The Ebb Tide

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson in collaboration with Lloyde Osbourne >> The Ebb Tide

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'You brute,' he said, in a voice that tottered, 'look behind
you!'

'Wha's that?' cried Davis, bounding in the boat and upsetting
the champagne.

'You lost the Sea Ranger because you were a drunken sot,' said
Herrick. 'Now you're going to lose the Farallone. You're going to
drown here the same way as you drowned others, and be damned. And
your daughter shall walk the streets, and your sons be thieves
like their father.'

For the moment, the words struck the captain white and
foolish. 'My God!' he cried, looking at Herrick as upon a ghost;
'my God, Herrick!'

'Look behind you, then!' reiterated the assailant.

The wretched man, already partly sobered, did as he was told,
and in the same breath of time leaped to his feet. 'Down
staysail!' he trumpeted. The hands were thrilling for the order,
and the great sail came with a run, and fell half overboard
among the racing foam. 'Jib topsail-halyards! Let the stays'l
be,' he said again.

But before it was well uttered, the squall shouted aloud and
fell, in a solid mass of wind and rain commingled, on the
Farallone; and she stooped under the blow, and lay like a thing
dead. From the mind of Herrick reason fled; he clung in the
weather rigging, exulting; he was done with life, and he gloried
in the release; he gloried in the wild noises of the wind and the
choking onslaught of the rain; he gloried to die so, and now,
amid this coil of the elements. And meanwhile, in the waist up
to his knees in water--so low. the schooner lay--the captain
was hacking at the foresheet with a pocket knife. It was a
question of seconds, for the Farallone drank deep of the
encroaching seas. But the hand of the captain had the advance;
the foresail boom tore apart the last strands of the sheet and
crashed to leeward; the Farallone leaped up into the wind and
righted; and the peak and throat halyards, which had long been
let go, began to run at the same instant.

For some ten minutes more she careered under the impulse of
the squall; but the captain was now master of himself and of his
ship, and all danger at an end. And then, sudden as a trick
change upon the stage, the squall blew by, the wind dropped
into light airs, the sun beamed forth again upon the tattered
schooner; and the captain, having secured the foresail boom and
set a couple of hands to the pump, walked aft, sober, a little
pale, and with the sodden end of a cigar still stuck between his
teeth even as the squall had found it. Herrick followed him; he
could scarce recall the violence of his late emotions, but he
felt there was a scene to go through, and he was anxious and even
eager to go through with it.

The captain, turning at the house end, met him face to face,
and averted his eyes. 'We've lost the two tops'ls and the
stays'l,' he gabbled. 'Good business, we didn't lose any sticks.
I guess you think we're all the better without the kites.'

'That's not what I'm thinking,' said Herrick, in a voice
strangely quiet, that yet echoed confusion in the captain's mind.

'I know that,' he cried, holding up his hand. 'I know what
you're thinking. No use to say it now. I'm sober.'

'I have to say it, though,' returned Herrick.

'Hold on, Herrick; you've said enough,' said Davis. 'You've
said what I would take from no man breathing but yourself;
only I know it's true.'

'I have to tell you, Captain Brown,' pursued Herrick, 'that I
resign my position as mate. You can put me in irons or shoot
me, as you please; I will make no resistance--only, I decline in
any way to help or to obey you; and I suggest you should put
Mr Huish in my place. He will make a worthy first officer to
your captain, sir.' He smiled, bowed, and turned to walk
forward.

'Where are you going, Herrick?' cried the captain, detaining
him by the shoulder.

'To berth forward with the men, sir,' replied Herrick, with
the same hateful smile. 'I've been long enough aft here with you
--gentlemen.

'You're wrong there,' said Davis. 'Don't you be too quick with
me; there ain't nothing wrong but the drink--it's the old
story, man! Let me get sober once, and then you'll see,' he
pleaded.

'Excuse me, I desire to see no more of you,' said Herrick.

The captain groaned aloud. 'You know what you said about
my children?' he broke out.

'By rote. In case you wish me to say it you again?' asked
Herrick.

'Don't!' cried the captain, clapping his hands to his ears.
'Don't make me kill a man I care for! Herrick, if you see me put
glass to my lips again till we're ashore, I give you leave to
put bullet through me; I beg you to do it! You're the only man
aboard whose carcase is worth losing; do you think I don't
know that? do you think I ever went back on you? I always
knew you were in the right of it--drunk or sober, I knew that.
What do you want?--an oath? Man, you're clever enough to
see that this is sure-enough earnest.'

