The Ebb Tide
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Robert Louis Stevenson in collaboration with Lloyde Osbourne >> The Ebb Tide
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He came close up to where the plank rested on the grassy
quay; turned his back upon the schooner, and began to whistle
that lively air, 'The Irish Washerwoman.' It caught the ears of
the Kanaka seamen like a preconcerted signal; with one accord
they looked up from their meal and crowded to the ship's side,
fei in hand and munching as they looked. Even as a poor brown
Pyrenean bear dances in the streets of English towns under his
master's baton; even so, but with how much more of spirit and
precision, the captain footed it in time to his own whistling,
and his long morning shadow capered beyond him on the grass. The
Kanakas smiled on thie performance; Herrick looked on heavy-eyed,
hunger for the moment conquering all sense of shame; and a little
farther off, but still hard by, the clerk was torn by the
seven devils of the influenza.
The captain stopped suddenly, appeared to perceive his audience
for the first time, and represented the part of a man surprised
in his private hour of pleasure.
'Hello!' said he.
The Kanakas clapped hands and called upon him to go on.
'No, SIR!' said the captain. 'No eat, no dance. Savvy?'
'Poor old man!' returned one of the crew. 'Him no eat?'
'Lord, no!' said the captain. 'Like-um too much eat. No got.'
'All right. Me got,' said the sailor; 'you tome here. Plenty
toffee, plenty fei. Nutha man him tome too.'
'I guess we'll drop right in,' observed the captain; and he and
his companions hastened up the plank. They were welcomed on
board with the shaking of hands; place was made for them
about the basin; a sticky demijohn of molasses was added to the
feast in honour of company, and an accordion brought from the
forecastle and significantly laid by the performer's side.
'Ariana," said he lightly, touching the instrument as he spoke;
and he fell to on a long savoury fei, made an end of it, raised
his mug of coffee, and nodded across at the spokesman of the
crew. 'Here's your health, old man; you're a credit to the South
Pacific,' said he.
With the unsightly greed of hounds they glutted themselves
with the hot food and coffee; and even the clerk revived and the
colour deepened in his eyes. The kettle was drained, the basin
cleaned; their entertainers, who had waited on their wants
throughout with the pleased hospitality of Polynesians, made
haste to bring forward a dessert of island tobacco and rolls of
pandanus leaf to serve as paper; and presently all sat about the
dishes puffing like Indian Sachems.
'When a man 'as breakfast every day, he don't know what it
is,' observed the clerk.
'The next point is dinner,' said Herrick; and then with a
passionate utterance: 'I wish to God I was a Kanaka!'
'There's one thing sure,' said the captain. 'I'm about desperate,
I'd rather hang than rot here much longer.' And with the
word he took the accordion and struck up. 'Home, sweet home.'
'O, drop that!' cried Herrick, 'I can't stand that.'
'No more can I,' said the captain. 'I've got to play something
though: got to pay the shot, my son.' And he struck up 'John
Brown's Body' in a fine sweet baritone: 'Dandy Jim of Carolina,'
came next; 'Rorin the Bold,' 'Swing low, Sweet Chariot,' and
'The Beautiful Land' followed. The captain was paying his shot
with usury, as he had done many a time before; many a meal
had he bought with the same currency from the melodious-minded
natives, always, as now, to their delight.
He was in the middle of 'Fifteen Dollars in the Inside Pocket,'
singing with dogged energy, for the task went sore against the
grain, when a sensation was suddenly to be observed among the
crew.
'Tapena Tom harry my,' said the spokesman, pointing.
And the three beachcombers, following his indication, saw
the figure of a man in pyjama trousers and a white jumper
approaching briskly from the town.
'Captain Tom is coming.'
'That's Tapena Tom, is it?' said the captain, pausing in his
music. 'I don't seem to place the brute.'
'We'd better cut,' said the clerk. "E's no good.,
'Well,' said the musician deliberately, 'one can't most generally
always tell. I'll try it on, I guess. Music has charms to soothe
the savage Tapena, boys. We might strike it rich; it might
amount to iced punch in the cabin.'
'Hiced punch? O my!' said the clerk. 'Give him something 'ot,
captain. "Way down the Swannee River"; try that.'
'No, sir! Looks Scotch,' said the captain; and he struck, for
his life, into 'Auld Lang Syne.'
Captain Tom continued to approach with the same business-like
alacrity; no change was to be perceived in his bearded face
as he came swinging up the plank: he did not even turn his eyes
on the performer.
'We twa hae paidled in the burn
Frae morning tide till dine,'
went the song.
