The Ebb Tide
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Robert Louis Stevenson in collaboration with Lloyde Osbourne >> The Ebb Tide
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'I'm not crying,' said Herrick, raising his face and showing his
dry eyes. 'It's worse than crying. It's the horror of that grave
that we've escaped from.'
'Come now, you tackle your soup; that'll fix you,' said Davis
kindly. 'I told you you were all broken up. You couldn't have
stood out another week.'
'That's the dreadful part of it!' cried Herrick. 'Another week
and I'd have murdered someone for a dollar! God! and I know
that? And I'm still living? It's some beastly dream.'
'Quietly, quietly! Quietly does it, my son. Take your pea
soup. Food, that's what you want,' said Davis.
The soup strengthened and quieted Herrick's nerves; another
glass of wine, and a piece of pickled pork and fried banana
completed what the soup began; and he was able once more to
look the captain in the face.
'I didn't know I was so much run down,' he said.
'Well,' said Davis, 'you were as steady as a rock all day: now
you've had a little lunch, you'll be as steady as a rock again.'
'Yes,'was the reply, 'I'm steady enough now, but I'm a queer
kind of a first officer.'
'Shucks!' cried the captain. 'You've only got to mind the
ship's course, and keep your slate to half a point. A babby could
do that, let alone a college graduate like you. There ain't
nothing TO sailoring, when you come to look it in the face. And
now we'll go and put her about. Bring the slate; we'll have to
start our dead reckoning right away.'
The distance run since the departure was read off the log by
the binnacle light and entered on the slate.
'Ready about,' said the captain. 'Give me the wheel, White
Man, and you stand by the mainsheet. Boom tackle, Mr Hay,
please, and then you can jump forward and attend head sails.'
'Ay, ay, sir,' responded Herrick.
'All clear forward?' asked Davis.
'All clear, sir.'
'Hard a-lee!' cried the captain. 'Haul in your slack as she
comes,' he called to Huish. 'Haul in your slack, put your back
into it; keep your feet out of the coils.' A sudden blow sent
Huish flat along the deck, and the captain was in his place.
'Pick yourself up and keep the wheel hard over!' he roared. 'You
wooden fool, you wanted to get killed, I guess. Draw the jib,' he
cried a moment later; and then to Huish, 'Give me the wheel
again, and see if you can coil that sheet.'
But Huish stood and looked at Davis with an evil countenance. 'Do
you know you struck me?' said he.
'Do you know I saved your life?' returned the other, not
deigning to look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the
compass and the sails. 'Where would you have been, if that
boom had swung out and you bundled in the clack? No, SIR,
we'll have no more of you at the mainsheet. Seaport towns are
full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one leg, my son, what's left
of them, and the rest are dead. (Set your boom tackle, Mr
Hay.) Struck you, did I? Lucky for you I did.'
'Well,' said Huish slowly, 'I daresay there may be somethink
in that. 'Ope there is.' He turned his back elaborately on the
captain, and entered the house, where the speedy explosion of a
champagne cork showed he was attending to his comfort.
Herrick came aft to the captain. 'How is she doing now?' he
asked.
'East and by no'the a half no'the,' said Davis. 'It's about as
good as I expected.'
'What'll the hands think of it?' said Herrick.
'Oh, they don't think. They ain't paid to,' says the captain.
'There was something wrong, was there not? between you
and--' Herrick paused.
'That's a nasty little beast, that's a biter,' replied the
captain, shaking his head. 'But so long as you and me hang in, it
don't matter.'
Herrick lay down in the weather alleyway; the night was
cloudless, the movement of the ship cradled him, he was
oppressed besides by the first generous meal after so long a time
of famine; and he was recalled from deep sleep by the voice of
Davis singing out: 'Eight bells!'
He rose stupidly, and staggered aft, where the captain gave
him the wheel.
'By the wind,' said the captain. 'It comes a little puffy; when
you get a heavy puff, steal all you can to windward, but keep
her a good full.'
He stepped towards the house, paused and hailed the
forecastle.
'Got such a thing as a concertina forward?' said he. 'Bully for
you, Uncle Ned. Fetch it aft, will you?'
The schooner steered very easy; and Herrick, watching the
moon-whitened sails, was overpowered by drowsiness. A sharp
report from the cabin startled him; a third bottle had been
opened; and Herrick remembered the Sea Ranger and Fourteen
Island Group. Presently the notes of the accordion sounded, and
then the captain's voice:
'O honey, with our pockets full of money,
We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay,
And I will dance with Kate, and Tom will dance with Sall,
When we're all back from South Amerikee.'