'Do you mean there shall be no more drinking?' asked
Herrick, 'neither by you nor Huish? that you won't go on
stealing my profits and drinking my champagne that I gave my
honour for? and that you'll attend to your duties, and stand
watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the ship's
work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman,
and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that
what you mean? If it is, be so good as to say it categorically.'

'You put these things in a way hard for a gentleman to
swallow,' said the captain. 'You wouldn't have me say I was
ashamed of myself? Trust me this once; I'll do the square thing,
and there's my hand on it.'

'Well, I'll try it once,' said Herrick. 'Fail me again. . .'

'No more now!' interrupted Davis. 'No more, old man!
Enough said. You've a riling tongue when your back's up,
Herrick. Just be glad we're friends again, the same as what I
am; and go tender on the raws; I'll see as you don't repent it.
We've been mighty near death this day--don't say whose fault
it was!--pretty near hell, too, I guess. We're in a mighty bad
line of life, us two, and ought to go easy with each other.'

He was maundering; yet it seemed as if he were maundering
with some design, beating about the bush of some communication
that he feared to make, or perhaps only talking against
time in terror of what Herrick might say next. But Herrick had
now spat his venom; his was a kindly nature, and, content with
his triumph, he had now begun to pity. With a few soothing
words, he sought to conclude the interview, and proposed that
they should change their clothes.

'Not right yet,' said Davis. 'There's another thing I want to
tell you first. You know what you said about my children? I
want to tell you why it hit me so hard; I kind of think you'll
feel bad about it too. It's about my little Adar. You hadn't
ought to have quite said that--but of course I know you didn't
know. She--she's dead, you see.'

'Why, Davis!' cried Herrick. 'You've told me a dozen times
she was alive! Clear your head, man! This must be the drink.'

"No, SIR,' said Davis. 'She's dead. Died of a bowel complaint.
That was when I was away in the brig Oregon. She lies in
Portland, Maine. "Adar, only daughter of Captain John Davis
and Mariar his wife, aged five." I had a doll for her on board. I
never took the paper off'n that doll, Herrick; it went down the
way it was with the Sea Ranger, that day I was damned.'

The Captain's eyes were fixed on the horizon, he talked with
an extraordinary softness but a complete composure; and Herrick
looked upon him with something that was almost terror.

'Don't think I'm crazy neither,' resumed Davis. 'I've all the
cold sense that I know what to do with. But I guess a man that's
unhappy's like a child; and this is a kind of a child's game of
mine. I never could act up to the plain-cut truth, you see; so I
pretend. And I warn you square; as soon as we're through with
this talk, I'll start in again with the pretending. Only, you
see, she can't walk no streets,' added the captain, 'couldn't
even make out to live and get that doll!'

Herrick laid a tremulous hand upon the captain's shoulder.

'Don't do that" cried Davis, recoiling from the touch. 'Can't
you see I'm all broken up the way it is? Come along, then; come
along, old man; you can put your trust in me right through;
come along and get dry clothes.'

They entered the cabin, and there was Huish on his knees
prising open a case of champagne.

"Vast, there!' cried the captain. 'No more of that. No more
drinking on this ship.'

'Turned teetotal, 'ave you?' inquired Hu'sh. 'I'm agreeable.
About time, eh? Bloomin' nearly lost another ship, I fancy.' He
took out a bottle and began calmly to burst the wire with the
spike of a corkscrew.

'Do you hear me speak?' cried Davis.

'I suppose I do. You speak loud enough,' said Huish. 'The
trouble is that I don't care.'

Herrick plucked the captain's sleeve. 'Let him free now,' he
said. 'We've had all we want this morning.'

'Let him have it then,' said the captain. 'It's his last.'

By this time the wire was open, the string was cut, the head
of glided paper was torn away; and Huish waited, mug in hand,
expecting the usual explosion. It did not follow. He eased the
cork with his thumb; still there was no result. At last he took
the screw and drew it. It came out very easy and with scarce a
sound.

"Illo!'said Huish. "Ere's a bad bottle.'

He poured some of the wine into the mug; it was colourless and
still. He smelt and tasted it.

'W'y, wot's this?' he said. 'It's water!'

If the voice of trumpets had suddenly sounded about the ship
in the midst of the sea, the three men in the house could
scarcely have been more stunned than by this incident. The mug
passed round; each sipped, each smelt of it; each stared at the
bottle in its glory of gold paper as Crusoe may have stared at
the footprint; and their minds were swift to fix upon a common
apprehension. The difference between a bottle of champagne
and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one or
the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.

A second bottle was broached. There were two cases standing
ready in a stateroom; these two were brought out, broken open,
and tested. Still with the same result: the contents were still
colourless and tasteless, and dead as the rain in a beached
fishing-boat.