Captain Tom had a parcel under his arm, which he laid on
the house roof, and then turning suddenly to the strangers:
'Here, you!' he bellowed, 'be off out of that!'
The clerk and Herrick stood not on the order of their going,
but fled incontinently by the plank. The performer, on the other
hand, flung down the instrument and rose to his full height
slowly.
'What's that you say?' he said. 'I've half a mind to give you a
lesson in civility.'
'You set up any more of your gab to me,' returned the Scotsman,
'and I'll show ye the wrong side of a jyle. I've heard tell of
the three of ye. Ye're not long for here, I can tell ye that.
The Government has their eyes upon ye. They make short work
of damned beachcombers, I'll say that for the French.'
'You wait till I catch you off your ship!' cried the captain:
and then, turning to the crew, 'Good-bye, you fellows!' he said.
'You're gentlemen, anyway! The worst nigger among you would
look better upon a quarter-deck than that filthy Scotchman.'
Captain Tom scorned to reply; he watched with a hard smile
the departure of his guests; and as soon as the last foot was off
the plank; turned to the hands to work cargo.
The beachcombers beat their inglorious retreat along the
shore; Herrick first, his face dark with blood, his knees
trembling under him with the hysteria of rage. Presently, under
the same purao where they had shivered the night before, he cast
himself down, and groaned aloud, and ground his face into the
sand.
'Don't speak to me, don't speak to me. I can't stand it,' broke
from him.
The other two stood over him perplexed.
'Wot can't he stand now?' said the clerk. ''Asn't he 'ad a
meal? I'M lickin' my lips.'
Herrick reared up his wild eyes and burning face. 'I can't beg!'
he screamed, and again threw himself prone.
'This thing's got to come to an end,' said the captain with an
intake of the breath.
'Looks like signs of an end, don't it?' sneered the clerk.
'He's not so far from it, and don't you deceive yourself,'
replied the captain. 'Well,' he added in a livelier voice, 'you
fellows hang on here, and I'll go and interview my
representative.'
Whereupon he turned on his heel, and set off at a swinging
sailor's walk towards Papeete.
It was some half hour later when he returned. The clerk was
dozing with his back against the tree: Herrick still lay where he
had flung himself; nothing showed whether he slept or waked.
'See, boys!' cried the captain, with that artificial heartiness
of his which was at times so painful, 'here's a new idea.' And he
produced note paper, stamped envelopes, and pencils, three of
each. 'We can all write home by the mail brigantine; the consul
says I can come over to his place and ink up the addresses.'
'Well, that's a start, too,' said the clerk. 'I never thought of
that.'
'It was that yarning last night about going home that put me
up to it,' said the captain.
'Well, 'and over,' said the clerk. 'I'll 'ave a shy,' and he
retired a little distance to the shade of a canoe.
The others remained under the purao. Now they would write
a word or two, now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at
the pencil end and staring seaward; now their eyes would rest
on the clerk, where he sat propped on the canoe, leering and
coughing, his pencil racing glibly on the paper.
'I can't do it,' said Herrick suddenly. 'I haven't got the
heart.'
'See here,' said the captain, speaking with unwonted gravity;
'it may be hard to write, and to write lies at that; and God
knows it is; but it's the square thing. It don't cost anything to
say you're well and happy, and sorry you can't make a remittance
this mail; and if you don't, I'll tell you what I think it
is--I think it's about the high-water mark of being a brute
beast.'
'It's easy to talk,' said Herrick. 'You don't seem to have
written much yourself, I notice.'
'What do you bring in me for?' broke from the captain. His
voice was indeed scarce raised above a whisper, but emotion
clanged in it. 'What do you know about me? If you had
commanded the finest barque that ever sailed from Portland; if
you had been drunk in your berth when she struck the breakers
in Fourteen Island Group, and hadn't had the wit to stay there
and drown, but came on deck, and given drunken orders, and
lost six lives--I could understand your talking then! There,' he
said more quietly, 'that's my yarn, and now you know it. It's a
pretty one for the father of a family. Five men and a woman
murdered. Yes, there was a woman on board, and hadn't no
business to be either. Guess I sent her to Hell, if there is such
a place. I never dared go home again; and the wife and the little
ones went to England to her father's place. I don't know what's
come to them,' he added, with a bitter shrug.
'Thank you, captain,' said Herrick. 'I never liked you better.'
They shook hands, short and hard, with eyes averted, tenderness
swelling in their bosoms.
'Now, boys! to work again at lying!' said the captain.
'I'll give my father up,' returned Herrick with a writhen smile.
'I'll try my sweetheart instead for a change of evils.'
