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+Project Gutenberg's The Mutiny of the "Elsinore", by Jack London
+#88 in our series by Jack London
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+The Mutiny of the Elsinore
+
+by Jack London
+
+December, 2000 [Etext #2415]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Mutiny of the "Elsinore", by Jack London
+******This file should be named elsnr10.txt or elsnr10.zip******
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+This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1915 Mills and Boon edition.  It was proofed by Rab Hughes.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTINY OF THE ELSINORE
+
+by Jack London
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+From the first the voyage was going wrong.  Routed out of my hotel on
+a bitter March morning, I had crossed Baltimore and reached the pier-
+end precisely on time.  At nine o'clock the tug was to have taken me
+down the bay and put me on board the Elsinore, and with growing
+irritation I sat frozen inside my taxicab and waited.  On the seat,
+outside, the driver and Wada sat hunched in a temperature perhaps
+half a degree colder than mine.  And there was no tug.
+
+Possum, the fox-terrier puppy Galbraith had so inconsiderately
+foisted upon me, whimpered and shivered on my lap inside my greatcoat
+and under the fur robe.  But he would not settle down.  Continually
+he whimpered and clawed and struggled to get out.  And, once out and
+bitten by the cold, with equal insistence he whimpered and clawed to
+get back.
+
+His unceasing plaint and movement was anything but sedative to my
+jangled nerves.  In the first place I was uninterested in the brute.
+He meant nothing to me.  I did not know him.  Time and again, as I
+drearily waited, I was on the verge of giving him to the driver.
+Once, when two little girls--evidently the wharfinger's daughters--
+went by, my hand reached out to the door to open it so that I might
+call to them and present them with the puling little wretch.
+
+A farewell surprise package from Galbraith, he had arrived at the
+hotel the night before, by express from New York.  It was Galbraith's
+way.  Yet he might so easily have been decently like other folk and
+sent fruit . . . or flowers, even.  But no; his affectionate
+inspiration had to take the form of a yelping, yapping two months'
+old puppy.  And with the advent of the terrier the trouble had begun.
+The hotel clerk judged me a criminal before the act I had not even
+had time to meditate.  And then Wada, on his own initiative and out
+of his own foolish stupidity, had attempted to smuggle the puppy into
+his room and been caught by a house detective.  Promptly Wada had
+forgotten all his English and lapsed into hysterical Japanese, and
+the house detective remembered only his Irish; while the hotel clerk
+had given me to understand in no uncertain terms that it was only
+what he had expected of me.
+
+Damn the dog, anyway!  And damn Galbraith too!  And as I froze on in
+the cab on that bleak pier-end, I damned myself as well, and the mad
+freak that had started me voyaging on a sailing-ship around the Horn.
+
+By ten o'clock a nondescript youth arrived on foot, carrying a suit-
+case, which was turned over to me a few minutes later by the
+wharfinger.  It belonged to the pilot, he said, and gave instructions
+to the chauffeur how to find some other pier from which, at some
+indeterminate time, I should be taken aboard the Elsinore by some
+other tug.  This served to increase my irritation.  Why should I not
+have been informed as well as the pilot?
+
+An hour later, still in my cab and stationed at the shore end of the
+new pier, the pilot arrived.  Anything more unlike a pilot I could
+not have imagined.  Here was no blue-jacketed, weather-beaten son of
+the sea, but a soft-spoken gentleman, for all the world the type of
+successful business man one meets in all the clubs.  He introduced
+himself immediately, and I invited him to share my freezing cab with
+Possum and the baggage.  That some change had been made in the
+arrangements by Captain West was all he knew, though he fancied the
+tug would come along any time.
+
+And it did, at one in the afternoon, after I had been compelled to
+wait and freeze for four mortal hours.  During this time I fully made
+up my mind that I was not going to like this Captain West.  Although
+I had never met him, his treatment of me from the outset had been, to
+say the least, cavalier.  When the Elsinore lay in Erie Basin, just
+arrived from California with a cargo of barley, I had crossed over
+from New York to inspect what was to be my home for many months.  I
+had been delighted with the ship and the cabin accommodation.  Even
+the stateroom selected for me was satisfactory and far more spacious
+than I had expected.  But when I peeped into the captain's room I was
+amazed at its comfort.  When I say that it opened directly into a
+bath-room, and that, among other things, it was furnished with a big
+brass bed such as one would never suspect to find at sea, I have said
+enough.
+
+Naturally, I had resolved that the bath-room and the big brass bed
+should be mine.  When I asked the agents to arrange with the captain
+they seemed non-committal and uncomfortable.  "I don't know in the
+least what it is worth," I said.  "And I don't care.  Whether it
+costs one hundred and fifty dollars or five hundred, I must have
+those quarters."
+
+Harrison and Gray, the agents, debated silently with each other and
+scarcely thought Captain West would see his way to the arrangement.
+"Then he is the first sea captain I ever heard of that wouldn't," I
+asserted confidently.  "Why, the captains of all the Atlantic liners
+regularly sell their quarters."
+
+"But Captain West is not the captain of an Atlantic liner," Mr.
+Harrison observed gently.
+
+"Remember, I am to be on that ship many a month," I retorted.  "Why,
+heavens, bid him up to a thousand if necessary."
+
+"We'll try," said Mr. Gray, "but we warn you not to place too much
+dependence on our efforts.  Captain West is in Searsport at the
+present time, and we will write him to-day.
+
+To my astonishment Mr. Gray called me up several days later to inform
+me that Captain West had declined my offer.  "Did you offer him up to
+a thousand?" I demanded.  "What did he say?"
+
+"He regretted that he was unable to concede what you asked," Mr. Gray
+replied.
+
+A day later I received a letter from Captain West.  The writing and
+the wording were old-fashioned and formal.  He regretted not having
+yet met me, and assured me that he would see personally that my
+quarters were made comfortable.  For that matter he had already
+dispatched orders to Mr. Pike, the first mate of the Elsinore, to
+knock out the partition between my state-room and the spare state-
+room adjoining.  Further--and here is where my dislike for Captain
+West began--he informed me that if, when once well at sea, I should
+find myself dissatisfied, he would gladly, in that case, exchange
+quarters with me.
+
+Of course, after such a rebuff, I knew that no circumstance could
+ever persuade me to occupy Captain West's brass bed.  And it was this
+Captain Nathaniel West, whom I had not yet met, who had now kept me
+freezing on pier-ends through four miserable hours.  The less I saw
+of him on the voyage the better, was my decision; and it was with a
+little tickle of pleasure that I thought of the many boxes of books I
+had dispatched on board from New York.  Thank the Lord, I did not
+depend on sea captains for entertainment.
+
+I turned Possum over to Wada, who was settling with the cabman, and
+while the tug's sailors were carrying my luggage on board I was led
+by the pilot to an introduction with Captain West.  At the first
+glimpse I knew that he was no more a sea captain than the pilot was a
+pilot.  I had seen the best of the breed, the captains of the liners,
+and he no more resembled them than did he resemble the bluff-faced,
+gruff-voiced skippers I had read about in books.  By his side stood a
+woman, of whom little was to be seen and who made a warm and gorgeous
+blob of colour in the huge muff and boa of red fox in which she was
+well-nigh buried.
+
+"My God!--his wife!" I darted in a whisper at the pilot.  "Going
+along with him? . . . "
+
+I had expressly stipulated with Mr. Harrison, when engaging passage,
+that the one thing I could not possibly consider was the skipper of
+the Elsinore taking his wife on the voyage.  And Mr. Harrison had
+smiled and assured me that Captain West would sail unaccompanied by a
+wife.
+
+"It's his daughter," the pilot replied under his breath.  "Come to
+see him off, I fancy.  His wife died over a year ago.  They say that
+is what sent him back to sea.  He'd retired, you know."
+
+Captain West advanced to meet me, and before our outstretched hands
+touched, before his face broke from repose to greeting and the lips
+moved to speech, I got the first astonishing impact of his
+personality.  Long, lean, in his face a touch of race I as yet could
+only sense, he was as cool as the day was cold, as poised as a king
+or emperor, as remote as the farthest fixed star, as neutral as a
+proposition of Euclid.  And then, just ere our hands met, a twinkle
+of--oh--such distant and controlled geniality quickened the many tiny
+wrinkles in the corner of the eyes; the clear blue of the eyes was
+suffused by an almost colourful warmth; the face, too, seemed
+similarly to suffuse; the thin lips, harsh-set the instant before,
+were as gracious as Bernhardt's when she moulds sound into speech.
+
+So curiously was I affected by this first glimpse of Captain West
+that I was aware of expecting to fall from his lips I knew not what
+words of untold beneficence and wisdom.  Yet he uttered most
+commonplace regrets at the delay in a voice provocative of fresh
+surprise to me.  It was low and gentle, almost too low, yet clear as
+a bell and touched with a faint reminiscent twang of old New England.
+
+"And this is the young woman who is guilty of the delay," he
+concluded my introduction to his daughter.  "Margaret, this is Mr.
+Pathurst."
+
+Her gloved hand promptly emerged from the fox-skins to meet mine, and
+I found myself looking into a pair of gray eyes bent steadily and
+gravely upon me.  It was discomfiting, that cool, penetrating,
+searching gaze.  It was not that it was challenging, but that it was
+so insolently business-like.  It was much in the very way one would
+look at a new coachman he was about to engage.  I did not know then
+that she was to go on the voyage, and that her curiosity about the
+man who was to be a fellow-passenger for half a year was therefore
+only natural.  Immediately she realized what she was doing, and her
+lips and eyes smiled as she spoke.
+
+As we moved on to enter the tug's cabin I heard Possum's shivering
+whimper rising to a screech, and went forward to tell Wada to take
+the creature in out of the cold.  I found him hovering about my
+luggage, wedging my dressing-case securely upright by means of my
+little automatic rifle.  I was startled by the mountain of luggage
+around which mine was no more than a fringe.  Ship's stores, was my
+first thought, until I noted the number of trunks, boxes, suit-cases,
+and parcels and bundles of all sorts.  The initials on what looked
+suspiciously like a woman's hat trunk caught my eye--"M.W."  Yet
+Captain West's first name was Nathaniel.  On closer investigation I
+did find several "N.W's." but everywhere I could see "M.W's."  Then I
+remembered that he had called her Margaret.
+
+I was too angry to return to the cabin, and paced up and down the
+cold deck biting my lips with vexation.  I had so expressly
+stipulated with the agents that no captain's wife was to come along.
+The last thing under the sun I desired in the pet quarters of a ship
+was a woman.  But I had never thought about a captain's daughter.
+For two cents I was ready to throw the voyage over and return on the
+tug to Baltimore.
+
+By the time the wind caused by our speed had chilled me bitterly, I
+noticed Miss West coming along the narrow deck, and could not avoid
+being struck by the spring and vitality of her walk.  Her face,
+despite its firm moulding, had a suggestion of fragility that was
+belied by the robustness of her body.  At least, one would argue that
+her body must be robust from her fashion of movement of it, though
+little could one divine the lines of it under the shapelessness of
+the furs.
+
+I turned away on my heel and fell moodily to contemplating the
+mountain of luggage.  A huge packing-case attracted my attention, and
+I was staring at it when she spoke at my shoulder.
+
+"That's what really caused the delay," she said.
+
+"What is it?" I asked incuriously.
+
+"Why, the Elsinore's piano, all renovated.  When I made up my mind to
+come, I telegraphed Mr. Pike--he's the mate, you know.  He did his
+best.  It was the fault of the piano house.  And while we waited to-
+day I gave them a piece of my mind they'll not forget in a hurry."
+
+She laughed at the recollection, and commenced to peep and peer into
+the luggage as if in search of some particular piece.  Having
+satisfied herself, she was starting back, when she paused and said:
+
+"Won't you come into the cabin where it's warm?  We won't be there
+for half an hour."
+
+"When did you decide to make this voyage?" I demanded abruptly.
+
+So quick was the look she gave me that I knew she had in that moment
+caught all my disgruntlement and disgust.
+
+"Two days ago," she answered.  "Why?"
+
+Her readiness for give and take took me aback, and before I could
+speak she went on:
+
+"Now you're not to be at all silly about my coming, Mr. Pathurst.  I
+probably know more about long-voyaging than you do, and we're all
+going to be comfortable and happy.  You can't bother me, and I
+promise you I won't bother you.  I've sailed with passengers before,
+and I've learned to put up with more than they ever proved they were
+able to put up with.  So there.  Let us start right, and it won't be
+any trouble to keep on going right.  I know what is the matter with
+you.  You think you'll be called upon to entertain me.  Please know
+that I do not need entertainment.  I never saw the longest voyage
+that was too long, and I always arrive at the end with too many
+things not done for the passage ever to have been tedious, and . . .
+I don't play Chopsticks."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+The Elsinore, fresh-loaded with coal, lay very deep in the water when
+we came alongside.  I knew too little about ships to be capable of
+admiring her lines, and, besides, I was in no mood for admiration.  I
+was still debating with myself whether or not to chuck the whole
+thing and return on the tug.  From all of which it must not be taken
+that I am a vacillating type of man.  On the contrary.
+
+The trouble was that at no time, from the first thought of it, had I
+been keen for the voyage.  Practically the reason I was taking it was
+because there was nothing else I was keen on.  For some time now life
+had lost its savour.  I was not jaded, nor was I exactly bored.  But
+the zest had gone out of things.  I had lost taste for my fellow-men
+and all their foolish, little, serious endeavours.  For a far longer
+period I had been dissatisfied with women.  I had endured them, but I
+had been too analytic of the faults of their primitiveness, of their
+almost ferocious devotion to the destiny of sex, to be enchanted with
+them.  And I had come to be oppressed by what seemed to me the
+futility of art--a pompous legerdemain, a consummate charlatanry that
+deceived not only its devotees but its practitioners.
+
+In short, I was embarking on the Elsinore because it was easier to
+than not; yet everything else was as equally and perilously easy.
+That was the curse of the condition into which I had fallen.  That
+was why, as I stepped upon the deck of the Elsinore, I was half of a
+mind to tell them to keep my luggage where it was and bid Captain
+West and his daughter good-day.
+
+I almost think what decided me was the welcoming, hospitable smile
+Miss West gave me as she started directly across the deck for the
+cabin, and the knowledge that it must be quite warm in the cabin.
+
+Mr. Pike, the mate, I had already met, when I visited the ship in
+Erie Basin.  He smiled a stiff, crack-faced smile that I knew must be
+painful, but did not offer to shake hands, turning immediately to
+call orders to half-a-dozen frozen-looking youths and aged men who
+shambled up from somewhere in the waist of the ship.  Mr. Pike had
+been drinking.  That was patent.  His face was puffed and
+discoloured, and his large gray eyes were bitter and bloodshot.
+
+I lingered, with a sinking heart watching my belongings come aboard
+and chiding my weakness of will which prevented me from uttering the
+few words that would put a stop to it.  As for the half-dozen men who
+were now carrying the luggage aft into the cabin, they were unlike
+any concept I had ever entertained of sailors.  Certainly, on the
+liners, I had observed nothing that resembled them.
+
+One, a most vivid-faced youth of eighteen, smiled at me from a pair
+of remarkable Italian eyes.  But he was a dwarf.  So short was he
+that he was all sea-boots and sou'wester.  And yet he was not
+entirely Italian.  So certain was I that I asked the mate, who
+answered morosely:
+
+"Him?  Shorty?  He's a dago half-breed.  The other half's Jap or
+Malay."
+
+One old man, who I learned was a bosun, was so decrepit that I
+thought he had been recently injured.  His face was stolid and ox-
+like, and as he shuffled and dragged his brogans over the deck he
+paused every several steps to place both hands on his abdomen and
+execute a queer, pressing, lifting movement.  Months were to pass, in
+which I saw him do this thousands of times, ere I learned that there
+was nothing the matter with him and that his action was purely a
+habit.  His face reminded me of the Man with the Hoe, save that it
+was unthinkably and abysmally stupider.  And his name, as I was to
+learn, of all names was Sundry Buyers.  And he was bosun of the fine
+American sailing-ship Elsinore--rated one of the finest sailing-ships
+afloat!
+
+Of this group of aged men and boys that moved the luggage along I saw
+only one, called Henry, a youth of sixteen, who approximated in the
+slightest what I had conceived all sailors to be like.  He had come
+off a training ship, the mate told me, and this was his first voyage
+to sea.  His face was keen-cut, alert, as were his bodily movements,
+and he wore sailor-appearing clothes with sailor-seeming grace.  In
+fact, as I was to learn, he was to be the only sailor-seeming
+creature fore and aft.
+
+The main crew had not yet come aboard, but was expected at any
+moment, the mate vouchsafed with a snarl of ominous expectancy.
+Those already on board were the miscellaneous ones who had shipped
+themselves in New York without the mediation of boarding-house
+masters.  And what the crew itself would be like God alone could
+tell--so said the mate.  Shorty, the Japanese (or Malay) and Italian
+half-caste, the mate told me, was an able seaman, though he had come
+out of steam and this was his first sailing voyage.
+
+"Ordinary seamen!" Mr. Pike snorted, in reply to a question.  "We
+don't carry Landsmen!--forget it!  Every clodhopper an' cow-walloper
+these days is an able seaman.  That's the way they rank and are paid.
+The merchant service is all shot to hell.  There ain't no more
+sailors.  They all died years ago, before you were born even."
+
+I could smell the raw whiskey on the mate's breath.  Yet he did not
+stagger nor show any signs of intoxication.  Not until afterward was
+I to know that his willingness to talk was most unwonted and was
+where the liquor gave him away.
+
+"It'd a-ben a grace had I died years ago," he said, "rather than to
+a-lived to see sailors an' ships pass away from the sea."
+
+"But I understand the Elsinore is considered one of the finest," I
+urged.
+
+"So she is . . . to-day.  But what is she?--a damned cargo-carrier.
+She ain't built for sailin', an' if she was there ain't no sailors
+left to sail her.  Lord!  Lord!  The old clippers!  When I think of
+'em!--The Gamecock, Shootin' Star, Flyin' Fish, Witch o' the Wave,
+Staghound, Harvey Birch, Canvas-back, Fleetwing, Sea Serpent,
+Northern Light!  An' when I think of the fleets of the tea-clippers
+that used to load at Hong Kong an' race the Eastern Passages.  A fine
+sight!  A fine sight!"
+
+I was interested.  Here was a man, a live man.  I was in no hurry to
+go into the cabin, where I knew Wada was unpacking my things, so I
+paced up and down the deck with the huge Mr. Pike.  Huge he was in
+all conscience, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned, and, despite the
+profound stoop of his shoulders, fully six feet in height.
+
+"You are a splendid figure of a man," I complimented.
+
+"I was, I was," he muttered sadly, and I caught the whiff of whiskey
+strong on the air.
+
+I stole a look at his gnarled hands.  Any finger would have made
+three of mine.  His wrist would have made three of my wrist.
+
+"How much do you weigh?" I asked.
+
+"Two hundred an' ten.  But in my day, at my best, I tipped the scales
+close to two-forty."
+
+"And the Elsinore can't sail," I said, returning to the subject which
+had roused him.
+
+"I'll take you even, anything from a pound of tobacco to a month's
+wages, she won't make it around in a hundred an' fifty days," he
+answered.  "Yet I've come round in the old Flyin' Cloud in eighty-
+nine days--eighty-nine days, sir, from Sandy Hook to 'Frisco.  Sixty
+men for'ard that WAS men, an' eight boys, an' drive! drive! drive!
+Three hundred an' seventy-four miles for a day's run under
+t'gallantsails, an' in the squalls eighteen knots o' line not enough
+to time her.  Eighty-nine days--never beat, an' tied once by the old
+Andrew Jackson nine years afterwards.  Them was the days!"
+
+"When did the Andrew Jackson tie her?" I asked, because of the
+growing suspicion that he was "having" me.
+
+"In 1860," was his prompt reply.
+
+"And you sailed in the Flying Cloud nine years before that, and this
+is 1913--why, that was sixty-two years ago," I charged.
+
+"And I was seven years old," he chuckled.  "My mother was stewardess
+on the Flyin' Cloud.  I was born at sea.  I was boy when I was
+twelve, on the Herald o' the Morn, when she made around in ninety-
+nine days--half the crew in irons most o' the time, five men lost
+from aloft off the Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken
+square off, knuckle-dusters an' belayin'-pins flyin', three men shot
+by the officers in one day, the second mate killed dead an' no one to
+know who done it, an' drive! drive! drive! ninety-nine days from land
+to land, a run of seventeen thousand miles, an' east to west around
+Cape Stiff!"
+
+"But that would make you sixty-nine years old," I insisted.
+
+"Which I am," he retorted proudly, "an' a better man at that than the
+scrubby younglings of these days.  A generation of 'em would die
+under the things I've been through.  Did you ever hear of the Sunny
+South?--she that was sold in Havana to run slaves an' changed her
+name to Emanuela?"
+
+"And you've sailed the Middle Passage!" I cried, recollecting the old
+phrase.
+
+"I was on the Emanuela that day in Mozambique Channel when the Brisk
+caught us with nine hundred slaves between-decks.  Only she wouldn't
+a-caught us except for her having steam."
+
+I continued to stroll up and down beside this massive relic of the
+past, and to listen to his hints and muttered reminiscences of old
+man-killing and man-driving days.  He was too real to be true, and
+yet, as I studied his shoulder-stoop and the age-drag of his huge
+feet, I was convinced that his years were as he asserted.  He spoke
+of a Captain Sonurs.
+
+"He was a great captain," he was saying.  "An' in the two years I
+sailed mate with him there was never a port I didn't jump the ship
+goin' in an' stay in hiding until I sneaked aboard when she sailed
+again."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"The men, on account of the men swearin' blood an' vengeance and
+warrants against me because of my ways of teachin' them to be
+sailors.  Why, the times I was caught, and the fines the skipper paid
+for me--and yet it was my work that made the ship make money.''
+
+He held up his huge paws, and as I stared at the battered, malformed
+knuckles I understood the nature of his work.
+
+"But all that's stopped now," he lamented.  "A sailor's a gentleman
+these days.  You can't raise your voice or your hand to them."
+
+At this moment he was addressed from the poop-rail above by the
+second mate, a medium-sized, heavily built, clean-shaven, blond man.
+
+"The tug's in sight with the crew, sir," he announced.
+
+The mate grunted an acknowledgment, then added, "Come on down, Mr.
+Mellaire, and meet our passenger."
+
+I could not help noting the air and carriage with which Mr. Mellaire
+came down the poop-ladder and took his part in the introduction.  He
+was courteous in an old-world way, soft-spoken, suave, and
+unmistakably from south of Mason and Dixon.
+
+"A Southerner," I said.
+
+"Georgia, sir."  He bowed and smiled, as only a Southerner can bow
+and smile.
+
+His features and expression were genial and gentle, and yet his mouth
+was the cruellest gash I had ever seen in a man's face.  It was a
+gash.  There is no other way of describing that harsh, thin-lipped,
+shapeless mouth that uttered gracious things so graciously.
+Involuntarily I glanced at his hands.  Like the mate's, they were
+thick-boned, broken-knuckled, and malformed.  Back into his blue eyes
+I looked.  On the surface of them was a film of light, a gloss of
+gentle kindness and cordiality, but behind that gloss I knew resided
+neither sincerity nor mercy.  Behind that gloss was something cold
+and terrible, that lurked and waited and watched--something catlike,
+something inimical and deadly.  Behind that gloss of soft light and
+of social sparkle was the live, fearful thing that had shaped that
+mouth into the gash it was.  What I sensed behind in those eyes
+chilled me with its repulsiveness and strangeness.
+
+As I faced Mr. Mellaire, and talked with him, and smiled, and
+exchanged amenities, I was aware of the feeling that comes to one in
+the forest or jungle when he knows unseen wild eyes of hunting
+animals are spying upon him.  Frankly I was afraid of the thing
+ambushed behind there in the skull of Mr. Mellaire.  One so as a
+matter of course identifies form and feature with the spirit within.
+But I could not do this with the second mate.  His face and form and
+manner and suave ease were one thing, inside which he, an entirely
+different thing, lay hid.
+
+I noticed Wada standing in the cabin door, evidently waiting to ask
+for instructions.  I nodded, and prepared to follow him inside.  Mr.
+Pike looked at me quickly and said:
+
+"Just a moment, Mr. Pathurst."
+
+He gave some orders to the second mate, who turned on his heel and
+started for'ard.  I stood and waited for Mr. Pike's communication,
+which he did not choose to make until he saw the second mate well out
+of ear-shot.  Then he leaned closely to me and said:
+
+"Don't mention that little matter of my age to anybody.  Each year I
+sign on I sign my age one year younger.  I am fifty-four, now, on the
+articles."
+
+"And you don't look a day older," I answered lightly, though I meant
+it in all sincerity.
+
+"And I don't feel it.  I can outwork and outgame the huskiest of the
+younglings.  And don't let my age get to anybody's ears, Mr.
+Pathurst.  Skippers are not particular for mates getting around the
+seventy mark.  And owners neither.  I've had my hopes for this ship,
+and I'd a-got her, I think, except for the old man decidin' to go to
+sea again.  As if he needed the money!  The old skinflint!"
+
+"Is he well off?" I inquired.
+
+"Well off!  If I had a tenth of his money I could retire on a chicken
+ranch in California and live like a fighting cock--yes, if I had a
+fiftieth of what he's got salted away.  Why, he owns more stock in
+all the Blackwood ships . . . and they've always been lucky and
+always earned money.  I'm getting old, and it's about time I got a
+command.  But no; the old cuss has to take it into his head to go to
+sea again just as the berth's ripe for me to fall into."
+
+Again I started to enter the cabin, but was stopped by the mate.
+
+"Mr. Pathurst?  You won't mention about my age?"
+
+"No, certainly not, Mr. Pike," I said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+Quite chilled through, I was immediately struck by the warm comfort
+of the cabin.  All the connecting doors were open, making what I
+might call a large suite of rooms or a whale house.  The main-deck
+entrance, on the port side, was into a wide, well-carpeted hallway.
+Into this hallway, from the port side, opened five rooms:  first, on
+entering, the mate's; next, the two state-rooms which had been
+knocked into one for me; then the steward's room; and, adjoining his,
+completing the row, a state-room which was used for the slop-chest.
+
+Across the hall was a region with which I was not yet acquainted,
+though I knew it contained the dining-room, the bath-rooms, the cabin
+proper, which was in truth a spacious living-room, the captain's
+quarters, and, undoubtedly, Miss West's quarters.  I could hear her
+humming some air as she bustled about with her unpacking.  The
+steward's pantry, separated by crosshalls and by the stairway leading
+into the chart-room above on the poop, was placed strategically in
+the centre of all its operations.  Thus, on the starboard side of it
+were the state-rooms of the captain and Miss West, for'ard of it were
+the dining-room and main cabin; while on the port side of it was the
+row of rooms I have described, two of which were mine.
+
+I ventured down the hall toward the stern, and found it opened into
+the stern of the Elsinore, forming a single large apartment at least
+thirty-five feet from side to side and fifteen to eighteen feet in
+depth, curved, of course, to the lines of the ship's stern.  This
+seemed a store-room.  I noted wash-tubs, bolts of canvas, many
+lockers, hams and bacon hanging, a step-ladder that led up through a
+small hatch to the poop, and, in the floor, another hatch.
+
+I spoke to the steward, an old Chinese, smooth-faced and brisk of
+movement, whose name I never learned, but whose age on the articles
+was fifty-six.
+
+"What is down there?" I asked, pointing to the hatch in the floor.
+
+"Him lazarette," he answered.
+
+"And who eats there?" I indicated a table with two stationary sea-
+chairs.
+
+"Him second table.  Second mate and carpenter him eat that table."
+
+When I had finished giving instructions to Wada for the arranging of
+my things I looked at my watch.  It was early yet, only several
+minutes after three so I went on deck again to witness the arrival of
+the crew.
+
+The actual coming on board from the tug I had missed, but for'ard of
+the amidship house I encountered a few laggards who had not yet gone
+into the forecastle.  These were the worse for liquor, and a more
+wretched, miserable, disgusting group of men I had never seen in any
+slum.  Their clothes were rags.  Their faces were bloated, bloody,
+and dirty.  I won't say they were villainous.  They were merely
+filthy and vile.  They were vile of appearance, of speech, and
+action.
+
+"Come!  Come!  Get your dunnage into the fo'c's'le!"
+
+Mr. Pike uttered these words sharply from the bridge above.  A light
+and graceful bridge of steel rods and planking ran the full length of
+the Elsinore, starting from the poop, crossing the amidship house and
+the forecastle, and connecting with the forecastle-head at the very
+bow of the ship.
+
+At the mate's command the men reeled about and glowered up at him,
+one or two starting clumsily to obey.  The others ceased their
+drunken yammerings and regarded the mate sullenly.  One of them, with
+a face mashed by some mad god in the making, and who was afterwards
+to be known by me as Larry, burst into a guffaw, and spat insolently
+on the deck.  Then, with utmost deliberation, he turned to his
+fellows and demanded loudly and huskily:
+
+"Who in hell's the old stiff, anyways?"
+
+I saw Mr. Pike's huge form tense convulsively and involuntarily, and
+I noted the way his huge hands strained in their clutch on the
+bridge-railing.  Beyond that he controlled himself.
+
+"Go on, you," he said.  "I'll have nothing out of you.  Get into the
+fo'c's'le."
+
+And then, to my surprise, he turned and walked aft along the bridge
+to where the tug was casting off its lines.  So this was all his high
+and mighty talk of kill and drive, I thought.  Not until afterwards
+did I recollect, as I turned aft down the deck, that I saw Captain
+West leaning on the rail at the break of the poop and gazing for'ard.
+
+The tug's lines were being cast off, and I was interested in watching
+the manoeuvre until she had backed clear of the ship, at which
+moment, from for'ard, arose a queer babel of howling and yelping, as
+numbers of drunken voices cried out that a man was overboard.  The
+second mate sprang down the poop-ladder and darted past me along the
+deck.  The mate, still on the slender, white-painted bridge, that
+seemed no more than a spider thread, surprised me by the activity
+with which he dashed along the bridge to the 'midship house, leaped
+upon the canvas-covered long-boat, and swung outboard where he might
+see.  Before the men could clamber upon the rail the second mate was
+among them, and it was he who flung a coil of line overboard.
+
+What impressed me particularly was the mental and muscular
+superiority of these two officers.  Despite their age--the mate
+sixty-nine and the second mate at least fifty--their minds and their
+bodies had acted with the swiftness and accuracy of steel springs.
+They were potent.  They were iron.  They were perceivers, willers,
+and doers.  They were as of another species compared with the sailors
+under them.  While the latter, witnesses of the happening and
+directly on the spot, had been crying out in befuddled helplessness,
+and with slow wits and slower bodies been climbing upon the rail, the
+second mate had descended the steep ladder from the poop, covered two
+hundred feet of deck, sprung upon the rail, grasped the instant need
+of the situation, and cast the coil of line into the water.
+
+And of the same nature and quality had been the actions of Mr. Pike.
+He and Mr. Mellaire were masters over the wretched creatures of
+sailors by virtue of this remarkable difference of efficiency and
+will.  Truly, they were more widely differentiated from the men under
+them than were the men under them differentiated from Hottentots--ay,
+and from monkeys.
+
+I, too, by this time, was standing on the big hawser-bitts in a
+position to see a man in the water who seemed deliberately swimming
+away from the ship.  He was a dark-skinned Mediterranean of some
+sort, and his face, in a clear glimpse I caught of it, was distorted
+by frenzy.  His black eyes were maniacal.  The line was so accurately
+flung by the second mate that it fell across the man's shoulders, and
+for several strokes his arms tangled in it ere he could swim clear.
+This accomplished, he proceeded to scream some wild harangue and
+once, as he uptossed his arms for emphasis, I saw in his hand the
+blade of a long knife.
+
+Bells were jangling on the tug as it started to the rescue.  I stole
+a look up at Captain West.  He had walked to the port side of the
+poop, where, hands in pockets, he was glancing, now for'ard at the
+struggling man, now aft at the tug.  He gave no orders, betrayed no
+excitement, and appeared, I may well say, the most casual of
+spectators.
+
+The creature in the water seemed now engaged in taking off his
+clothes.  I saw one bare arm, and then the other, appear.  In his
+struggles he sometimes sank beneath the surface, but always he
+emerged, flourishing the knife and screaming his addled harangue.  He
+even tried to escape the tug by diving and swimming underneath.
+
+I strolled for'ard, and arrived in time to see him hoisted in over
+the rail of the Elsinore.  He was stark naked, covered with blood,
+and raving.  He had cut and slashed himself in a score of places.
+From one wound in the wrist the blood spurted with each beat of the
+pulse.  He was a loathsome, non-human thing.  I have seen a scared
+orang in a zoo, and for all the world this bestial-faced, mowing,
+gibbering thing reminded me of the orang.  The sailors surrounded
+him, laying hands on him, withstraining him, the while they guffawed
+and cheered.  Right and left the two mates shoved them away, and
+dragged the lunatic down the deck and into a room in the 'midship
+house.  I could not help marking the strength of Mr. Pike and Mr.
+Mellaire.  I had heard of the superhuman strength of madmen, but this
+particular madman was as a wisp of straw in their hands.  Once into
+the bunk, Mr. Pike held down the struggling fool easily with one hand
+while he dispatched the second mate for marlin with which to tie the
+fellow's arms.