So it went to its quaint air; and the watch below lingered and
listened by the forward door, and Uncle Ned was to be seen in
the moonlight nodding time; and Herrick smiled at the wheel,
his anxieties a while forgotten. Song followed song; another cork
exploded; there were voices raised, as though the pair in
the cabin were in disagreement; and presently it seemed the
breach was healed; for it was now the voice of Huish that struck
up, to the captain's accompaniment--
'Up in a balloon, boys,
Up in a balloon,
All among the little stars
And round about the moon.'
A wave of nausea overcame Herrick at the wheel. He wondered why
the air, the words (which were yet written with a certain knack),
and the voice and accent of the singer, should all
jar his spirit like a file on a man's teeth. He sickened at the
thought of his two comrades drinking away their reason upon
stolen wine, quarrelling and hiccupping and waking up, while
the doors of the prison yawned for them in the near future.
'Shall I have sold my honour for nothing?' he thought; and a
heat of rage and resolution glowed in his bosom--rage against
his comrades--resolution to carry through this business if it
might be carried; pluck profit out of shame, since the shame at
least was now inevitable; and come home, home from South
America--how did the song go?--'with his pockets full of
money':
'O honey, with our pockets full of money,
We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay:'
so the words ran in his head; and the honey took on visible
form, the quay rose before him and he knew it for the lamplit
Embankment, and he saw the lights of Battersea bridge bestride
the sullen river. All through the remainder of his trick, he
stood entranced, reviewing the past. He had been always true to
his love, but not always sedulous to recall her. In the growing
calamity of his life, she had swum more distant, like the moon
in mist. The letter of farewell, the dishonourable hope that had
surprised and corrupted him in his distress, the changed scene,
the sea, the night and the music--all stirred him to the roots of
manhood. 'I WILL win her,' he thought, and ground his teeth.
'Fair or foul, what matters if I win her?'
'Fo' bell, matey. I think um fo' bell'--he was suddenly recalled
by these words in the voice of Uncle Ned.
'Look in at the clock, Uncle,' said he. He would not look
himself, from horror of the tipplers.
'Him past, matey,' repeated the Hawaiian.
'So much the better for you, Uncle,' he replied; and he gave
up the wheel, repeating the directions as he had received them.
He took two steps forward and remembered his dead reckoning. 'How
has she been heading?' he thought; and he flushed
from head to foot. He had not observed or had forgotten; here
was the old incompetence; the slate must be filled up by guess.
'Never again!' he vowed to himself in silent fury, 'never again.
It shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry.' And for the
remainder of his watch, he stood close by Uncle Ned, and read
the face of the compass as perhaps he had never read a letter
from his sweetheart.
All the time, and spurring him to the more attention, song,
loud talk, fleering laughter and the occasional popping of a
cork, reached his ears from the interior of the house; and when
the port watch was relieved at midnight, Huish and the captain
appeared upon the quarter-deck with flushed faces and uneven
steps, the former laden with bottles, the latter with two tin
mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed him in thick
voices, he made no answer, they cursed him for a churl, he paid
no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He
closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on
a locker in the cabin--not to sleep he thought--rather to think
and to despair. Yet he had scarce turned twice on his uneasy
bed, before a drunken voice hailed him in the ear, and he must
go on deck again to stand the morning watch.
The first evening set the model for those that were to follow.
Two cases of champagne scarce lasted the four-and-twenty
hours, and almost the whole was drunk by Huish and the
captain. Huish seemed to thrive on the excess; he was never
sober, yet never wholly tipsy; the food and the sea air had soon
healed him of his disease, and he began to lay on flesh. But
with Davis things went worse. In the drooping, unbuttoned figure
that sprawled all day upon the lockers, tippling and reading
novels; in the fool who made of the evening watch a public
carouse on the quarter-deck, it would have been hard to
recognise the vigorous seaman of Papeete roads. He kept himself
reasonably well in hand till he had taken the sun and yawned
and blotted through his calculations; but from the moment he
rolled up the chart, his hours were passed in slavish
self-indulgence or in hoggish slumber. Every other branch of his
duty was neglected, except maintaining a stern discipline about
the dinner table. Again and again Herrick would hear the cook
called aft, and see him running with fresh tins, or carrying away
again a meal that had been totally condemned. And the more
the captain became sunk in drunkenness, the more delicate his
palate showed itself. Once, in the forenoon, he had a bo'sun's
chair rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers, and went
overboard with a pot of paint. 'I don't like the way this
schooner's painted,' said he, 'and I've taken a down upon her
name.' But he tired of it in half an hour, and the schooner went
on her way with an incongruous patch of colour on the stern,
and the word Farallone part obliterated and part looking
through. He refused to stand either the middle or the morning
watch. It was fine-weather sailing, he said; and asked, with a
laugh, 'Who ever heard of the old man standing watch himself?'