'Crikey!' said Huish.

'Here, let's sample the hold!' said the captain, mopping his
brow with a back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of
the house, grim and heavy-footed.

All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below,
another stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took
his place beside the coamings.

'Are you going to let the men know?' whispered Herrick.

'Damn the men!' said Davis. 'It's beyond that. We've got to
know ourselves.'

Three cases were sent on deck and sampled in turn; from each
bottle, as the captain smashed it with the axe, the champagne
ran bubbling and creaming.

'Go deeper, can't you?' cried Davis to the Kanakas in the
hold.

The command gave the signal for a disastrous change. Case
after case came up, bottle after bottle was burst and bled mere
water. Deeper yet, and they came upon a layer where there was
scarcely so much as the intention to deceive; where the cases
were no longer branded, the bottles no longer wired or papered,
where the fraud was manifest and stared them in the face.

'Here's about enough of this foolery!' said Davis. 'Stow back
the cases in the hold, Uncle, and get the broken crockery
overboard. Come with me,' he added to his co-adventurers, and
led the way back into the cabin.

Chapter 6. THE PARTNERS

Each took a side of the fixed table; it was the first time they
had sat down at it together; but now all sense of incongruity,
all memory of differences, was quite swept away by the presence
of the common ruin.

'Gentlemen,' said the captain, after a pause, and with very
much the air of a chairman opening a board-meeting, 'we're
sold.'

Huish broke out in laughter. 'Well, if this ain't the 'ighest old
rig!' he cried. 'And Dyvis, 'ere, who thought he had got up so
bloomin' early in the mornin'! We've stolen a cargo of spring
water! Oh, my crikey!' and he squirmed with mirth.

The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.

'Here's Old Man Destiny again,' said he to Herrick, 'but this
time I guess he's kicked the door right in.'

Herrick only shook his head.

'O Lord, it's rich!' laughed Huish. 'it would really be a
scrumptious lark if it 'ad 'appened to somebody else! And wot
are we to do next? Oh, my eye! with this bloomin' schooner,
too?'

'That's the trouble,' said Davis. 'There's only one thing
certain: it's no use carting this old glass and ballast to Peru.
No, SIR, we're in a hole.'

'O my, and the merchand' cried Huish; 'the man that made
this shipment! He'll get the news by the mail brigantine; and
he'll think of course we're making straight for Sydney.'

'Yes, he'll be a sick merchant,' said the captain. 'One thing:
this explains the Kanaka crew. If you're going to lose a ship, I
would ask no better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there's one
thing it don't explain; it don't explain why she came down
Tahiti ways.'

'Wy, to lose her, you byby!' said Huish.

'A lot you know,' said the captain. 'Nobody wants to lose a
schooner; they want to lose her ON HER COURSE, you skeericks!
You seem to think underwriters haven't got enough sense to
come in out of the rain.'

'Well,' said Herrick, 'I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came
so far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned. It seems these two
unhappy devils, Wiseman and Wishart, were drunk on the
champagne from the beginning--and died drunk at the end.'

The captain looked on the table.

'They lay in their two bunks, or sat here in this damned
house,' he pursued, with rising agitation, 'filling their skins
with the accursed stuff, till sickness took them. As they
sickened and the fever rose, they drank the more. They lay here
howling and groaning, drunk and dying, all in one. They didn't
know where they were, they didn't care. They didn't even take the
sun, it seems.'

'Not take the sun?' cried the captain, looking up. 'Sacred
Billy! what a crowd!'

'Well, it don't matter to Joe!' said Huish. 'Wot are Wiseman
and the t'other buffer to us?'

'A good deal, too,' says the captain. 'We're their heirs, I
guess.'

'It is a great inheritance,' said Herrick.

'Well, I don't know about that,' returned Davis. 'Appears to
me as if it might be worse. 'Tain't worth what the cargo would
have been of course, at least not money down. But I'll tell you
what it appears to figure up to. Appears to me as if it amounted
to about the bottom dollar of the man in 'Frisco.'

''Old on,' said Huish. 'Give a fellow time; 'ow's this, umpire?'

'Well, my sons,' pursued the captain, who seemed to have
recovered his assurance, 'Wiseman and Wishart were to be paid
for casting away this old schooner and its cargo. We're going to
cast away the schooner right enough; and I'll make it my private
business to see that we get paid. What were W. and W. to get?
That's more'n I can tell. But W. and W. went into this business
themselves, they were on the crook. Now WE'RE on the square,
we only stumbled into it; and that merchant has just got to
squeal, and I'm the man to see that he squeals good. No, sir!
there's some stuffing to this Farallone racket after all.'