+
+"Bughouse," Mr. Pike grinned at me.  "I've seen some bughouse crews
+in my time, but this one's the limit."
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.  "The man will bleed to death."
+
+"And good riddance," he answered promptly.  "We'll have our hands
+full of him until we can lose him somehow.  When he gets easy I'll
+sew him up, that's all, if I have to ease him with a clout of the
+jaw."
+
+I glanced at the mate's huge paw and appreciated its anaesthetic
+qualities.  Out on deck again, I saw Captain West on the poop, hands
+still in pockets, quite uninterested, gazing at a blue break in the
+sky to the north-east.  More than the mates and the maniac, more than
+the drunken callousness of the men, did this quiet figure, hands in
+pockets, impress upon me that I was in a different world from any I
+had known.
+
+Wada broke in upon my thoughts by telling me he had been sent to say
+that Miss West was serving tea in the cabin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+The contrast, as I entered the cabin, was startling.  All contrasts
+aboard the Elsinore promised to be startling.  Instead of the cold,
+hard deck my feet sank into soft carpet.  In place of the mean and
+narrow room, built of naked iron, where I had left the lunatic, I was
+in a spacious and beautiful apartment.  With the bawling of the men's
+voices still in my ears, and with the pictures of their drink-puffed
+and filthy faces still vivid under my eyelids, I found myself greeted
+by a delicate-faced, prettily-gowned woman who sat beside a lacquered
+oriental table on which rested an exquisite tea-service of Canton
+china.  All was repose and calm.  The steward, noiseless-footed,
+expressionless, was a shadow, scarcely noticed, that drifted into the
+room on some service and drifted out again.
+
+Not at once could I relax, and Miss West, serving my tea, laughed and
+said:
+
+"You look as if you had been seeing things.  The steward tells me a
+man has been overboard.  I fancy the cold water must have sobered
+him."
+
+I resented her unconcern.
+
+"The man is a lunatic," I said.  "This ship is no place for him.  He
+should be sent ashore to some hospital."
+
+"I am afraid, if we begin that, we'd have to send two-thirds of our
+complement ashore--one lump?
+
+"Yes, please," I answered.  "But the man has terribly wounded
+himself.  He is liable to bleed to death."
+
+She looked at me for a moment, her gray eyes serious and
+scrutinizing, as she passed me my cup; then laughter welled up in her
+eyes, and she shook her head reprovingly.
+
+"Now please don't begin the voyage by being shocked, Mr. Pathurst.
+Such things are very ordinary occurrences.  You'll get used to them.
+You must remember some queer creatures go down to the sea in ships.
+The man is safe.  Trust Mr. Pike to attend to his wounds.  I've never
+sailed with Mr. Pike, but I've heard enough about him.  Mr. Pike is
+quite a surgeon.  Last voyage, they say, he performed a successful
+amputation, and so elated was he that he turned his attention on the
+carpenter, who happened to be suffering from some sort of
+indigestion.  Mr. Pike was so convinced of the correctness of his
+diagnosis that he tried to bribe the carpenter into having his
+appendix removed."  She broke off to laugh heartily, then added:
+"They say he offered the poor man just pounds and pounds of tobacco
+to consent to the operation."
+
+"But is it safe . . . for the . . . the working of the ship," I
+urged, "to take such a lunatic along?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, as if not intending to reply, then said:
+
+"This incident is nothing.  There are always several lunatics or
+idiots in every ship's company.  And they always come aboard filled
+with whiskey and raving.  I remember, once, when we sailed from
+Seattle, a long time ago, one such madman.  He showed no signs of
+madness at all; just calmly seized two boarding-house runners and
+sprang overboard with them.  We sailed the same day, before the
+bodies were recovered."
+
+Again she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"What would you?  The sea is hard, Mr. Pathurst.  And for our sailors
+we get the worst type of men.  I sometimes wonder where they find
+them.  And we do our best with them, and somehow manage to make them
+help us carry on our work in the world.  But they are low . . . low."
+
+As I listened, and studied her face, contrasting her woman's
+sensitivity and her soft pretty dress with the brute faces and rags
+of the men I had noticed, I could not help being convinced
+intellectually of the rightness of her position.  Nevertheless, I was
+hurt sentimentally,--chiefly, I do believe, because of the very
+hardness and unconcern with which she enunciated her view.  It was
+because she was a woman, and so different from the sea-creatures,
+that I resented her having received such harsh education in the
+school of the sea.
+
+"I could not help remarking your father's--er, er sang froid during
+the occurrence."  I ventured.
+
+"He never took his hands from his pockets!" she cried.
+
+Her eyes sparkled as I nodded confirmation.
+
+"I knew it!  It's his way.  I've seen it so often.  I remember when I
+was twelve years old--mother was alone--we were running into San
+Francisco.  It was in the Dixie, a ship almost as big as this.  There
+was a strong fair wind blowing, and father did not take a tug.  We
+sailed right through the Golden Gate and up the San Francisco water-
+front.  There was a swift flood tide, too; and the men, both watches,
+were taking in sail as fast as they could.
+
+"Now the fault was the steamboat captain's.  He miscalculated our
+speed and tried to cross our bow.  Then came the collision, and the
+Dixie's bow cut through that steamboat, cabin and hull.  There were
+hundreds of passengers, men, women, and children.  Father never took
+his hands from his pockets.  He sent the mate for'ard to superintend
+rescuing the passengers, who were already climbing on to our bowsprit
+and forecastle-head, and in a voice no different from what he'd use
+to ask some one to pass the butter he told the second mate to set all
+sail.  And he told him which sails to begin with."
+
+"But why set more sails?" I interrupted.
+
+"Because he could see the situation.  Don't you see, the steamboat
+was cut wide open.  All that kept her from sinking instantly was the
+bow of the Dixie jammed into her side.  By setting more sail and
+keeping before the wind, he continued to keep the bow of the Dixie
+jammed.
+
+"I was terribly frightened.  People who had sprung or fallen
+overboard were drowning on each side of us, right in my sight, as we
+sailed along up the water-front.  But when I looked at father, there
+he was, just as I had always known him, hands in pockets, walking
+slowly up and down, now giving an order to the wheel--you see, he had
+to direct the Dixie's course through all the shipping--now watching
+the passengers swarming over our bow and along our deck, now looking
+ahead to see his way through the ships at anchor.  Sometimes he did
+glance at the poor, drowning ones, but he was not concerned with
+them.
+
+"Of course, there were numbers drowned, but by keeping his hands in
+his pockets and his head cool he saved hundreds of lives.  Not until
+the last person was off the steamboat--he sent men aboard to make
+sure--did he take off the press of sail.  And the steamboat sank at
+once."
+
+She ceased, and looked at me with shining eyes for approbation.
+
+"It was splendid," I acknowledged.  "I admire the quiet man of power,
+though I confess that such quietness under stress seems to me almost
+unearthly and beyond human.  I can't conceive of myself acting that
+way, and I am confident that I was suffering more while that poor
+devil was in the water than all the rest of the onlookers put
+together."
+
+"Father suffers!" she defended loyally.  "Only he does not show it."
+
+I bowed, for I felt she had missed my point.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+I came out from tea in the cabin to find the tug Britannia in sight.
+She was the craft that was to tow us down Chesapeake Bay to sea.
+Strolling for'ard I noted the sailors being routed out of the
+forecastle by Sundry Buyers, for ever tenderly pressing his abdomen
+with his hands.  Another man was helping Sundry Buyers at routing out
+the sailors.  I asked Mr. Pike who the man was.
+
+"Nancy--my bosun; ain't he a peach?" was the answer I got, and from
+the mate's manner of enunciation I was quite aware that "Nancy" had
+been used derisively.
+
+Nancy could not have been more than thirty, though he looked as if he
+had lived a very long time.  He was toothless and sad and weary of
+movement.  His eyes were slate-coloured and muddy, his shaven face
+was sickly yellow.  Narrow-shouldered, sunken-chested, with cheeks
+cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of
+consumption.  Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even
+less life.  And these were bosuns!--bosuns of the fine American
+sailing-ship Elsinore!  Never had any illusion of mine taken a more
+distressing cropper.
+
+It was plain to me that the pair of them, spineless and spunkless,
+were afraid of the men they were supposed to boss.  And the men!
+Dore could never have conjured a more delectable hell's broth.  For
+the first time I saw them all, and I could not blame the two bosuns
+for being afraid of them.  They did not walk.  They slouched and
+shambled, some even tottered, as from weakness or drink.
+
+But it was their faces.  I could not help remembering what Miss West
+had just told me--that ships always sailed with several lunatics or
+idiots in their crews.  But these looked as if they were all lunatic
+or feeble-minded.  And I, too, wondered where such a mass of human
+wreckage could have been obtained.  There was something wrong with
+all of them.  Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and
+almost without exception they were under-sized.  The several quite
+fairly large men I marked were vacant-faced.  One man, however, large
+and unmistakably Irish, was also unmistakably mad.  He was talking
+and muttering to himself as he came out.  A little, curved, lop-sided
+man, with his head on one side and with the shrewdest and wickedest
+of faces and pale blue eyes, addressed an obscene remark to the mad
+Irishman, calling him O'Sullivan.  But O'Sullivan took no notice and
+muttered on.  On the heels of the little lop-sided man appeared an
+overgrown dolt of a fat youth, followed by another youth so tall and
+emaciated of body that it seemed a marvel his flesh could hold his
+frame together.
+
+Next, after this perambulating skeleton, came the weirdest creature I
+have ever beheld.  He was a twisted oaf of a man.  Face and body were
+twisted as with the pain of a thousand years of torture.  His was the
+face of an ill-treated and feeble-minded faun.  His large black eyes
+were bright, eager, and filled with pain; and they flashed
+questioningly from face to face and to everything about.  They were
+so pitifully alert, those eyes, as if for ever astrain to catch the
+clue to some perplexing and threatening enigma.  Not until afterwards
+did I learn the cause of this.  He was stone deaf, having had his
+ear-drums destroyed in the boiler explosion which had wrecked the
+rest of him.
+
+I noticed the steward, standing at the galley door and watching the
+men from a distance.  His keen, Asiatic face, quick with
+intelligence, was a relief to the eye, as was the vivid face of
+Shorty, who came out of the forecastle with a leap and a gurgle of
+laughter.  But there was something wrong with him, too.  He was a
+dwarf, and, as I was to come to know, his high spirits and low
+mentality united to make him a clown.
+
+Mr. Pike stopped beside me a moment and while he watched the men I
+watched him.  The expression on his face was that of a cattle-buyer,
+and it was plain that he was disgusted with the quality of cattle
+delivered.
+
+"Something the matter with the last mother's son of them," he
+growled.
+
+And still they came:  one, pallid, furtive-eyed, that I instantly
+adjudged a drug fiend; another, a tiny, wizened old man, pinch-faced
+and wrinkled, with beady, malevolent blue eyes; a third, a small,
+well-fleshed man, who seemed to my eye the most normal and least
+unintelligent specimen that had yet appeared.  But Mr. Pike's eye was
+better trained than mine.
+
+"What's the matter with YOU?" he snarled at the man.
+
+"Nothing, sir," the fellow answered, stopping immediately.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+Mr. Pike never spoke to a sailor save with a snarl.
+
+"Charles Davis, sir."
+
+"What are you limping about?"
+
+"I ain't limpin', sir," the man answered respectfully, and, at a nod
+of dismissal from the mate, marched off jauntily along the deck with
+a heodlum swing to the shoulders.
+
+"He's a sailor all right," the mate grumbled; "but I'll bet you a
+pound of tobacco or a month's wages there's something wrong with
+him."
+
+The forecastle now seemed empty, but the mate turned on the bosuns
+with his customary snarl.
+
+"What in hell are you doing?  Sleeping?  Think this is a rest cure?
+Get in there an' rustle 'em out!"
+
+Sundry Buyers pressed his abdomen gingerly and hesitated, while
+Nancy, his face one dogged, long-suffering bleakness, reluctantly
+entered the forecastle.  Then, from inside, we heard oaths, vile and
+filthy, urgings and expostulations on the part of Nancy, meekly and
+pleadingly uttered.
+
+I noted the grim and savage look that came on Mr. Pike's face, and
+was prepared for I knew not what awful monstrosities to emerge from
+the forecastle.  Instead, to my surprise, came three fellows who were
+strikingly superior to the ruck that had preceded them.  I looked to
+see the mate's face soften to some sort of approval.  On the
+contrary, his blue eyes contracted to narrow slits, the snarl of his
+voice was communicated to his lips, so that he seemed like a dog
+about to bite.
+
+But the three fellows.  They were small men, all; and young men,
+anywhere between twenty-five and thirty.  Though roughly dressed,
+they were well dressed, and under their clothes their bodily
+movements showed physical well-being.  Their faces were keen cut,
+intelligent.  And though I felt there was something queer about them,
+I could not divine what it was.
+
+Here were no ill-fed, whiskey-poisoned men, such as the rest of the
+sailors, who, having drunk up their last pay-days, had starved ashore
+until they had received and drunk up their advance money for the
+present voyage.  These three, on the other hand were supple and
+vigorous.  Their movements were spontaneously quick and accurate.
+Perhaps it was the way they looked at me, with incurious yet
+calculating eyes that nothing escaped.  They seemed so worldly wise,
+so indifferent, so sure of themselves.  I was confident they were not
+sailors.  Yet, as shore-dwellers, I could not place them.  They were
+a type I had never encountered.  Possibly I can give a better idea of
+them by describing what occurred.
+
+As they passed before us they favoured Mr. Pike with the same
+indifferent, keen glances they gave me.
+
+"What's your name--you?" Mr. Pike barked at the first of the trio,
+evidently a hybrid Irish-Jew.  Jewish his nose unmistakably was.
+Equally unmistakable was the Irish of his eyes, and jaw, and upper
+lip.
+
+The three had immediately stopped, and, though they did not look
+directly at one another, they seemed to be holding a silent
+conference.  Another of the trio, in whose veins ran God alone knows
+what Semitic, Babylonish and Latin strains, gave a warning signal.
+Oh, nothing so crass as a wink or a nod.  I almost doubted that I had
+intercepted it, and yet I knew he had communicated a warning to his
+fellows.  More a shade of expression that had crossed his eyes, or a
+glint in them of sudden light--or whatever it was, it carried the
+message.
+
+"Murphy," the other answered the mate.
+
+"Sir!" Mr. Pike snarled at him.
+
+Murphy shrugged his shoulders in token that he did not understand.
+It was the poise of the man, of the three of them, the cool poise
+that impressed me.
+
+"When you address any officer on this ship you'll say 'sir,'" Mr.
+Pike explained, his voice as harsh as his face was forbidding.  "Did
+you get THAT?"
+
+"Yes .  . sir,'' Murphy drawled with deliberate slowness.  "I
+gotcha."
+
+"Sir!" Mr. Pike roared.
+
+"Sir," Murphy answered, so softly and carelessly that it irritated
+the mate to further bullyragging.
+
+"Well, Murphy's too long," he announced.  "Nosey'll do you aboard
+this craft.  Got THAT?"
+
+"I gotcha . . . sir," came the reply, insolent in its very softness
+and unconcern.  "Nosey Murphy goes . . . sir."
+
+And then he laughed--the three of them laughed, if laughter it might
+be called that was laughter without sound or facial movement.  The
+eyes alone laughed, mirthlessly and cold-bloodedly.
+
+Certainly Mr. Pike was not enjoying himself with these baffling
+personalities.  He turned upon the leader, the one who had given the
+warning and who looked the admixture of all that was Mediterranean
+and Semitic.
+
+"What's YOUR name?"
+
+"Bert Rhine . . . sir," was the reply, in tones as soft and careless
+and silkily irritating as the other's.
+
+"And YOU?"--this to the remaining one, the youngest of the trio, a
+dark-eyed, olive-skinned fellow with a face most striking in its
+cameo-like beauty.  American-born, I placed him, of immigrants from
+Southern Italy--from Naples, or even Sicily.
+
+"Twist . . . sir," he answered, precisely in the same manner as the
+others.
+
+"Too long," the mate sneered.  "The Kid'll do you.  Got THAT?"
+
+"I gotcha . . . sir.  Kid Twist'll do me . . . sir."
+
+"Kid'll do!"
+
+"Kid . . . sir."
+
+And the three laughed their silent, mirthless laugh.  By this time
+Mr. Pike was beside himself with a rage that could find no excuse for
+action.
+
+"Now I'm going to tell you something, the bunch of you, for the good
+of your health."  The mate's voice grated with the rage he was
+suppressing.  "I know your kind.  You're dirt.  D'ye get THAT?
+You're dirt.  And on this ship you'll be treated as dirt.  You'll do
+your work like men, or I'll know the reason why.  The first time one
+of you bats an eye, or even looks like batting an eye, he gets his.
+D'ye get that?  Now get out.  Get along for'ard to the windlass."
+
+Mr. Pike turned on his heel, and I swung alongside of him as he moved
+aft.
+
+"What do you make of them?" I queried.
+
+"The limit," he grunted.  "I know their kidney.  They've done time,
+the three of them.  They're just plain sweepings of hell--"
+
+Here his speech was broken off by the spectacle that greeted him on
+Number Two hatch.  Sprawled out on the hatch were five or six men,
+among them Larry, the tatterdemalion who had called him "old stiff"
+earlier in the afternoon.  That Larry had not obeyed orders was
+patent, for he was sitting with his back propped against his sea-bag,
+which ought to have been in the forecastle.  Also, he and the group
+with him ought to have been for'ard manning the windlass.
+
+The mate stepped upon the hatch and towered over the man.
+
+"Get up," he ordered.
+
+Larry made an effort, groaned, and failed to get up.
+
+"I can't," he said.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"I can't, sir.  I was drunk last night an' slept in Jefferson Market.
+An' this mornin' I was froze tight, sir.  They had to pry me loose."
+
+"Stiff with the cold you were, eh?" the mate grinned.
+
+"It's well ye might say it, sir," Larry answered.
+
+"And you feel like an old stiff, eh?"
+
+Larry blinked with the troubled, querulous eyes of a monkey.  He was
+beginning to apprehend he knew not what, and he knew that bending
+over him was a man-master.
+
+"Well, I'll just be showin' you what an old stiff feels like,
+anyways."  Mr. Pike mimicked the other's brogue.
+
+And now I shall tell what I saw happen.  Please remember what I have
+said of the huge paws of Mr. Pike, the fingers much longer than mine
+and twice as thick, the wrists massive-boned, the arm-bones and the
+shoulder-bones of the same massive order.  With one flip of his right
+hand, with what I might call an open-handed, lifting, upward slap,
+save that it was the ends of the fingers only that touched Larry's
+face, he lifted Larry into the air, sprawling him backward on his
+back across his sea-bag.
+
+The man alongside of Larry emitted a menacing growl and started to
+spring belligerently to his feet.  But he never reached his feet.
+Mr. Pike, with the back of same right hand, open, smote the man on
+the side of the face.  The loud smack of the impact was startling.
+The mate's strength was amazing.  The blow looked so easy, so
+effortless; it had seemed like the lazy stroke of a good-natured
+bear, but in it was such a weight of bone and muscle that the man
+went down sidewise and rolled off the hatch on to the deck.
+
+At this moment, lurching aimlessly along, appeared O'Sullivan.  A
+sudden access of muttering, on his part, reached Mr. Pike's ear, and
+Mr. Pike, instantly keen as a wild animal, his paw in the act of
+striking O'Sullivan, whipped out like a revolver shot, "What's that?"
+Then he noted the sense-struck face of O'Sullivan and withheld the
+blow.  "Bug-house," Mr. Pike commented.
+
+Involuntarily I had glanced to see if Captain West was on the poop,
+and found that we were hidden from the poop by the 'midship house.
+
+Mr. Pike, taking no notice of the man who lay groaning on the deck,
+stood over Larry, who was likewise groaning.  The rest of the
+sprawling men were on their feet, subdued and respectful.  I, too,
+was respectful of this terrific, aged figure of a man.  The
+exhibition had quite convinced me of the verity of his earlier
+driving and killing days.
+
+"Who's the old stiff now?" he demanded.
+
+"'Tis me, sir," Larry moaned contritely.
+
+"Get up!"
+
+Larry got up without any difficulty at all.
+
+"Now get for'ard to the windlass!  The rest of you!"
+
+And they went, sullenly, shamblingly, like the cowed brutes they
+were.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+I climbed the ladder on the side of the for'ard house (which house
+contained, as I discovered, the forecastle, the galley, and the
+donkey-engine room), and went part way along the bridge to a position
+by the foremast, where I could observe the crew heaving up anchor.
+The Britannia was alongside, and we were getting under way.
+
+A considerable body of men was walking around with the windlass or
+variously engaged on the forecastle-head.  Of the crew proper were
+two watches of fifteen men each.  In addition were sailmakers, boys,
+bosuns, and the carpenter.  Nearly forty men were they, but such men!
+They were sad and lifeless.  There was no vim, no go, no activity.
+Every step and movement was an effort, as if they were dead men
+raised out of coffins or sick men dragged from hospital beds.  Sick
+they were--whiskey-poisoned.  Starved they were, and weak from poor
+nutrition.  And worst of all, they were imbecile and lunatic.
+
+I looked aloft at the intricate ropes, at the steel masts rising and
+carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel
+masts and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and
+stays turned into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the
+sky.  That such a wretched muck of men should be able to work this
+magnificent ship through all storm and darkness and peril of the sea
+was beyond all seeming.  I remembered the two mates, the super-
+efficiency, mental and physical, of Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike--could
+they make this human wreckage do it?  They, at least, evinced no
+doubts of their ability.  The sea?  If this feat of mastery were
+possible, then clear it was that I knew nothing of the sea.
+
+I looked back at the misshapen, starved, sick, stumbling hulks of men
+who trod the dreary round of the windlass.  Mr. Pike was right.
+These were not the brisk, devilish, able-bodied men who manned the
+ships of the old clipper-ship days; who fought their officers, who
+had the points of their sheath-knives broken off, who killed and were
+killed, but who did their work as men.  These men, these shambling
+carcasses at the windlass--I looked, and looked, and vainly I strove
+to conjure the vision of them swinging aloft in rack and storm,
+"clearing the raffle," as Kipling puts it, "with their clasp knives
+in their teeth."  Why didn't they sing a chanty as they hove the
+anchor up?  In the old days, as I had read, the anchor always came up
+to the rollicking sailor songs of sea-chested men.
+
+I tired of watching the spiritless performance, and went aft on an
+exploring trip along the slender bridge.  It was a beautiful
+structure, strong yet light, traversing the length of the ship in
+three aerial leaps.  It spanned from the forecastle-head to the
+forecastle-house, next to the 'midship house, and then to the poop.
+The poop, which was really the roof or deck over all the cabin space
+below, and which occupied the whole after-part of the ship, was very
+large.  It was broken only by the half-round and half-covered wheel-
+house at the very stern and by the chart-house.  On either side of
+the latter two doors opened into a tiny hallway.  This, in turn, gave
+access to the chart-room and to a stairway that led down into the
+cabin quarters beneath.
+
+I peeped into the chart-room and was greeted with a smile by Captain
+West.  He was lolling back comfortably in a swing chair, his feet
+cocked on the desk opposite.  On a broad, upholstered couch sat the
+pilot.  Both were smoking cigars; and, lingering for a moment to
+listen to the conversation, I grasped that the pilot was an ex-sea-
+captain.
+
+As I descended the stairs, from Miss West's room came a sound of
+humming and bustling, as she settled her belongings.  The energy she
+displayed, to judge by the cheerful noises of it, was almost
+perturbing.
+
+Passing by the pantry, I put my head inside the door to greet the
+steward and courteously let him know that I was aware of his
+existence.  Here, in his little realm, it was plain that efficiency
+reigned.  Everything was spotless and in order, and I could have
+wished and wished vainly for a more noiseless servant than he ashore.
+His face, as he regarded me, had as little or as much expression as
+the Sphinx.  But his slant, black eyes were bright, with
+intelligence.
+
+"What do you think of the crew?" I asked, in order to put words to my
+invasion of his castle.
+
+"Buggy-house," he answered promptly, with a disgusted shake of the
+head.  "Too much buggy-house.  All crazy.  You see.  No good.
+Rotten.  Down to hell."
+
+That was all, but it verified my own judgment.  While it might be
+true, as Miss West had said, that every ship's crew contained several
+lunatics and idiots, it was a foregone conclusion that our crew
+contained far more than several.  In fact, and as it was to turn out,
+our crew, even in these degenerate sailing days, was an unusual crew
+in so far as its helplessness and worthlessness were beyond the
+average.
+
+I found my own room (in reality it was two rooms) delightful.  Wada
+had unpacked and stored away my entire outfit of clothing, and had
+filled numerous shelves with the library I had brought along.
+Everything was in order and place, from my shaving outfit in the
+drawer beside the wash-basin, and my sea-boots and oilskins hung
+ready to hand, to my writing materials on the desk, before which a
+swing arm-chair, leather-upholstered and screwed solidly to the
+floor, invited me.  My pyjamas and dressing-gown were out.  My
+slippers, in their accustomed place by the bed, also invited me.
+
+Here, aft, all was fitness, intelligence.  On deck it was what I have
+described--a nightmare spawn of creatures, assumably human, but
+malformed, mentally and physically, into caricatures of men.  Yes, it
+was an unusual crew; and that Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire could whip it
+into the efficient shape necessary to work this vast and intricate
+and beautiful fabric of a ship was beyond all seeming of possibility.
+
+Depressed as I was by what I had just witnessed on deck, there came
+to me, as I leaned back in my chair and opened the second volume of
+George Moore's Hail and Farewell, a premonition that the voyage was
+to be disastrous.  But then, as I looked about the room, measured its
+generous space, realized that I was more comfortably situated than I
+had ever been on any passenger steamer, I dismissed foreboding
+thoughts and caught a pleasant vision of myself, through weeks and
+months, catching up with all the necessary reading which I had so
+long neglected.
+
+Once, I asked Wada if he had seen the crew.  No, he hadn't, but the
+steward had said that in all his years at sea this was the worst crew
+he had ever seen.
+
+"He say, all crazy, no sailors, rotten," Wada said.  "He say all big
+fools and bime by much trouble.  'You see,' he say all the time.
+'You see, You see.'  He pretty old man--fifty-five years, he say.
+Very smart man for Chinaman.  Just now, first time for long time, he
+go to sea.  Before, he have big business in San Francisco.  Then he
+get much trouble--police.  They say he opium smuggle.  Oh, big, big
+trouble.  But he catch good lawyer.  He no go to jail.  But long time
+lawyer work, and when trouble all finish lawyer got all his business,
+all his money, everything.  Then he go to sea, like before.  He make
+good money.  He get sixty-five dollars a month on this ship.  But he
+don't like.  Crew all crazy.  When this time finish he leave ship, go
+back start business in San Francisco."
+
+Later, when I had Wada open one of the ports for ventilation, I could
+hear the gurgle and swish of water alongside, and I knew the anchor
+was up and that we were in the grip of the Britannia, towing down the
+Chesapeake to sea.  The idea suggested itself that it was not too
+late.  I could very easily abandon the adventure and return to
+Baltimore on the Britannia when she cast off the Elsinore.  And then
+I heard a slight tinkling of china from the pantry as the steward
+proceeded to set the table, and, also, it was so warm and
+comfortable, and George Moore was so irritatingly fascinating.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+In every way dinner proved up beyond my expectations, and I
+registered a note that the cook, whoever or whatever he might be, was
+a capable man at his trade.  Miss West served, and, though she and
+the steward were strangers, they worked together splendidly.  I
+should have thought, from the smoothness of the service, that he was
+an old house servant who for years had known her every way.
+
+The pilot ate in the chart-house, so that at table were the four of
+us that would always be at table together.  Captain West and his
+daughter faced each other, while I, on the captain's right, faced Mr.
+Pike.  This put Miss West across the corner on my right.
+
+Mr. Pike, his dark sack coat (put on for the meal) bulging and
+wrinkling over the lumps of muscles that padded his stooped
+shoulders, had nothing at all to say.  But he had eaten too many
+years at captains' tables not to have proper table manners.  At first
+I thought he was abashed by Miss West's presence.  Later, I decided
+it was due to the presence of the captain.  For Captain West had a
+way with him that I was beginning to learn.  Far removed as Mr. Pike
+and Mr. Mellaire were from the sailors, individuals as they were of
+an entirely different and superior breed, yet equally as different
+and far removed from his officers was Captain West.  He was a serene
+and absolute aristocrat.  He neither talked "ship" nor anything else
+to Mr. Pike.
+
+On the other hand, Captain West's attitude toward me was that of a
+social equal.  But then, I was a passenger.  Miss West treated me the
+same way, but unbent more to Mr. Pike.  And Mr. Pike, answering her
+with "Yes, Miss," and "No, Miss," ate good-manneredly and with his
+shaggy-browed gray eyes studied me across the table.  I, too, studied
+him.  Despite his violent past, killer and driver that he was, I
+could not help liking the man.  He was honest, genuine.  Almost more
+than for that, I liked him for the spontaneous boyish laugh he gave
+on the occasions when I reached the points of several funny stories.
+No man could laugh like that and be all bad.  I was glad that it was
+he, and not Mr. Mellaire, who was to sit opposite throughout the
+voyage.  And I was very glad that Mr. Mellaire was not to eat with us
+at all.
+
+I am afraid that Miss West and I did most of the talking.  She was
+breezy, vivacious, tonic, and I noted again that the delicate, almost
+fragile oval of her face was given the lie by her body.  She was a
+robust, healthy young woman.  That was undeniable.  Not fat--heaven
+forbid!--not even plump; yet her lines had that swelling roundness
+that accompanies long, live muscles.  She was full-bodied, vigorous;
+and yet not so full-bodied as she seemed.  I remember with what
+surprise, when we arose from table, I noted her slender waist.  At
+that moment I got the impression that she was willowy.  And willowy
+she was, with a normal waist and with, in addition, always that
+informing bodily vigour that made her appear rounder and robuster
+than she really was.
+
+It was the health of her that interested me.  When I studied her face
+more closely I saw that only the lines of the oval of it were
+delicate.  Delicate it was not, nor fragile.  The flesh was firm, and
+the texture of the skin was firm and fine as it moved over the firm
+muscles of face and neck.  The neck was a beautiful and adequate
+pillar of white.  Its flesh was firm, its skin fine, and it was
+muscular.  The hands, too, attracted me--not small, but well-shaped,
+fine, white and strong, and well cared for.  I could only conclude
+that she was an unusual captain's daughter, just as her father was an
+unusual captain and man.  And their noses were alike, just the hint-
+touch of the beak of power and race.
+
+While Miss West was telling of the unexpectedness of the voyage, of
+how suddenly she had decided to come--she accounted for it as a whim-
+-and while she told of all the complications she had encountered in
+her haste of preparation, I found myself casting up a tally of the
+efficient ones on board the Elsinore.  They were Captain West and his
+daughter, the two mates, myself, of course, Wada and the steward,
+and, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the cook.  The dinner vouched for
+him.  Thus I found our total of efficients to be eight.  But the
+cook, the steward, and Wada were servants, not sailors, while Miss
+West and myself were supernumeraries.  Remained to work, direct, do,
+but three efficients out of a total ship's company of forty-five.  I
+had no doubt that other efficients there were; it seemed impossible
+that my first impression of the crew should be correct.  There was
+the carpenter.  He might, at his trade, be as good as the cook.  Then
+the two sailmakers, whom I had not yet seen, might prove up.
+
+A little later during the meal I ventured to talk about what had
+interested me and aroused my admiration, namely, the masterfulness
+with which Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire had gripped hold of that woeful,
+worthless crew.  It was all new to me, I explained, but I appreciated
+the need of it.  As I led up to the occurrence on Number Two hatch,
+when Mr. Pike had lifted up Larry and toppled him back with a mere
+slap from the ends of his fingers, I saw in Mr. Pike's eyes a
+warning, almost threatening, expression.  Nevertheless, I completed
+my description of the episode.
+
+When I had quite finished there was a silence.  Miss West was busy
+serving coffee from a copper percolator.  Mr. Pike, profoundly
+occupied with cracking walnuts, could not quite hide the wicked,
+little, half-humorous, half-revengeful gleam in his eyes.  But
+Captain West looked straight at me, but from oh! such a distance--
+millions and millions of miles away.  His clear blue eyes were as
+serene as ever, his tones as low and soft.
+
+"It is the one rule I ask to be observed, Mr. Pathurst--we never
+discuss the sailors."
+
+It was a facer to me, and with quite a pronounced fellow-feeling for
+Larry I hurriedly added:
+
+"It was not merely the discipline that interested me.  It was the
+feat of strength."
+
+"Sailors are trouble enough without our hearing about them, Mr.
+Pathurst," Captain West went on, as evenly and imperturbably as if I
+had not spoken.  "I leave the handling of the sailors to my officers.
+That's their business, and they are quite aware that I tolerate no
+undeserved roughness or severity."
+
+Mr. Pike's harsh face carried the faintest shadow of an amused grin
+as he stolidly regarded the tablecloth.  I glanced to Miss West for
+sympathy.  She laughed frankly, and said:
+
+"You see, father never has any sailors.  And it's a good plan, too."
+
+"A very good plan," Mr. Pike muttered.
+
+Then Miss West kindly led the talk away from that subject, and soon
+had us laughing with a spirited recital of a recent encounter of hers
+with a Boston cab-driver.