And here is what he wrote:
'Emma, I have scratched out the beginning to my father, for I
think I can write more easily to you. This is my last farewell to
all, the last you will ever hear or see of an unworthy friend and
son. I have failed in life; I am quite broken down and disgraced.
I pass under a false name; you will have to tell my father that
with all your kindness. It is my own fault. I know, had I chosen,
that I might have done well; and yet I swear to you I tried to
choose. I could not bear that you should think I did not try. For
I loved you all; you must never doubt me in that, you least of
all. I have always unceasingly loved, but what was my love
worth? and what was I worth? I had not the manhood of a
common clerk, I could not work to earn you; I have lost you
now, and for your sake I could be glad of it. When you first
came to my father's house--do you remember those days? I
want you to--you saw the best of me then, all that was good in
me. Do you remember the day I took your hand and would not
let it go--and the day on Battersea Bridge, when we were
looking at a barge, and I began to tell you one of my silly
stories, and broke off to say I loved you? That was the
beginning, and now here is the end. When you have read this
letter, you will go round and kiss them all good-bye, my father
and mother, and the children, one by one, and poor uncle; And
tell them all to forget me, and forget me yourself. Turn the key
in the door; let no thought of me return; be done with the poor
ghost that pretended he was a man and stole your love. Scorn of
myself grinds in me as I write. I should tell you I am well and
happy, and want for nothing. I do not exactly make money, or I
should send a remittance; but I am well cared for, have friends,
live in a beautiful place and climate, such as we have dreamed
of together, and no pity need be wasted on me. In such places,
you understand, it is easy to live, and live well, but often hard
to make sixpence in money. Explain this to my father, he will
understand. I have no more to say; only linger, going out, like
an unwilling guest. God in heaven bless you. Think of me to the
last, here, on a bright beach, the sky and sea immoderately blue,
and the great breakers roaring outside on a barrier reef, where a
little isle sits green with palms. I am well and strong. It is a
more pleasant way to die than if you were crowding about me on a
sick-bed. And yet I am dying. This is my last kiss. Forgive,
forget the unworthy.'
So far he bad written, his paper was all filled, when there
returned a memory of evenings at the piano, and that song, the
masterpiece of love, in which so many have found the expression
of their dearest thoughts. 'Einst, O wunder!' he added. More
was not required; he knew that in his love's heart the context
would spring up, escorted with fair images and harmony; of
how all through life her name should tremble in his ears, her
name be everywhere repeated in the sounds of nature; and when
death came, and he lay dissolved, her memory lingered and
thrilled among his elements.
'Once, O wonder! once from the ashes of my heart
Arose a blossom--'
Herrick and the captain finished their letters about the same
time; each was breathing deep, and their eyes met and were
averted as they closed the envelopes.
'Sorry I write so big,' said the captain gruffly. 'Came all of a
rush, when it did come.'
'Same here,' said Herrick. 'I could have done with a ream when I
got started; but it's long enough for all the good I had to say.'
They were still at the addresses when the clerk strolled up,
smirking and twirling his envelope, like a man well pleased. He
looked over Herrick's shoulder.
'Hullo,' he said, 'you ain't writing 'ome.'
'I am, though,' said Herrick; 'she lives with my father. Oh, I
see what you mean,' he added. 'My real name is Herrick. No
more Hay'--they had both used the same alias--'no more Hay
than yours, I dare say.'
'Clean bowled in the middle stump!' laughed the clerk. 'My
name's 'Uish if you want to know. Everybody has a false nyme
in the Pacific. Lay you five to three the captain 'as.'
'So I have too,' replied the captain; 'and I've never told my own
since the day I tore the title page out of my Bowditch and
flung the damned thing into the sea. But I'll tell it to you,
boys. John Davis is my name. I'm Davis of the Sea Ranger.'
'Dooce you are!' said Hush. 'And what was she? a pirate or a
slyver?'
'She was the fastest barque out of Portland, Maine,' replied
the captain; 'and for the way I lost her, I might as well have
bored a hole in her side with an auger.'
'Oh, you lost her, did you?' said the clerk. ''Ope she was
insured?'
No answer being returned to this sally, Huish, still brimming
over with vanity and conversation, struck into another subject.
'I've a good mind to read you my letter,' said he. 'I've a good
fist with a pen when I choose, and this is a prime lark. She was
a barmaid I ran across in Northampton; she was a spanking fine
piece, no end of style; and we cottoned at first sight like
parties in the play. I suppose I spent the chynge of a fiver on
that girl. Well, I 'appened to remember her nyme, so I wrote to
her, and told her 'ow I had got rich, and married a queen in the
Hislands, and lived in a blooming palace. Such a sight of
crammers! I must read you one bit about my opening the nigger
parliament in a cocked 'at. It's really prime.'