'Go it, cap!' cried Huish. 'Yoicks! Forrard! 'Old 'ard! There's
your style for the money! Blow me if I don't prefer this to the
hother.'

'I do not understand,' said Herrick. 'I have to ask you to
excuse. me; I do not understand.'

'Well now, see here, Herrick,' said Davis, 'I'm going to have a
word with you anyway upon a different matter, and it's good
that Huish should hear it too. We're done with this boozing
business, and we ask your pardon for it right here and now. We
have to thank you for all you did for us while we were making
hogs of ourselves; you'll find me turn-to all right in future;
and as for the wine, which I grant we stole from you, I'll take
stock and see you paid for it. That's good enough, I believe. But
what I want to point out to you is this. The old game was a risky
game. The new game's as safe as running a Vienna Bakery. We
just put this Farallone before the wind, and run till we're well
to looard of our port of departure and reasonably well up with
some other place, where they have an American Consul. Down
goes the Farallone, and good-bye to her! A day or so in the
boat; the consul packs us home, at Uncle Sam's expense, to
'Frisco; and if that merchant don't put the dollars down, you
come to me!'

'But I thought,' began Herrick; and then broke out; 'oh, let's
get on to Peru!'

'Well, if you're going to Peru for your health, I won't say no!'
replied. the captain. 'But for what other blame' shadow of a
reason you should want to go there, gets me clear. We don't
want to go there with this cargo; I don't know as old bottles is
a lively article anywheres; leastways, I'll go my bottom cent, it
ain't Peru. It was always a doubt if we could sell the schooner;
I never rightly hoped to, and now I'm sure she ain't worth a hill
of beans; what's wrong with her, I don't know; I only know it's
something, or she wouldn't be here with this truck in her inside.
Then again, if we lose her, and land in Peru, where are we? We
can't declare the loss, or how did we get to Peru? In that case
the merchant can't touch the insurance; most likely he'll go
bust; and don't you think you see the three of us on the beach of
Callao?'

'There's no extradition there,' said Herrick.

'Well, my son, and we want to be extraded,' said the captain.

'What's our point? We want to have a consul extrade us as far
as San Francisco and that merchant's office door. My idea is
that Samoa would be found an eligible business centre. It's dead
before the wind; the States have a consul there, and 'Frisco
steamers call, so's we could skip right back and interview the
merchant.'

'Samoa?' said Herrick. 'It will take us for ever to get there.'

'Oh, with a fair wind!' said the captain.

'No trouble about the log, eh?' asked Huish.

'No, SIR,' said Davis. 'Ligbt airs and baffling winds. Squalls
and calms. D. R.: five miles. No obs. Pumps attended. And fill
in the barometer and thermometer off of last year's trip.' 'Never
saw such a voyage,' says you to the consul. 'Thought I was
going to run short . . .' He stopped in mid career. "Say,' he
began again, and once more stopped. 'Beg your pardon, Herrick,'
he added with undisguised humility, 'but did you keep the
run of the stores?'

'Had I been told to do so, it should have been done, as the
rest was done, to the best of my little ability,' said Herrick.
'As it was, the cook helped himself to what he pleased.'

Davis looked at the table.

'I drew it rather fine, you see,' he said at last. 'The great
thing was to clear right out of Papeete before the consul could
think better of it. Tell you what: I guess I'll take stock.'

And he rose from table and disappeared with a lamp in the
lazarette.

"Ere's another screw loose,' observed Huish.

'My man,' said Herrick, with a sudden gleam of animosity, 'it
is still your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?'

'You come the 'eavy swell, don't you, ducky?' said Huish.

'Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w'eel, my man.
Yah.'

He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and strolled into the waist with
his hands in his pockets.

In a surprisingly short time, the captain reappeared; he did
not look at Herrick, but called Huish back and sat down.

'Well,' he began, 'I've taken stock--roughly.' He paused as if
for somebody to help him out; and none doing so, both gazing
on him instead with manifest anxiety, he yet more heavily
resumed. 'Well, it won't fight. We can't do it; that's the bed
rock. I'm as sorry as what you can be, and sorrier. We can't
look near Samoa. I don't know as we could get to Peru.'

'Wot-ju mean?' asked Huish brutally.