+
+Dinner over, I stepped to my room in quest of cigarettes, and
+incidentally asked Wada about the cook.  Wada was always a great
+gatherer of information.
+
+"His name Louis," he said.  "He Chinaman, too.  No; only half
+Chinaman.  Other half Englishman.  You know one island Napoleon he
+stop long time and bime by die that island?"
+
+"St. Helena," I prompted.
+
+"Yes, that place Louis he born.  He talk very good English."
+
+At this moment, entering the hall from the deck, Mr. Mellaire, just
+relieved by the mate, passed me on his way to the big room in the
+stern where the second table was set.  His "Good evening, sir," was
+as stately and courteous as any southern gentleman of the old days
+could have uttered it.  And yet I could not like the man.  His
+outward seeming was so at variance with the personality that resided
+within.  Even as he spoke and smiled I felt that from inside his
+skull he was watching me, studying me.  And somehow, in a flash of
+intuition, I knew not why, I was reminded of the three strange young
+men, routed last from the forecastle, to whom Mr. Pike had read the
+law.  They, too, had given me a similar impression.
+
+Behind Mr. Mellaire slouched a self-conscious, embarrassed
+individual, with the face of a stupid boy and the body of a giant.
+His feet were even larger than Mr. Pike's, but the hands--I shot a
+quick glance to see--were not so large as Mr. Pike's.
+
+As they passed I looked inquiry to Wada.
+
+"He carpenter.  He sat second table.  His name Sam Lavroff.  He come
+from New York on ship.  Steward say he very young for carpenter,
+maybe twenty-two, three years old."
+
+As I approached the open port over my desk I again heard the swish
+and gurgle of water and again realized that we were under way.  So
+steady and noiseless was our progress, that, say seated at table, it
+never entered one's head that we were moving or were anywhere save on
+the solid land. I had been used to steamers all my life, and it was
+difficult immediately to adjust myself to the absence of the
+propeller-thrust vibration.
+
+"Well, what do you think?" I asked Wada, who, like myself, had never
+made a sailing-ship voyage.
+
+He smiled politely.
+
+"Very funny ship.  Very funny sailors. I don't know.  Mebbe all
+right.  We see."
+
+"You think trouble?" I asked pointedly.
+
+"I think sailors very funny," he evaded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+Having lighted my cigarette, I strolled for'ard along the deck to
+where work was going on.  Above my head dim shapes of canvas showed
+in the starlight. Sail was being made, and being made slowly, as I
+might judge, who was only the veriest tyro in such matters.  The
+indistinguishable shapes of men, in long lines, pulled on ropes.
+They pulled in sick and dogged silence, though Mr. Pike, ubiquitous,
+snarled out orders and rapped out oaths from every angle upon their
+miserable heads.
+
+Certainly, from what I had read, no ship of the old days ever
+proceeded so sadly and blunderingly to sea.  Ere long Mr. Mellaire
+joined Mr. Pike in the struggle of directing the men.  It was not yet
+eight in the evening, and all hands were at work.  They did not seem
+to know the ropes.  Time and again, when the half-hearted suggestions
+of the bosuns had been of no avail, I saw one or the other of the
+mates leap to the rail and put the right rope in the hands of the
+men.
+
+These, on the deck, I concluded, were the hopeless ones.  Up aloft,
+from sounds and cries, I knew were other men, undoubtedly those who
+were at least a little seaman-like, loosing the sails.
+
+But on deck!  Twenty or thirty of the poor devils, tailed on a rope
+that hoisted a yard, would pull without concerted effort and with
+painfully slow movements.  "Walk away with it!" Mr. Pike would yell.
+And perhaps for two or three yards they would manage to walk with the
+rope ere they came to a halt like stalled horses on a hill.  And yet,
+did either of the mates spring in and add his strength, they were
+able to move right along the deck without stopping.  Either of the
+mates, old men that they were, was muscularly worth half-a-dozen of
+the wretched creatures.
+
+"This is what sailin's come to," Mr. Pike paused to snort in my ear.
+"This ain't the place for an officer down here pulling and hauling.
+But what can you do when the bosuns are worse than the men?"
+
+"I thought sailors sang songs when they pulled," I said.
+
+"Sure they do.  Want to hear 'em?"
+
+I knew there was malice of some sort in his voice, but I answered
+that I'd like to very much.
+
+"Here, you bosun!" Mr. Pike snarled.  "Wake up!  Start a song!
+Topsail halyards!"
+
+In the pause that followed I could have sworn that Sundry Buyers was
+pressing his hands against his abdomen, while Nancy, infinite
+bleakness freezing upon his face, was wetting his lips to begin.
+
+Nancy it was who began, for from no other man, I was confident, could
+have issued so sepulchral a plaint.  It was unmusical, unbeautiful,
+unlively, and indescribably doleful.  Yet the words showed that it
+should have ripped and crackled with high spirits and lawlessness,
+for the words poor Nancy sang were:
+
+
+"Away, way, way, yar,
+We'll kill Paddy Doyle for bus boots."
+
+
+"Quit it!  Quit it!" Mr. Pike roared.  "This ain't a funeral!  Ain't
+there one of you that can sing?  Come on, now!  It's a topsail-yard--
+"
+
+He broke off to leap in to the pin-rail and get the wrong ropes out
+of the men's hands to put into them the right rope.
+
+"Come on, bosun!  Break her out!"
+
+Then out of the gloom arose Sundry Buyers' voice, cracked and crazy
+and even more lugubrious than Nancy's:
+
+
+"Then up aloft that yard must go,
+Whiskey for my Johnny."
+
+
+The second line was supposed to be the chorus, but not more than two
+men feebly mumbled it.  Sundry Buyers quavered the next line:
+
+
+"Oh, whiskey killed my sister Sue."
+
+
+Then Mr. Pike took a hand, seizing the hauling-part next to the pin
+and lifting his voice with a rare snap and devilishness:
+
+
+"And whiskey killed the old man, too,
+Whiskey for my Johnny."
+
+
+He sang the devil-may-care lines on and on, lifting the crew to the
+work and to the chorused emphasis of "Whiskey for my Johnny."
+
+And to his voice they pulled, they moved, they sang, and were alive,
+until he interrupted the song to cry "Belay!"
+
+And then all the life and lilt went out of them, and they were again
+maundering and futile things, getting in one another's way, stumbling
+and shuffling through the darkness, hesitating to grasp ropes, and,
+when they did take hold, invariably taking hold of the wrong rope
+first.  Skulkers there were among them, too; and once, from for'ard
+of the 'midship house, I heard smacks, and curses, and groans, and
+out of the darkness hurriedly emerged two men, on their heels Mr.
+Pike, who chanted a recital of the distressing things that would
+befall them if he caught them at such tricks again.
+
+The whole thing was too depressing for me to care to watch further,
+so I strolled aft and climbed the poop.  In the lee of the chart-
+house Captain West and the pilot were pacing slowly up and down.
+Passing on aft, I saw steering at the wheel the weazened little old
+man I had noted earlier in the day.  In the light of the binnacle his
+small blue eyes looked more malevolent than ever.  So weazened and
+tiny was he, and so large was the brass-studded wheel, that they
+seemed of a height.  His face was withered, scorched, and wrinkled,
+and in all seeming he was fifty years older than Mr. Pike.  He was
+the most remarkable figure of a burnt-out, aged man one would expect
+to find able seaman on one of the proudest sailing-ships afloat.
+Later, through Wada, I was to learn that his name was Andy Fay and
+that he claimed no more years than sixty-three.
+
+I leaned against the rail in the lee of the wheel-house, and stared
+up at the lofty spars and myriad ropes that I could guess were there.
+No, I decided I was not keen on the voyage.  The whole atmosphere of
+it was wrong.  There were the cold hours I had waited on the pier-
+ends.  There was Miss West coming along.  There was the crew of
+broken men and lunatics.  I wondered if the wounded Greek in the
+'midship house still gibbered, and if Mr. Pike had yet sewed him up;
+and I was quite sure I would not care to witness such a transaction
+in surgery.
+
+Even Wada, who had never been in a sailing-ship, had his doubts of
+the voyage.  So had the steward, who had spent most of a life-time in
+sailing-ships.  So far as Captain West was concerned, crews did not
+exist.  And as for Miss West, she was so abominably robust that she
+could not be anything else than an optimist in such matters.  She had
+always lived; her red blood sang to her only that she would always
+live and that nothing evil would ever happen to her glorious
+personality.
+
+Oh, trust me, I knew the way of red blood.  Such was my condition
+that the red-blood health of Miss West was virtually an affront to
+me--for I knew how unthinking and immoderate such blood could be.
+And for five months at least--there was Mr. Pike's offered wager of a
+pound of tobacco or a month's wages to that effect--I was to be pent
+on the same ship with her.  As sure as cosmic sap was cosmic sap,
+just that sure was I that ere the voyage was over I should be
+pestered by her making love to me.  Please do not mistake me.  My
+certainty in this matter was due, not to any exalted sense of my own
+desirableness to women, but to my anything but exalted concept of
+women as instinctive huntresses of men.  In my experience women
+hunted men with quite the same blind tropism that marks the pursuit
+of the sun by the sunflower, the pursuit of attachable surfaces by
+the tendrils of the grapevine.
+
+Call me blase--I do not mind, if by blase is meant the world-
+weariness, intellectual, artistic, sensational, which can come to a
+young man of thirty.  For I was thirty, and I was weary of all these
+things--weary and in doubt.  It was because of this state that I was
+undertaking the voyage.  I wanted to get away by myself, to get away
+from all these things, and, with proper perspective, mull the matter
+over.
+
+It sometimes seemed to me that the culmination of this world-sickness
+had been brought about by the success of my play--my first play, as
+every one knows.  But it had been such a success that it raised the
+doubt in my own mind, just as the success of my several volumes of
+verse had raised doubts.  Was the public right?  Were the critics
+right?  Surely the function of the artist was to voice life, yet what
+did I know of life?
+
+So you begin to glimpse what I mean by the world-sickness that
+afflicted me.  Really, I had been, and was, very sick.  Mad thoughts
+of isolating myself entirely from the world had hounded me.  I had
+even canvassed the idea of going to Molokai and devoting the rest of
+my years to the lepers--I, who was thirty years old, and healthy and
+strong, who had no particular tragedy, who had a bigger income than I
+knew how to spend, who by my own achievement had put my name on the
+lips of men and proved myself a power to be reckoned with--I was that
+mad that I had considered the lazar house for a destiny.
+
+Perhaps it will be suggested that success had turned my head.  Very
+well.  Granted.  But the turned head remains a fact, an
+incontrovertible fact--my sickness, if you will, and a real sickness,
+and a fact.  This I knew:  I had reached an intellectual and artistic
+climacteric, a life-climacteric of some sort.  And I had diagnosed my
+own case and prescribed this voyage.  And here was the atrociously
+healthy and profoundly feminine Miss West along--the very last
+ingredient I would have considered introducing into my prescription.
+
+A woman!  Woman!  Heaven knows I had been sufficiently tormented by
+their persecutions to know them.  I leave it to you:  thirty years of
+age, not entirely unhandsome, an intellectual and artistic place in
+the world, and an income most dazzling--why shouldn't women pursue
+me?  They would have pursued me had I been a hunchback, for the sake
+of my artistic place alone, for the sake of my income alone.
+
+Yes; and love!  Did I not know love--lyric, passionate, mad, romantic
+love?  That, too, was of old time with me.  I, too, had throbbed and
+sung and sobbed and sighed--yes, and known grief, and buried my dead.
+But it was so long ago.  How young I was--turned twenty-four!  And
+after that I had learned the bitter lesson that even deathless grief
+may die; and I had laughed again and done my share of philandering
+with the pretty, ferocious moths that fluttered around the light of
+my fortune and artistry; and after that, in turn, I had retired
+disgusted from the lists of woman, and gone on long lance-breaking
+adventures in the realm of mind.  And here I was, on board the
+Elsinore, unhorsed by my encounters with the problems of the
+ultimate, carried off the field with a broken pate.
+
+As I leaned against the rail, dismissing premonitions of disaster, I
+could not help thinking of Miss West below, bustling and humming as
+she made her little nest.  And from her my thought drifted on to the
+everlasting mystery of woman.  Yes, I, with all the futuristic
+contempt for woman, am ever caught up afresh by the mystery of woman.
+
+Oh, no illusions, thank you.  Woman, the love-seeker, obsessing and
+possessing, fragile and fierce, soft and venomous, prouder than
+Lucifer and as prideless, holds a perpetual, almost morbid,
+attraction for the thinker.  What is this flame of her, blazing
+through all her contradictions and ignobilities?--this ruthless
+passion for life, always for life, more life on the planet?  At times
+it seems to me brazen, and awful, and soulless.  At times I am made
+petulant by it.  And at other times I am swayed by the sublimity of
+it.  No; there is no escape from woman.  Always, as a savage returns
+to a dark glen where goblins are and gods may be, so do I return to
+the contemplation of woman.
+
+Mr. Pike's voice interrupted my musings.  From for'ard, on the main
+deck, I heard him snarl:
+
+"On the main-topsail-yard, there!--if you cut that gasket I'll split
+your damned skull!"
+
+Again he called, with a marked change of voice, and the Henry he
+called to I concluded was the training-ship boy.
+
+"You, Henry, main-skysail-yard, there!" he cried.  "Don't make those
+gaskets up!  Fetch 'em in along the yard and make fast to the tye!"
+
+Thus routed from my reverie, I decided to go below to bed.  As my
+hand went out to the knob of the chart-house door again the mate's
+voice rang out:
+
+"Come on, you gentlemen's sons in disguise!  Wake up!  Lively now!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+I did not sleep well.  To begin with, I read late.  Not till two in
+the morning did I reach up and turn out the kerosene reading-lamp
+which Wada had purchased and installed for me.  I was asleep
+immediately--perfect sleep being perhaps my greatest gift; but almost
+immediately I was awake again.  And thereafter, with dozings and cat-
+naps and restless tossings, I struggled to win to sleep, then gave it
+up.  For of all things, in my state of jangled nerves, to be
+afflicted with hives!  And still again, to be afflicted with hives in
+cold winter weather!
+
+At four I lighted up and went to reading, forgetting my irritated
+skin in Vernon Lee's delightful screed against William James, and his
+"will to believe."  I was on the weather side of the ship, and from
+overhead, through the deck, came the steady footfalls of some officer
+on watch.  I knew that they were not the steps of Mr. Pike, and
+wondered whether they were Mr. Mellaire's or the pilot's.  Somebody
+above there was awake.  The work was going on, the vigilant seeing
+and overseeing, that, I could plainly conclude, would go on through
+every hour of all the hours on the voyage.
+
+At half-past four I heard the steward's alarm go off, instantly
+suppressed, and five minutes later I lifted my hand to motion him in
+through my open door.  What I desired was a cup of coffee, and Wada
+had been with me through too many years for me to doubt that he had
+given the steward precise instructions and turned over to him my
+coffee and my coffee-making apparatus.
+
+The steward was a jewel.  In ten minutes he served me with a perfect
+cup of coffee.  I read on until daylight, and half-past eight found
+me, breakfast in bed finished, dressed and shaved, and on deck.  We
+were still towing, but all sails were set to a light favouring breeze
+from the north.  In the chart-room Captain West and the pilot were
+smoking cigars.  At the wheel I noted what I decided at once was an
+efficient.  He was not a large man; if anything he was undersized.
+But his countenance was broad-browed and intelligently formed.  Tom,
+I later learned, was his name--Tom Spink, an Englishman.  He was
+blue-eyed, fair-skinned, well-grizzled, and, to the eye, a hale fifty
+years of age.  His reply of "Good morning, sir" was cheery, and he
+smiled as he uttered the simple phrase.  He did not look sailor-like,
+as did Henry, the training-ship boy; and yet I felt at once that he
+was a sailor, and an able one.
+
+It was Mr. Pike's watch, and on asking him about Tom he grudgingly
+admitted that the man was the "best of the boiling."
+
+Miss West emerged from the chart-house, with a rosy morning face and
+her vital, springy limb-movement, and immediately began establishing
+her contacts.  On asking how I had slept, and when I said wretchedly,
+she demanded an explanation.  I told her of my affliction of hives
+and showed her the lumps on my wrists.
+
+"Your blood needs thinning and cooling," she adjudged promptly.
+"Wait a minute.  I'll see what can be done for you."
+
+And with that she was away and below and back in a trice, in her hand
+a part glass of water into which she stirred a teaspoonful of cream
+of tartar.
+
+"Drink it," she ordered, as a matter of course.
+
+I drank it.  And at eleven in the morning she came up to my deck-
+chair with a second dose of the stuff.  Also she reproached me
+soundly for permitting Wada to feed meat to Possum.  It was from her
+that Wada and I learned how mortal a sin it was to give meat to a
+young puppy.  Furthermore, she laid down the law and the diet for
+Possum, not alone to me and Wada, but to the steward, the carpenter,
+and Mr. Mellaire.  Of the latter two, because they ate by themselves
+in the big after-room and because Possum played there, she was
+especially suspicious; and she was outspoken in voicing her
+suspicions to their faces.  The carpenter mumbled embarrassed
+asseverations in broken English of past, present, and future
+innocence, the while he humbly scraped and shuffled before her on his
+huge feet.  Mr. Mellaire's protestations were of the same nature,
+save that they were made with the grace and suavity of a
+Chesterfield.
+
+In short, Possum's diet raised quite a tempest in the Elsinore
+teapot, and by the time it was over Miss West had established this
+particular contact with me and given me a feeling that we were the
+mutual owners of the puppy.  I noticed, later in the day, that it was
+to Miss West that Wada went for instructions as to the quantity of
+warm water he must use to dilute Possum's condensed milk.
+
+Lunch won my continued approbation of the cook.  In the afternoon I
+made a trip for'ard to the galley to make his acquaintance.  To all
+intents he was a Chinese, until he spoke, whereupon, measured by
+speech alone, he was an Englishman.  In fact, so cultured was his
+speech that I can fairly say it was vested with an Oxford accent.
+He, too, was old, fully sixty--he acknowledged fifty-nine.  Three
+things about him were markedly conspicuous:  his smile, that embraced
+all of his clean-shaven Asiatic face and Asiatic eyes; his even-
+rowed, white, and perfect teeth, which I deemed false until Wada
+ascertained otherwise for me; and his hands and feet.  It was his
+hands, ridiculously small and beautifully modelled, that led my
+scrutiny to his feet.  They, too, were ridiculously small and very
+neatly, almost dandifiedly, shod.
+
+We had put the pilot off at midday, but the Britannia towed us well
+into the afternoon and did not cast us off until the ocean was wide
+about us and the land a faint blur on the western horizon.  Here, at
+the moment of leaving the tug, we made our "departure"--that is to
+say, technically began the voyage, despite the fact that we had
+already travelled a full twenty-four hours away from Baltimore.
+
+It was about the time of casting off, when I was leaning on the poop-
+rail gazing for'ard, when Miss West joined me.  She had been busy
+below all day, and had just come up, as she put it, for a breath of
+air.  She surveyed the sky in weather-wise fashion for a full five
+minutes, then remarked:
+
+"The barometer's very high--30 degrees 60.  This light north wind
+won't last.  It will either go into a calm or work around into a
+north-east gale."
+
+"Which would you prefer?" I asked.
+
+"The gale, by all means.  It will help us off the land, and it will
+put me through my torment of sea-sickness more quickly.  Oh, yes,"
+she added, "I'm a good sailor, but I do suffer dreadfully at the
+beginning of every voyage.  You probably won't see me for a couple of
+days now.  That's why I've been so busy getting settled first."
+
+"Lord Nelson, I have read, never got over his squeamishness at sea,"
+I said.
+
+"And I've seen father sea-sick on occasion," she answered.  "Yes, and
+some of the strongest, hardest sailors I have ever known."
+
+Mr. Pike here joined us for a moment, ceasing from his everlasting
+pacing up and down to lean with us on the poop-rail.
+
+Many of the crew were in evidence, pulling on ropes on the main deck
+below us.  To my inexperienced eye they appeared more unprepossessing
+than ever.
+
+"A pretty scraggly crew, Mr. Pike," Miss West remarked.
+
+"The worst ever," he growled, "and I've seen some pretty bad ones.
+We're teachin' them the ropes just now--most of 'em."
+
+"They look starved," I commented.
+
+"They are, they almost always are," Miss West answered, and her eyes
+roved over them in the same appraising, cattle-buyer's fashion I had
+marked in Mr. Pike.  "But they'll fatten up with regular hours, no
+whiskey, and solid food--won't they, Mr. Pike?"
+
+"Oh, sure.  They always do.  And you'll see them liven up when we get
+'em in hand . . . maybe.  They're a measly lot, though."
+
+I looked aloft at the vast towers of canvas.  Our four masts seemed
+to have flowered into all the sails possible, yet the sailors beneath
+us, under Mr. Mellaire's direction, were setting triangular sails,
+like jibs, between the masts, and there were so many that they
+overlapped one another.  The slowness and clumsiness with which the
+men handled these small sails led me to ask:
+
+"But what would you do, Mr. Pike, with a green crew like this, if you
+were caught right now in a storm with all this canvas spread?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as if I had asked what he would do in an
+earthquake with two rows of New York skyscrapers falling on his head
+from both sides of a street.
+
+"Do?" Miss West answered for him.  "We'd get the sail off.  Oh, it
+can be done, Mr. Pathurst, with any kind of a crew.  If it couldn't,
+I should have been drowned long ago."
+
+"Sure," Mr. Pike upheld her.  "So would I."
+
+"The officers can perform miracles with the most worthless sailors,
+in a pinch," Miss West went on.
+
+Again Mr. Pike nodded his head and agreed, and I noted his two big
+paws, relaxed the moment before and drooping over the rail, quite
+unconsciously tensed and folded themselves into fists.  Also, I noted
+fresh abrasions on the knuckles.  Miss West laughed heartily, as from
+some recollection.
+
+"I remember one time when we sailed from San  Francisco with a most
+hopeless crew.  It was in the Lallah Rookh--YOU remember her, Mr.
+Pike?"
+
+"Your father's fifth command," he nodded.  "Lost on the West Coast
+afterwards--went ashore in that big earthquake and tidal wave.
+Parted her anchors, and when she hit under the cliff, the cliff fell
+on her."
+
+"That's the ship.  Well, our crew seemed mostly cow-boys, and
+bricklayers, and tramps, and more tramps than anything else.  Where
+the boarding-house masters got them was beyond imagining.  A number
+of them were shanghaied, that was certain.  You should have seen them
+when they were first sent aloft."  Again she laughed.  "It was better
+than circus clowns.  And scarcely had the tug cast us off, outside
+the Heads, when it began to blow up and we began to shorten down.
+And then our mates performed miracles.  You remember Mr. Harding--
+Silas Harding?"
+
+"Don't I though!" Mr. Pike proclaimed enthusiastically.  "He was some
+man, and he must have been an old man even then."
+
+"He was, and a terrible man," she concurred, and added, almost
+reverently:  "And a wonderful man."  She turned her face to me.  "He
+was our mate.  The men were sea-sick and miserable and green.  But
+Mr. Harding got the sail off the Lallah Rookh just the same.  What I
+wanted to tell you was this:
+
+"I was on the poop, just like I am now, and Mr. Harding had a lot of
+those miserable sick men putting gaskets on the main-lower-topsail.
+How far would that be above the deck, Mr. Pike?"
+
+"Let me see . . . the Lallah Rookh."  Mr. Pike paused to consider.
+"Oh, say around a hundred feet."
+
+"I saw it myself.  One of the green hands, a tramp--and he must
+already have got a taste of Mr. Harding--fell off the lower-topsail-
+yard.  I was only a little girl, but it looked like certain death,
+for he was falling from the weather side of the yard straight down on
+deck.  But he fell into the belly of the mainsail, breaking his fall,
+turned a somersault, and landed on his feet on deck and unhurt.  And
+he landed right alongside of Mr. Harding, facing him.  I don't know
+which was the more astonished, but I think Mr. Harding was, for he
+stood there petrified.  He had expected the man to be killed.  Not so
+the man.  He took one look at Mr. Harding, then made a wild jump for
+the rigging and climbed right back up to that topsail-yard.
+
+Miss West and the mate laughed so heartily that they scarcely heard
+me say:
+
+"Astonishing!  Think of the jar to the man's nerves, falling to
+apparent death that way."
+
+"He'd been jarred harder by Silas Harding, I guess," was Mr. Pike's
+remark, with another burst of laughter, in which Miss West joined.
+
+Which was all very well in a way.  Ships were ships, and judging by
+what I had seen of our present crew harsh treatment was necessary.
+But that a young woman of the niceness of Miss West should know of
+such things and be so saturated in this side of ship life was not
+nice.  It was not nice for me, though it interested me, I confess,--
+and strengthened my grip on reality.  Yet it meant a hardening of
+one's fibres, and I did not like to think of Miss West being so
+hardened.
+
+I looked at her and could not help marking again the fineness and
+firmness of her skin.  Her hair was dark, as were her eyebrows, which
+were almost straight and rather low over her long eyes.  Gray her
+eyes were, a warm gray, and very steady and direct in expression,
+intelligent and alive.  Perhaps, taking her face as a whole, the most
+noteworthy expression of it was a great calm.  She seemed always in
+repose, at peace with herself and with the external world.  The most
+beautiful feature was her eyes, framed in lashes as dark as her brows
+and hair.  The most admirable feature was her nose, quite straight,
+very straight, and just the slightest trifle too long.  In this it
+was reminiscent of her father's nose.  But the perfect modelling of
+the bridge and nostrils conveyed an indescribable advertisement of
+race and blood.
+
+Hers was a slender-lipped, sensitive, sensible, and generous mouth--
+generous, not so much in size, which was quite average, but generous
+rather in tolerance, in power, and in laughter.  All the health and
+buoyancy of her was in her mouth, as well as in her eyes.  She rarely
+exposed her teeth in smiling, for which purpose she seemed chiefly to
+employ her eyes; but when she laughed she showed strong white teeth,
+even, not babyish in their smallness, but just the firm, sensible,
+normal size one would expect in a woman as healthy and normal as she.
+
+I would never have called her beautiful, and yet she possessed many
+of the factors that go to compose feminine beauty.  She had all the
+beauty of colouring, a white skin that was healthy white and that was
+emphasized by the darkness of her lashes, brows, and hair.  And, in
+the same way, the darkness of lashes and brows and the whiteness of
+skin set off the warm gray of her eyes.  The forehead was, well,
+medium-broad and medium high, and quite smooth.  No lines nor hints
+of lines were there, suggestive of nervousness, of blue days of
+depression and white nights of insomnia.  Oh, she bore all the marks
+of the healthy, human female, who never worried nor was vexed in the
+spirit of her, and in whose body every process and function was
+frictionless and automatic.
+
+"Miss West has posed to me as quite a weather prophet," I said to the
+mate.  "Now what is your forecast of our coming weather?"
+
+"She ought to be," was Mr. Pike's reply as he lifted his glance
+across the smooth swell of sea to the sky.  "This ain't the first
+time she's been on the North Atlantic in winter."  He debated a
+moment, as he studied the sea and sky.  "I should say, considering
+the high barometer, we ought to get a mild gale from the north-east
+or a calm, with the chances in favour of the calm."
+
+She favoured me with a triumphant smile, and suddenly clutched the
+rail as the Elsinore lifted on an unusually large swell and sank into
+the trough with a roll from windward that flapped all the sails in
+hollow thunder.
+
+"The calm has it," Miss West said, with just a hint of grimness.
+"And if this keeps up I'll be in my bunk in about five minutes."
+
+She waved aside all sympathy.  "Oh, don't bother about me, Mr.
+Pathurst.  Sea-sickness is only detestable and horrid, like sleet,
+and muddy weather, and poison ivy; besides, I'd rather be sea-sick
+than have the hives."
+
+Something went wrong with the men below us on the deck, some
+stupidity or blunder that was made aware to us by Mr. Mellaire's
+raised voice.  Like Mr. Pike, he had a way of snarling at the sailors
+that was distinctly unpleasant to the ear.
+
+On the faces of several of the sailors bruises were in evidence.
+One, in particular, had an eye so swollen that it was closed.
+
+"Looks as if he had run against a stanchion in the dark," I observed.
+
+Most eloquent, and most unconscious, was the quick flash of Miss
+West's eyes to Mr. Pike's big paws, with freshly abraded knuckles,
+resting on the rail.  It was a stab of hurt to me.  SHE KNEW.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+That evening the three men of us had dinner alone, with racks on the
+table, while the Elsinore rolled in the calm that had sent Miss West
+to her room.
+
+"You won't see her for a couple of days," Captain West told me.  "Her
+mother was the same way--a born sailor, but always sick at the outset
+of a voyage.''
+
+"It's the shaking down."  Mr. Pike astonished me with the longest
+observation I had yet heard him utter at table.  "Everybody has to
+shake down when they leave the land.  We've got to forget the good
+times on shore, and the good things money'll buy, and start watch and
+watch, four hours on deck and four below.  And it comes hard, and all
+our tempers are strung until we can make the change.  Did it happen
+that you heard Caruso and Blanche Arral this winter in New York, Mr.
+Pathurst?"
+
+I nodded, still marvelling over this spate of speech at table.
+
+"Well, think of hearing them, and Homer, and Witherspoon, and Amato,
+every night for nights and nights at the Metropolitan; and then to
+give it the go-by, and get to sea and shake down to watch and watch."
+
+"You don't like the sea?" I queried.
+
+He sighed.
+
+"I don't know.  But of course the sea is all I know--"
+
+"Except music," I threw in.
+
+"Yes, but the sea and all the long-voyaging has cheated me out of
+most of the music I oughta have had coming to me."
+
+"I suppose you've heard Schumann Heink?"
+
+"Wonderful, wonderful!" he murmured fervently, then regarded me with
+an eager wistfulness.  "I've half-a-dozen of her records, and I've
+got the second dog-watch below.  If Captain West don't mind . . . "
+(Captain West nodded that he didn't mind).  "And if you'd want to
+hear them?  The machine is a good one."
+
+And then, to my amazement, when the steward had cleared the table,
+this hoary old relic of man-killing and man-driving days, battered
+waif of the sea that he was, carried in from his room a most splendid
+collection of phonograph records.  These, and the machine, he placed
+on the table.  The big doors were opened, making the dining-room and
+the main cabin into one large room.  It was in the cabin that Captain
+West and I lolled in big leather chairs while Mr. Pike ran the
+phonograph.  His face was in a blaze of light from the swinging
+lamps, and every shade of expression was visible to me.
+
+In vain I waited for him to start some popular song.  His records
+were only of the best, and the care he took of them was a revelation.
+He handled each one reverently, as a sacred thing, untying and
+unwrapping it and brushing it with a fine camel's hair brush while it
+revolved and ere he placed the needle on it.  For a time all I could
+see was the huge brute hands of a brute-driver, with skin off the
+knuckles, that expressed love in their every movement.  Each touch on
+the discs was a caress, and while the record played he hovered over
+it and dreamed in some heaven of music all his own.
+
+During this time Captain West lay back and smoked a cigar.  His face
+was expressionless, and he seemed very far away, untouched by the
+music.  I almost doubted that he heard it.  He made no remarks
+between whiles, betrayed no sign of approbation or displeasure.  He
+seemed preternaturally serene, preternaturally remote.  And while I
+watched him I wondered what his duties were.  I had not seen him
+perform any.  Mr. Pike had attended to the loading of the ship.  Not
+until she was ready for sea had Captain West come on board.  I had
+not seen him give an order.  It looked to me that Mr. Pike and Mr.
+Mellaire did the work.  All Captain West did was to smoke cigars and
+keep blissfully oblivious of the Elsinore's crew.
+
+When Mr. Pike had played the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the Messiah,
+and "He Shall Feed His Flock," he mentioned to me, almost
+apologetically, that he liked sacred music, and for the reason,
+perhaps, that for a short period, a child ashore in San Francisco, he
+had been a choir boy.
+
+"And then I hit the dominie over the head with a baseball bat and
+sneaked off to sea again," he concluded with a harsh laugh.
+
+And thereat he fell to dreaming while he played Meyerbeer's "King of
+Heaven," and Mendelssohn's "O Rest in the Lord."
+
+When one bell struck, at quarter to eight, he carried his music, all
+carefully wrapped, back into his room.  I lingered with him while he
+rolled a cigarette ere eight bells struck.
+
+"I've got a lot more good things," he said confidentially:  "Coenen's
+'Come Unto Me,' and Faure's 'Crucifix'; and there's 'O Salutaris,'
+and 'Lead, Kindly Light' by the Trinity Choir; and 'Jesu, Lover of My
+Soul' would just melt your heart.  I'll play 'em for you some night."
+
+"Do you believe in them?" I was led to ask by his rapt expression and
+by the picture of his brute-driving hands which I could not shake
+from my consciousness.
+
+He hesitated perceptibly, then replied:
+
+"I do . . . when I'm listening to them."
+
+
+My sleep that night was wretched.  Short of sleep from the previous
+night, I closed my book and turned my light off early.  But scarcely
+had I dropped into slumber when I was aroused by the recrudescence of
+my hives.  All day they had not bothered me; yet the instant I put
+out the light and slept, the damnable persistent itching set up.
+Wada had not yet gone to bed, and from him I got more cream of
+tartar.  It was useless, however, and at midnight, when I heard the
+watch changing, I partially dressed, slipped into my dressing-gown,
+and went up on to the poop.
