interesting manoeuvre."

"But why wait till four?" I asked.

"The Captain's orders, sir. The watches will be changing, and we'll
have the use of both of them, without working a hardship on the watch
below by calling it out now."

And when both watches were on deck Captain West, again in oilskins,
came out of the chart-house. Mr. Pike, out on the bridge, took
charge of the many men who, on deck and on the poop, were to manage
the mizzen-braces, while Mr. Mellaire went for'ard with his watch to
handle the fore-and main-braces. It was a pretty manoeuvre, a play
of leverages, by which they cased the force of the wind on the after
part of the Elsinore and used the force of the wind on the for'ard
part.

Captain West gave no orders whatever, and, to all intents, was quite
oblivious of what was being done. He was again the favoured
passenger, taking a stroll for his health's sake. And yet I knew
that both his officers were uncomfortably aware of his presence and
were keyed to their finest seamanship. I know, now, Captain West's
position on board. He is the brains of the Elsinore. He is the
master strategist. There is more in directing a ship on the ocean
than in standing watches and ordering men to pull and haul. They are
pawns, and the two officers are pieces, with which Captain West plays
the game against sea, and wind, and season, and ocean current. He is
the knower. They are his tongue, by which he makes his knowledge
articulate.

A bad night--equally bad for the Elsinore and for me. She is
receiving a sharp buffeting at the hands of the wintry North
Atlantic. I fell asleep early, exhausted from lack of sleep, and
awoke in an hour, frantic with my lumped and burning skin. More
cream of tartar, more reading, more vain attempts to sleep, until
shortly before five, when the steward brought me my coffee, I wrapped
myself in my dressing-gown, and like a being distracted prowled into
the cabin. I dozed in a leather chair and was thrown out by a
violent roll of the ship. I tried the sofa, sinking to sleep
immediately, and immediately thereafter finding myself precipitated
to the floor. I am convinced that when Captain West naps on the sofa
he is only half asleep. How else can he maintain so precarious a
position?--unless, in him, too, the sea and its motion be ingrained.

I wandered into the dining-room, wedged myself into a screwed chair,
and fell asleep, my head on my arms, my arms on the table. And at
quarter past seven the steward roused me by shaking my shoulders. It
was time to set table.

Heavy with the brief heaviness of sleep I had had, I dressed and
stumbled up on to the poop in the hope that the wind would clear my
brain. Mr. Pike had the watch, and with sure, age-lagging step he
paced the deck. The man is a marvel--sixty-nine years old, a life of
hardship, and as sturdy as a lion. Yet of the past night alone his
hours had been: four to six in the afternoon on deck; eight to
twelve on deck; and four to eight in the morning on deck. In a few
minutes he would be relieved, but at midday he would again be on
deck.

I leaned on the poop-rail and stared for'ard along the dreary waste
of deck. Every port and scupper was working to ease the weight of
North Atlantic that perpetually fell on board. Between the rush of
the cascades, streaks of rust showed everywhere. Some sort of a
wooden pin-rail had carried away on the starboard-rail at the foot of
the mizzen-shrouds, and an amazing raffle of ropes and tackles washed
about. Here Nancy and half-a-dozen men worked sporadically, and in
fear of their lives, to clear the tangle.

The long-suffering bleakness was very pronounced on Nancy's face, and
when the walls of water, in impending downfall, reared above the
Elsinore's rail, he was always the first to leap for the life-line
which had been stretched fore and aft across the wide space of deck.

The rest of the men were scarcely less backward in dropping their
work and springing to safety--if safety it might be called, to grip a
rope in both hands and have legs sweep out from under, and be
wrenched full-length upon the boiling surface of an ice-cold flood.
Small wonder they look wretched. Bad as their condition was when
they came aboard at Baltimore, they look far worse now, what of the
last several days of wet and freezing hardship.

From time to time, completing his for'ard pace along the poop, Mr.
Pike would pause, ere he retraced his steps, and snort sardonic glee
at what happened to the poor devils below. The man's heart is
callous. A thing of iron, he has endured; and he has no patience nor
sympathy with these creatures who lack his own excessive iron.