'I can't 'most tell myself,' replied the captain. 'I drew it
fine; I said I did; but what's been going on here gets me!
Appears as if the devil had been around. That cook must be the
holiest kind of fraud. Only twelve days, too! Seems like
craziness. I'll own up square to one thing: I seem to have
figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest--my land! I'll
never understand it! There's been more waste on this twopenny
ship than what there is to an Atlantic Liner.' He stole a glance
at his companions; nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark
faces; and he had recourse to rage. 'You wait till I interview
that cook!' he roared and smote the table with his fist. 'I'll
interview the son of a gun so's he's never been spoken to before.
I'll put a bead upon the--'

'You will not lay a finger on the man,' said Herrick. 'The fault
is yours and you know it. If you turn a savage loose in your
store-room, you know what to expect. I will not allow the man
to be molested.'

It is hard to say how Davis might have taken this defiance;
but he was diverted to a fresh assailant.

'Well!' drawled Huish, 'you're a plummy captain, ain't you?
You're a blooming captain! Don't you, set up any of your chat
to me, John Dyvis: I know you now, you ain't any more use
than a bloomin' dawl! Oh, you "don't know", don't you? Oh,
it "gets you", do it? Oh, I dessay! W'y, we en't you 'owling for
fresh tins every blessed day? 'Ow often 'ave I 'eard you send the
'ole bloomin' dinner off and tell the man to chuck it in the
swill tub? And breakfast? Oh, my crikey! breakfast for ten, and
you 'ollerin' for more! And now you "can't 'most tell"! Blow me,
if it ain't enough to make a man write an insultin' letter to
Gawd! You dror it mild, John Dyvis; don't 'andle me; I'm
dyngerous.'

Davis sat like one bemused; it might even have been doubted
if he heard, but the voice of the clerk rang about the cabin like
that of a cormorant among the ledges of the cliff.

'That will do, Huish,' said Herrick.

'Oh, so you tyke his part, do you? you stuck-up sneerin' snob!
Tyke it then. Come on, the pair of you. But as for John Dyvis,
let him look out! He struck me the first night aboard, and I
never took a blow yet but wot I gave as good. Let him knuckle
down on his marrow bones and beg my pardon. That's my last
word.'

'I stand by the Captain,' said Herrick. 'That makes us two to
one, both good men; and the crew will all follow me. I hope I
shall die very soon; but I have not the least objection to
killing you before I go. I should prefer it so; I should do it
with no more remorse than winking. Take care--take care, you
little cad!'

The animosity with which these words were uttered was so
marked in itself, and so remarkable in the man who uttered
them that Huish stared, and even the humiliated Davis reared
up his head and gazed at his defender. As for Herrick, the
successive agitations and disappointments of the day had left
him wholly reckless; he was conscious of a pleasant glow, an
agreeable excitement; his head seemed empty, his eyeballs
burned as he turned them, his throat was dry as a biscuit; the
least dangerous man by nature, except in so far as the weak are
always dangerous, at that moment he was ready to slay or to be
slain with equal unconcern.

Here at least was the gage thrown down, and battle offered;
he who should speak next would bring the matter to an issue
there and then; all knew it to be so and hung back; and for
many seconds by the cabin clock, the trio sat motionless and
silent.

Then came an interruption, welcome as the flowers in May.

'Land ho!' sang out a voice on deck. 'Land a weatha bow!'

'Land!' cried Davis, springing to his feet. 'What's this? There
ain't no land here.'

And as men may run from the chamber of a murdered corpse,
the three ran forth out of the house and left their quarrel
behind them, undecided.

The sky shaded down at the sea level to the white of opals; the
sea itself, insolently, inkily blue, drew all about them the
uncompromising wheel of the horizon. Search it as they pleased,
not even the practisect eye of Captain Davis could descry the
smallest interruption. A few filmy clouds were slowly melting
overhead; and about the schooner, as around the only point of
interest, a tropic bird, white as a snowflake, hung, and circled,
and displayed, as it turned, the long vermilion feather of its
tall. Save the sea and the heaven, that was all.

'Who sang out land?' asked Davis. 'If there's any boy playing
funny dog with me, I'll teach him skylarking!'

But Uncle Ned contentedly pointed to a part of the horizon,
where a greenish, filmy iridescence could be discerned floating
like smoke on the pale heavens.

Davis applied his glass to it, and then looked at the Kanaka.
'Call that land?' said he. 'Well, it's more than I do.'

'One time long ago,' said Uncle Ned, 'I see Anaa all-e-same
that, four five hours befo' we come up. Capena he say sun go
down, sun go up again; he say lagoon all-e-same milla.'

'All-e-same WHAT?' asked Davis.

'Milla, sah,' said Uncle Ned.

'Oh, ah! mirror,' said Davis. 'I see; reflection from the lagoon.
Well, you know, it is just possible, though it's strange I never
heard of it. Here, let's look at the chart.'

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