+
+I saw Mr. Mellaire beginning his four hours' watch, pacing up and
+down the port side of the poop; and I slipped away aft, past the man
+at the wheel, whom I did not recognize, and took refuge in the lee of
+the wheel-house.
+
+Once again I studied the dim loom and tracery of intricate rigging
+and lofty, sail-carrying spars, thought of the mad, imbecile crew,
+and experienced premonitions of disaster.  How could such a voyage be
+possible, with such a crew, on the huge Elsinore, a cargo-carrier
+that was only a steel shell half an inch thick burdened with five
+thousand tons of coal?  It was appalling to contemplate.  The voyage
+had gone wrong from the first.  In the wretched unbalance that loss
+of sleep brings to any good sleeper, I could decide only that the
+voyage was doomed.  Yet how doomed it was, in truth, neither I nor a
+madman could have dreamed.
+
+I thought of the red-blooded Miss West, who had always lived and had
+no doubts but what she would always live.  I thought of the killing
+and driving and music-loving Mr. Pike.  Many a haler remnant than he
+had gone down on a last voyage.  As for Captain West, he did not
+count.  He was too neutral a being, too far away, a sort of favoured
+passenger who had nothing to do but serenely and passively exist in
+some Nirvana of his own creating.
+
+Next I remembered the self-wounded Greek, sewed up by Mr. Pike and
+lying gibbering between the steel walls of the 'midship-house.  This
+picture almost decided me, for in my fevered imagination he typified
+the whole mad, helpless, idiotic crew.  Certainly I could go back to
+Baltimore.  Thank God I had the money to humour my whims.  Had not
+Mr. Pike told me, in reply to a question, that he estimated the
+running expenses of the Elsinore at two hundred dollars a day?  I
+could afford to pay two hundred a day, or two thousand, for the
+several days that might be necessary to get me back to the land, to a
+pilot tug, or any inbound craft to Baltimore.
+
+I was quite wholly of a mind to go down and rout out Captain West to
+tell him my decision, when another presented itself:  THEN ARE YOU,
+THE THINKER AND PHILOSOPHER, THE WORLD-SICK ONE, AFRAID TO GO DOWN,
+TO CEASE IN THE DARKNESS?  Bah!  My own pride in my life-
+pridelessness saved Captain West's sleep from interruption.  Of
+course I would go on with the adventure, if adventure it might be
+called, to go sailing around Cape Horn with a shipload of fools and
+lunatics--and worse; for I remembered the three Babylonish and
+Semitic ones who had aroused Mr. Pike's ire and who had laughed so
+terribly and silently.
+
+Night thoughts!  Sleepless thoughts!  I dismissed them all and
+started below, chilled through by the cold.  But at the chart-room
+door I encountered Mr. Mellaire.
+
+"A pleasant evening, sir," he greeted me.  "A pity there's not a
+little wind to help us off the land."
+
+"What do you think of the crew?" I asked, after a moment or so.
+
+Mr. Mellaire shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I've seen many queer crews in my time, Mr. Pathurst.  But I never
+saw one as queer as this--boys, old men, cripples and--you saw Tony
+the Greek go overboard yesterday?  Well, that's only the beginning.
+He's a sample.  I've got a big Irishman in my watch who's going bad.
+Did you notice a little, dried-up Scotchman?"
+
+"Who looks mean and angry all the time, and who was steering the
+evening before last?"
+
+"The very one--Andy Fay.  Well, Andy Fay's just been complaining to
+me about O'Sullivan.  Says O'Sullivan's threatened his life.  When
+Andy Fay went off watch at eight he found O'Sullivan stropping a
+razor.  I'll give you the conversation as Andy gave it to me:
+
+"'Says O'Sullivan to me, "Mr. Fay, I'll have a word wid yeh?"
+"Certainly," says I; "what can I do for you?"  "Sell me your sea-
+boots, Mr. Fay," says O'Sullivan, polite as can be.  "But what will
+you be wantin' of them?" says I.  "'Twill be a great favour," says
+O'Sullivan.  "But it's my only pair," says I; "and you have a pair of
+your own," says I.  "Mr. Fay, I'll be needin' me own in bad weather,"
+says O'Sullivan.  "Besides," says I, "you have no money."  "I'll pay
+for them when we pay off in Seattle," says O'Sullivan.  "I'll not do
+it," says I; "besides, you're not tellin' me what you'll be doin'
+with them."  "But I will tell yeh," says O'Sullivan; "I'm wantin' to
+throw 'em over the side."  And with that I turns to walk away, but
+O'Sullivan says, very polite and seducin'-like, still a-stroppin' the
+razor, "Mr. Fay," says he, "will you kindly step this way an' have
+your throat cut?"  And with that I knew my life was in danger, and I
+have come to make report to you, sir, that the man is a violent
+lunatic.'
+
+"Or soon will be," I remarked.  "I noticed him yesterday, a big man
+muttering continually to himself?"
+
+"That's the man," Mr. Mellaire said.
+
+"Do you have many such at sea?" I asked.
+
+"More than my share, I do believe, sir."
+
+He was lighting a cigarette at the moment, and with a quick movement
+he pulled off his cap, bent his head forward, and held up the blazing
+match that I might see.
+
+I saw a grizzled head, the full crown of which was not entirely bald,
+but partially covered with a few sparse long hairs.  And full across
+this crown, disappearing in the thicker fringe above the ears, ran
+the most prodigious scar I had ever seen.  Because the vision of it
+was so fleeting, ere the match blew out, and because of the scar's
+very prodigiousness, I may possibly exaggerate, but I could have
+sworn that I could lay two fingers deep into the horrid cleft and
+that it was fully two fingers broad.  There seemed no bone at all,
+just a great fissure, a deep valley covered with skin; and I was
+confident that the brain pulsed immediately under that skin.
+
+He pulled his cap on and laughed in an amused, reassuring way.
+
+"A crazy sea cook did that, Mr. Pathurst, with a meat-axe.  We were
+thousands of miles from anywhere, in the South Indian Ocean at the
+time, running our Easting down, but the cook got the idea into his
+addled head that we were lying in Boston Harbour, and that I wouldn't
+let him go ashore.  I had my back to him at the time, and I never
+knew what struck me."
+
+"But how could you recover from so fearful an injury?" I questioned.
+"There must have been a splendid surgeon on board, and you must have
+had wonderful vitality."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"It must have been the vitality . . . and the molasses."
+
+"Molasses!"
+
+"Yes; the captain had old-fashioned prejudices against antiseptics.
+He always used molasses for fresh wound-dressings.  I lay in my bunk
+many weary weeks--we had a long passage--and by the time we reached
+Hong Kong the thing was healed, there was no need for a shore
+surgeon, and I was standing my third mate's watch--we carried third
+mates in those days."
+
+Not for many a long day was I to realize the dire part that scar in
+Mr. Mellaire's head was to play in his destiny and in the destiny of
+the Elsinore.  Had I known at the time, Captain West would have
+received the most unusual awakening from sleep that he ever
+experienced; for he would have been routed out by a very determined,
+partially-dressed passenger with a proposition capable of going to
+the extent of buying the Elsinore outright with all her cargo, so
+that she might be sailed straight back to Baltimore.
+
+As it was, I merely thought it a very marvellous thing that Mr.
+Mellaire should have lived so many years with such a hole in his
+head.
+
+We talked on, and he gave me many details of that particular
+happening, and of other happenings at sea on the part of the lunatics
+that seem to infest the sea.
+
+And yet I could not like the man.  In nothing he said, nor in the
+manner of saying things, could I find fault.  He seemed generous,
+broad-minded, and, for a sailor, very much of a man of the world.  It
+was easy for me to overlook his excessive suavity of speech and
+super-courtesy of social mannerism.  It was not that.  But all the
+time I was distressingly, and, I suppose, intuitively aware, though
+in the darkness I couldn't even see his eyes, that there, behind
+those eyes, inside that skull, was ambuscaded an alien personality
+that spied upon me, measured me, studied me, and that said one thing
+while it thought another thing.
+
+When I said good night and went below it was with the feeling that I
+had been talking with the one half of some sort of a dual creature.
+The other half had not spoken.  Yet I sensed it there, fluttering and
+quick, behind the mask of words and flesh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+But I could not sleep.  I took more cream of tartar.  It must be the
+heat of the bed-clothes, I decided, that excited my hives.  And yet,
+whenever I ceased struggling for sleep, and lighted the lamp and
+read, my skin irritation decreased.  But as soon as I turned out the
+lamp and closed my eyes I was troubled again.  So hour after hour
+passed, through which, between vain attempts to sleep, I managed to
+wade through many pages of Rosny's Le Termite--a not very cheerful
+proceeding, I must say, concerned as it is with the microscopic and
+over-elaborate recital of Noel Servaise's tortured nerves, bodily
+pains, and intellectual phantasma.  At last I tossed the novel aside,
+damned all analytical Frenchmen, and found some measure of relief in
+the more genial and cynical Stendhal.
+
+Over my head I could hear Mr. Mellaire steadily pace up and down.  At
+four the watches changed, and I recognized the age-lag in Mr. Pike's
+promenade.  Half an hour later, just as the steward's alarm went off,
+instantly checked by that light-sleeping Asiatic, the Elsinore began
+to heel over on my side.  I could hear Mr. Pike barking and snarling
+orders, and at times a trample and shuffle of many feet passed over
+my head as the weird crew pulled and hauled.  The Elsinore continued
+to heel over until I could see the water against my port, and then
+she gathered way and dashed ahead at such a rate that I could hear
+the stinging and singing of the foam through the circle of thick
+glass beside me.
+
+The steward brought me coffee, and I read till daylight and after,
+when Wada served me breakfast and helped me dress.  He, too,
+complained of inability to sleep.  He had been bunked with Nancy in
+one of the rooms in the 'midship-house.  Wada described the
+situation.  The tiny room, made of steel, was air-tight when the
+steel door was closed.  And Nancy insisted on keeping the door
+closed.  As a result Wada, in the upper bunk, had stifled.  He told
+me that the air had got so bad that the flame of the lamp, no matter
+how high it was turned, guttered down and all but refused to burn.
+Nancy snored beautifully through it all, while he had been unable to
+close his eyes.
+
+"He is not clean," quoth Wada.  "He is a pig.  No more will I sleep
+in that place."
+
+On the poop I found the Elsinore, with many of her sails furled,
+slashing along through a troubled sea under an overcast sky.  Also I
+found Mr. Mellaire marching up and down, just as I had left him hours
+before, and it took quite a distinct effort for me to realize that he
+had had the watch off between four and eight.  Even then, he told me,
+he had slept from four until half-past seven.
+
+"That is one thing, Mr. Pathurst, I always sleep like a baby . . .
+which means a good conscience, sir, yes, a good conscience."
+
+And while he enunciated the platitude I was uncomfortably aware that
+that alien thing inside his skull was watching me, studying me.
+
+In the cabin Captain West smoked a cigar and read the Bible.  Miss
+West did not appear, and I was grateful that to my sleeplessness the
+curse of sea-sickness had not been added.
+
+Without asking permission of anybody, Wada arranged a sleeping place
+for himself in a far corner of the big after-room, screening the
+corner with a solidly lashed wall of my trunks and empty book boxes.
+
+It was a dreary enough day, no sun, with occasional splatters of rain
+and a persistent crash of seas over the weather rail and swash of
+water across the deck.  With my eyes glued to the cabin ports, which
+gave for'ard along the main deck, I could see the wretched sailors,
+whenever they were given some task of pull and haul, wet through and
+through by the boarding seas.  Several times I saw some of them taken
+off their feet and rolled about in the creaming foam.  And yet,
+erect, unstaggering, with certitude of weight and strength, among
+these rolled men, these clutching, cowering ones, moved either Mr.
+Pike or Mr. Mellaire.  They were never taken off their feet.  They
+never shrank away from a splash of spray or heavier bulk of down-
+falling water.  They had fed on different food, were informed with a
+different spirit, were of iron in contrast with the poor miserables
+they drove to their bidding.
+
+In the afternoon I dozed for half-an-hour in one of the big chairs in
+the cabin.  Had it not been for the violent motion of the ship I
+could have slept there for hours, for the hives did not trouble.
+Captain West, stretched out on the cabin sofa, his feet in carpet
+slippers, slept enviably.  By some instinct, I might say, in the deep
+of sleep, he kept his place and was not rolled off upon the floor.
+Also, he lightly held a half-smoked cigar in one hand.  I watched him
+for an hour, and knew him to be asleep, and marvelled that he
+maintained his easy posture and did not drop the cigar.
+
+After dinner there was no phonograph.  The second dog-watch was Mr.
+Pike's on deck.  Besides, as he explained, the rolling was too
+severe.  It would make the needle jump and scratch his beloved
+records.
+
+And no sleep!  Another weary night of torment, and another dreary,
+overcast day and leaden, troubled sea.  And no Miss West.  Wada, too,
+is sea-sick, although heroically he kept his feet and tried to tend
+on me with glassy, unseeing eyes.  I sent him to his bunk, and read
+through the endless hours until my eyes were tired, and my brain,
+between lack of sleep and over-use, was fuzzy.
+
+Captain West is no conversationalist.  The more I see of him the more
+I am baffled.  I have not yet found a reason for that first
+impression I received of him.  He has all the poise and air of a
+remote and superior being, and yet I wonder if it be not poise and
+air and nothing else.  Just as I had expected, that first meeting,
+ere he spoke a word, to hear fall from his lips words of untold
+beneficence and wisdom, and then heard him utter mere social
+commonplaces, so I now find myself almost forced to conclude that his
+touch of race, and beak of power, and all the tall, aristocratic
+slenderness of him have nothing behind them.
+
+And yet, on the other hand, I can find no reason for rejecting that
+first impression.  He has not shown any strength, but by the same
+token he has not shown any weakness.  Sometimes I wonder what resides
+behind those clear blue eyes.  Certainly I have failed to find any
+intellectual backing.  I tried him out with William James' Varieties
+of Religious Experience.  He glanced at a few pages, then returned it
+to me with the frank statement that it did not interest him.  He has
+no books of his own.  Evidently he is not a reader.  Then what is he?
+I dared to feel him out on politics.  He listened courteously, said
+sometimes yes and sometimes no, and, when I ceased from very
+discouragement, said nothing.
+
+Aloof as the two officers are from the men, Captain West is still
+more aloof from his officers.  I have not seen him address a further
+word to Mr. Mellaire than "Good morning" on the poop.  As for Mr.
+Pike, who eats three times a day with him, scarcely any more
+conversation obtains between them.  And I am surprised by what seems
+the very conspicuous awe with which Mr. Pike seems to regard his
+commander.
+
+Another thing.  What are Captain West's duties?  So far he has done
+nothing, save eat three times a day, smoke many cigars, and each day
+stroll a total of one mile around the poop.  The mates do all the
+work, and hard work it is, four hours on deck and four below, day and
+night with never a variation.  I watch Captain West and am amazed.
+He will loll back in the cabin and stare straight before him for
+hours at a time, until I am almost frantic to demand of him what are
+his thoughts.  Sometimes I doubt that he is thinking at all.  I give
+him up.  I cannot fathom him.
+
+Altogether a depressing day of rain-splatter and wash of water across
+the deck.  I can see, now, that the problem of sailing a ship with
+five thousand tons of coal around the Horn is more serious than I had
+thought.  So deep is the Elsinore in the water that she is like a log
+awash.  Her tall, six-foot bulwarks of steel cannot keep the seas
+from boarding her.  She has not the buoyancy one is accustomed to
+ascribe to ships.  On the contrary, she is weighted down until she is
+dead, so that, for this one day alone, I am appalled at the thought
+of how many thousands of tons of the North Atlantic have boarded her
+and poured out through her spouting scuppers and clanging ports.
+
+Yes, a depressing day.  The two mates have alternated on deck and in
+their bunks.  Captain West has dozed on the cabin sofa or read the
+Bible.  Miss West is still sea-sick.  I have tired myself out with
+reading, and the fuzziness of my unsleeping brain makes for
+melancholy.  Even Wada is anything but a cheering spectacle, crawling
+out of his bunk, as he does at stated intervals, and with sick,
+glassy eyes trying to discern what my needs may be.  I almost wish I
+could get sea-sick myself.  I had never dreamed that a sea voyage
+could be so unenlivening as this one is proving.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+Another morning of overcast sky and leaden sea, and of the Elsinore,
+under half her canvas, clanging her deck ports, spouting water from
+her scuppers, and dashing eastward into the heart of the Atlantic.
+And I have failed to sleep half-an-hour all told.  At this rate, in a
+very short time I shall have consumed all the cream of tartar on the
+ship.  I never have had hives like these before.  I can't understand
+it.  So long as I keep my lamp burning and read I am untroubled.  The
+instant I put out the lamp and drowse off the irritation starts and
+the lumps on my skin begin to form.
+
+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.
+
+This is the first time Steve Roberts has ever seen the sea.  How he
+happened to drift from the western cattle-ranges to New York he did
+not explain, any more than did he explain how he came to ship on the
+Elsinore.  But here he is, not a sailor on horseback, but a cowboy on
+the sea.  He is a small man, but most powerfully built.  His
+shoulders are very broad, and his muscles bulge under his shirt; and
+yet he is slender-waisted, lean-limbed, and hollow-cheeked.  This
+last, however, is not due to sickness or ill-health.  Tyro as he is
+on the sea, Steve Roberts is keen and intelligent . . . yes, and
+crooked.  He has a way of looking straight at one with utmost
+frankness while he talks, and yet it is at such moments I get most
+strongly the impression of crookedness.  But he is a man, if trouble
+should arise, to be reckoned with.  In ways he suggests a kinship
+with the three men Mr. Pike took so instant a prejudice against--Kid
+Twist, Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine.  And I have already noticed, in
+the dog-watches, that it is with this trio that Steve Roberts chums.
+
+The second sailor Miss West rejected, after silently watching him
+work for five minutes, was Mulligan Jacobs, the wisp of a man with
+curvature of the spine.  But before she sent him packing other things
+occurred in which I was concerned.  I was in the room when Mulligan
+Jacobs first came in to go to work, and I could not help observing
+the startled, avid glance he threw at my big shelves of books.  He
+advanced on them in the way a robber might advance on a secret hoard
+of gold, and as a miser would fondle gold so Mulligan Jacobs fondled
+these book-titles with his eyes.
+
+And such eyes!  All time bitterness and venom Mr. Pike had told me
+the man possessed was there in his eyes.  They were small, pale-blue,
+and gimlet-pointed with fire.  His eyelids were inflamed, and but
+served to ensanguine the bitter and cold-blazing intensity of the
+pupils.  The man was constitutionally a hater, and I was not long in
+learning that he hated all things except books.
+
+"Would you care to read some of them?" I said hospitably.
+
+All the caress in his eyes for the books vanished as he turned his
+head to look at me, and ere he spoke I knew that I, too, was hated.
+
+"It's hell, ain't it?--you with a strong body and servants to carry
+for you a weight of books like this, and me with a curved spine that
+puts the pot-hooks of hell-fire into my brain?"
+
+How can I possibly convey the terrible venomousness with which he
+uttered these words?  I know that Mr. Pike, dragging his feet down
+the hall past my open door, gave me a very gratifying sense of
+safety.  Being alone in the room with this man seemed much the same
+as if I were locked in a cage with a tiger-cat.  The devilishness,
+the wickedness, and, above all, the pitch of glaring hatred with
+which the man eyed me and addressed me, were most unpleasant.  I
+swear I knew fear--not calculated caution, not timid apprehension,
+but blind, panic, unreasoned terror.  The malignancy of the creature
+was blood curdling; nor did it require words to convey it:  it poured
+from him, out of his red-rimmed, blazing eyes, out of his withered,
+twisted, tortured face, out of his broken-nailed, crooked talons of
+hands.  And yet, in that very moment of instinctive startle and
+repulsion, the thought was in my mind that with one hand I could take
+the throat of the weazened wisp of a crippled thing and throttle the
+malformed life out of it.
+
+But there was little encouragement in such thought--no more than a
+man might feel in a cave of rattlesnakes or a pit of centipedes, for,
+crush them with his very bulk, nevertheless they would first sink
+their poison into him.  And so with this Mulligan Jacobs.  My fear of
+him was the fear of being infected with his venom.  I could not help
+it; for I caught a quick vision of the black and broken teeth I had
+seen in his mouth sinking into my flesh, polluting me, eating me with
+their acid, destroying me.
+
+One thing was very clear.  In the creature was no fear.  Absolutely,
+he did not know fear.  He was as devoid of it as the fetid slime one
+treads underfoot in nightmares.  Lord, Lord! that is what the thing
+was, a nightmare.
+
+"You suffer pain often?" I asked, attempting to get myself in hand by
+the calculated use of sympathy.
+
+"The hooks are in me, in the brain, white-hot hooks that burn an'
+burn," was his reply.  "But by what damnable right do you have all
+these books, and time to read 'em, an' all night in to read 'em, an'
+soak in them, when me brain's on fire, and I'm watch and watch, an'
+me broken spine won't let me carry half a hundredweight of books
+about with me?"
+
+Another madman, was my conclusion; and yet I was quickly compelled to
+modify it, for, thinking to play with a rattle-brain, I asked him
+what were the books up to half a hundredweight he carried, and what
+were the writers he preferred.  His library, he told me, among other
+things included, first and f ore-most, a complete Byron.  Next was a
+complete Shakespeare; also a complete Browning in one volume.  A full
+hall-dozen he had in the forecastle of Renan, a stray volume of
+Lecky, Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, several of Carlyle, and
+eight or ten of Zola.  Zola he swore by, though Anatole France was a
+prime favourite.
+
+He might be mad, was my revised judgment, but he was most differently
+mad from any madman I had ever encountered.  I talked on with him
+about books and bookmen.  He was most universal and particular.  He
+liked O. Henry.  George Moore was a cad and a four--flusher.  Edgar
+Saltus' Anatomy of Negation was profounder than Kant.  Maeterlinck
+was a mystic frump.  Emerson was a charlatan.  Ibsen's Ghosts was the
+stuff, though Ibsen was a bourgeois lickspittler.  Heine was the real
+goods.  He preferred Flaubert to de Maupassant, and Turgenieff to
+Tolstoy; but Gorky was the best of the Russian boiling.  John
+Masefield knew what he was writing about, and Joseph Conrad was
+living too fat to turn out the stuff he first turned out.
+
+And so it went, the most amazing running commentary on literature I
+had ever heard.  I was hugely interested, and I quizzed him on
+sociology.  Yes, he was a Red, and knew his Kropotkin, but he was no
+anarchist.  On the other hand, political action was a blind-alley
+leading to reformism and quietism.  Political socialism had gone to
+pot, while industrial unionism was the logical culmination of
+Marxism.  He was a direct actionist.  The mass strike was the thing.
+Sabotage, not merely as a withdrawal of efficiency, but as a keen
+destruction-of-profits policy, was the weapon.  Of course he believed
+in the propaganda of the deed, but a man was a fool to talk about it.
+His job was to do it and keep his mouth shut, and the way to do it
+was to shoot the evidence.  Of course, HE talked; but what of it?
+Didn't he have curvature of the spine?  He didn't care when he got
+his, and woe to the man who tried to give it to him.
+
+And while he talked he hated me.  He seemed to hate the things he
+talked about and espoused.  I judged him to be of Irish descent, and
+it was patent that he was self-educated.  When I asked him how it was
+he had come to sea, he replied that the hooks in his brain were as
+hot one place as another.  He unbent enough to tell me that he had
+been an athlete, when he was a young man, a professional foot-racer
+in Eastern Canada.  And then his disease had come upon him, and for a
+quarter of a century he had been a common tramp and vagabond, and he
+bragged of a personal acquaintance with more city prisons and county
+jails than any man that ever existed.
+
+It was at this stage in our talk that Mr. Pike thrust his head into
+the doorway.  He did not address me, but he favoured me with a most
+sour look of disapprobation.  Mr. Pike's countenance is almost
+petrified.  Any expression seems to crack it--with the exception of
+sourness.  But when Mr. Pike wants to look sour he has no difficulty
+at all.  His hard-skinned, hard-muscled face just flows to sourness.
+Evidently he condemned my consuming Mulligan Jacobs's time.  To
+Mulligan Jacobs he said in his customary snarl:
+
+"Go on an' get to your work.  Chew the rag in your watch below."
+
+And then I got a sample of Mulligan Jacobs.  The venom of hatred I
+had already seen in his face was as nothing compared with what now
+was manifested.  I had a feeling that, like stroking a cat in cold
+weather, did I touch his face it would crackle electric sparks.
+
+"Aw, go to hell, you old stiff," said Mulligan Jacobs.
+
+If ever I had seen murder in a man s eyes, I saw it then in the
+mate's.  He lunged into the room, his arm tensed to strike, the hand
+not open but clenched.  One stroke of that bear's paw and Mulligan
+Jacobs and all the poisonous flame of him would have been quenched in
+the everlasting darkness.  But he was unafraid.  Like a cornered rat,
+like a rattlesnake on the trail, unflinching, sneering, snarling, he
+faced the irate giant.  More than that.  He even thrust his face
+forward on its twisted neck to meet the blow.
+
+It was too much for Mr. Pike; it was too impossible to strike that
+frail, crippled, repulsive thing.
+
+"It's me that can call you the stiff," said Mulligan Jacobs.  "I
+ain't no Larry.  G'wan an' hit me.  Why don't you hit me?"
+
+And Mr. Pike was too appalled to strike the creature.  He, whose
+whole career on the sea had been that of a bucko driver in a
+shambles, could not strike this fractured splinter of a man.  I swear
+that Mr. Pike actually struggled with himself to strike.  I saw it.
+But he could not.
+
+"Go on to your work," he ordered.  "The voyage is young yet,
+Mulligan.  I'll have you eatin' outa my hand before it's over."
+
+And Mulligan Jacobs's face thrust another inch closer on its twisted
+neck, while all his concentrated rage seemed on the verge of bursting
+into incandescence.  So immense and tremendous was the bitterness
+that consumed him that he could find no words to clothe it.  All he
+could do was to hawk and guttural deep in his throat until I should
+not have been surprised had he spat poison in the mate's face.
+
+And Mr. Pike turned on his heel and left the room, beaten, absolutely
+beaten.
+
+
+I can't get it out of my mind.  The picture of the mate and the
+cripple facing each other keeps leaping up under my eyelids.  This is
+different from the books and from what I know of existence.  It is
+revelation.  Life is a profoundly amazing thing.  What is this bitter
+flame that informs Mulligan Jacobs?  How dare he--with no hope of any
+profit, not a hero, not a leader of a forlorn hope nor a martyr to
+God, but a mere filthy, malignant rat--how dare he, I ask myself, be
+so defiant, so death-inviting?  The spectacle of him makes me doubt
+all the schools of the metaphysicians and the realists.  No
+philosophy has a leg to stand on that does not account for Mulligan
+Jacobs.  And all the midnight oil of philosophy I have burned does
+not enable me to account for Mulligan Jacobs . . . unless he be
+insane.  And then I don't know.
+
+Was there ever such a freight of human souls on the sea as these
+humans with whom I am herded on the Elsinore?
+
+
+And now, working in my rooms, white-leading and turpentining, is
+another one of them.  I have learned his name.  It is Arthur Deacon.
+He is the pallid, furtive-eyed man whom I observed the first day when
+the men were routed out of the forecastle to man the windlass--the
+man I so instantly adjudged a drug-fiend.  He certainly looks it.
+
+I asked Mr. Pike his estimate of the man.
+
+"White slaver," was his answer.  "Had to skin outa New York to save
+his skin.  He'll be consorting with those other three larrakins I
+gave a piece of my mind to."
+
+"And what do you make of them?" I asked.
+
+"A month's wages to a pound of tobacco that a district attorney, or a
+committee of some sort investigating the New York police is lookin'
+for 'em right now.  I'd like to have the cash somebody's put up in
+New York to send them on this get-away.  Oh, I know the breed."
+
+"Gangsters?" I queried.
+
+"That's what.  But I'll trim their dirty hides.  I'll trim 'em.  Mr.
+Pathurst, this voyage ain't started yet, and this old stiff's a long
+way from his last legs.  I'll give them a run for their money.  Why,
+I've buried better men than the best of them aboard this craft.  And
+I'll bury some of them that think me an old stiff."
+
+He paused and looked at me solemnly for a full half minute.
+
+"Mr. Pathurst, I've heard you're a writing man.  And when they told
+me at the agents' you were going along passenger, I made a point of
+going to see your play.  Now I'm not saying anything about that play,
+one way or the other.  But I just want to tell you, that as a writing
+man you'll get stuff in plenty to write about on this voyage.  Hell's
+going to pop, believe me, and right here before you is the stiff
+that'll do a lot of the poppin'.  Some several and plenty's going to
+learn who's an old stiff."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+
+How I have been sleeping!  This relief of renewed normality is
+delicious--thanks to Miss West.  Now why did not Captain West, or Mr.
+Pike, both experienced men, diagnose my trouble for me?  And then
+there was Wada.  But no; it required Miss West.  Again I contemplate
+the problem of woman.  It is just such an incident among a million
+others that keeps the thinker's gaze fixed on woman.  They truly are
+the mothers and the conservers of the race.
+
+Rail as I will at Miss West's red-blood complacency of life, yet I
+must bow my head to her life-giving to me.  Practical, sensible,
+hard-headed, a comfort-maker and a nest-builder, possessing all the
+distressing attributes of the blind-instinctive race-mother,
+nevertheless I must confess I am most grateful that she is along.
+Had she not been on the Elsinore, by this time I should have been so
+overwrought from lack of sleep that I would be biting my veins and
+howling--as mad a hatter as any of our cargo of mad hatters.  And so
+we come to it--the everlasting mystery of woman.  One may not be able
+to get along with her; yet is it patent, as of old time, that one
+cannot get along without her.  But, regarding Miss West, I do
+entertain one fervent hope, namely, that she is not a suffragette.
+That would be too much.
+
+Captain West may be a Samurai, but he is also human.  He was really a
+bit fluttery this morning, in his reserved, controlled way, when he
+regretted the plague of vermin I had encountered in my rooms.  It
+seems he has a keen sense of hospitality, and that he is my host on
+the Elsinore, and that, although he is oblivious of the existence of
+the crew, he is not oblivious of my comfort.  By his few expressions
+of regret it appears that he cannot forgive himself for his careless
+acceptance of the erroneous diagnosis of my affliction.  Yes; Captain
+West is a real human man.  Is he not the father of the slender-faced,
+strapping-bodied Miss West?
+
+"Thank goodness that's settled," was Miss West's exclamation this
+morning, when we met on the poop and after I had told her how
+gloriously I had slept.
+
+And then, that nightmare episode dismissed because, forsooth, for all
+practical purposes--it was settled, she next said:
+
+"Come on and see the chickens."
+
+And I accompanied her along the spidery bridge to the top of the
+'midship-house, to look at the one rooster and the four dozen fat
+hens in the ship's chicken-coop.
+
+As I accompanied her, my eyes dwelling pleasurably on that vital gait
+of hers as she preceded me, I could not help reflecting that, coming
+down on the tug from Baltimore, she had promised not to bother me nor
+require to be entertained.
+
+COME AND SEE THE CHICKENS!--Oh, the sheer female possessiveness of
+that simple invitation!  For effrontery of possessiveness is there
+anything that can exceed the nest-making, planet-populating, female,
+human woman?--COME AND SEE THE CHICKENS!  Oh, well, the sailors
+for'ard may be hard-bitten, but I can promise Miss West that here,
+aft, is one male passenger, unmarried and never married, who is an
+equally hard-bitten adventurer on the sea of matrimony.  When I go
+over the census I remember at least several women, superior to Miss
+West, who trilled their song of sex and failed to shipwreck me.
+
+As I read over what I have written I notice how the terminology of
+the sea has stolen into my mental processes.  Involuntarily I think
+in terms of the sea.  Another thing I notice is my excessive use of
+superlatives.  But then, everything on board the Elsinore is
+superlative.  I find myself continually combing my vocabulary in
+quest of just and adequate words.  Yet am I aware of failure.  For
+example, all the words of all the dictionaries would fail to
+approximate the exceeding terribleness of Mulligan Jacobs.
+
+But to return to the chickens.  Despite every precaution, it was
+evident that they had had a hard time during the past days of storm.
+It was equally evident that Miss West, even during her sea-sickness,
+had not neglected them.  Under her directions the steward had
+actually installed a small oil-stove in the big coop, and she now
+beckoned him up to the top of the house as he was passing for'ard to
+the galley.  It was for the purpose of instructing him further in the
+matter of feeding them.
+
+Where were the grits?  They needed grits.  He didn't know.  The sack
+had been lost among the miscellaneous stores, but Mr. Pike had
+promised a couple of sailors that afternoon to overhaul the
+lazarette.
+
+"Plenty of ashes," she told the steward.  "Remember.  And if a sailor
+doesn't clean the coop each day, you report to me.  And give them
+only clean food--no spoiled scraps, mind.  How many eggs yesterday?"
+
+The steward's eyes glistened with enthusiasm as he said he had got
+nine the day before and expected fully a dozen to-day.
+
+"The poor things," said Miss West--to me.  "You've no idea how bad
+weather reduces their laying."  She turned back upon the steward.
+"Mind now, you watch and find out which hens don't lay, and kill them
+first.  And you ask me each time before you kill one."