I noticed the stone-deaf man, the twisted oaf whose face I have
described as being that of an ill-treated and feeble-minded faun.
His bright, liquid, pain-filled eyes were more filled with pain than
ever, his face still more lean and drawn with suffering. And yet his
face showed an excess of nervousness, sensitiveness, and a pathetic
eagerness to please and do. I could not help observing that, despite
his dreadful sense-handicap and his wrecked, frail body, he did the
most work, was always the last of the group to spring to the life-
line and always the first to loose the life-line and slosh knee-deep
or waist-deep through the churning water to attack the immense and
depressing tangle of rope and tackle.

I remarked to Mr. Pike that the men seemed thinner and weaker than
when they came on board, and he delayed replying for a moment while
he stared down at them with that cattle-buyer's eye of his.

"Sure they are," he said disgustedly. "A weak breed, that's what
they are--nothing to build on, no stamina. The least thing drags
them down. Why, in my day we grew fat on work like that--only we
didn't; we worked so hard there wasn't any chance for fat. We kept
in fighting trim, that was all. But as for this scum and slum--say,
you remember, Mr. Pathurst, that man I spoke to the first day, who
said his name was Charles Davis?"

"The one you thought there was something the matter with?"

"Yes, and there was, too. He's in that 'midship room with the Greek
now. He'll never do a tap of work the whole Voyage. He's a hospital
case, if there ever was one. Talk about shot to pieces! He's got
holes in him I could shove my fist through. I don't know whether
they're perforating ulcers, or cancers, or cannon-shot wounds, or
what not. And he had the nerve to tell me they showed up after he
came on board!"

"And he had them all the time?" I asked.

"All the time! Take my word, Mr. Pathurst, they're years old. But
he's a wonder. I watched him those first days, sent him aloft, had
him down in the fore-hold trimming a few tons of coal, did everything
to him, and he never showed a wince. Being up to the neck in the
salt water finally fetched him, and now he's reported off duty--for
the voyage. And he'll draw his wages for the whole time, have all
night in, and never do a tap. Oh, he's a hot one to have passed over
on us, and the Elsinore's another man short."

"Another!" I exclaimed. "Is the Greek going to die?"

"No fear. I'll have him steering in a few days. I refer to the
misfits. If we rolled a dozen of them together they wouldn't make
one real man. I'm not saying it to alarm you, for there's nothing
alarming about it; but we're going to have proper hell this voyage."
He broke off to stare reflectively at his broken knuckles, as if
estimating how much drive was left in them, then sighed and
concluded, "Well, I can see I've got my work cut out for me."

Sympathizing with Mr. Pike is futile; the only effect is to make his
mood blacker. I tried it, and he retaliated with:

"You oughta see the bloke with curvature of the spine in Mr.
Mellaire's watch. He's a proper hobo, too, and a land lubber, and
don't weigh more'n a hundred pounds, and must be fifty years old, and
he's got curvature of the spine, and he's able seaman, if you please,
on the Elsinore. And worse than all that, he puts it over on you;
he's nasty, he's mean, he's a viper, a wasp. He ain't afraid of
anything because he knows you dassent hit him for fear of croaking
him. Oh, he's a pearl of purest ray serene, if anybody should slide
down a backstay and ask you. If you fail to identify him any other
way, his name is Mulligan Jacobs."

After breakfast, again on deck, in Mr. Mellaire's watch, I discovered
another efficient. He was at the wheel, a small, well-knit, muscular
man of say forty-five, with black hair graying on the temples, a big
eagle-face, swarthy, with keen, intelligent black eyes.

Mr. Mellaire vindicated my judgment by telling me the man was the
best sailor in his watch, a proper seaman. When he referred to the
man as the Maltese Cockney, and I asked why, he replied:

"First, because he is Maltese, Mr. Pathurst; and next, because he
talks Cockney like a native. And depend upon it, he heard Bow Bells
before he lisped his first word."

"And has O'Sullivan bought Andy Fay's sea-boots yet?" I queried.

It was at this moment that Miss West emerged upon the poop. She was
as rosy and vital as ever, and certainly, if she had been sea-sick,
she flew no signals of it. As she came toward me, greeting me, I
could not help remarking again the lithe and springy limb-movement
with which she walked, and her fine, firm skin. Her neck, free in a
sailor collar, with white sweater open at the throat, seemed almost
redoubtably strong to my sleepless, jaundiced eyes. Her hair, under
a white knitted cap, was smooth and well-groomed. In fact, the
totality of impression she conveyed was of a well-groomedness one
would not expect of a sea-captain's daughter, much less of a woman
who had been sea-sick. Life!--that is the key of her, the essential
note of her--life and health. I'll wager she has never entertained a
morbid thought in that practical, balanced, sensible head of hers.