To the dead reckoning which Herrick still tried to keep, he
would pay not the least attention nor afford the least
assistance.
'What do we want of dead reckoning?' he asked. 'We get the
sun all right, don't we?'
'We mayn't get it always though,' objected Herrick. 'And you
told me yourself you weren't sure of the chronometer.'
'Oh, there ain't no flies in the chronometer!' cried Davis.
'Oblige me so far, captain,' said Herrick stiffly. 'I am anxious
to keep this reckoning, which is a part of my duty; I do not
know what to allow for current, nor how to allow for it. I am
too inexperienced; and I beg of you to help me.'
'Never discourage zealous officer,' said the captain, unrolling
the chart again, for Herrick had taken him over his day's work
and while he was still partly sober. 'Here it is: look for
yourself; anything from west to west no'the-west, and anyways
from five to twenty-five miles. That's what the A'm'ralty chart
says; I guess you don't expect to get on ahead of your own
Britishers?'
'I am trying to do my duty, Captain Brown,' said Herrick,
with a dark flush, 'and I have the honour to inform you that I
don't enjoy being trifled with.'
'What in thunder do you want?' roared Davis. 'Go and look
at the blamed wake. If you're trying to do your duty, why don't
you go and do it? I guess it's no business of mine to go and
stick my head over the ship's rump? I guess it's yours. And I'll
tell you what it is, my fine fellow, I'll trouble you not to come
the dude over me. You're insolent, that's what's wrong with you.
Don't you crowd me, Mr Herrick, Esquire.'
Herrick tore up his papers, threw them on the floor, and left
the cabin.
'He's turned a bloomin' swot, ain't he?' sneered Huish.
'He thinks himself too good for his company, that's what ails
Herrick, Esquire,' raged the captain. 'He thinks I don't
understand when he comes the heavy swell. Won't sit down with us,
won't he? won't say a civil word? I'll serve the son of a gun as
he deserves. By God, Huish, I'll show him whether he's too good
for John Davis!'
'Easy with the names, cap',' said Huish, who was always the
more sober. 'Easy over the stones, my boy!'
'All right, I will. You're a good sort, Huish. I didn't take to
you at first, but I guess you're right enough. Let's open another
bottle,' said the captain; and that day, perhaps because he was
excited by the quarrel, he drank more recklessly, and by four
o'clock was stretched insensible upon the locker.
Herrick and Huish supped alone, one after the other, opposite
his flushed and snorting body. And if the sight killed Herrick's
hunger, the isolation weighed so heavily on the clerk's spirit,
that he was scarce risen from table ere he was currying favour
with his former comrade.
Herrick was at the wheel when he approached, and Huish
leaned confidentially across the binnacle.
'I say, old chappie,' he said, 'you and me don't seem to be
such pals somehow.'
Herrick gave her a spoke or two in silence; his eye, as it
skirted from the needle to the luff of the foresail, passed the
man by without speculation. But Huish was really dull, a thing he
could support with difficulty, having no resources of his own.
The idea of a private talk with Herrick, at this stage of their
relations, held out particular inducements to a person of his
character. Drink besides, as it renders some men hyper-sensitive,
made Huish callous. And it would almost have required a blow
to make him quit his purpose.
'Pretty business, ain't it?' he continued; 'Dyvis on the lush?
Must say I thought you gave it 'im A1 today. He didn't like it a
bit; took on hawful after you were gone.--"'Ere," says I, "'old
on, easy on the lush," I says. "'Errick was right, and you know
it. Give 'im a chanst," I says.--"Uish," sezee, "don't you
gimme no more of your jaw, or I'll knock your bloomin' eyes
out." Well, wot can I do, 'Errick? But I tell you, I don't 'arf
like it. It looks to me like the Sea Rynger over again.'
Still Herrick was silent.
'Do you )ear me speak?' asked Huish sharply. 'You're pleasant,
ain't you?'
'Stand away from that binnacle,' said Herrick.