+
+I found myself neglected, out there on top the draughty house, while
+Miss West talked chickens with the Chinese ex-smuggler.  But it gave
+me opportunity to observe her.  It is the length of her eyes that
+accentuates their steadiness of gaze--helped, of course, by the dark
+brows and lashes.  I noted again the warm gray of her eyes.  And I
+began to identify her, to locate her.  She is a physical type of the
+best of the womanhood of old New England.  Nothing spare nor meagre,
+nor bred out, but generously strong, and yet not quite what one would
+call robust.  When I said she was strapping-bodied I erred.  I must
+fall back on my other word, which will have to be the last:  Miss
+West is vital-bodied.  That is the key-word.
+
+When we had regained the poop, and Miss West had gone below, I
+ventured my customary pleasantry with Mr. Mellaire of:
+
+"And has O'Sullivan bought Andy Fay's sea-boots yet?"
+
+"Not yet, Mr. Pathurst," was the reply, "though he nearly got them
+early this morning.  Come on along, sir, and I'll show you."
+
+Vouchsafing no further information, the second mate led the way along
+the bridge, across the 'midship-house and the for'ard-house.  From
+the edge of the latter, looking down on Number One hatch, I saw two
+Japanese, with sail-needles and twine, sewing up a canvas-swathed
+bundle that unmistakably contained a human body.
+
+"O'Sullivan used a razor," said Mr. Mellaire.
+
+"And that is Andy Fay?" I cried.
+
+"No, sir, not Andy.  That's a Dutchman.  Christian Jespersen was his
+name on the articles.  He got in O'Sullivan's way when O'Sullivan
+went after the boots.  That's what saved Andy.  Andy was more active.
+Jespersen couldn't get out of his own way, much less out of
+O'Sullivan's.  There's Andy sitting over there."
+
+I followed Mr. Mellaire's gaze, and saw the burnt-out, aged little
+Scotchman squatted on a spare spar and sucking a pipe.  One arm was
+in a sling and his head was bandaged.  Beside him squatted Mulligan
+Jacobs.  They were a pair.  Both were blue-eyed, and both were
+malevolent-eyed.  And they were equally emaciated.  It was easy to
+see that they had discovered early in the voyage their kinship of
+bitterness.  Andy Fay, I knew, was sixty-three years old, although he
+looked a hundred; and Mulligan Jacobs, who was only about fifty, made
+up for the difference by the furnace-heat of hatred that burned in
+his face and eyes.  I wondered if he sat beside the injured bitter
+one in some sense of sympathy, or if he were there in order to gloat.
+
+Around the corner of the house strolled Shorty, flinging up to me his
+inevitable clown-grin.  One hand was swathed in bandages.
+
+"Must have kept Mr. Pike busy," was my comment to Mr. Mellaire.
+
+"He was sewing up cripples about all his watch from four till eight."
+
+"What?" I asked.  "Are there any more?"
+
+"One more, sir, a sheeny.  I didn't know his name before, but Mr.
+Pike got it--Isaac B. Chantz.  I never saw in all my life at sea as
+many sheenies as are on board the Elsinore right now.  Sheenies don't
+take to the sea as a rule.  We've certainly got more than our share
+of them.  Chantz isn't badly hurt, but you ought to hear him
+whimper."
+
+"Where's O'Sullivan?" I inquired.
+
+"In the 'midship-house with Davis, and without a mark.  Mr. Pike got
+into the rumpus and put him to sleep with one on the jaw.  And now
+he's lashed down and talking in a trance.  He's thrown the fear of
+God into Davis.  Davis is sitting up in his bunk with a marlin-spike,
+threatening to brain O'Sullivan if he starts to break loose, and
+complaining that it's no way to run a hospital.  He'd have padded
+cells, straitjackets, night and day nurses, and violent wards, I
+suppose--and a convalescents' home in a Queen Anne cottage on the
+poop.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Mellaire sighed.  "This is the funniest
+voyage and the funniest crew I've ever tackled.  It's not going to
+come to a good end.  Anybody can see that with half an eye.  It'll be
+dead of winter off the Horn, and a fo'c's'le full of lunatics and
+cripples to do the work.--Just take a look at that one.  Crazy as a
+bedbug.  He's likely to go overboard any time.''
+
+I followed his glance and saw Tony the Greek, the one who had sprung
+overboard the first day.  He had just come around the corner of the
+house, and, beyond one arm in a sling, seemed in good condition.  He
+walked easily and with strength, a testimonial to the virtues of Mr.
+Pike's rough surgery.
+
+My eyes kept returning to the canvas-covered body of Christian
+Jespersen, and to the Japanese who sewed with sail-twine his sailor's
+shroud.  One of them had his right hand in a huge wrapping of cotton
+and bandage.
+
+"Did he get hurt, too?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir.  He's the sail-maker.  They're both sail-makers.  He's a
+good one, too.  Yatsuda is his name.  But he's just had blood-
+poisoning and lain in hospital in New York for eighteen months.  He
+flatly refused to let them amputate.  He's all right now, but the
+hand is dead, all except the thumb and fore-finger, and he's teaching
+himself to sew with his left hand.  He's as clever a sail-maker as
+you'll find at sea."
+
+"A lunatic and a razor make a cruel combination," I remarked.
+
+"It's put five men out of commission," Mr. Mellaire sighed.  "There's
+O'Sullivan himself, and Christian Jespersen gone, and Andy Fay, and
+Shorty, and the sheeny.  And the voyage not started yet.  And there's
+Lars with the broken leg, and Davis laid off for keeps--why, sir,
+we'll soon be that weak it'll take both watches to set a staysail."
+
+Nevertheless, while I talked in a matter-of-fact way with Mr.
+Mellaire, I was shocked--no; not because death was aboard with us.  I
+have stood by my philosophic guns too long to be shocked by death, or
+by murder.  What affected me was the utter, stupid bestiality of the
+affair.  Even murder--murder for cause--I can understand.  It is
+comprehensible that men should kill one another in the passion of
+love, of hatred, of patriotism, of religion.  But this was different.
+Here was killing without cause, an orgy of blind-brutishness, a thing
+monstrously irrational.
+
+Later on, strolling with Possum on the main deck, as I passed the
+open door of the hospital I heard the muttering chant of O'Sullivan,
+and peeped in.  There he lay, lashed fast on his back in the lower
+bunk, rolling his eyes and raving.  In the top bunk, directly above,
+lay Charles Davis, calmly smoking a pipe.  I looked for the marlin-
+spike.  There it was, ready to hand, on the bedding beside him.
+
+"It's hell, ain't it, sir?" was his greeting.  "And how am I goin' to
+get any sleep with that baboon chattering away there.  He never lets
+up--keeps his chin-music goin' right along when he's asleep, only
+worse.  The way he grits his teeth is something awful.  Now I leave
+it to you, sir, is it right to put a crazy like that in with a sick
+man?  And I am a sick man.''
+
+While he talked the massive form of Mr. Pike loomed beside me and
+halted just out of sight of the man in the bunk.  And the man talked
+on.
+
+"By rights, I oughta have that lower bunk.  It hurts me to crawl up
+here.  It's inhumanity, that's what it is, and sailors at sea are
+better protected by the law than they used to be.  And I'll have you
+for a witness to this before the court when we get to Seattle."
+
+Mr. Pike stepped into the doorway.
+
+"Shut up, you damned sea-lawyer, you," he snarled.  "Haven't you
+played a dirty trick enough comin' on board this ship in your
+condition?  And if I have anything more out of you . . . "
+
+Mr. Pike was so angry that he could not complete the threat.  After
+spluttering for a moment he made a fresh attempt.
+
+"You . . . you . . . well, you annoy me, that's what you do."
+
+"I know the law, sir," Davis answered promptly.  "I worked full able
+seaman on this here ship.  All hands can testify to that.  I was
+aloft from the start.  Yes, sir, and up to my neck in salt water day
+and night.  And you had me below trimmin' coal.  I did full duty and
+more, until this sickness got me--"
+
+"You were petrified and rotten before you ever saw this ship," Mr.
+Pike broke in.
+
+"The court'll decide that, sir," replied the imperturbable Davis.
+
+"And if you go to shoutin' off your sea-lawyer mouth," Mr. Pike
+continued, "I'll jerk you out of that and show you what real work
+is."
+
+"An' lay the owners open for lovely damages when we get in," Davis
+sneered.
+
+"Not if I bury you before we get in," was the mate's quick, grim
+retort.  "And let me tell you, Davis, you ain't the first sea-lawyer
+I've dropped over the side with a sack of coal to his feet."
+
+Mr. Pike turned, with a final "Damned sea-lawyer!" and started along
+the deck.  I was walking behind him when he stopped abruptly.
+
+"Mr. Pathurst."
+
+Not as an officer to a passenger did he thus address me.  His tone
+was imperative, and I gave heed.
+
+"Mr. Pathurst.  From now on the less you see aboard this ship the
+better.  That is all."
+
+And again he turned on his heel and went his way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+
+No, the sea is not a gentle place.  It must be the very hardness of
+the life that makes all sea-people hard.  Of course, Captain West is
+unaware that his crew exists, and Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire never
+address the men save to give commands.  But Miss West, who is more
+like myself, a passenger, ignores the men.  She does not even say
+good-morning to the man at the wheel when she first comes on deck.
+Nevertheless I shall, at least to the man at the wheel.  Am I not a
+passenger?
+
+Which reminds me.  Technically I am not a passenger.  The Elsinore
+has no licence to carry passengers, and I am down on the articles as
+third mate and am supposed to receive thirty-five dollars a month.
+Wada is down as cabin boy, although I paid a good price for his
+passage and he is my servant.
+
+Not much time is lost at sea in getting rid of the dead.  Within an
+hour after I had watched the sail-makers at work Christian Jespersen
+was slid overboard, feet first, a sack of coal to his feet to sink
+him.  It was a mild, calm day, and the Elsinore, logging a lazy two
+knots, was not hove to for the occasion.  At the last moment Captain
+West came for'ard, prayer-book in hand, read the brief service for
+burial at sea, and returned immediately aft.  It was the first time I
+had seen him for'ard.
+
+I shall not bother to describe the burial.  All I shall say of it is
+that it was as sordid as Christian Jespersen's life had been and as
+his death had been.
+
+As for Miss West, she sat in a deck-chair on the poop busily engaged
+with some sort of fancy work.  When Christian Jespersen and his coal
+splashed into the sea the crew immediately dispersed, the watch below
+going to its bunks, the watch on deck to its work.  Not a minute
+elapsed ere Mr. Mellaire was giving orders and the men were pulling
+and hauling.  So I returned to the poop to be unpleasantly impressed
+by Miss West's smiling unconcern.
+
+"Well, he's buried," I observed.
+
+"Oh," she said, with all the tonelessness of disinterest, and went on
+with her stitching.
+
+She must have sensed my frame of mind, for, after a moment, she
+paused from her sewing and looked at me
+
+Your first sea funeral, Mr. Pathurst?
+
+"Death at sea does not seem to affect you," I said bluntly.
+
+"Not any more than on the land."  She shrugged her shoulders.  "So
+many people die, you know.  And when they are strangers to you . . .
+well, what do you do on the land when you learn that some workers
+have been killed in a factory you pass every day coming to town?  It
+is the same on the sea."
+
+"It's too bad we are a hand short," I said deliberately.
+
+It did not miss her.  Just as deliberately she replied:
+
+"Yes, isn't it?  And so early in the voyage, too."  She looked at me,
+and when I could not forbear a smile of appreciation she smiled back.
+
+"Oh, I know very well, Mr. Pathurst, that you think me a heartless
+wretch.  But it isn't that it's . . . it's the sea, I suppose.  And
+yet, I didn't know this man.  I don't remember ever having seen him.
+At this stage of the voyage I doubt if I could pick out half-a-dozen
+of the sailors as men I had ever laid eyes on.  So why vex myself
+with even thinking of this stupid stranger who was killed by another
+stupid stranger?  As well might one die of grief with reading the
+murder columns of the daily papers."
+
+"And yet, it seems somehow different," I contended.
+
+"Oh, you'll get used to it," she assured me cheerfully, and returned
+to her sewing.
+
+I asked her if she had read Moody's Ship of Souls, but she had not.
+I searched her out further.  She liked Browning, and was especially
+fond of The Ring and the Book.  This was the key to her.  She cared
+only for healthful literature--for the literature that exposits the
+vital lies of life.
+
+For instance, the mention of Schopenhauer produced smiles and
+laughter.  To her all the philosophers of pessimism were laughable.
+The red blood of her would not permit her to take them seriously.  I
+tried her out with a conversation I had had with De Casseres shortly
+before leaving New York.  De Casseres, after tracing Jules de
+Gaultier's philosophic genealogy back to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
+had concluded with the proposition that out of their two formulas de
+Gaultier had constructed an even profounder formula.  The "Will-to-
+Live" of the one and the "Will-to-Power" of the other were, after
+all, only parts of de Gaultier's supreme generalization, the "Will-
+to-Illusion."
+
+I flatter myself that even De Casseres would have been pleased with
+the way I repeated his argument.  And when I had concluded it, Miss
+West promptly demanded if the realists might not be fooled by their
+own phrases as often and as completely as were the poor common
+mortals with the vital lies they never questioned.
+
+And there we were.  An ordinary young woman, who had never vexed her
+brains with ultimate problems, hears such things stated for the first
+time, and immediately, and with a laugh, sweeps them all away.  I
+doubt not that De Casseres would have agreed with her.
+
+"Do you believe in God?" I asked rather abruptly.  She dropped her
+sewing into her lap, looked at me meditatively, then gazed on and
+away across the flashing sea and up into the azure dome of sky.  And
+finally, with true feminine evasion, she replied:
+
+"My father does."
+
+"But you?" I insisted.
+
+"I really don't know.  I don't bother my head about such things.  I
+used to when I was a little girl.  And yet . . . yes, surely I
+believe in God.  At times, when I am not thinking about it at all, I
+am very sure, and my faith that all is well is just as strong as the
+faith of your Jewish friend in the phrases of the philosophers.
+That's all it comes to, I suppose, in every case--faith.  But, as I
+say, why bother?"
+
+"Ah, I have you now, Miss West!" I cried.  "You are a true daughter
+of Herodias."
+
+"It doesn't sound nice," she said with a moue.
+
+"And it isn't," I exulted.  "Nevertheless, it is what you are.  It is
+Arthur Symon's poem, The Daughters of Herodias.  Some day I shall
+read it to you, and you will answer.  I know you will answer that
+you, too, have looked often upon the stars."
+
+We had just got upon the subject of music, of which she possesses a
+surprisingly solid knowledge, and she was telling me that Debussy and
+his school held no particular charm for her, when Possum set up a
+wild yelping.
+
+The puppy had strayed for'ard along the bridge to the 'midship-house,
+and had evidently been investigating the chickens when his disaster
+came upon him.  So shrill was his terror that we both stood up.  He
+was dashing along the bridge toward us at full speed, yelping at
+every jump and continually turning his head back in the direction
+whence he came.
+
+I spoke to him and held out my hand, and was rewarded with a snap and
+clash of teeth as he scuttled past.  Still with head turned back, he
+went on along the poop.  Before I could apprehend his danger, Mr.
+Pike and Miss West were after him.  The mate was the nearer, and with
+a magnificent leap gained the rail just in time to intercept Possum,
+who was blindly going overboard under the slender railing.  With a
+sort of scooping kick Mr. Pike sent the animal rolling half across
+the poop.  Howling and snapping more violently, Possum regained his
+feet and staggered on toward the opposite railing.
+
+"Don't touch him!" Mr. Pike cried, as Miss West showed her intention
+of catching the crazed little animal with her hands.  "Don't touch'm!
+He's got a fit."
+
+But it did not deter her.  He was half-way under the railing when she
+caught him up and held him at arm's length while he howled and barked
+and slavered.
+
+"It's a fit," said Mr. Pike, as the terrier collapsed and lay on the
+deck jerking convulsively.
+
+"Perhaps a chicken pecked him," said Miss West.  "At any rate, get a
+bucket of water."
+
+"Better let me take him," I volunteered helplessly, for I was
+unfamiliar with fits.
+
+"No; it's all right," she answered.  "I'll take charge of him.  The
+cold water is what he needs.  He got too close to the coop, and a
+peck on the nose frightened him into the fit."
+
+"First time I ever heard of a fit coming that way," Mr. Pike
+remarked, as he poured water over the puppy under Miss West's
+direction.  "It's just a plain puppy fit.  They all get them at sea."
+
+"I think it was the sails that caused it," I argued.  "I've noticed
+that he is very afraid of them.  When they flap, he crouches down in
+terror and starts to run.  You noticed how he ran with his head
+turned back?"
+
+"I've seen dogs with fits do that when there was nothing to frighten
+them," Mr. Pike contended.
+
+"It was a fit, no matter what caused it," Miss West stated
+conclusively.  "Which means that he has not been fed properly.  From
+now on I shall feed him.  You tell your boy that, Mr. Pathurst.
+Nobody is to feed Possum anything without my permission."
+
+At this juncture Wada arrived with Possum's little sleeping box, and
+they prepared to take him below.
+
+"It was splendid of you, Miss West," I said, "and rash, as well, and
+I won't attempt to thank you.  But I tell you what-you take him.
+He's your dog now."
+
+She laughed and shook her head as I opened the chart-house door for
+her to pass.
+
+"No; but I'll take care of him for you.  Now don't bother to come
+below.  This is my affair, and you would only be in the way.  Wada
+will help me."
+
+And I was rather surprised, as I returned to my deck chair and sat
+down, to find how affected I was by the little episode.  I
+remembered, at the first, that my pulse had been distinctly
+accelerated with the excitement of what had taken place.  And
+somehow, as I leaned back in my chair and lighted a cigarette, the
+strangeness of the whole voyage vividly came to me.  Miss West and I
+talk philosophy and art on the poop of a stately ship in a circle of
+flashing sea, while Captain West dreams of his far home, and Mr. Pike
+and Mr. Mellaire stand watch and watch and snarl orders, and the
+slaves of men pull and haul, and Possum has fits, and Andy Fay and
+Mulligan Jacobs burn with hatred unconsumable, and the small-handed
+half-caste Chinese cooks for all, and Sundry Buyers perpetually
+presses his abdomen, and O'Sullivan raves in the steel cell of the
+'midship-house, and Charles Davis lies about him nursing a marlin-
+spike, and Christian Jespersen, miles astern, is deep sunk in the sea
+with a sack of coal at his feet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+
+Two weeks out to-day, on a balmy sea, under a cloud-flecked sky, and
+slipping an easy eight knots through the water to a light easterly
+wind.  Captain West said he was almost convinced that it was the
+north-east trade.  Also, I have learned that the Elsinore, in order
+to avoid being jammed down on Cape San Roque, on the Brazil coast,
+must first fight eastward almost to the coast of Africa.  On
+occasion, on this traverse, the Cape Verde Islands are raised.  No
+wonder the voyage from Baltimore to Seattle is reckoned at eighteen
+thousand miles.
+
+I found Tony, the suicidal Greek, steering this morning when I came
+on deck.  He seemed sensible enough, and quite rationally took off
+his hat when I said good morning to him.  The sick men are improving
+nicely, with the exceptions of Charles Davis and O'Sullivan.  The
+latter still is lashed to his bunk, and Mr. Pike has compelled Davis
+to attend on him.  As a result, Davis moves about the deck, bringing
+food and water from the galley and grumbling his wrongs to every
+member of the crew.
+
+Wada told me a strange thing this morning.  It seems that he, the
+steward, and the two sail-makers foregather each evening in the
+cook's room--all being Asiatics--where they talk over ship's gossip.
+They seem to miss little, and Wada brings it all to me.  The thing
+Wada told me was the curious conduct of Mr. Mellaire.  They have sat
+in judgment on him and they do not approve of his intimacy with the
+three gangsters for'ard.
+
+"But, Wada," I said, "he is not that kind of a man.  He is very hard
+and rough with all the sailors.  He treats them like dogs.  You know
+that."
+
+"Sure," assented Wada.  "Other sailors he do that.  But those three
+very bad men he make good friends.  Louis say second mate belong aft
+like first mate and captain.  No good for second mate talk like
+friend with sailors.  No good for ship.  Bime by trouble.  You see.
+Louis say Mr. Mellaire crazy do that kind funny business."
+
+All of which, if it were true, and I saw no reason to doubt it, led
+me to inquire.  It seems that the gangsters, Kid Twist, Nosey Murphy,
+and Bert Rhine, have made themselves cocks of the forecastle.
+Standing together, they have established a reign of terror and are
+ruling the forecastle.  All their training in New York in ruling the
+slum brutes and weaklings in their gangs fits them for the part.  As
+near as I could make out from Wada's tale, they first began on the
+two Italians in their watch, Guido Bombini and Mike Cipriani.  By
+means I cannot guess, they have reduced these two wretches to
+trembling slaves.  As an instance, the other night, according to the
+ship's gossip, Bert Rhine made Bombini get out of bed and fetch him a
+drink of water.
+
+Isaac Chantz is likewise under their rule, though he is treated more
+kindly.  Herman Lunkenheimer, a good-natured but simple-minded dolt
+of a German, received a severe beating from the three because he
+refused to wash some of Nosey Murphy's dirty garments.  The two
+bosuns are in fear of their lives with this clique, which is growing;
+for Steve Roberts, the ex-cowboy, and the white-slaver, Arthur
+Deacon, have been admitted to it.
+
+I am the only one aft who possesses this information, and I confess I
+don't know what to do with it.  I know that Mr. Pike would tell me to
+mind my own business.  Mr. Mellaire is out of the question.  And
+Captain West hasn't any crew.  And I fear Miss West would laugh at me
+for my pains.  Besides, I understand that every forecastle has its
+bully, or group of bullies; so this is merely a forecastle matter and
+no concern of the afterguard.  The ship's work goes on.  The only
+effect I can conjecture is an increase in the woes of the
+unfortunates who must bow to this petty tyranny for'ard.
+
+- Oh, and another thing Wada told me.  The gangster clique has
+established its privilege of taking first cut of the salt-beef in the
+meat-kids.  After that, the rest take the rejected pieces.  But I
+will say, contrary to my expectations, the Elsinore's forecastle is
+well found.  The men are not on whack.  They have all they want to
+eat.  A barrel of good hardtack stands always open in the forecastle.
+Louis bakes fresh bread for the sailors three times a week.  The
+variety of food is excellent, if not the quality.  There is no
+restriction in the amount of water for drinking purposes.  And I can
+only say that in this good weather the men's appearance improves
+daily.
+
+Possum is very sick.  Each day he grows thinner.  Scarcely can I call
+him a perambulating skeleton, because he is too weak to walk.  Each
+day, in this delightful weather, Wada, under Miss West's
+instructions, brings him up in his box and places him out of the wind
+on the awninged poop.  She has taken full charge of the puppy, and
+has him sleep in her room each night.  I found her yesterday, in the
+chart-room, reading up the Elsinore's medical library.  Later on she
+overhauled the medicine-chest.  She is essentially the life-giving,
+life-conserving female of the species.  All her ways, for herself and
+for others, make toward life.
+
+And yet--and this is so curious it gives me pause--she shows no
+interest in the sick and injured for'ard.
+
+They are to her cattle, or less than cattle.  As the life-giver and
+race-conserver, I should have imagined her a Lady Bountiful, tripping
+regularly into that ghastly steel-walled hospital room of the
+midship-house and dispensing gruel, sunshine, and even tracts.  On
+the contrary, as with her father, these wretched humans do not exist.
+
+And still again, when the steward jammed a splinter under his nail,
+she was greatly concerned, and manipulated the tweezers and pulled it
+out.  The Elsinore reminds me of a slave plantation before the war;
+and Miss West is the lady of the plantation, interested only in the
+house-slaves.  The field slaves are beyond her ken or consideration,
+and the sailors are the Elsinore's field slaves.  Why, several days
+back, when Wada suffered from a severe headache, she was quite
+perturbed, and dosed him with aspirin.  Well, I suppose this is all
+due to her sea-training.  She has been trained hard.
+
+We have the phonograph in the second dog-watch every other evening in
+this fine weather.  On the alternate evenings this period is Mr.
+Pike's watch on deck.  But when it is his evening below, even at
+dinner, he betrays his anticipation by an eagerness ill suppressed.
+And yet, on each such occasion, he punctiliously waits until we ask
+if we are to be favoured with music.  Then his hard-bitten face
+lights up, although the lines remain hard as ever, hiding his
+ecstasy, and he remarks gruffly, off-handedly, that he guesses he can
+play over a few records.  And so, every other evening, we watch this
+killer and driver, with lacerated knuckles and gorilla paws, brushing
+and caressing his beloved discs, ravished with the music of them,
+and, as he told me early in the voyage, at such moments believing in
+God.
+
+A strange experience is this life on the Elsinore.  I confess, while
+it seems that I have been here for long months, so familiar am I with
+every detail of the little round of living, that I cannot orient
+myself.  My mind continually strays from things non-understandable to
+things incomprehensible--from our Samurai captain with the exquisite
+Gabriel voice that is heard only in the tumult and thunder of storm;
+on to the ill-treated and feeble-minded faun with the bright, liquid,
+pain-filled eyes; to the three gangsters who rule the forecastle and
+seduce the second mate; to the perpetually muttering O'Sullivan in
+the steel-walled hole and the complaining Davis nursing the marlin-
+spike in the upper bunk; and to Christian Jespersen somewhere adrift
+in this vastitude of ocean with a coal-sack at his feet.  At such
+moments all the life on the Elsinore becomes as unreal as life to the
+philosopher is unreal.
+
+I am a philosopher.  Therefore, it is unreal to me.  But is it unreal
+to Messrs.  Pike and Mellaire? to the lunatics and idiots? to the
+rest of the stupid herd for'ard?  I cannot help remembering a remark
+of De Casseres.  It was over the wine in Mouquin's.  Said he:  "The
+profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is,
+against the Real.  He shuns facts from his infancy.  His life is a
+perpetual evasion.  Miracle, chimera and to-morrow keep him alive.
+He lives on fiction and myth.  It is the Lie that makes him free.
+Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis;
+men dare not.  The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the
+Real because he has no imagination.  Man, awake, is compelled to seek
+a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism,
+Immortality, Alcohol, Love.  From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to
+Maya-Lie."
+
+Ben will agree that I have quoted him fairly.  And so, the thought
+comes to me, that to all these slaves of the Elsinore the Real is
+real because they fictionally escape it.  One and all they are
+obsessed with the belief that they are free agents.  To me the Real
+is unreal, because I have torn aside the veils of fiction and myth.
+My pristine fictional escape from the Real, making me a philosopher,
+has bound me absolutely to the wheel of the Real.  I, the super-
+realist, am the only unrealist on board the Elsinore.  Therefore I,
+who penetrate it deepest, in the whole phenomena of living on the
+Elsinore see it only as phantasmagoria.
+
+Paradoxes?  I admit it.  All deep thinkers are drowned in the sea of
+contradictions.  But all the others on the Elsinore, sheer surface
+swimmers, keep afloat on this sea--forsooth, because they have never
+dreamed its depth.  And I can easily imagine what Miss West's
+practical, hard-headed judgment would be on these speculations of
+mine.  After all, words are traps.  I don't know what I know, nor
+what I think I think.
+
+This I do know:  I cannot orient myself.  I am the maddest and most
+sea-lost soul on board.  Take Miss West.  I am beginning to admire
+her.  Why, I know not, unless it be because she is so abominably
+healthy.  And yet, it is this very health of her, the absence of any
+shred of degenerative genius, that prevents her from being great . .
+. for instance, in her music.
+
+A number of times, now, I have come in during the day to listen to
+her playing.  The piano is good, and her teaching has evidently been
+of the best.  To my astonishment I learn that she is a graduate of
+Bryn Mawr, and that her father took a degree from old Bowdoin long
+ago.  And yet she lacks in her music.
+
+Her touch is masterful.  She has the firmness and weight (without
+sharpness or pounding) of a man's playing--the strength and surety
+that most women lack and that some women know they lack.  When she
+makes a slip she is ruthless with herself, and replays until the
+difficulty is overcome.  And she is quick to overcome it.
+
+Yes, and there is a sort of temperament in her work, but there is no
+sentiment, no fire.  When she plays Chopin, she interprets his
+sureness and neatness.  She is the master of Chopin's technique, but
+she never walks where Chopin walks on the heights.  Somehow, she
+stops short of the fulness of music.
+
+I did like her method with Brahms, and she was not unwilling, at my
+suggestion, to go over and over the Three Rhapsodies.  On the Third
+Intermezzo she was at her best, and a good best it was.
+
+"You were talking of Debussy," she remarked.  "I've got some of his
+stuff here.  But I don't get into it.  I don't understand it, and
+there is no use in trying.  It doesn't seem altogether like real
+music to me.  It fails to get hold of me, just as I fail to get hold
+of it."
+
+"Yet you like MacDowell," I challenged.
+
+"Y. . . es," she admitted grudgingly.  "His New England Idylls and
+Fireside Tales.  And I like that Finnish man's stuff, Sibelius, too,
+although it seems to me too soft, too richly soft, too beautiful, if
+you know what I mean.  It seems to cloy."
+
+What a pity, I thought, that with that noble masculine touch of hers
+she is unaware of the deeps of music.  Some day I shall try to get
+from her just what Beethoven, say, and Chopin, mean to her.  She has
+not read Shaw's Perfect Wagnerite, nor had she ever heard of
+Nietzsche's Case of Wagner.  She likes Mozart, and old Boccherini,
+and Leonardo Leo.  Likewise she is partial to Schumann, especially
+Forest Scenes.  And she played his Papillons most brilliantly.  When
+I closed my eyes I could have sworn it was a man's fingers on the
+keys.
+
+And yet, I must say it, in the long run her playing makes me nervous.
+I am continually led up to false expectations.  Always, she seems
+just on the verge of achieving the big thing, the super-big thing,
+and always she just misses it by a shade.  Just as I am prepared for
+the culminating flash and illumination, I receive more perfection of
+technique.  She is cold.  She must be cold . . . Or else, and the
+theory is worth considering, she is too healthy.
+
+I shall certainly read to her The Daughters of Herodias.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+
+Was there ever such a voyage!  This morning, when I came on deck, I
+found nobody at the wheel.  It was a startling sight--the great
+Elsinore, by the wind, under an Alpine range of canvas, every sail
+set from skysails to try-sails and spanker, slipping across the
+surface of a mild trade-wind sea, and no hand at the wheel to guide
+her.
+
+No one was on the poop.  It was Mr. Pike's watch, and I strolled
+for'ard along the bridge to find him.  He was on Number One hatch
+giving some instructions to the sail-makers.  I awaited my chance,
+until he glanced up and greeted me.
+
+"Good morning," I answered.  "And what man is at the wheel now?"
+
+"That crazy Greek, Tony," he replied.
+
+"A month's wages to a pound of tobacco he isn't," I offered.
+
+Mr. Pike looked at me with quick sharpness.
+
+"Who is at the wheel?"
+
+"Nobody," I replied.
+
+And then he exploded into action.  The age-lag left his massive
+frame, and he bounded aft along the deck at a speed no man on board
+could have exceeded; and I doubt if very many could have equalled it.
+He went up the poop-ladder three steps at a time and disappeared in
+the direction of the wheel behind the chart-house.
+
+Next came a promptitude of bellowed orders, and all the watch was
+slacking away after braces to starboard and pulling on after braces
+to port.  I had already learned the manoeuvre.  Mr. Pike was wearing
+ship.
+
+As I returned aft along the bridge Mr. Mellaire and the carpenter
+emerged from the cabin door.  They had been interrupted at breakfast,
+for they were wiping their mouths.  Mr. Pike came to the break of the
+poop, called down instructions to the second mate, who proceeded
+for'ard, and ordered the carpenter to take the wheel.
+
+As the Elsinore swung around on her heel Mr. Pike put her on the back
+track so as to cover the water she had just crossed over.  He lowered
+the glasses through which he was scanning the sea and pointed down
+the hatchway that opened into the big after-room beneath.  The ladder
+was gone.
+
+"Must have taken the lazarette ladder with him," said Mr. Pike.
+
+Captain West strolled out of the chart-room.  He said good morning in
+his customary way, courteously to me and formally to the mate, and
+strolled on along the poop to the wheel, where he paused to glance
+into the binnacle.  Turning, he went on leisurely to the break of the
+poop.  Again he came back to us.  Fully two minutes must have elapsed
+ere he spoke.
+
+"What is the matter, Mr. Pike?  Man overboard?"
+
+"Yes, sir," was the answer.
+
+"And took the lazarette ladder along with him?" Captain West queried.
+
+"Yes, sir.  It's the Greek that jumped over at Baltimore."
+
+Evidently the affair was not serious enough for Captain West to be
+the Samurai.  He lighted a cigar and resumed his stroll.  And yet he
+had missed nothing, not even the absence of the ladder.
+
+Mr. Pike sent look-outs aloft to every skysail-yard, and the Elsinore
+slipped along through the smooth sea.  Miss West came up and stood
+beside me, searching the ocean with her eyes while I told her the
+little I knew.  She evidenced no excitement, and reassured me by
+telling me how difficult it was to lose a man of Tony's suicidal
+type.
+
+"Their madness always seems to come upon them in fine weather or
+under safe circumstances," she smiled, "when a boat can be lowered or
+a tug is alongside.  And sometimes they take life--preservers with
+them, as in this case."