"And how have you been?" she asked, then rattled on with sheer
exuberance ere I could answer. "Had a lovely night's sleep. I was
really over my sickness yesterday, but I just devoted myself to
resting up. I slept ten solid hours--what do you think of that?"

"I wish I could say the same," I replied with appropriate dejection,
as I swung in beside her, for she had evinced her intention of
promenading.

"Oh, then you've been sick?"

"On the contrary," I answered dryly. "And I wish I had been. I
haven't had five hours' sleep all told since I came on board. These
pestiferous hives.

I held up a lumpy wrist to show. She took one glance at it, halted
abruptly, and, neatly balancing herself to the roll, took my wrist in
both her hands and gave it close scrutiny.

"Mercy!" she cried; and then began to laugh.

I was of two minds. Her laughter was delightful to the ear, there
was such a mellowness, and healthiness, and frankness about it. On
the other hand, that it should be directed at my misfortune was
exasperating. I suppose my perplexity showed in my face, for when
she had eased her laughter and looked at me with a sobering
countenance, she immediately went off into more peals.

"You poor child," she gurgled at last. "And when I think of all the
cream of tartar I made you consume!"

It was rather presumptuous of her to poor-child me, and I resolved to
take advantage of the data I already possessed in order to ascertain
just how many years she was my junior. She had told me she was
twelve years old the time the Dixie collided with the river steamer
in San Francisco Bay. Very well, all I had to do was to ascertain
the date of that disaster and I had her. But in the meantime she
laughed at me and my hives.

"I suppose it is--er--humorous, in some sort of way," I said a bit
stiffly, only to find that there was no use in being stiff with Miss
West, for it only set her off into more laughter.

"What you needed," she announced, with fresh gurglings, "was an
exterior treatment."

"Don't tell me I've got the chicken-pox or the measles," I protested.

"No." She shook her head emphatically while she enjoyed another
paroxysm. "What you are suffering from is a severe attack . . . "

She paused deliberately, and looked me straight the eyes.

"Of bedbugs," she concluded. And then, all seriousness and
practicality, she went on: "But we'll have that righted in a jiffy.
I'll turn the Elsinore's after-quarters upside down, though I know
there are none in father's room or mine. And though this is my first
voyage with Mr. Pike I know he's too hard-bitten" (here I laughed at
her involuntary pun) "an old sailor not to know that his room is
clean. Yours" (I was perturbed for fear she was going to say that I
had brought them on board) "have most probably drifted in from
for'ard. They always have them for'ard.

"And now, Mr. Pathurst, I am going down to attend to your case.
You'd better get your Wada to make up a camping kit for you. The
next couple of nights you'll spend in the cabin or chart-room. And
be sure Wada removes all silver and metallic tarnishable stuff from
your rooms. There's going to be all sorts of fumigating, and tearing
out of woodwork, and rebuilding. Trust me. I know the vermin.

CHAPTER XIV

Such a cleaning up and turning over! For two nights, one in the
chart-room and one on the cabin sofa, I have soaked myself in sleep,
and I am now almost stupid with excess of sleep. The land seems very
far away. By some strange quirk, I have an impression that weeks, or
months, have passed since I left Baltimore on that bitter March
morning. And yet it was March 28, and this is only the first week in
April.

I was entirely right in my first estimation of Miss West. She is the
most capable, practically masterful woman I have ever encountered.
What passed between her and Mr. Pike I do not know; but whatever it
was, she was convinced that he was not the erring one. In some
strange way, my two rooms are the only ones which have been invaded
by this plague of vermin. Under Miss West's instructions bunks,
drawers, shelves, and all superficial woodwork have been ripped out.
She worked the carpenter from daylight till dark, and then, after a
night of fumigation, two of the sailors, with turpentine and white
lead, put the finishing touches on the cleansing operations. The
carpenter is now busy rebuilding my rooms. Then will come the
painting, and in two or three more days I expect to be settled back
in my quarters.

Of the men who did the turpentining and white-leading there have been
four. Two of them were quickly rejected by Miss West as not being up
to the work. The first one, Steve Roberts, which he told me was his
name, is an interesting fellow. I talked with him quite a bit ere
Miss West sent him packing and told Mr. Pike that she wanted a real
sailor.

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