The clerk looked at him, long and straight and black; his
figure seemed to writhe like that of a snake about to strike;
then he turned on his heel, went back to the cabin and opened a
bottle of champagne. When eight bells were cried, he slept on
the floor beside the captain on the locker; and of the whole
starboard watch, only Sally Day appeared upon the summons.
The mate proposed to stand the watch with him, and let Uncle
Ned lie down; it would make twelve hours on deck, and
probably sixteen, but in this fair-weather sailing, he might
safely sleep between his tricks of wheel, leaving orders to be
called on any sign of squalls. So far he could trust the men,
between whom and himself a close relation had sprung up. With
Uncle Ned he held long nocturnal conversations, and the old man
told him his simple and hard story of exile, suffering, and
injustice among cruel whites. The cook, when he found Herrick
messed alone, produced for him unexpected and sometimes
unpalatable dainties, of which he forced himself to eat. And one
day, when he was forward, he was surprised to feel a caressing
hand run down his shoulder, and to hear the voice of Sally Day
crooning in his ear: 'You gootch man!' He turned, and, choking
down a sob, shook hands with the negrito. They were kindly,
cheery, childish souls. Upon the Sunday each brought forth his
separate Bible--for they were all men of alien speech even to
each other, and Sally Day communicated with his mates in English
only, each read or made believe to read his chapter, Uncle Ned
with spectacles on his nose; and they would all join together in
the singing of missionary hymns. It was thus a cutting reproof to
compare the islanders and the whites aboard the Farallone.
Shame ran in Herrick's blood to remember what employment
he was on, and to see these poor souls--and even Sally Day, the
child of cannibals, in all likelihood a cannibal himself--so
faithful to what they knew of good. The fact that he was held in
grateful favour by these innocents served like blinders to his
conscience, and there were times when he was inclined, with
Sally Day, to call himself a good man. But the height of his
favour was only now to appear. With one voice, the crew
protested; ere Herrick knew what they were doing, the cook
was aroused and came a willing volunteer; all hands clustered
about their mate with expostulations and caresses; and he was
bidden to lie down and take his customary rest without alarm.
'He tell you tlue,' said Uncle Ned. 'You sleep. Evely man hae
he do all light. Evely man he like you too much.'
Herrick struggled, and gave way; choked upon some trivial
words of gratitude; and walked to the side of the house, against
which he leaned, struggling with emotion.
Uncle Ned presently followed him and begged him to lie
down.
'It's no use, Uncle Ned,' he replied. 'I couldn't sleep. I'm
knocked over with all your goodness.'
'Ah, no call me Uncle Ned no mo'!' cried the old man. 'No
my name! My name Taveeta, all-e-same Taveeta King of Islael. Wat
for he call that Hawaii? I think no savvy nothing--all-e-
same Wise-a-mana.'
It was the first time the name of the late captain had been
mentioned, and Herrick grasped the occasion. The reader shall
be spared Uncle Ned's unwieldy dialect, and learn in less
embarrassing English, the sum of what he now communicated.
The ship had scarce cleared the Golden Gates before the captain
and mate had entered on a career of drunkenness, which was
scarcely interrupted by their malady and only closed by death.
For days and weeks they had encountered neither land nor ship;
and seeing themselves lost on the huge deep with their insane
conductors, the natives had drunk deep of terror.
At length they made a low island, and went in; and Wiseman
and Wishart landed in the boat.
There was a great village, a very fine village, and plenty
Kanakas in that place; but all mighty serious; and from every
here and there in the back parts of the settlement, Taveeta heard
the sounds of island lamentation. 'I no savvy TALK that island,'
said he. 'I savvy hear um CLY. I think, Hum! too many people die
here!' But upon Wiseman and Wishart the significance of that
barbaric keening was lost. Full of bread and drink, they
rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls who had scarce
energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken voices) in
the death wail, and at last (on what they took to be an
invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a
considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped
below the eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came
forth again with changed faces and silent tongues; and as the
press severed to make way for them, Taveeta was able to perceive,
in the deep shadow of the house, the sick man raising from his
mat a head already defeatured by disease. The two tragic triflers
fled without hesitation for their boat, screaming on Taveeta to
make haste; they came aboard with all speed of oars, raised
anchor and crowded sail upon the ship with blows and curses, and
were at sea again--and again drunk--before sunset. A week after,
and the last of the two had been committed to the deep. Herrick
asked Taveeta where that island was, and he replied that, by
what he gathered of folks' talk as they went up together from
the beach, he supposed it must be one of the Paumotus. This
was in itself probable enough, for the Dangerous Archipelago
had been swept that year from east to west by devastating
smallpox; but Herrick thought it a strange course to lie from
Sydney. Then he remembered the drink.