+
+At the end of an hour Mr. Pike wore the Elsinore around, and again
+retraced the course she must have been sailing when the Greek went
+over.  Captain West still strolled and smoked, and Miss West made a
+brief trip below to give Wada forgotten instructions about Possum.
+Andy Pay was called to the wheel, and the carpenter went below to
+finish his breakfast.
+
+It all seemed rather callous to me.  Nobody was much concerned for
+the man who was overboard somewhere on that lonely ocean.  And yet I
+had to admit that everything possible was being done to find him.  I
+talked a little with Mr. Pike, and he seemed more vexed than anything
+else.  He disliked to have the ship's work interrupted in such
+fashion.
+
+Mr. Mellaire's attitude was different.
+
+"We are short-handed enough as it is," he told me, when he joined us
+on the poop.  "We can't afford to lose him even if he is crazy.  We
+need him.  He's a good sailor most of the time."
+
+The hail came from the mizzen-skysail-yard.  The Maltese Cockney it
+was who first sighted the man and called down the information.  The
+mate, looking to windwards, suddenly lowered his glasses, rubbed his
+eyes in a puzzled way, and looked again.  Then Miss West, using
+another pair of glasses, cried out in surprise and began to laugh.
+
+"What do you make of it, Miss West?" the mate asked.
+
+"He doesn't seem to be in the water.  He's standing up."
+
+Mr. Pike nodded.
+
+"He's on the ladder," he said.  "I'd forgotten that.  It fooled me at
+first.  I couldn't understand it."  He turned to the second mate.
+"Mr. Mellaire, will you launch the long boat and get some kind of a
+crew into it while I back the main-yard?  I'll go in the boat.  Pick
+men that can pull an oar."
+
+"You go, too," Miss West said to me.  "It will be an opportunity to
+get outside the Elsinore and see her under full sail."
+
+Mr. Pike nodded consent, so I went along, sitting near him in the
+stern-sheets where he steered, while half a dozen hands rowed us
+toward the suicide, who stood so weirdly upon the surface of the sea.
+The Maltese Cockney pulled the stroke oar, and among the other five
+men was one whose name I had but recently learned--Ditman Olansen, a
+Norwegian.  A good seaman, Mr. Mellaire had told me, in whose watch
+he was; a good seaman, but "crank-eyed."  When pressed for an
+explanation Mr. Mellaire had said that he was the sort of man who
+flew into blind rages, and that one never could tell what little
+thing would produce such a rage.  As near as I could grasp it, Ditman
+Olansen was a Berserker type.  Yet, as I watched him pulling in good
+time at the oar, his large, pale-blue eyes seemed almost bovine--the
+last man in the world, in my judgment, to have a Berserker fit.
+
+As we drew close to the Greek he began to scream menacingly at us and
+to brandish a sheath-knife.  His weight sank the ladder until the
+water washed his knees, and on this submerged support he balanced
+himself with wild writhing and outflinging of arms.  His face,
+grimacing like a monkey's, was not a pretty thing to look upon.  And
+as he continued to threaten us with the knife I wondered how the
+problem of rescuing him would be solved.
+
+But I should have trusted Mr. Pike for that.  He removed the boat-
+stretcher from under the Maltese Cockney's feet and laid it close to
+hand in the stern-sheets.  Then he had the men reverse the boat and
+back it upon the Greek.  Dodging a sweep of the knife, Mr. Pike
+awaited his chance, until a passing wave lifted the boat's stern
+high, while Tony was sinking toward the trough.  This was the moment.
+Again I was favoured with a sample of the lightning speed with which
+that aged man of sixty-nine could handle his body.  Timed precisely,
+and delivered in a flash and with weight, the boat-stretcher came
+down on the Greek's head.  The knife fell into the sea, and the
+demented creature collapsed and followed it, knocked unconscious.
+Mr. Pike scooped him out, quite effortlessly it seemed to me, and
+flung him into the boat's bottom at my feet.
+
+The next moment the men were bending to their oars and the mate was
+steering back to the Elsinore.  It was a stout rap Mr. Pike had
+administered with the boat-stretcher.  Thin streaks of blood oozed on
+the damp, plastered hair from the broken scalp.  I could but stare at
+the lump of unconscious flesh that dripped sea-water at my feet.  A
+man, all life and movement one moment, defying the universe, reduced
+the next moment to immobility and the blackness and blankness of
+death, is always a fascinating object for the contemplative eye of
+the philosopher.  And in this case it had been accomplished so
+simply, by means of a stick of wood brought sharply in contact with
+his skull.
+
+If Tony the Greek be accounted an APPEARANCE, what was he now?--a
+DISAPPEARANCE?  And if so, whither had he disappeared?  And whence
+would he journey back to reoccupy that body when what we call
+consciousness returned to him?  The first word, much less the last,
+of the phenomena of personality and consciousness yet remains to be
+uttered by the psychologists.
+
+Pondering thus, I chanced to lift my eyes, and the glorious spectacle
+of the Elsinore burst upon me.  I had been so long on board, and in
+board of her, that I had forgotten she was a white-painted ship.  So
+low to the water was her hull, so delicate and slender, that the
+tall, sky-reaching spars and masts and the hugeness of the spread of
+canvas seemed preposterous and impossible, an insolent derision of
+the law of gravitation.  It required effort to realize that that slim
+curve of hull inclosed and bore up from the sea's bottom five
+thousand tons of coal.  And again, it seemed a miracle that the mites
+of men had conceived and constructed so stately and magnificent an
+element-defying fabric--mites of men, most woefully like the Greek at
+my feet, prone to precipitation into the blackness by means of a rap
+on the head with a piece of wood.
+
+Tony made a struggling noise in his throat, then coughed and groaned.
+From somewhere he was reappearing.  I noticed Mr. Pike look at him
+quickly, as if apprehending some recrudescence of frenzy that would
+require more boat-stretcher.  But Tony merely fluttered his big black
+eyes open and stared at me for a long minute of incurious amaze ere
+he closed them again.
+
+"What are you going to do with him?" I asked the mate.
+
+"Put 'm back to work," was the reply.  "It's all he's good for, and
+he ain't hurt.  Somebody's got to work this ship around the Horn."
+
+When we hoisted the boat on board I found Miss West had gone below.
+In the chart-room Captain West was winding the chronometers.  Mr.
+Mellaire had turned in to catch an hour or two of sleep ere his watch
+on deck at noon.  Mr. Mellaire, by the way, as I have forgotten to
+state, does not sleep aft.  He shares a room in the 'midship-house
+with Mr. Pike's Nancy.
+
+Nobody showed sympathy for the unfortunate Greek.  He was bundled out
+upon Number Two hatch like so much carrion and left there unattended,
+to recover consciousness as he might elect.  Yes, and so inured have
+I become that I make free to admit I felt no sympathy for him myself.
+My eyes were still filled with the beauty of the Elsinore.  One does
+grow hard at sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+
+One does not mind the trades.  We have held the north-east trade for
+days now, and the miles roll off behind us as the patent log whirls
+and tinkles on the taffrail.  Yesterday, log and observation
+approximated a run of two hundred and fifty-two miles; the day before
+we ran two hundred and forty, and the day before that two hundred and
+sixty-one.  But one does not appreciate the force of the wind.  So
+balmy and exhilarating is it that it is so much atmospheric wine.  I
+delight to open my lungs and my pores to it.  Nor does it chill.  At
+any hour of the night, while the cabin lies asleep, I break off from
+my reading and go up on the poop in the thinnest of tropical pyjamas.
+
+I never knew before what the trade wind was.  And now I am infatuated
+with it.  I stroll up and down for an hour at a time, with whichever
+mate has the watch.  Mr. Mellaire is always full-garmented, but Mr.
+Pike, on these delicious nights, stands his first watch after
+midnight in his pyjamas.  He is a fearfully muscular man.  Sixty-nine
+years seem impossible when I see his single, slimpsy garments pressed
+like fleshings against his form and bulged by heavy bone and huge
+muscle.  A splendid figure of a man!  What he must have been in the
+hey-day of youth two score years and more ago passes comprehension.
+
+The days, so filled with simple routine, pass as in a dream.  Here,
+where time is rigidly measured and emphasized by the changing of the
+watches, where every hour and half-hour is persistently brought to
+one's notice by the striking of the ship's bells fore and aft, time
+ceases.  Days merge into days, and weeks slip into weeks, and I, for
+one, can never remember the day of the week or month.
+
+The Elsinore is never totally asleep.  Day and night, always, there
+are the men on watch, the look-out on the forecastle head, the man at
+the wheel, and the officer of the deck.  I lie reading in my bunk,
+which is on the weather side, and continually over my head during the
+long night hours impact the footsteps of one mate or the other,
+pacing up and down, and, as I well know, the man himself is for ever
+peering for'ard from the break of the poop, or glancing into the
+binnacle, or feeling and gauging the weight and direction of wind on
+his cheek, or watching the cloud-stuff in the sky adrift and a-scud
+across the stars and the moon.  Always, always, there are wakeful
+eyes on the Elsinore.
+
+Last night, or this morning, rather, about two o'clock, as I lay with
+the printed page swimming drowsily before me, I was aroused by an
+abrupt outbreak of snarl from Mr. Pike.  I located him as at the
+break of the poop; and the man at whom he snarled was Larry,
+evidently on the main deck beneath him.  Not until Wada brought me
+breakfast did I learn what had occurred.
+
+Larry, with his funny pug nose, his curiously flat and twisted face,
+and his querulous, plaintive chimpanzee eyes, had been moved by some
+unlucky whim to venture an insolent remark under the cover of
+darkness on the main deck.  But Mr. Pike, from above, at the break of
+the poop, had picked the offender unerringly.  This was when the
+explosion occurred.  Then the unfortunate Larry, truly half-devil and
+all child, had waxed sullen and retorted still more insolently; and
+the next he knew, the mate, descending upon him like a hurricane, had
+handcuffed him to the mizzen fife-rail.
+
+Imagine, on Mr. Pike's part, that this was one for Larry and at least
+ten for Kid Twist, Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine.  I'll not be so
+absurd as to say that the mate is afraid of those gangsters.  I doubt
+if he has ever experienced fear.  It is not in him.  On the other
+hand, I am confident that he apprehends trouble from these men, and
+that it was for their benefit he made this example of Larry.
+
+Larry could stand no more than an hour in irons, at which time his
+stupid brutishness overcame any fear he might have possessed, because
+he bellowed out to the poop to come down and loose him for a fair
+fight.  Promptly Mr. Pike was there with the key to the handcuffs.
+As if Larry had the shred of a chance against that redoubtable aged
+man!  Wada reported that Larry, amongst other things, had lost a
+couple of front teeth and was laid up in his bunk for the day.  When
+I met Mr. Pike on deck after eight o'clock I glanced at his knuckles.
+They verified Wada's tale.
+
+I cannot help being amused by the keen interest I take in little
+events like the foregoing.  Not only has time ceased, but the world
+has ceased.  Strange it is, when I come to think of it, in all these
+weeks I have received no letter, no telephone call, no telegram, no
+visitor.  I have not been to the play.  I have not read a newspaper.
+So far as I am concerned, there are no plays nor newspapers.  All
+such things have vanished with the vanished world.  All that exists
+is the Elsinore, with her queer human freightage and her cargo of
+coal, cleaving a rotund of ocean of which the skyline is a dozen
+miles away.
+
+I am reminded of Captain Scott, frozen on his south-polar venture,
+who for ten months after his death was believed by the world to be
+alive.  Not until the world learned of his death was he anything but
+alive to the world.  By the same token, was he not alive?  And by the
+same token, here on the Elsinore, has not the land-world ceased?  May
+not the pupil of one's eye be, not merely the centre of the world,
+but the world itself?  Truly, it is tenable that the world exists
+only in consciousness.  "The world is my idea," said Schopenhauer.
+Said Jules de Gaultier, "The world is my invention."  His dogma was
+that imagination created the Real.  Ah, me, I know that the practical
+Miss West would dub my metaphysics a depressing and unhealthful
+exercise of my wits.
+
+To-day, in our deck chairs on the poop, I read The Daughters of
+Herodias to Miss West.  It was superb in its effect--just what I had
+expected of her.  She hemstitched a fine white linen handkerchief for
+her father while I read.  (She is never idle, being so essentially a
+nest-maker and comfort-producer and race-conserver; and she has a
+whole pile of these handkerchiefs for her father.)
+
+She smiled, how shall I say?--oh, incredulously, triumphantly, oh,
+with all the sure wisdom of all the generations of women in her warm,
+long gray eyes, when I read:
+
+
+"But they smile innocently and dance on,
+Having no thought but this unslumbering thought:
+'Am I not beautiful?  Shall I not be loved?'
+Be patient, for they will not understand,
+Not till the end of time will they put by
+The weaving of slow steps about men's hearts."
+
+
+"But it is well for the world that it is so," was her comment.
+
+Ah, Symons knew women!  His perfect knowledge she attested when I
+read that magnificent passage:
+
+
+"They do not understand that in the world
+There grows between the sunlight and the grass
+Anything save themselves desirable.
+It seems to them that the swift eyes of men
+Are made but to be mirrors, not to see
+Far-off, disastrous, unattainable things.
+'For are not we,' they say, 'the end of all?
+Why should you look beyond us?  If you look
+Into the night, you will find nothing there:
+We also have gazed often at the stars.'"
+
+
+"It is true," said Miss West, in the pause I permitted in order to
+see how she had received the thought.  "We also have gazed often at
+the stars."
+
+It was the very thing I had predicted to her face that she would say.
+
+"But wait," I cried.  "Let me read on."  And I read:
+
+
+"'We, we alone among all beautiful things,
+We only are real:  for the rest are dreams.
+Why will you follow after wandering dreams
+When we await you?  And you can but dream
+Of us, and in our image fashion them.'"
+
+
+"True, most true," she murmured, while all unconsciously pride and
+power mounted in her eyes.
+
+"A wonderful poem," she conceded--nay, proclaimed--when I had done.
+
+"But do you not see .  .  ."  I began impulsively, then abandoned the
+attempt.  For how could she see, being woman, the "far-off,
+disastrous, unattainable things," when she, as she so stoutly
+averred, had gazed often on the stars?
+
+She?  What could she see, save what all women see--that they only are
+real, and that all the rest are dreams.
+
+"I am proud to be a daughter of Herodias," said Miss West.
+
+"Well," I admitted lamely, "we agree.  You remember it is what I told
+you you were."
+
+"I am grateful for the compliment," she said; and in those long gray
+eyes of hers were limned and coloured all the satisfaction, and self-
+certitude and answering complacency of power that constitute so large
+a part of the seductive mystery and mastery that is possessed by
+woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+
+Heavens!--how I read in this fine weather.  I take so little exercise
+that my sleep need is very small; and there are so few interruptions,
+such as life teems with on the land, that I read myself almost
+stupid.  Recommend me a sea-voyage any time for a man who is behind
+in his reading.  I am making up years of it.  It is an orgy, a
+debauch; and I am sure the addled sailors adjudge me the queerest
+creature on board.
+
+At times, so fuzzy do I get from so much reading, that I am glad for
+any diversion.  When we strike the doldrums, which lie between the
+north-east and the south-east trades, I shall have Wada assemble my
+little twenty-two automatic rifle and try to learn how to shoot.  I
+used to shoot, when I was a wee lad.  I can remember dragging a shot-
+gun around with me over the hills.  Also, I possessed an air-rifle,
+with which, on great occasion, I was even able to slaughter a robin.
+
+While the poop is quite large for promenading, the available space
+for deck-chairs is limited to the awnings that stretch across from
+either side of the chart-house and that are of the width of the
+chart-house.  This space again is restricted to one side or the other
+according to the slant of the morning and afternoon sun and the
+freshness of the breeze.  Wherefore, Miss West's chair and mine are
+most frequently side by side.  Captain West has a chair, which he
+infrequently occupies.  He has so little to do in the working of the
+ship, taking his regular observations and working them up with such
+celerity, that he is rarely in the chart-room for any length of time.
+He elects to spend his hours in the main cabin, not reading, not
+doing anything save dream with eyes wide open in the draught of wind
+that pours through the open ports and door from out the huge crojack
+and the jigger staysails.
+
+Miss West is never idle.  Below, in the big after-room, she does her
+own laundering.  Nor will she let the steward touch her father's fine
+linen.  In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine.  All
+hand-stitching, and embroidering, and fancy work she does in the
+deck-chair beside me.  She avers that she loves the sea and the
+atmosphere of sea-life, yet, verily, she has brought her home-things
+and land-things along with her--even to her pretty china for
+afternoon tea.
+
+Most essentially is she the woman and home-maker.  She is a born
+cook.  The steward and Louis prepare dishes extraordinary and de luxe
+for the cabin table; yet Miss West is able at a moment's notice to
+improve on these dishes.  She never lets any of their dishes come on
+the table without first planning them or passing on them.  She has
+quick judgment, an unerring taste, and is possessed of the needful
+steel of decision.  It seems she has only to look at a dish, no
+matter who has cooked it, and immediately divine its lack or its
+surplusage, and prescribe a treatment that transforms it into
+something indescribably different and delicious--My, how I do eat!  I
+am quite dumbfounded by the unfailing voracity of my appetite.
+Already am I quite convinced that I am glad Miss West is making the
+voyage.
+
+She has sailed "out East," as she quaintly calls it, and has an
+enormous repertoire of tasty, spicy, Eastern dishes.  In the cooking
+of rice Louis is a master; but in the making of the accompanying
+curry he fades into a blundering amateur compared with Miss West.  In
+the matter of curry she is a sheer genius.  How often one's thoughts
+dwell upon food when at sea!
+
+So in this trade-wind weather I see a great deal of Miss West.  I
+read all the time, and quite a good part of the time I read aloud to
+her passages, and even books, with which I am interested in trying
+her out.  Then, too, such reading gives rise to discussions, and she
+has not yet uttered anything that would lead me to change my first
+judgment of her.  She is a genuine daughter of Herodias.
+
+And yet she is not what one would call a cute girl.  She isn't a
+girl, she is a mature woman with all the freshness of a girl.  She
+has the carriage, the attitude of mind, the aplomb of a woman, and
+yet she cannot be described as being in the slightest degree stately.
+She is generous, dependable, sensible--yes, and sensitive; and her
+superabundant vitality, the vitality that makes her walk so
+gloriously, discounts the maturity of her.  Sometimes she seems all
+of thirty to me; at other times, when her spirits and risibilities
+are aroused, she scarcely seems thirteen.  I shall make a point of
+asking Captain West the date of the Dixie's collision with that river
+steamer in San Francisco Bay.  In a word, she is the most normal, the
+most healthy, natural woman I have ever known.
+
+Yes, and she is feminine, despite, no matter how she does her hair,
+that it is as invariably smooth and well-groomed as all the rest of
+her.  On the other hand, this perpetual well-groomedness is relieved
+by the latitude of dress she allows herself.  She never fails of
+being a woman.  Her sex, and the lure of it, is ever present.
+Possibly she may possess high collars, but I have never seen her in
+one on board.  Her blouses are always open at the throat, disclosing
+one of her choicest assets, the muscular, adequate neck, with its
+fine-textured garmenture of skin.  I embarrass myself by stealing
+long glances at that bare throat of hers and at the hint of fine,
+firm-surfaced shoulder.
+
+Visiting the chickens has developed into a regular function.  At
+least once each day we make the journey for'ard along the bridge to
+the top of the 'midship-house.  Possum, who is now convalescent,
+accompanies us.  The steward makes a point of being there so as to
+receive instructions and report the egg-output and laying conduct of
+the many hens.  At the present time our four dozen hens are laying
+two dozen eggs a day, with which record Miss West is greatly elated.
+
+Already she has given names to most of them.  The cock is Peter, of
+course.  A much-speckled hen is Dolly Varden.  A slim, trim thing
+that dogs Peter's heels she calls Cleopatra.  Another hen--the
+mellowest-voiced one of all--she addresses as Bernhardt.  One thing I
+have noted:  whenever she and the steward have passed death sentence
+on a non-laying hen (which occurs regularly once a week), she takes
+no part in the eating of the meat, not even when it is metamorphosed
+into one of her delectable curries.  At such times she has a special
+curry made for herself of tinned lobster, or shrimp, or tinned
+chicken.
+
+Ah, I must not forget.  I have learned that it was no man-interest
+(in me, if you please) that brought about her sudden interest to come
+on the voyage.  It was for her father that she came.  Something is
+the matter with Captain West.  At rare moments I have observed her
+gazing at him with a world of solicitude and anxiety in her eyes.
+
+I was telling an amusing story at table yesterday midday, when my
+glance chanced to rest upon Miss West.  She was not listening.  Her
+food on her fork was suspended in the air a sheer instant as she
+looked at her father with all her eyes.  It was a stare of fear.  She
+realized that I was observing, and with superb control, slowly, quite
+naturally, she lowered the fork and rested it on her plate, retaining
+her hold on it and retaining her father's face in her look.
+
+But I had seen.  Yes; I had seen more than that.  I had seen Captain
+West's face a transparent white, while his eyelids fluttered down and
+his lips moved noiselessly.  Then the eyelids raised, the lips set
+again with their habitual discipline, and the colour slowly returned
+to his face.  It was as if he had been away for a time and just
+returned.  But I had seen, and guessed her secret.
+
+And yet it was this same Captain West, seven hours later, who
+chastened the proud sailor spirit of Mr. Pike.  It was in the second
+dog-watch that evening, a dark night, and the watch was pulling away
+on the main deck.  I had just come out of the chart-house door and
+seen Captain West pace by me, hands in pockets, toward the break of
+the poop.  Abruptly, from the mizzen-mast, came a snap of breakage
+and crash of fabric.  At the same instant the men fell backward and
+sprawled over the deck.
+
+A moment of silence followed, and then Captain West's voice went out:
+
+"What carried away, Mr. Pike?"
+
+"The halyards, sir," came the reply out of the darkness.
+
+There was a pause.  Again Captain West's voice went out.
+
+"Next time slack away on your sheet first."
+
+Now Mr. Pike is incontestably a splendid seaman.  Yet in this
+instance he had been wrong.  I have come to know him, and I can well
+imagine the hurt to his pride.  And more--he has a wicked, resentful,
+primitive nature, and though he answered respectfully enough, "Yes,
+sir," I felt safe in predicting to myself that the poor devils under
+him would receive the weight of his resentment in the later watches
+of the night.
+
+They evidently did; for this morning I noted a black eye on John
+Hackey, a San Francisco hoodlum, and Guido Bombini was carrying a
+freshly and outrageously swollen jaw.  I asked Wada about the matter,
+and he soon brought me the news.  Quite a bit of beating up takes
+place for'ard of the deck-houses in the night watches while we of the
+after-guard peacefully slumber.
+
+Even to-day Mr. Pike is going around sullen and morose, snarling at
+the men more than usual, and barely polite to Miss West and me when
+we chance to address him.  His replies are grunted in monosyllables,
+and his face is set in superlative sourness.  Miss West who is
+unaware of the occurrence, laughs and calls it a "sea grouch"--a
+phenomenon with which she claims large experience.
+
+But I know Mr. Pike now--the stubborn, wonderful old sea-dog.  It
+will be three days before he is himself again.  He takes a terrible
+pride in his seamanship, and what hurts him most is the knowledge
+that he was guilty of the blunder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+
+To-day, twenty-eight days out, in the early morning, while I was
+drinking my coffee, still carrying the north-east trade, we crossed
+the line.  And Charles Davis signalized the event by murdering
+O'Sullivan.  It was Boney, the lanky splinter of a youth in Mr.
+Mellaire's watch, who brought the news.  The second mate and I had
+just arrived in the hospital room, when Mr. Pike entered.
+
+O'Sullivan's troubles were over.  The man in the upper bunk had
+completed the mad, sad span of his life with the marlin-spike.
+
+I cannot understand this Charles Davis.  He sat up calmly in his
+bunk, and calmly lighted his pipe ere he replied to Mr. Mellaire.  He
+certainly is not insane.  Yet deliberately, in cold blood, he has
+murdered a helpless man.
+
+"What'd you do it for?" Mr. Mellaire demanded.
+
+"Because, sir," said Charles Davis, applying a second match to his
+pipe, "because"--puff, puff--"he bothered my sleep."  Here he caught
+Mr. Pike's glowering eye.  "Because"--puff, puff--"he annoyed me.
+The next time"--puff, puff--"I hope better judgment will be shown in
+what kind of a man is put in with me.  Besides"--puff, puff--"this
+top bunk ain't no place for me.  It hurts me to get into it"--puff,
+puff--"an' I'm gem' back to that lower bunk as soon as you get
+O'Sullivan out of it."
+
+"But what'd you do it for?" Mr. Pike snarled.
+
+"I told you, sir, because he annoyed me.  I got tired of it, an' so,
+this morning, I just put him out of his misery.  An' what are you
+goin' to do about it?  The man's dead, ain't he?  An' I killed 'm in
+self-defence.  I know the law.  What right'd you to put a ravin'
+lunatic in with me, an' me sick an' helpless?"
+
+"By God, Davis!" the mate burst forth.  "You'll never draw your pay-
+day in Seattle.  I'll fix you out for this, killing a crazy lashed
+down in his bunk an' harmless.  You'll follow 'm overside, my
+hearty."
+
+"If I do, you'll hang for it, sir," Davis retorted.  He turned his
+cool eyes on me.  "An' I call on you, sir, to witness the threats
+he's made.  An' you'll testify to them, too, in court.  An' he'll
+hang as sure as I go over the side.  Oh, I know his record.  He's
+afraid to face a court with it.  He's been up too many a time with
+charges of man-killin' an' brutality on the high seas.  An' a man
+could retire for life an live off the interest of the fines he's
+paid, or his owners paid for him--"
+
+"Shut your mouth or I'll knock it out of your face!" Mr. Pike roared,
+springing toward him with clenched, up-raised fist.
+
+Davis involuntarily shrank away.  His flesh was weak, but not so his
+spirit.  He got himself promptly in hand and struck another match.
+
+"You can't get my goat, sir," he sneered, under the shadow of the
+impending blow.  "I ain't scared to die.  A man's got to die once
+anyway, an' it's none so hard a trick to do when you can't help it.
+O'Sullivan died so easy it was amazin'.  Besides, I ain't goin' to
+die.  I'm goin' to finish this voyage, an' sue the owners when I get
+to Seattle.  I know my rights an' the law.  An' I got witnesses."
+
+Truly, I was divided between admiration for the courage of this
+wretched sailor and sympathy for Mr. Pike thus bearded by a sick man
+he could not bring himself to strike.
+
+Nevertheless he sprang upon the man with calculated fury, gripped him
+between the base of the neck and the shoulders with both gnarled
+paws, and shook him back and forth, violently and frightfully, for a
+full minute.  It was a wonder the man's neck was not dislocated.
+
+"I call on you to witness, sir," Davis gasped at me the instant he
+was free.
+
+He coughed and strangled, felt his throat, and made wry neck-
+movements indicative of injury.
+
+"The marks'll begin to show in a few minutes," he murmured
+complacently as his dizziness left him and his breath came back.
+
+This was too much for Mr. Pike, who turned and left the room,
+growling and cursing incoherently, deep in his throat.  When I made
+my departure, a moment later, Davis was refilling his pipe and
+telling Mr. Mellaire that he'd have him up for a witness in Seattle.
+
+
+So we have had another burial at sea.  Mr. Pike was vexed by it
+because the Elsinore, according to sea tradition, was going too fast
+through the water for a proper ceremony.  Thus a few minutes of the
+voyage were lost by backing the Elsinore's main-topsail and deadening
+her way while the service was read and O'Sullivan was slid overboard
+with the inevitable sack of coal at his feet.
+
+"Hope the coal holds out," Mr. Pike grumbled morosely at me five
+minutes later.
+
+
+And we sit on the poop, Miss West and I, tended on by servants,
+sipping afternoon tea, sewing fancy work, discussing philosophy and
+art, while a few feet away from us, on this tiny floating world, all
+the grimy, sordid tragedy of sordid, malformed, brutish life plays
+itself out.  And Captain West, remote, untroubled, sits dreaming in
+the twilight cabin while the draught of wind from the crojack blows
+upon him through the open ports.  He has no doubts, no worries.  He
+believes in God.  All is settled and clear and well as he nears his
+far home.  His serenity is vast and enviable.  But I cannot shake
+from my eyes that vision of him when life forsook his veins, and his
+mouth slacked, and his eyelids closed, while his face took on the
+white transparency of death.
+
+I wonder who will be the next to finish the game and depart with a
+sack of coal.
+
+"Oh, this is nothing, sir," Mr. Mellaire remarked to me cheerfully as
+we strolled the poop during the first watch.  "I was once on a voyage
+on a tramp steamer loaded with four hundred Chinks--I beg your
+pardon, sir--Chinese.  They were coolies, contract labourers, coming
+back from serving their time.
+
+"And the cholera broke out.  We hove over three hundred of them
+overboard, sir, along with both bosuns, most of the Lascar crew, and
+the captain, the mate, the third mate, and the first and third
+engineers.  The second and one white oiler was all that was left
+below, and I was in command on deck, when we made port.  The doctors
+wouldn't come aboard.  They made me anchor in the outer roads and
+told me to heave out my dead.  There was some tall buryin' about that
+time, Mr. Pathurst, and they went overboard without canvas, coal, or
+iron.  They had to.  I had nobody to help me, and the Chinks below
+wouldn't lift a hand.
+
+"I had to go down myself, drag the bodies on to the slings, then
+climb on deck and heave them up with the donkey.  And each trip I
+took a drink.  I was pretty drunk when the job was done."
+
+"And you never caught it yourself?" I queried.  Mr. Mellaire held up
+his left hand.  I had often noted that the index finger was missing.
+
+"That's all that happened to me, sir.  The old man'd had a fox-
+terrier like yours.  And after the old man passed out the puppy got
+real, chummy with me.  Just as I was making the hoist of the last
+sling-load, what does the puppy do but jump on my leg and sniff my
+hand.  I turned to pat him, and the next I knew my other hand had
+slipped into the gears and that finger wasn't there any more.
+
+"Heavens!" I cried.  "What abominable luck to come through such a
+terrible experience like that and then lose your finger!"
+
+"That's what I thought, sir," Mr. Mellaire agreed.
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, just held it up and looked at it, and said 'My goodness
+gracious!' and took another drink."
+
+"And you didn't get the cholera afterwards?"
+
+"No, sir.  I reckon I was so full of alcohol the germs dropped dead
+before they could get to me."  He considered a moment.  "Candidly,
+Mr. Pathurst, I don't know about that alcohol theory.  The old man
+and the mates died drunk, and so did the third engineer.  But the
+chief was a teetotaller, and he died, too."
+
+
+Never again shall I wonder that the sea is hard.  I walked apart from
+the second mate and stared up at the magnificent fabric of the
+Elsinore sweeping and swaying great blotting curves of darkness
+across the face of the starry sky.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+
+Something has happened.  But nobody knows, either fore or aft, except
+the interested persons, and they will not say anything.  Yet the ship
+is abuzz with rumours and guesses.
+
+This I do know:  Mr. Pike has received a fearful blow on the head.
+At table, yesterday, at midday, I arrived late, and, passing behind
+his chair, I saw a prodigious lump on top of his head.  When I was
+seated, facing him, I noted that his eyes seemed dazed; yes, and I
+could see pain in them.  He took no part in the conversation, ate
+perfunctorily, behaved stupidly at times, and it was patent that he
+was controlling himself with an iron hand.
+
+And nobody dares ask him what has happened.  I know I don't dare ask
+him, and I am a passenger, a privileged person.  This redoubtable old
+sea-relic has inspired me with a respect for him that partakes half
+of timidity and half of awe.
+
+He acts as if he were suffering from concussion of the brain.  His
+pain is evident, not alone in his eyes and the strained expression of
+his face, but by his conduct when he thinks he is unobserved.  Last
+night, just for a breath of air and a moment's gaze at the stars, I
+came out of the cabin door and stood on the main deck under the break
+of the poop.  From directly over my head came a low and persistent
+groaning.  My curiosity was aroused, and I retreated into the cabin,
+came out softly on to the poop by way of the chart-house, and
+strolled noiselessly for'ard in my slippers.  It was Mr. Pike.  He
+was leaning collapsed on the rail, his head resting on his arms.  He
+was giving voice in secret to the pain that racked him.  A dozen feet
+away he could not be heard.  But, close to his shoulder, I could hear
+his steady, smothered groaning that seemed to take the form of a
+chant.  Also, at regular intervals, he would mutter:
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear."  Always he repeated
+the phrase five times, then returned to his groaning.  I stole away
+as silently as I had come.
+
+Yet he resolutely stands his watches and performs all his duties of
+chief officer.  Oh, I forgot.  Miss West dared to quiz him, and he
+replied that he had a toothache, and that if it didn't get better
+he'd pull it out.
+
+Wada cannot learn what has happened.  There were no eye-witnesses.
+He says that the Asiatic clique, discussing the affair in the cook's
+room, thinks the three gangsters are responsible.  Bert Rhine is
+carrying a lame shoulder.  Nosey Murphy is limping as from some
+injury in the hips.  And Kid Twist has been so badly beaten that he
+has not left his bunk for two days.  And that is all the data to
+build on.  The gangsters are as close-mouthed as Mr. Pike.  The
+Asiatic clique has decided that murder was attempted and that all
+that saved the mate was his hard skull.