The captain jumped to his feet. 'That's what you did with the
paper that I went and begged for you?' he roared.
It was perhaps lucky for Huish--it was surely in the end
unfortunate for all--that he was seized just then by one of his
prostrating accesses of cough; his comrades would have else
deserted him, so bitter was their resentment. When the fit had
passed, the clerk reached out his hand, picked up the letter,
which had fallen to the earth, and tore it into fragments, stamp
and all.
'Does that satisfy you?' he asked sullenly.
'We'll say no more about it,' replied Davis.
Chapter 3. THE OLD CALABOOSE - DESTINY AT THE DOOR
The old calaboose, in which the waifs had so long harboured, is
a low, rectangular enclosure of building at the corner of a shady
western avenue and a little townward of the British consulate.
Within was a grassy court, littered with wreckage and the traces
of vagrant occupation. Six or seven cells opened from the court:
the doors, that had once been locked on mutinous whalermen,
rotting before them in the grass. No mark remained of their old
destination, except the rusty bars upon the windows.
The floor of one of the cells had been a little cleared; a bucket
(the last remaining piece of furniture of the three caitiffs)
stood full of water by the door, a half cocoanut shell beside it
for a drinking cup; and on some ragged ends of mat Huish sprawled
asleep, his mouth open, his face deathly. The glow of the tropic
afternoon, the green of sunbright foliage, stared into that shady
place through door and window; and Herrick, pacing to and fro
on the coral floor, sometimes paused and laved his face and
neck with tepid water from the bucket. His long arrears of
suffering, the night's vigil, the insults of the morning, and the
harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point
when pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and
death and life appear indifferent. To and fro he paced like a
caged brute; his mind whirling through the universe of thought
and memory; his eyes, as he went, skimming the legends on the
wall. The crumbling whitewash was all full of them: Tahitian
names, and French, and English, and rude sketches of ships
under sail and men at fisticuffs.
It came to him of a sudden that he too must leave upon these
walls the memorial of his passage. He paused before a clean
space, took the pencil out, and pondered. Vanity, so hard to
dislodge, awoke in him. We call it vanity at least; perhaps
unjustly. Rather it was the bare sense of his existence prompted
him; the sense of his life, the one thing wonderful, to which he
scarce clung with a finger. From his jarred nerves there came a
strong sentiment of coming change; whether good or ill he could
not say: change, he knew no more--change, with inscrutable
veiled face, approaching noiseless. With the feeling, came the
vision of a concert room, the rich hues of instruments, the
silent audience, and the loud voice of the symphony. 'Destiny
knocking at the door,' he thought; drew a stave on the plaster,
and wrote in the famous phrase from the Fifth Symphony. 'So,'
thought he, 'they will know that I loved music and had classical
tastes. They? He, I suppose: the unknown, kindred spirit that
shall come some day and read my memor querela. Ha, he shall
have Latin too!' And he added: terque quaterque beati Queis
ante ora patrum.
He turned again to his uneasy pacing, but now with an
irrational and supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his
grave that morning; now he had carved his epitaph; the folds of
the toga were composed, why should he delay the insignificant
trifle that remained to do? He paused and looked long in the
face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment and distaste
of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could
the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights? -
only the obligation to go on, without discharge or furlough,
bearing the unbearable? Ich trage unertragliches, the quotation
rose in his mind; he repeated the whole piece, one of the most
perfect of the most perfect of poets; and a phrase struck him
like a blow: Du, stolzes Herz, A hast es ja gewolit. Where was
the pride of his heart? And he raged against himself, as a man
bites on a sore tooth, in a heady sensuality of scorn. 'I have no
pride, I have no heart, no manhood,' he thought, 'or why should
I prolong a life more shameful than the gallows? Or why should
I have fallen to it? No pride, no capacity, no force. Not even a
bandit! and to be starving here with worse than banditti--with
this trivial hell-hound!' His rage against his comrade rose and
flooded him, and he shook a trembling fist at the sleeper.
A swift step was audible. The captain appeared upon the
threshold of the cell, panting and flushed, and with a foolish
face of happiness. In his arms he carried a loaf of bread and
bottles of beer; the pockets of his coat were bulging with
cigars.
He rolled his treasures on the floor, grasped Herrick by both
hands, and crowed with laughter.
'Broach the beer!' he shouted. 'Broach the beer, and glory
hallelujah!'
'Beer?' repeated Huish, struggling to his feet. 'Beer it is!'
cried Davis. 'Beer and plenty of it. Any number of persons can
use it (like Lyon's tooth-tablet) with perfect propriety and
neatness. Who's to officiate?'