'Were they not surprised when they made the island?' he
asked.
'Wise-a-mana he say "dam! what this?"' was the reply.
'O, that's it then,' said Herrick. 'I don't believe they knew
where they were.'
'I think so too,' said Uncle Ned. 'I think no savvy. This one
mo' betta,' he added, pointing to the house where the drunken
captain slumbered: 'Take-a-sun all-e-time.'
The implied last touch completed Herrick's picture of the life
and death of his two predecessors; of their prolonged, sordid,
sodden sensuality as they sailed, they knew not whither, on their
last cruise. He held but a twinkling and unsure belief in any
future state; the thought of one of punishment he derided; yet
for him (as for all) there dwelt a horror about the end of the
brutish man. Sickness fell upon him at the image thus called up;
and when he compared it with the scene in which himself was
acting, and considered the doom that seemed to brood upon the
schooner, a horror that was almost superstitious fell upon him.
And yet the strange thing was, he did not falter. He who had
proved his incapacity in so many fields, being now falsely placed
amid duties which he did not understand, without help, and it
might be said without countenance, had hitherto surpassed
expectation; and even the shameful misconduct and shocking
disclosures of that night seemed but to nerve and strengthen
him. He had sold his honour; he vowed it should not be in vain;
'it shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry,' he repeated. And
in his heart he wondered at himself. Living rage no doubt
supported him; no doubt also, the sense of the last cast, of the
ships burned, of all doors closed but one, which is so strong a
tonic to the merely weak, and so deadly a depressant to the
merely cowardly.
For some time the voyage went otherwise well. They weathered
Fakarava with one board; and the wind holding well to the
southward and blowing fresh, they passed between Ranaka and
Ratiu, and ran some days north-east by east-half-east under the
lee of Takume and Honden, neither of which they made. In
about 14 degrees South and between 134 and 135 degrees West, it
fell a dead calm with rather a heavy sea. The captain refused to
take in sail, the helm was lashed, no watch was set, and the
Farallone rolled and banged for three days, according to
observation, in almost the same place. The fourth morning, a
little before day, a breeze sprang up and rapidly freshened. The
captain had drunk hard the night before; he was far from sober
when he was roused; and when he came on deck for the first time
at half-past eight, it was plain he had already drunk deep again
at breakfast. Herrick avoided his eye; and resigned the deck with
indignation to a man more than half-seas over.
By the loud commands of the captain and the singing out of
fellows at the ropes, he could judge from the house that sail was
being crowded on the ship; relinquished his half-eaten breakfast;
and came on deck again, to find the main and the jib topsails
set, and both watches and the cook turned out to hand the
staysail. The Farallone lay already far over; the sky was
obscured with misty scud; and from the windward an ominous
squall came flying up, broadening and blackening as it rose.
Fear thrilled in Herrick's vitals. He saw death hard by; and if
not death, sure ruin. For if the Farallone lived through the
coming squall, she must surely be dismasted. With that their
enterprise was at an end, and they themselves bound prisoners to
the very evidence of their crime. The greatness of the peril
and his own alarm sufficed to silence him. Pride, wrath, and
shame raged without issue in his mind; and he shut his teeth
and folded his arms close.
The captain sat in the boat to windward, bellowing orders
and insults, his eyes glazed, his face deeply congested; a bottle
set between his knees, a glass in his hand half empty. His back
was to the squall, and he was at first intent upon the setting of
the sail. When that was done, and the great trapezium of canvas
had begun to draw and to trail the lee-rail of the Farallone
level with the foam, he laughed out an empty laugh, drained his
glass, sprawled back among the lumber in the boat, and fetched
out a crumpled novel.
Herrick watched him, and his indignation glowed red hot. He
glanced to windward where the squall already whitened the near
sea and heralded its coming with a singular and dismal sound.
He glanced at the steersman, and saw him clinging to the spokes
with a face of a sickly blue. He saw the crew were running to
their stations without orders. And it seemed as if something
broke in his brain; and the passion of anger, so long restrained,
so long eaten in secret, burst suddenly loose and shook him like
a sail. He stepped across to the captain and smote his hand
heavily on the drunkard's shoulder.
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