+
+Last evening, in the second dog-watch, I got another proof that
+Captain West is not so oblivious of what goes on aboard the Elsinore
+as he seems.  I had gone for'ard along the bridge to the mizzen-mast,
+in the shadow of which I was leaning.  From the main deck, in the
+alley-way between the 'midship-house and the rail, came the voices of
+Bert Rhine, Nosey Murphy, and Mr. Mellaire.  It was not ship's work.
+They were having a friendly, even sociable chat, for their voices
+hummed genially, and now and again one or another laughed, and
+sometimes all laughed.
+
+I remembered Wada's reports on this unseamanlike intimacy of the
+second mate with the gangsters, and tried to make out the nature of
+the conversation.  But the gangsters were low-voiced, and all I could
+catch was the tone of friendliness and good-nature.
+
+Suddenly, from the poop, came Captain West's voice.  It was the
+voice, not of the Samurai riding the storm, but of the Samurai calm
+and cold.  It was clear, soft, and mellow as the mellowest bell ever
+cast by eastern artificers of old time to call worshippers to prayer.
+I know I slightly chilled to it--it was so exquisitely sweet and yet
+as passionless as the ring of steel on a frosty night.  And I knew
+the effect on the men beneath me was electrical.  I could FEEL them
+stiffen and chill to it as I had stiffened and chilled.  And yet all
+he said was:
+
+"Mr. Mellaire."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Mr. Mellaire, after a moment of tense silence.
+
+"Come aft here," came Captain West's voice.
+
+I heard the second mate move along the deck beneath me and stop at
+the foot of the poop-ladder.
+
+"Your place is aft on the poop, Mr. Mellaire," said the cold,
+passionless voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the second mate.
+
+That was all.  Not another word was spoken.  Captain West resumed his
+stroll on the weather side of the poop, and Mr. Mellaire, ascending
+the ladder, went to pacing up and down the lee side.
+
+I continued along the bridge to the forecastle head and purposely
+remained there half an hour ere I returned to the cabin by way of the
+main deck.  Although I did not analyze my motive, I knew I did not
+desire any one to know that I had overheard the occurrence.
+
+
+I have made a discovery.  Ninety per cent. of our crew is brunette.
+Aft, with the exception of Wada and the steward, who are our
+servants, we are all blonds.  What led me to this discovery was
+Woodruff's Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, which I am just
+reading.  Major Woodruff's thesis is that the white-skinned, blue-
+eyed Aryan, born to government and command, ever leaving his
+primeval, overcast and foggy home, ever commands and governs the rest
+of the world and ever perishes because of the too-white light he
+encounters.  It is a very tenable hypothesis, and will bear looking
+into.
+
+But to return.  Every one of us who sits aft in the high place is a
+blond Aryan.  For'ard, leavened with a ten per cent, of degenerate
+blonds, the remaining ninety per cent, of the slaves that toil for us
+are brunettes.  They will not perish.  According to Woodruff, they
+will inherit the earth, not because of their capacity for mastery and
+government, but because of their skin-pigmentation which enables
+their tissues to resist the ravages of the sun.
+
+And I look at the four of us at table--Captain West, his daughter,
+Mr. Pike, and myself--all fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and perishing, yet
+mastering and commanding, like our fathers before us, to the end of
+our type on the earth.  Ah, well, ours is a lordly history, and
+though we may be doomed to pass, in our time we shall have trod on
+the faces of all peoples, disciplined them to obedience, taught them
+government, and dwelt in the palaces we have compelled them by the
+weight of our own right arms to build for us.
+
+The Elsinore depicts this in miniature.  The best of the food and all
+spacious and beautiful accommodation is ours.  For'ard is a pig-sty
+and a slave-pen.
+
+As a king, Captain West sits above all.  As a captain of soldiers,
+Mr. Pike enforces his king's will.  Miss West is a princess of the
+royal house.  And I?  Am I not an honourable, noble-lineaged
+pensioner on the deeds and achievements of my father, who, in his
+day, compelled thousands of the lesser types to the building of the
+fortune I enjoy?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+
+The north-west trade carried us almost into the south-east trade, and
+then left us for several days to roll and swelter in the doldrums.
+
+During this time I have discovered that I have a genius for rifle-
+shooting.  Mr. Pike swore I must have had long practice; and I
+confess I was myself startled by the ease of the thing.  Of course,
+it's the knack; but one must be so made, I suppose, in order to be
+able to acquire the knack.
+
+By the end of half an hour, standing on the heaving deck and shooting
+at bottles floating on the rolling swell, I found that I broke each
+bottle at the first shot.  The supply of empty bottles giving out,
+Mr. Pike was so interested that he had the carpenter saw me a lot of
+small square blocks of hard wood.  These were more satisfactory.  A
+well-aimed shot threw them out of the water and spinning into the
+air, and I could use a single block until it had drifted out of
+range.  In an hour's time I could, shooting quickly and at short
+range, empty my magazine at a block and hit it nine times, and, on
+occasion, ten times, out of eleven.
+
+I might not have judged my aptitude as unusual, had I not induced
+Miss West and Wada to try their hands.  Neither had luck like mine.
+I finally persuaded Mr. Pike, and he went behind the wheel-house so
+that none of the crew might see how poor a shot he was.  He was never
+able to hit the mark, and was guilty of the most ludicrous misses.
+
+"I never could get the hang of rifle-shooting," he announced
+disgustedly, "but when it comes to close range with a gat I'm right
+there.  I guess I might as well overhaul mine and limber it up."
+
+He went below and came back with a huge '44 automatic pistol and a
+handful of loaded clips.
+
+"Anywhere from right against the body up to ten or twelve feet away,
+holding for the stomach, it's astonishing, Mr. Pathurst, what you can
+do with a weapon like this.  Now you can't use a rifle in a mix-up.
+I've been down and under, with a bunch giving me the boot, when I
+turned loose with this.  Talk about damage!  It ranged them the full
+length of their bodies.  One of them'd just landed his brogans on my
+face when I let'm have it.  The bullet entered just above his knee,
+smashed the collarbone, where it came out, and then clipped off an
+ear.  I guess that bullet's still going.  It took more than a full-
+sized man to stop it.  So I say, give me a good handy gat when
+something's doing."
+
+"Ain't you afraid you'll use all your ammunition up?" he asked
+anxiously half an hour later, as I continued to crack away with my
+new toy.
+
+He was quite reassured when I told him Wada had brought along fifty
+thousand rounds for me.
+
+In the midst of the shooting, two sharks came swimming around.  They
+were quite large, Mr. Pike said, and he estimated their length at
+fifteen feet.  It was Sunday morning, so that the crew, except for
+working the ship, had its time to itself, and soon the carpenter,
+with a rope for a fish-line and a great iron hook baited with a chunk
+of salt pork the size of my head, captured first one, and then the
+other, of the monsters.  They were hoisted in on the main deck.  And
+then I saw a spectacle of the cruelty of the sea.
+
+The full crew gathered about with sheath knives, hatchets, clubs, and
+big butcher knives borrowed from the galley.  I shall not give the
+details, save that they gloated and lusted, and roared and bellowed
+their delight in the atrocities they committed.  Finally, the first
+of the two fish was thrown back into the ocean with a pointed stake
+thrust into its upper and lower jaws so that it could not close its
+mouth.  Inevitable and prolonged starvation was the fate thus meted
+out to it.
+
+"I'll show you something, boys," Andy Fay cried, as they prepared to
+handle the second shark.
+
+The Maltese Cockney had been a most capable master of ceremonies with
+the first one.  More than anything else, I think, was I hardened
+against these brutes by what I saw them do.  In the end, the
+maltreated fish thrashed about the deck entirely eviscerated.
+Nothing remained but the mere flesh-shell of the creature, yet it
+would not die.  It was amazing the life that lingered when all the
+vital organs were gone.  But more amazing things were to follow.
+
+Mulligan Jacobs, his arms a butcher's to the elbows, without as much
+as "by your leave," suddenly thrust a hunk of meat into my hand.  I
+sprang back, startled, and dropped it to the deck, while a gleeful
+howl went up from the two-score men.  I was shamed, despite myself.
+These brutes held me in little respect; and, after all, human nature
+is so strange a compound that even a philosopher dislikes being held
+in disesteem by the brutes of his own species.
+
+I looked at what I had dropped.  It was the heart of the shark, and
+as I looked, there under my eyes, on the scorching deck where the
+pitch oozed from the seams, the heart pulsed with life.
+
+And I dared.  I would not permit these animals to laugh at any
+fastidiousness of mine.  I stooped and picked up the heart, and while
+I concealed and conquered my qualms I held it in my hand and felt it
+beat in my hand.
+
+At any rate, I had won a mild victory over Mulligan Jacobs; for he
+abandoned me for the more delectable diversion of torturing the shark
+that would not die.  For several minutes it had been lying quite
+motionless.  Mulligan Jacobs smote it a heavy blow on the nose with
+the flat of a hatchet, and as the thing galvanized into life and
+flung its body about the deck the little venomous man screamed in
+ecstasy:
+
+"The hooks are in it!--the hooks are in it!--and burnin' hot!"
+
+He squirmed and writhed with fiendish delight, and again he struck it
+on the nose and made it leap.
+
+This was too much, and I beat a retreat--feigning boredom, or
+cessation of interest, of course; and absently carrying the still
+throbbing heart in my hand.
+
+As I came upon the poop I saw Miss West, with her sewing basket,
+emerging from the port door of the chart-house.  The deck-chairs were
+on that side, so I stole around on the starboard side of the chart-
+house in order to fling overboard unobserved the dreadful thing I
+carried.  But, drying on the surface in the tropic heat and still
+pulsing inside, it stuck to my hand, so that it was a bad cast.
+Instead of clearing the railing, it struck on the pin-rail and stuck
+there in the shade, and as I opened the door to go below and wash my
+hands, with a last glance I saw it pulse where it had fallen.
+
+When I came back it was still pulsing.  I heard a splash overside
+from the waist of the ship, and knew the carcass had been flung
+overboard.  I did not go around the chart-house and join Miss West,
+but stood enthralled by the spectacle of that heart that beat in the
+tropic heat.
+
+Boisterous shouts from the sailors attracted my attention.  They had
+all climbed to the top of the tall rail and were watching something
+outboard.  I followed their gaze and saw the amazing thing.  That
+long-eviscerated shark was not dead.  It moved, it swam, it thrashed
+about, and ever it strove to escape from the surface of the ocean.
+Sometimes it swam down as deep as fifty or a hundred feet, and then,
+still struggling to escape the surface, struggled involuntarily to
+the surface.  Each failure thus to escape fetched wild laughter from
+the men.  But why did they laugh?  The thing was sublime, horrible,
+but it was not humorous.  I leave it to you.  What is there laughable
+in the sight of a pain-distraught fish rolling helplessly on the
+surface of the sea and exposing to the sun all its essential
+emptiness?
+
+I was turning away, when renewed shouting drew my gaze.  Half a dozen
+other sharks had appeared, smaller ones, nine or ten feet long.  They
+attacked their helpless comrade.  They tore him to pieces they
+destroyed him, devoured him.  I saw the last shred of him disappear
+down their maws.  He was gone, disintegrated, entombed in the living
+bodies of his kind, and already entering into the processes of
+digestion.  And yet, there, in the shade on the pin-rail, that
+unbelievable and monstrous heart beat on.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+
+The voyage is doomed to disaster and death.  I know Mr. Pike, now,
+and if ever he discovers the identity of Mr. Mellaire, murder will be
+done.  Mr. Mellaire is not Mr. Mellaire.  He is not from Georgia.  He
+is from Virginia.  His name is Waltham--Sidney Waltham.  He is one of
+the Walthams of Virginia, a black sheep, true, but a Waltham.  Of
+this I am convinced, just as utterly as I am convinced that Mr. Pike
+will kill him if he learns who he is.
+
+Let me tell how I have discovered all this.  It was last night,
+shortly before midnight, when I came up on the poop to enjoy a whiff
+of the south-east trades in which we are now bowling along, close-
+hauled in order to weather Cape San Roque.  Mr. Pike had the watch,
+and I paced up and down with him while he told me old pages of his
+life.  He has often done this, when not "sea-grouched," and often he
+has mentioned with pride--yes, with reverence--a master with whom he
+sailed five years.  "Old Captain Somers," he called him--"the finest,
+squarest, noblest man I ever sailed under, sir."
+
+Well, last night our talk turned on lugubrious subjects, and Mr.
+Pike, wicked old man that he is, descanted on the wickedness of the
+world and on the wickedness of the man who had murdered Captain
+Somers.
+
+"He was an old man, over seventy years old," Mr. Pike went on.  "And
+they say he'd got a touch of palsy--I hadn't seen him for years.  You
+see, I'd had to clear out from the coast because of trouble.  And
+that devil of a second mate caught him in bed late at night and beat
+him to death.  It was terrible.  They told me about it.  Right in San
+Francisco, on board the Jason Harrison, it happened, eleven years
+ago.
+
+"And do you know what they did?  First, they gave the murderer life,
+when he should have been hanged.  His plea was insanity, from having
+had his head chopped open a long time before by a crazy sea-cook.
+And when he'd served seven years the governor pardoned him.  He
+wasn't any good, but his people were a powerful old Virginian family,
+the Walthams--I guess you've heard of them--and they brought all
+kinds of pressure to bear.  His name was Sidney Waltham."
+
+At this moment the warning bell, a single stroke fifteen minutes
+before the change of watch, rang out from the wheel and was repeated
+by the look-out on the forecastle head.  Mr. Pike, under his stress
+of feeling, had stopped walking, and we stood at the break of the
+poop.  As chance would have it, Mr. Mellaire was a quarter of an hour
+ahead of time, and he climbed the poop-ladder and stood beside us
+while the mate concluded his tale.
+
+"I didn't mind it," Mr. Pike continued, "as long as he'd got life and
+was serving his time.  But when they pardoned him out after only
+seven years I swore I'd get him.  And I will.  I don't believe in God
+or devil, and it's a rotten crazy world anyway; but I do believe in
+hunches.  And I know I'm going to get him."
+
+"What will you do?" I queried.
+
+"Do?" Mr. Pike's voice was fraught with surprise that I should not
+know.  "Do?  Well, what did he do to old Captain Somers?  Yet he's
+disappeared these last three years now.  I've heard neither hide nor
+hair of him.  But he's a sailor, and he'll drift back to the sea, and
+some day . . . "
+
+In the illumination of a match with which the second mate was
+lighting his pipe I saw Mr. Pike's gorilla arms and huge clenched
+paws raised to heaven, and his face convulsed and working.  Also, in
+that brief moment of light, I saw that the second mate's hand which
+held the match was shaking.
+
+"And I ain't never seen even a photo of him," Mr. Pike added.  "But
+I've got a general idea of his looks, and he's got a mark
+unmistakable.  I could know him by it in the dark.  All I'd have to
+do is feel it.  Some day I'll stick my fingers into that mark."
+
+"What did you say, sir, was the captain's name?" Mr. Mellaire asked
+casually.
+
+"Somers--old Captain Somers," Mr. Pike answered.
+
+Mr. Mellaire repeated the name aloud several times, and then
+hazarded:
+
+"Didn't he command the Lammermoor thirty years ago?"
+
+"That's the man."
+
+"I thought I recognized him.  I lay at anchor in a ship next to his
+in Table Bay that time ago."
+
+"Oh, the wickedness of the world, the wickedness of the world," Mr.
+Pike muttered as he turned and strode away.
+
+I said good-night to the second mate and had started to go below,
+when he called to me in a low voice, "Mr. Pathurst!"
+
+I stopped, and then he said, hurriedly and confusedly:
+
+"Never mind, sir . . . I beg your pardon . . . I--I changed my mind."
+
+Below, lying in my bunk, I found myself unable to read.  My mind was
+bent on returning to what had just occurred on deck, and, against my
+will, the most gruesome speculations kept suggesting themselves.
+
+And then came Mr. Mellaire.  He had slipped down the booby hatch into
+the big after-room and thence through the hallway to my room.  He
+entered noiselessly, on clumsy tiptoes, and pressed his finger
+warningly to his lips.  Not until he was beside my bunk did he speak,
+and then it was in a whisper.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, Mr. Pathurst . . . I--I beg your pardon;
+but, you see, sir, I was just passing, and seeing you awake I . . . I
+thought it would not inconvenience you to . . . you see, I thought I
+might just as well prefer a small favour . . . seeing that I would
+not inconvenience you, sir . . . I . . . I . . . "
+
+I waited for him to proceed, and in the pause that ensued, while he
+licked his dry lips with his tongue, the thing ambushed in his skull
+peered at me through his eyes and seemed almost on the verge of
+leaping out and pouncing upon me.
+
+"Well, sir," he began again, this time more coherently, "it's just a
+little thing--foolish on my part, of course--a whim, so to say--but
+you will remember, near the beginning of the voyage, I showed you a
+scar on my head . . . a really small affair, sir, which I contracted
+in a misadventure.  It amounts to a deformity, which it is my fancy
+to conceal.  Not for worlds, sir, would I care to have Miss West, for
+instance, know that I carried such a deformity.  A man is a man, sir-
+-you understand--and you have not spoken of it to her?"
+
+"No," I replied.  "It just happens that I have not."
+
+"Nor to anybody else?--to, say, Captain West?--or, say, Mr. Pike?"
+
+"No, I haven't mentioned it to anybody," I averred.
+
+He could not conceal the relief he experienced.  The perturbation
+went out of his face and manner, and the ambushed thing drew back
+deeper into the recess of his skull.
+
+"The favour, sir, Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will
+not mention that little matter to anybody.  I suppose" (he smiled,
+and his voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part--you
+understand, I am sure."
+
+I nodded, and made a restless movement with my book as evidence that
+I desired to resume my reading.
+
+"I can depend upon you for that, Mr. Pathurst?"  His whole voice and
+manner had changed.  It was practically a command, and I could almost
+see fangs, bared and menacing, sprouting in the jaws of that thing I
+fancied dwelt behind his eyes.
+
+"Certainly," I answered coldly.
+
+"Thank you, sir--I thank you," he said, and, without more ado,
+tiptoed from the room.
+
+Of course I did not read.  How could I?  Nor did I sleep.  My mind
+ran on, and on, and not until the steward brought my coffee, shortly
+before five, did I sink into my first doze.
+
+One thing is very evident.  Mr. Pike does not dream that the murderer
+of Captain Somers is on board the Elsinore.  He has never glimpsed
+that prodigious fissure that clefts Mr. Mellaire's, or, rather,
+Sidney Waltham's, skull.  And I, for one, shall never tell Mr. Pike.
+And I know, now, why from the very first I disliked the second mate.
+And I understand that live thing, that other thing, that lurks within
+and peers out through the eyes.  I have recognized the same thing in
+the three gangsters for'ard.  Like the second mate, they are prison
+birds.  The restraint, the secrecy, and iron control of prison life
+has developed in all of them terrible other selves.
+
+Yes, and another thing is very evident.  On board this ship, driving
+now through the South Atlantic for the winter passage of Cape Horn,
+are all the elements of sea tragedy and horror.  We are freighted
+with human dynamite that is liable at any moment to blow our tiny
+floating world to fragments.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+
+The days slip by.  The south-east trade is brisk and small splashes
+of sea occasionally invade my open ports.  Mr. Pike's room was soaked
+yesterday.  This is the most exciting thing that has happened for
+some time.  The gangsters rule in the forecastle.  Larry and Shorty
+have had a harmless FIGHT.  The hooks continue to burn in Mulligan
+Jacobs's brain.  Charles Davis resides alone in his little steel
+room, coming out only to get his food from the galley.  Miss West
+plays and sings, doctors Possum, launders, and is for ever otherwise
+busy with her fancy work.  Mr. Pike runs the phonograph every other
+evening in the second dog-watch.  Mr. Mellaire hides the cleft in his
+head.  I keep his secret.  And Captain West, more remote than ever,
+sits in the draught of wind in the twilight cabin.
+
+We are now thirty-seven days at sea, in which time, until to-day, we
+have not sighted a vessel.  And to-day, at one time, no less than six
+vessels were visible from the deck.  Not until I saw these ships was
+I able thoroughly to realize how lonely this ocean is.
+
+Mr. Pike tells me we are several hundred miles off the South American
+coast.  And yet, only the other day, it seems, we were scarcely more
+distant from Africa.  A big velvety moth fluttered aboard this
+morning, and we are filled with conjecture.  How possibly could it
+have come from the South American coast these hundreds of miles in
+the teeth of the trades?
+
+The Southern Cross has been visible, of course, for weeks; the North
+Star has disappeared behind the bulge of the earth; and the Great
+Bear, at its highest, is very low.  Soon it, too, will be gone and we
+shall be raising the Magellan Clouds.
+
+I remember the fight between Larry and Shorty.  Wada reports that Mr.
+Pike watched it for some time, until, becoming incensed at their
+awkwardness, he clouted both of them with his open hands and made
+them stop, announcing that until they could make a better showing he
+intended doing all the fighting on the Elsinore himself.
+
+It is a feat beyond me to realize that he is sixty-nine years old.
+And when I look at the tremendous build of him and at his fearful,
+man-handling hands, I conjure up a vision of him avenging Captain
+Somers's murder.
+
+Life is cruel.  Amongst the Elsinore's five thousand tons of coal are
+thousands of rats.  There is no way for them to get out of their
+steel-walled prison, for all the ventilators are guarded with stout
+wire-mesh.  On her previous voyage, loaded with barley, they
+increased and multiplied.  Now they are imprisoned in the coal, and
+cannibalism is what must occur among them.  Mr. Pike says that when
+we reach Seattle there will be a dozen or a score of survivors, huge
+fellows, the strongest and fiercest.  Sometimes, passing the mouth of
+one ventilator that is in the after wall of the chart-house, I can
+hear their plaintive squealing and crying from far beneath in the
+coal.
+
+Other and luckier rats are in the 'tween decks for'ard, where all the
+spare suits of sails are stored.  They come out and run about the
+deck at night, steal food from the galley, and lap up the dew.  Which
+reminds me that Mr. Pike will no longer look at Possum.  It seems,
+under his suggestion, that Wada trapped a rat in the donkey-engine
+room.  Wada swears that it was the father of all rats, and that, by
+actual measurement, it scaled eighteen inches from nose to the tip of
+tail.  Also, it seems that Mr. Pike and Wada, with the door shut in
+the former's room, pitted the rat against Possum, and that Possum was
+licked.  They were compelled to kill the rat themselves, while
+Possum, when all was over, lay down and had a fit.
+
+Now Mr. Pike abhors a coward, and his disgust with Possum is
+profound.  He no longer plays with the puppy, nor even speaks to him,
+and, whenever he passes him on the deck, glowers sourly at him.
+
+I have been reading up the South Atlantic Sailing Directions, and I
+find that we are now entering the most beautiful sunset region in the
+world.  And this evening we were favoured with a sample.  I was in my
+quarters, overhauling my books, when Miss West called to me from the
+foot of the chart-house stairs:
+
+"Mr. Pathurst!--Come quick!  Oh, do come quick!  You can't afford to
+miss it!"
+
+Half the sky, from the zenith to the western sea-line, was an
+astonishing sheet of pure, pale, even gold.  And through this sheen,
+on the horizon, burned the sun, a disc of richer gold.  The gold of
+the sky grew more golden, then tarnished before our eyes and began to
+glow faintly with red.  As the red deepened, a mist spread over the
+whole sheet of gold and the burning yellow sun.  Turner was never
+guilty of so audacious an orgy in gold-mist.
+
+Presently, along the horizon, entirely completing the circle of sea
+and sky, the tight-packed shapes of the trade wind clouds began to
+show through the mist; and as they took form they spilled with rose-
+colour at their upper edges, while their bases were a pulsing,
+bluish-white.  I say it advisedly.  All the colours of this display
+PULSED.
+
+As the gold-mist continued to clear away, the colours became garish,
+bold; the turquoises went into greens and the roses turned to the red
+of blood.  And the purple and indigo of the long swells of sea were
+bronzed with the colour-riot in the sky, while across the water, like
+gigantic serpents, crawled red and green sky-reflections.  And then
+all the gorgeousness quickly dulled, and the warm, tropic darkness
+drew about us.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+
+The Elsinore is truly the ship of souls, the world in miniature; and,
+because she is such a small world, cleaving this vastitude of ocean
+as our larger world cleaves space, the strange juxtapositions that
+continually occur are startling.
+
+For instance, this afternoon on the poop.  Let me describe it.  Here
+was Miss West, in a crisp duck sailor suit, immaculately white, open
+at the throat, where, under the broad collar, was knotted a man-of-
+war black silk neckerchief.  Her smooth-groomed hair, a trifle
+rebellious in the breeze, was glorious.  And here was I, in white
+ducks, white shoes, and white silk shirt, as immaculate and well-
+tended as she.  The steward was just bringing the pretty tea-service
+for Miss West, and in the background Wada hovered.
+
+We had been discussing philosophy--or, rather, I had been feeling her
+out; and from a sketch of Spinoza's anticipations of the modern mind,
+through the speculative interpretations of the latest achievements in
+physics of Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Ramsay, I had come, as
+usual, to De Casseres, whom I was quoting, when Mr. Pike snarled
+orders to the watch.
+
+"'In this rise into the azure of pure perception, attainable only by
+a very few human beings, the spectacular sense is born,'."  I was
+quoting.  "'Life is no longer good or evil.  It is a perpetual play
+of forces without beginning or end.  The freed Intellect merges
+itself with the World-Will and partakes of its essence, which is not
+a moral essence but an aesthetic essence . . . "
+
+And at this moment the watch swarmed on to the poop to haul on the
+port-braces of the mizzen-sky-sail, royal and topgallant-sail.  The
+sailors passed us, or toiled close to us, with lowered eyes.  They
+did not look at us, so far removed from them were we.  It was this
+contrast that caught my fancy.  Here were the high and low, slaves
+and masters, beauty and ugliness, cleanness and filth.  Their feet
+were bare and scaled with patches of tar and pitch.  Their unbathed
+bodies were garmented in the meanest of clothes, dingy, dirty,
+ragged, and sparse.  Each one had on but two garments--dungaree
+trousers and a shoddy cotton shirt.
+
+And we, in our comfortable deck-chairs, our two servants at our
+backs, the quintessence of elegant leisure, sipped delicate tea from
+beautiful, fragile cups, and looked on at these wretched ones whose
+labour made possible the journey of our little world.  We did not
+speak to them, nor recognize their existence, any more than would
+they have dared speak to us.
+
+And Miss West, with the appraising eye of a plantation mistress for
+the condition of her field slaves, looked them over.
+
+"You see how they have fleshed up," she said, as they coiled the last
+turns of the ropes over the pins and faded away for'ard off the poop.
+"It is the regular hours, the good weather, the hard work, the open
+air, the sufficient food, and the absence of whisky.  And they will
+keep in this fettle until they get off the Horn.  And then you will
+see them go down from day to day.  A winter passage of the Horn is
+always a severe strain on the men.
+
+"But then, once we are around and in the good weather of the Pacific,
+you will see them gain again from day to day.  And when we reach
+Seattle they will be in splendid shape.  Only they will go ashore,
+drink up their wages in several days, and ship away on other vessels
+in precisely the same sodden, miserable condition that they were in
+when they sailed with us from Baltimore."
+
+And just then Captain West came out the chart-house door, strolled by
+for a single turn up and down, and with a smile and a word for us and
+an all-observant eye for the ship, the trim of her sails, the wind,
+and the sky, and the weather promise, went back through the chart-
+house door--the blond Aryan master, the king, the Samurai.
+
+And I finished sipping my tea of delicious and most expensive aroma,
+and our slant-eyed, dark-skinned servitors carried the pretty gear
+away, and I read, continuing De Casseres:
+
+"'Instinct wills, creates, carries on the work of the species.  The
+Intellect destroys, negatives, satirizes and ends in pure nihilism,
+instinct creates life, endlessly, hurling forth profusely and blindly
+its clowns, tragedians and comedians.  Intellect remains the eternal
+spectator of the play.  It participates at will, but never gives
+itself wholly to the fine sport.  The Intellect, freed from the
+trammels of the personal will, soars into the ether of perception,
+where Instinct follows it in a thousand disguises, seeking to draw it
+down to earth.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+
+We are now south of Rio and working south.  We are out of the
+latitude of the trades, and the wind is capricious.  Rain squalls and
+wind squalls vex the Elsinore.  One hour we may be rolling
+sickeningly in a dead calm, and the next hour we may be dashing
+fourteen knots through the water and taking off sail as fast as the
+men can clew up and lower away.  A night of calm, when sleep is well-
+nigh impossible in the sultry, muggy air, may be followed by a day of
+blazing sun and an oily swell from the south'ard, connoting great
+gales in that area of ocean we are sailing toward--or all day long
+the Elsinore, under an overcast sky, royals and sky sails furled, may
+plunge and buck under wind-pressure into a short and choppy head-sea.
+
+And all this means work for the men.  Taking Mr. Pike's judgment,
+they are very inadequate, though by this time they know the ropes.
+He growls and grumbles, and snorts and sneers whenever he watches
+them doing anything.  To-day, at eleven in the morning, the wind was
+so violent, continuing in greater gusts after having come in a great
+gust, that Mr. Pike ordered the mainsail taken off.  The great
+crojack was already off.  But the watch could not clew up the
+mainsail, and, after much vain sing-songing and pull-hauling, the
+watch below was routed out to bear a hand.
+
+"My God!" Mr. Pike groaned to me.  "Two watches for a rag like that
+when half a decent watch could do it!  Look at that preventer bosun
+of mine!"
+
+Poor Nancy!  He looked the saddest, sickest, bleakest creature I had
+ever seen.  He was so wretched, so miserable, so helpless.  And
+Sundry Buyers was just as impotent.  The expression on his face was
+of pain and hopelessness, and as he pressed his abdomen he lumbered
+futilely about, ever seeking something he might do and ever failing
+to find it.  He pottered.  He would stand and stare at one rope for a
+minute or so at a time, following it aloft with his eyes through the
+maze of ropes and stabs and gears with all the intentness of a man
+working out an intricate problem.  Then, holding his hand against his
+stomach, he would lumber on a few steps and select another rope for
+study.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Pike lamented.  "How can one drive with
+bosuns like that and a crew like that?  Just the same, if I was
+captain of this ship I'd drive 'em.  I'd show 'em what drive was, if
+I had to lose a few of them.  And when they grow weak off the Horn
+what'll we do?  It'll be both watches all the time, which will weaken
+them just that much the faster."
+
+Evidently this winter passage of the Horn is all that one has been
+led to expect from reading the narratives of the navigators.  Iron
+men like the two mates are very respectful of "Cape Stiff," as they
+call that uttermost tip of the American continent.  Speaking of the
+two mates, iron-made and iron-mouthed that they are, it is amusing
+that in really serious moments both of them curse with "Oh dear, oh
+dear."
+
+In the spells of calm I take great delight in the little rifle.  I
+have already fired away five thousand rounds, and have come to
+consider myself an expert.  Whatever the knack of shooting may be,
+I've got it.  When I get back I shall take up target practice.  It is
+a neat, deft sport.
+
+Not only is Possum afraid of the sails and of rats, but he is afraid
+of rifle-fire, and at the first discharge goes yelping and ki-yi-ing
+below.  The dislike Mr. Pike has developed for the poor little puppy
+is ludicrous.  He even told me that if it were his dog he'd throw it
+overboard for a target.  Just the same, he is an affectionate, heart-
+warming little rascal, and has already crept so deep into my heart
+that I am glad Miss West did not accept him.
+
+And--oh!--he insists on sleeping with me on top the bedding; a
+proceeding which has scandalized the mate.  "I suppose he'll be using
+your toothbrush next," Mr. Pike growled at me.  But the puppy loves
+my companionship, and is never happier than when on the bed with me.
+Yet the bed is not entirely paradise, for Possum is badly frightened
+when ours is the lee side and the seas pound and smash against the
+glass ports.  Then the little beggar, electric with fear to every
+hair tip, crouches and snarls menacingly and almost at the same time
+whimpers appeasingly at the storm-monster outside.
+
+"Father KNOWS the sea," Miss West said to me this afternoon.  "He
+understands it, and he loves it."
+
+"Or it may be habit," I ventured.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"He does know it.  And he loves it.  That is why he has come back to
+it.  All his people before him were sea folk.  His grandfather,
+Anthony West, made forty-six voyages between 1801 and 1847.  And his
+father, Robert, sailed master to the north-west coast before the gold
+days and was captain of some of the fastest Cape Horn clippers after
+the gold discovery.  Elijah West, father's great-grandfather, was a
+privateersman in the Revolution.  He commanded the armed brig New
+Defence.  And, even before that, Elijah's father, in turn, and
+Elijah's father's father, were masters and owners on long-voyage
+merchant adventures.
+
+"Anthony West, in 1813 and 1814, commanded the David Bruce, with
+letters of marque.  He was half-owner, with Gracie & Sons as the
+other half-owners.  She was a two-hundred-ton schooner, built right
+up in Maine.  She carried a long eighteen-pounder, two ten-pounders,
+and ten six-pounders, and she sailed like a witch.  She ran the
+blockade off Newport and got away to the English Channel and the Bay
+of Biscay.  And, do you know, though she only cost twelve thousand
+dollars all told, she took over three hundred thousand dollars of
+British prizes.  A brother of his was on the Wasp.