'Leave me alone f6r that,' said the clerk. He knocked the
necks off with a lump of coral, and each drank in succession
from the shell.
'Have a weed,' said Davis. 'It's all in the bill.'
'What is up?' asked Herrick.
The captain fell suddenly grave. 'I'm coming to that,' said he.
'I want to speak with Herrick here. You, Hay--or Huish, or
whatever your name is--you take a weed and the other bottle,
and go and see how the wind is down by the purao. I'll call you
when you're wanted!'
'Hay? Secrets? That ain't the ticket,' said Huish.
'Look here, my son,' said the captain, 'this is business, and
don't you make any mistake about it. If you're going to make
trouble, you can have it your own way and stop right here. Only
get the thing right: if Herrick and I go, we take the beer.
Savvy?'
'Oh, I don't want to shove my oar in,' returned Huish. 'I'll
cut right enough. Give me the swipes. You can jaw till you're
blue in the face for what I care. I don't think it's the friendly
touch: that's all.' And he shambled grumbling out of the cell
into the staring sun.
The captain watched him clear of the courtyard; then turned
to Herrick.
'What is it?' asked Herrick thickly.
'I'll tell you,' said Davis. 'I want to consult you. It's a
chance we've got. What's that?' he cried, pointing to the music
on the wall.
'What?' said the other. 'Oh, that! It's music; it's a phrase of
Beethoven's I was writing up. It means Destiny knocking at the
door.'
'Does it?' said the captain, rather low; and he went near and
studied the inscription; 'and this French?' he asked, pointing to
the Latin.
'O, it just means I should have been luckier if I had died at
horne,' returned Herrick impatiently. 'What is this business?'
'Destiny knocking at the door,' repeated the captain; and
then, looking over his shoulder. 'Well, Mr Herrick, that's about
what it comes to,' he added.
'What do you mean? Explain yourself,' said Herrick.
But the captain was again staring at the music. 'About how
long ago since you wrote up this truck?' he asked.
'What does it matter?' exclaimed Herrick. 'I dare say half an
hour.'
'My God, it's strange!' cried Davis. 'There's some men would
call that accidental: not me. That--' and he drew his thick
finger under the music--'that's what I call Providence.'
'You said we had a chance,' said Herrick.
'Yes, SIR!' said the captain, wheeling suddenly face to face
with his companion. 'I did so. If you're the man I take you for,
we have a chance.'
'I don't know what you take me for,' was the reply. 'You can
scarce take me too low.'
'Shake hands, Mr Herrick,' said the captain. 'I know you.
You're a gentleman and a man of spirit. I didn't want to speak
before that bummer there; you'll see why. But to you I'll rip it
right out. I got a ship.'
'A ship?' cried Herrick. 'What ship?'
'That schooner we saw this morning off the passage.'
'The schooner with the hospital flag?'
'That's the hooker,' said Davis. 'She's the Farallone, hundred
and sixty tons register, out of 'Frisco for Sydney, in California
champagne. Captain, mate, and one hand all died of the
smallpox, same as they had round in the Paumotus, I guess.
Captain and mate were the only white men; all the hands
Kanakas; seems a queer kind of outfit from a Christian port.
Three of them left and a cook; didn't know where they were; I
can't think where they were either, if you come to that; Wiseman
must have been on the booze, I guess, to sail the course he did.
However, there HE was, dead; and here are the Kanakas as good
as lost. They bummed around at sea like the babes in the wood;
and tumbled end-on upon Tahiti. The consul here took charge. He
offered the berth to Williams; Williams had never had the
smallpox and backed down. That was when I came in for the
letter paper; I thought there was something up when the consul
asked me to look in again; but I never let on to you fellows,
so's you'd not be disappointed. Consul tried M'Neil; scared of
smallpox. He tried Capirati, that Corsican and Leblue, or
whatever his name is, wouldn't lay a hand on it; all too fond of
their sweet lives. Last of all, when there wasn't nobody else
left to offer it to, he offers it to me. "Brown, will you ship
captain and take her to Sydney?" says he. "Let me choose my own
mate and another white hand," says I, "for I don't hold with this
Kanaka crew racket; give us all two months' advance to get our
clothes and instruments out of pawn, and I'll take stock tonight,
fill up stores, and get to sea tomorrow before dark!" That's
what I said. "That's good enough," says the consul, "and you
can count yourself damned lucky, Brown," says he. And he said
it pretty meaningful-appearing, too. However, that's all one
now. I'll ship Huish before the mast--of course I'll let him
berth aft--and I'll ship you mate at seventy-five dollars and two
months' advance.'
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