+
+"So, you see, the sea is in our blood.  She is our mother.  As far
+back as we can trace all our line was born to the sea."  She laughed
+and went on.  "We've pirates and slavers in our family, and all sorts
+of disreputable sea-rovers.  Old Ezra West, just how far back I don't
+remember, was executed for piracy and his body hung in chains at
+Plymouth.
+
+"The sea is father's blood.  And he knows, well, a ship, as you would
+know a dog or a horse.  Every ship he sails has a distinct
+personality for him.  I have watched him, in high moments, and SEEN
+him think.  But oh! the times I have seen him when he does not think-
+-when he FEELS and knows everything without thinking at all.  Really,
+with all that appertains to the sea and ships, he is an artist.
+There is no other word for it."
+
+"You think a great deal of your father," I remarked.
+
+"He is the most wonderful man I have ever known," she replied.
+"Remember, you are not seeing him at his best.  He has never been the
+same since mother's death.  If ever a man and woman were one, they
+were."  She broke off, then concluded abruptly.  "You don't know him.
+You don't know him at all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+
+"I think we are going to have a fine sunset," Captain West remarked
+last evening.
+
+Miss West and I abandoned our rubber of cribbage and hastened on
+deck.  The sunset had not yet come, but all was preparing.  As we
+gazed we could see the sky gathering the materials, grouping the gray
+clouds in long lines and towering masses, spreading its palette with
+slow-growing, glowing tints and sudden blobs of colour.
+
+"It's the Golden Gate!" Miss West cried, indicating the west.  "See!
+We're just inside the harbour.  Look to the south there.  If that
+isn't the sky-line of San Francisco!  There's the Call Building, and
+there, far down, the Ferry Tower, and surely that is the Fairmount."
+Her eyes roved back through the opening between the cloud masses, and
+she clapped her hands.  "It's a sunset within a sunset!  See!  The
+Farallones!"--swimming in a miniature orange and red sunset all their
+own.  "Isn't it the Golden Gate, and San Francisco, and the
+Farallones?"  She appealed to Mr. Pike, who, leaning near, on the
+poop-rail, was divided between gazing sourly at Nancy pottering on
+the main deck and sourly at Possum, who, on the bridge, crouched with
+terror each time the crojack flapped emptily above him.
+
+The mate turned his head and favoured the sky picture with a solemn
+stare.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he growled.  "It may look like the Farallones to
+you, but to me it looks like a battleship coming right in the Gate
+with a bone in its teeth at a twenty-knot clip."
+
+Sure enough.  The floating Farallones had metamorphosed into a giant
+warship.
+
+Then came the colour riot, the dominant tone of which was green.  It
+was green, green, green--the blue-green of the springing year, and
+sere and yellow green and tawny-brown green of autumn.  There were
+orange green, gold green, and a copper green.  And all these greens
+were rich green beyond description; and yet the richness and the
+greenness passed even as we gazed upon it, going out of the gray
+clouds and into the sea, which assumed the exquisite golden pink of
+polished copper, while the hollows of the smooth and silken ripples
+were touched by a most ethereal pea green.
+
+The gray clouds became a long, low swathe of ruby red, or garnet red-
+-such as one sees in a glass of heavy burgundy when held to the
+light.  There was such depth to this red!  And, below it, separated
+from the main colour-mass by a line of gray-white fog, or line of
+sea, was another and smaller streak of ruddy-coloured wine.
+
+I strolled across the poop to the port side.
+
+"Oh!  Come back!  Look!  Look!" Miss West cried to me.
+
+"What's the use?" I answered.  "I've something just as good over
+here."
+
+She joined me, and as she did so I noted, a sour grin on Mr. Pike's
+face.
+
+The eastern heavens were equally spectacular.  That quarter of the
+sky was sheer and delicate shell of blue, the upper portions of which
+faded, changed, through every harmony, into a pale, yet warm, rose,
+all trembling, palpitating, with misty blue tinting into pink.  The
+reflection of this coloured sky-shell upon the water made of the sea
+a glimmering watered silk, all changeable, blue, Nile-green, and
+salmon-pink.  It was silky, silken, a wonderful silk that veneered
+and flossed the softly moving, wavy water.
+
+And the pale moon looked like a wet pearl gleaming through the tinted
+mist of the sky-shell.
+
+In the southern quadrant of the sky we discovered an entirely
+different sunset--what would be accounted a very excellent orange-
+and-red sunset anywhere, with grey clouds hanging low and lighted and
+tinted on all their under edges.
+
+"Huh!" Mr. Pike muttered gruffly, while we were exclaiming over our
+fresh discovery.  "Look at the sunset I got here to the north.  It
+ain't doing so badly now, I leave it to you."
+
+And it wasn't.  The northern quadrant was a great fen of colour and
+cloud, that spread ribs of feathery pink, fleece-frilled, from the
+horizon to the zenith.  It was all amazing.  Four sunsets at the one
+time in the sky!  Each quadrant glowed, and burned, and pulsed with a
+sunset distinctly its own.
+
+And as the colours dulled in the slow twilight, the moon, still
+misty, wept tears of brilliant, heavy silver into the dim lilac sea.
+And then came the hush of darkness and the night, and we came to
+ourselves, out of reverie, sated with beauty, leaning toward each
+other as we leaned upon the rail side by side.
+
+
+I never grow tired of watching Captain West.  In a way he bears a
+sort of resemblance to several of Washington's portraits.  He is six
+feet of aristocratic thinness, and has a very definite, leisurely and
+stately grace of movement.  His thinness is almost ascetic.  In
+appearance and manner he is the perfect old-type New England
+gentleman.
+
+He has the same gray eyes as his daughter, although his are genial
+rather than warm; and his eyes have the same trick of smiling.  His
+skin is pinker than hers, and his brows and lashes are fairer.  But
+he seems removed beyond passion, or even simple enthusiasm.  Miss
+West is firm, like her father; but there is warmth in her firmness.
+He is clean, he is sweet and courteous; but he is coolly sweet,
+coolly courteous.  With all his certain graciousness, in cabin or on
+deck, so far as his social equals are concerned, his graciousness is
+cool, elevated, thin.
+
+He is the perfect master of the art of doing nothing.  He never
+reads, except the Bible; yet he is never bored.  Often, I note him in
+a deck-chair, studying his perfect finger-nails, and, I'll swear, not
+seeing them at all.  Miss West says he loves the sea.  And I ask
+myself a thousand times, "But how?" He shows no interest in any phase
+of the sea.  Although he called our attention to the glorious sunset
+I have just described, he did not remain on deck to enjoy it.  He sat
+below, in the big leather chair, not reading, not dozing, but merely
+gazing straight before him at nothing.
+
+
+The days pass, and the seasons pass.  We left Baltimore at the tail-
+end of winter, went into spring and on through summer, and now we are
+in fall weather and urging our way south to the winter of Cape Horn.
+And as we double the Cape and proceed north, we shall go through
+spring and summer--a long summer--pursuing the sun north through its
+declination and arriving at Seattle in summer.  And all these seasons
+have occurred, and will have occurred, in the space of five months.
+
+Our white ducks are gone, and, in south latitude thirty-five, we are
+wearing the garments of a temperate clime.  I notice that Wada has
+given me heavier underclothes and heavier pyjamas, and that Possum,
+of nights, is no longer content with the top of the bed but must
+crawl underneath the bed-clothes.
+
+
+We are now off the Plate, a region notorious for storms, and Mr. Pike
+is on the lookout for a pampero.  Captain West does not seem to be on
+the lookout for anything; yet I notice that he spends longer hours on
+deck when the sky and barometer are threatening.
+
+Yesterday we had a hint of Plate weather, and to-day an awesome
+fiasco of the same.  The hint came last evening between the twilight
+and the dark.  There was practically no wind, and the Elsinore, just
+maintaining steerage way by means of intermittent fans of air from
+the north, floundered exasperatingly in a huge glassy swell that
+rolled up as an echo from some blown-out storm to the south.
+
+Ahead of us, arising with the swiftness of magic, was a dense slate-
+blackness.  I suppose it was cloud-formation, but it bore no
+semblance to clouds.  It was merely and sheerly a blackness that
+towered higher and higher until it overhung us, while it spread to
+right and left, blotting out half the sea.
+
+And still the light puffs from the north filled our sails; and still,
+as the Elsinore floundered on the huge, smooth swells and the sails
+emptied and flapped a hollow thunder, we moved slowly towards that
+ominous blackness.  In the cast, in what was quite distinctly an
+active thunder cloud, the lightning fairly winked, while the
+blackness in front of us was rent with blobs and flashes of
+lightning.
+
+The last puffs left us, and in the hushes, between the rumbles of the
+nearing thunder, the voices of the men aloft on the yards came to
+one's ear as if they were right beside one instead of being hundreds
+of feet away and up in the air.  That they were duly impressed by
+what was impending was patent from the earnestness with which they
+worked.  Both watches toiled under both mates, and Captain West
+strolled the poop in his usual casual way, and gave no orders at all,
+save in low conventional tones, when Mr. Pike came upon the poop and
+conferred with him.
+
+Miss West, having deserted the scene five minutes before, returned, a
+proper sea-woman, clad in oil-skins, sou'wester, and long sea-boots.
+She ordered me, quite peremptorily, to do the same.  But I could not
+bring myself to leave the deck for fear of missing something, so I
+compromised by having Wada bring my storm-gear to me.
+
+And then the wind came, smack out of the blackness, with the
+abruptness of thunder and accompanied by the most diabolical thunder.
+And with the rain and thunder came the blackness.  It was tangible.
+It drove past us in the bellowing wind like so much stuff that one
+could feel.  Blackness as well as wind impacted on us.  There is no
+other way to describe it than by the old, ancient old, way of saying
+one could not see his hand before his face.
+
+"Isn't it splendid!" Miss West shouted into my ear, close beside me,
+as we clung to the railing of the break of the poop.
+
+"Superb!" I shouted back, my lips to her ear, so that her hair
+tickled my face.
+
+And, I know not why--it must have been spontaneous with both of us--
+in that shouting blackness of wind, as we clung to the rail to avoid
+being blown away, our hands went out to each other and my hand and
+hers gripped and pressed and then held mutually to the rail.
+
+"Daughter of Herodias," I commented grimly to myself; but my hand did
+not leave hers.
+
+"What is happening?" I shouted in her ear.
+
+"We've lost way," came her answer.  "I think we're caught aback!  The
+wheel's up, but she could not steer!"
+
+The Gabriel voice of the Samurai rang out.  "Hard over?" was his
+mellow storm-call to the man at the wheel.  "Hard over, sir," came
+the helmsman's reply, vague, cracked with strain, and smothered.
+
+Came the lightning, before us, behind us, on every side, bathing us
+in flaming minutes at a time.  And all the while we were deafened by
+the unceasing uproar of thunder.  It was a weird sight--far aloft the
+black skeleton of spars and masts from which the sails had been
+removed; lower down, the sailors clinging like monstrous bugs as they
+passed the gaskets and furled; beneath them the few set sails, filled
+backward against the masts, gleaming whitely, wickedly, evilly, in
+the fearful illumination; and, at the bottom, the deck and bridge and
+houses of the Elsinore, and a tangled riff-raff of flying ropes, and
+clumps and bunches of swaying, pulling, hauling, human creatures.
+
+It was a great moment, the master's moment--caught all aback with all
+our bulk and tonnage and infinitude of gear, and our heaven-aspiring
+masts two hundred feet above our heads.  And our master was there, in
+sheeting flame, slender, casual, imperturbable, with two men--one of
+them a murderer--under him to pass on and enforce his will, and with
+a horde of inefficients and weaklings to obey that will, and pull,
+and haul, and by the sheer leverages of physics manipulate our
+floating world so that it would endure this fury of the elements.
+
+What happened next, what was done, I do not know, save that now and
+again I heard the Gabriel voice; for the darkness came, and the rain
+in pouring, horizontal sheets.  It filled my mouth and strangled my
+lungs as if I had fallen overboard.  It seemed to drive up as well as
+down, piercing its way under my sou'wester, through my oilskins, down
+my tight-buttoned collar, and into my sea-boots.  I was dizzied,
+obfuscated, by all this onslaught of thunder, lightning, wind,
+blackness, and water.  And yet the master, near to me, there on the
+poop, lived and moved serenely in all, voicing his wisdom and will to
+the wisps of creatures who obeyed and by their brute, puny strength
+pulled braces, slacked sheets, dragged courses, swung yards and
+lowered them, hauled on buntlines and clewlines, smoothed and
+gasketed the huge spreads of canvas.
+
+How it happened I know not, but Miss West and I crouched together,
+clinging to the rail and to each other in the shelter of the
+thrumming weather-cloth.  My arm was about her and fast to the
+railing; her shoulder pressed close against me, and by one hand she
+held tightly to the lapel of my oilskin.
+
+An hour later we made our way across the poop to the chart-house,
+helping each other to maintain footing as the Elsinore plunged and
+bucked in the rising sea and was pressed over and down by the weight
+of wind on her few remaining set sails.  The wind, which had lulled
+after the rain, had risen in recurrent gusts to storm violence.  But
+all was well with the gallant ship.  The crisis was past, and the
+ship lived, and we lived, and with streaming faces and bright eyes we
+looked at each other and laughed in the bright light of the chart-
+room.
+
+"Who can blame one for loving the sea?" Miss West cried out
+exultantly, as she wrung the rain from her ropes of hair which had
+gone adrift in the turmoil.  "And the men of the sea!" she cried.
+"The masters of the sea!  You saw my father . . . "
+
+"He is a king," I said.
+
+"He is a king," she repeated after me.
+
+And the Elsinore lifted on a cresting sea and flung down on her side,
+so that we were thrown together and brought up breathless against the
+wall.
+
+I said good-night to her at the foot of the stairs, and as I passed
+the open door to the cabin I glanced in.  There sat Captain West,
+whom I had thought still on deck.  His storm-trappings were removed,
+his sea-boots replaced by slippers; and he leaned back in the big
+leather chair, eyes wide open, beholding visions in the curling smoke
+of a cigar against a background of wildly reeling cabin wall.
+
+It was at eleven this morning that the Plate gave us a fiasco.  Last
+night's was a real pampero--though a mild one.  To-day's promised to
+be a far worse one, and then laughed at us as a proper cosmic joke.
+The wind, during the night, had so eased that by nine in the morning
+we had all our topgallant-sails set.  By ten we were rolling in a
+dead calm.  By eleven the stuff began making up ominously in the
+south'ard.
+
+The overcast sky closed down.  Our lofty trucks seemed to scrape the
+cloud-zenith.  The horizon drew in on us till it seemed scarcely half
+a mile away.  The Elsinore was embayed in a tiny universe of mist and
+sea.  The lightning played.  Sky and horizon drew so close that the
+Elsinore seemed on the verge of being absorbed, sucked in by it,
+sucked up by it.
+
+Then from zenith to horizon the sky was cracked with forked
+lightning, and the wet atmosphere turned to a horrid green.  The
+rain, beginning gently, in dead calm, grew into a deluge of enormous
+streaming drops.  It grew darker and darker, a green darkness, and in
+the cabin, although it was midday, Wada and the steward lighted
+lamps.  The lightning came closer and closer, until the ship was
+enveloped in it.  The green darkness was continually a-tremble with
+flame, through which broke greater illuminations of forked lightning.
+These became more violent as the rain lessened, and, so absolutely
+were we centred in this electrical maelstrom, there was no connecting
+any chain or flash or fork of lightning with any particular thunder-
+clap.  The atmosphere all about us paled and flamed.  Such a crashing
+and smashing!  We looked every moment for the Elsinore to be struck.
+And never had I seen such colours in lightning.  Although from moment
+to moment we were dazzled by the greater bolts, there persisted
+always a tremulous, pulsing lesser play of light, sometimes softly
+blue, at other times a thin purple that quivered on into a thousand
+shades of lavender.
+
+And there was no wind.  No wind came.  Nothing happened.  The
+Elsinore, naked-sparred, under only lower-topsails, with spanker and
+crojack furled, was prepared for anything.  Her lower-topsails hung
+in limp emptiness from the yards, heavy with rain and flapping
+soggily when she rolled.  The cloud mass thinned, the day brightened,
+the green blackness passed into gray twilight, the lightning eased,
+the thunder moved along away from us, and there was no wind.  In half
+an hour the sun was shining, the thunder muttered intermittently
+along the horizon, and the Elsinore still rolled in a hush of air.
+
+"You can't tell, sir," Mr. Pike growled to me.  "Thirty years ago I
+was dismasted right here off the Plate in a clap of wind that come on
+just as that come on."
+
+It was the changing of the watches, and Mr. Mellaire, who had come on
+the poop to relieve the mate, stood beside me.
+
+"One of the nastiest pieces of water in the world," he concurred.
+"Eighteen years ago the Plate gave it to me--lost half our sticks,
+twenty hours on our beam-ends, cargo shifted, and foundered.  I was
+two days in the boat before an English tramp picked us up.  And none
+of the other boats ever was picked up."
+
+"The Elsinore behaved very well last night," I put in cheerily.
+
+"Oh, hell, that wasn't nothing," Mr. Pike grumbled.  "Wait till you
+see a real pampero.  It's a dirty stretch hereabouts, and I, for one,
+'ll be glad when we get across It.  I'd sooner have a dozen Cape Horn
+snorters than one of these.  How about you, Mr. Mellaire?"
+
+"Same here, sir," he answered.  "Those sou'-westers are honest.  You
+know what to expect.  But here you never know.  The best of ship-
+masters can get tripped up off the Plate."
+
+
+"'As I've found out .  .
+Beyond a doubt,"
+
+
+Mr. Pike hummed from Newcomb's Celeste, as he went down the ladder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+
+The sunsets grow more bizarre and spectacular off this coast of the
+Argentine.  Last evening we had high clouds, broken white and golden,
+flung disorderly, generously, over the western half of the sky, while
+in the east was painted a second sunset--a reflection, perhaps, of
+the first.  At any rate, the eastern sky was a bank of pale clouds
+that shed soft, spread rays of blue and white upon a blue-grey sea.
+
+And the evening before last we had a gorgeous Arizona riot in the
+west.  Bastioned upon the ocean cloud-tier was piled upon cloud-tier,
+spacious and lofty, until we gazed upon a Grand Canyon a myriad times
+vaster and more celestial than that of the Colorado.  The clouds took
+on the same stratified, serrated, rose-rock formation, and all the
+hollows were filled with the opal blues and purple hazes of the
+Painted Lands.
+
+The Sailing Directions say that these remarkable sunsets are due to
+the dust being driven high into the air by the winds that blow across
+the pampas of the Argentine.
+
+And our sunset to-night--I am writing this at midnight, as I sit
+propped in my blankets, wedged by pillows, while the Elsinore wallows
+damnably in a dead calm and a huge swell rolling up from the Cape
+Horn region, where, it does seem, gales perpetually blow.  But our
+sunset.  Turner might have perpetrated it.  The west was as if a
+painter had stood off and slapped brushfuls of gray at a green
+canvas.  On this green background of sky the clouds spilled and
+crumpled.
+
+But such a background!  Such an orgy of green!  No shade of green was
+missing in the interstices, large and small, between the milky,
+curdled clouds--Nile-green high up, and then, in order, each with a
+thousand shades, blue-green, brown-green, grey-green, and a wonderful
+olive-green that tarnished into a rich bronze-green.
+
+During the display the rest of the horizon glowed with broad bands of
+pink, and blue, and pale green, and yellow.  A little later, when the
+sun was quite down, in the background of the curdled clouds
+smouldered a wine-red mass of colour, that faded to bronze and tinged
+all the fading greens with its sanguinary hue.  The clouds themselves
+flushed to rose of all shades, while a fan of gigantic streamers of
+pale rose radiated toward the zenith.  These deepened rapidly into
+flaunting rose-flame and burned long in the slow-closing twilight.
+
+And with all this wonder of the beauty of the world still glowing in
+my brain hours afterward, I hear the snarling of Mr. Pike above my
+head, and the trample and drag of feet as the men move from rope to
+rope and pull and haul.  More weather is making, and from the way
+sail is being taken in it cannot be far off.
+
+
+Yet at daylight this morning we were still wallowing in the same dead
+calm and sickly swell.  Miss West says the barometer is down, but
+that the warning has been too long, for the Plate, to amount to
+anything.  Pamperos happen quickly here, and though the Elsinore,
+under bare poles to her upper-topsails, is prepared for anything, it
+may well be that they will be crowding on canvas in another hour.
+
+Mr. Pike was so fooled that he actually had set the topgallant-sails,
+and the gaskets were being taken off the royals, when the Samurai
+came on deck, strolled back and forth a casual five minutes, then
+spoke in an undertone to Mr. Pike.  Mr. Pike did not like it.  To me,
+a tyro, it was evident that he disagreed with his master.
+Nevertheless, his voice went out in a snarl aloft to the men on the
+royal-yards to make all fast again.  Then it was clewlines and
+buntlines and lowering of yards as the topgallant-sails were stripped
+off.  The crojack was taken in, and some of the outer fore-and-aft
+handsails, whose order of names I can never remember.
+
+A breeze set in from the south-west, blowing briskly under a clear
+sky.  I could see that Mr. Pike was secretly pleased.  The Samurai
+had been mistaken.  And each time Mr. Pike glanced aloft at the naked
+topgallant- and royal-yards, I knew his thought was that they might
+well be carrying sail.  I was quite convinced that the Plate had
+fooled Captain West.  So was Miss West convinced, and, being a
+favoured person like myself, she frankly told me so.
+
+"Father will be setting sail in half an hour," she prophesied.
+
+What superior weather-sense Captain West possesses I know not, save
+that it is his by Samurai right.  The sky, as I have said, was clear.
+The air was brittle--sparkling gloriously in the windy sun.  And yet,
+behold, in a brief quarter of an hour, the change that took place.  I
+had just returned from a trip below, and Miss West was venting her
+scorn on the River Plate and promising to go below to the sewing-
+machine, when we heard Mr. Pike groan.  It was a whimsical groan of
+disgust, contrition, and acknowledgment of inferiority before the
+master.
+
+"Here comes the whole River Plate," was what he groaned.
+
+Following his gaze to the south-west, we saw it coming.  It was a
+cloud-mass that blotted out the sunlight and the day.  It seemed to
+swell and belch and roll over and over on itself as it advanced with
+a rapidity that told of enormous wind behind it and in it.  Its speed
+was headlong, terrific; and, beneath it, covering the sea, advancing
+with it, was a gray bank of mist.
+
+Captain West spoke to the mate, who bawled the order along, and the
+watch, reinforced by the watch below, began dewing up the mainsail
+and foresail and climbing into the rigging.
+
+"Keep off!  Put your wheel over!  Hard over!" Captain West called
+gently to the helmsman.
+
+And the big wheel spun around, and the Elsinore's bow fell off so
+that she might not be caught aback by the onslaught of wind.
+
+Thunder rode in that rushing, rolling blackness of cloud; and it was
+rent by lightning as it fell upon us.
+
+Then it was rain, wind, obscureness of gloom, and lightning.  I
+caught a glimpse of the men on the lower-yards as they were blotted
+from view and as the Elsinore heeled over and down.  There were
+fifteen men of them to each yard, and the gaskets were well passed
+ere we were struck.  How they regained the deck I do not know, I
+never saw; for the Elsinore, under only upper- and lower-topsails,
+lay down on her side, her port-rail buried in the sea, and did not
+rise.
+
+There was no maintaining an unsupported upright position on that
+acute slant of deck.  Everybody held on.  Mr. Pike frankly gripped
+the poop-rail with both hands, and Miss West and I made frantic
+clutches and scrambled for footing.  But I noticed that the Samurai,
+poised lightly, like a bird on the verge of flight, merely rested one
+hand on the rail.  He gave no orders.  As I divined, there was
+nothing to be done.  He waited--that was all--in tranquillity and
+repose.  The situation was simple.  Either the masts would go, or the
+Elsinore would rise with her masts intact, or she would never rise
+again.
+
+In the meantime she lay dead, her lee yardarms almost touching the
+sea, the sea creaming solidly to her hatch-combings across the
+buried, unseen rail.
+
+The minutes were as centuries, until the bow paid off and the
+Elsinore, turned tail before it, righted to an even keel.
+Immediately this was accomplished Captain West had her brought back
+upon the wind.  And immediately, thereupon, the big foresail went
+adrift from its gaskets.  The shock, or succession of shocks, to the
+ship, from the tremendous buffeting that followed, was fearful.  It
+seemed she was being racked to pieces.  Master and mate were side by
+side when this happened, and the expressions on their faces typified
+them.  In neither face was apprehension.  Mr. Pike's face bore a sour
+sneer for the worthless sailors who had botched the job.  Captain
+West's face was serenely considerative.
+
+Still, nothing was to be done, could be done; and for five minutes
+the Elsinore was shaken as in the maw of some gigantic monster, until
+the last shreds of the great piece of canvas had been torn away.
+
+"Our foresail has departed for Africa," Miss West laughed in my ear.
+
+She is like her father, unaware of fear.
+
+"And now we may as well go below and be comfortable," she said five
+minutes later.  "The worst is over.  It will only be blow, blow,
+blow, and a big sea making."
+
+
+All day it blew.  And the big sea that arose made the Elsinore's
+conduct almost unlivable.  My only comfort was achieved by taking to
+my bunk and wedging myself with pillows buttressed against the bunk's
+sides by empty soap-boxes which Wada arranged.  Mr. Pike, clinging to
+my door-casing while his legs sprawled adrift in a succession of
+terrific rolls, paused to tell me that it was a new one on him in the
+pampero line.  It was all wrong from the first.  It had not come on
+right.  It had no reason to be.
+
+He paused a little longer, and, in a casual way, that under the
+circumstances was ridiculously transparent, exposed what was at
+ferment in his mind.
+
+First of all he was absurd enough to ask if Possum showed symptoms of
+sea-sickness.  Next, he unburdened his wrath for the inefficients who
+had lost the foresail, and sympathized with the sail-makers for the
+extra work thrown upon them.  Then he asked permission to borrow one
+of my books, and, clinging to my bunk, selected Buchner's Force and
+Matter from my shelf, carefully wedging the empty space with the
+doubled magazine I use for that purpose.
+
+Still he was loth to depart, and, cudgelling his brains for a
+pretext, he set up a rambling discourse on River Plate weather.  And
+all the time I kept wondering what was behind it all.  At last it
+came.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Pathurst," he remarked, "do you happen to remember
+how many years ago Mr. Mellaire said it was that he was dismasted and
+foundered off here?"
+
+I caught his drift on the instant.
+
+"Eight years ago, wasn't it?" I lied.
+
+Mr. Pike let this sink in and slowly digested it, while the Elsinore
+was guilty of three huge rolls down to port and back again.
+
+"Now I wonder what ship was sunk off the Plate eight years ago?" he
+communed, as if with himself.  "I guess I'll have to ask Mr. Mellaire
+her name.  You can search me for all any I can recollect."
+
+He thanked me with unwonted elaborateness for Force and Matter, of
+which I knew he would never read a line, and felt his way to the
+door.  Here he hung on for a moment, as if struck by a new and most
+accidental idea.
+
+"Now it wasn't, by any chance, that he said eighteen years ago?" he
+queried.
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Eight years ago," I said.  "That's the way I remember it, though why
+I should remember it at all I don't know.  But that is what he said,"
+I went on with increasing confidence.  "Eight years ago.  I am sure
+of it."
+
+Mr. Pike looked at me ponderingly, and waited until the Elsinore had
+fairly righted for an instant ere he took his departure down the
+hall.
+
+I think I have followed the working of his mind.  I have long since
+learned that his memory of ships, officers, cargoes, gales, and
+disasters is remarkable.  He is a veritable encyclopaedia of the sea.
+Also, it is patent that he has equipped himself with Sidney Waltham's
+history.  As yet, he does not dream that Mr. Mellaire is Sidney
+Waltham, and he is merely wondering if Mr. Mellaire was a ship-mate
+of Sidney Waltham eighteen years ago in the ship lost off the Plate.
+
+In the meantime, I shall never forgive Mr. Mellaire for this slip he
+has made.  He should have been more careful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+
+An abominable night!  A wonderful night!  Sleep?  I suppose I did
+sleep, in catnaps, but I swear I heard every bell struck until three-
+thirty.  Then came a change, an easement.  No longer was it a
+stubborn, loggy fight against pressures.  The Elsinore moved.  I
+could feel her slip, and slide, and send, and soar.  Whereas before
+she had been flung continually down to port, she now rolled as far to
+one side as to the other.
+
+I knew what had taken place.  Instead of remaining hove-to on the
+pampero, Captain West had turned tail and was running before it.
+This, I understood, meant a really serious storm, for the north-east
+was the last direction in which Captain West desired to go.  But at
+any rate the movement, though wilder, was easier, and I slept.  I was
+awakened at five by the thunder of seas that fell aboard, rushed down
+the main deck, and crashed against the cabin wall.  Through my open
+door I could see water swashing up and down the hall, while half a
+foot of water creamed and curdled from under my bunk across the floor
+each time the ship rolled to starboard.
+
+The steward brought me my coffee, and, wedged by boxes and pillows,
+like an equilibrist, I sat up and drank it.  Luckily I managed to
+finish it in time, for a succession of terrific rolls emptied one of
+my book-shelves.  Possum, crawling upward from my feet under the
+covered way of my bed, yapped with terror as the seas smashed and
+thundered and as the avalanche of books descended upon us.  And I
+could not but grin when the Paste Board Crown smote me on the head,
+while the puppy was knocked gasping with Chesterton's What's Wrong
+with the World?
+
+"Well, what do you think?" I queried of the steward who was helping
+to set us and the books to rights.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and his bright slant eyes were very bright
+as he replied:
+
+"Many times I see like this.  Me old man.  Many times I see more bad.
+Too much wind, too much work.  Rotten dam bad."
+
+I could guess that the scene on deck was a spectacle, and at six
+o'clock, as gray light showed through my ports in the intervals when
+they were not submerged, I essayed the side-board of my bunk like a
+gymnast, captured my careering slippers, and shuddered as I thrust my
+bare feet into their chill sogginess.  I did not wait to dress.
+Merely in pyjamas I headed for the poop, Possum wailing dismally at
+my desertion.
+
+It was a feat to travel the narrow halls.  Time and again I paused
+and held on until my finger-tips hurt.  In the moments of easement I
+made progress.  Yet I miscalculated.  The foot of the broad stairway
+to the chart-house rested on a cross-hall a dozen feet in length.
+Over-confidence and an unusually violent antic of the Elsinore caused
+the disaster.  She flung down to starboard with such suddenness and
+at such a pitch that the flooring seemed to go out from under me and
+I hustled helplessly down the incline.  I missed a frantic clutch at
+the newel-post, flung up my arm in time to save my face, and, most
+fortunately, whirled half about, and, still falling, impacted with my
+shoulder muscle-pad on Captain West's door.
+
+Youth will have its way.  So will a ship in a sea.  And so will a
+hundred and seventy pounds of a man.  The beautiful hardwood door-
+panel splintered, the latch fetched away, and I broke the nails of
+the four fingers of my right hand in a futile grab at the flying
+door, marring the polished surface with four parallel scratches.  I
+kept right on, erupting into Captain West's spacious room with the
+big brass bed.
+
+Miss West, swathed in a woollen dressing-gown, her eyes heavy still
+with sleep, her hair glorious and for the once ungroomed, clinging in
+the doorway that gave entrance on the main cabin, met my startled
+gaze with an equally startled gaze.
+
+It was no time for apologies.  I kept right on my mad way, caught the
+foot stanchion, and was whipped around in half a circle flat upon
+Captain West's brass bed.
+
+Miss West was beginning to laugh.
+
+"Come right in," she gurgled.
+
+A score of retorts, all deliciously inadvisable, tickled my tongue,
+so I said nothing, contenting myself with holding on with my left
+hand while I nursed my stinging right hand under my arm-pit.  Beyond
+her, across the floor of the main cabin, I saw the steward in pursuit
+of Captain West's Bible and a sheaf of Miss West's music.  And as she
+gurgled and laughed at me, beholding her in this intimacy of storm,
+the thought flashed through my brain:
+
+SHE IS A WOMAN.  SHE IS DESIRABLE.
+
+Now did she sense this fleeting, unuttered flash of mine?  I know
+not, save that her laughter left her, and long conventional training
+asserted itself as she said:
+
+"I just knew everything was adrift in father's room.  He hasn't been
+in it all night.  I could hear things rolling around . . . What is
+wrong?  Are you hurt?"
+
+"Stubbed my fingers, that's all," I answered, looking at my broken
+nails and standing gingerly upright.
+
+"My, that WAS a roll," she sympathized.
+
+"Yes; I'd started to go upstairs," I said, "and not to turn into your
+father's bed.  I'm afraid I've ruined the door."
+
+Came another series of great rolls.  I sat down on the bed and held
+on.  Miss West, secure in the doorway, began gurgling again, while
+beyond, across the cabin carpet, the steward shot past, embracing a
+small writing-desk that had evidently carried away from its
+fastenings when he seized hold of it for support.  More seas smashed
+and crashed against the for'ard wall of the cabin; and the steward,
+failing of lodgment, shot back across the carpet, still holding the
+desk from harm.
+
+Taking advantage of favouring spells, I managed to effect my exit and
+gain the newel-post ere the next series of rolls came.  And as I
+clung on and waited, I could not forget what I had just seen.
+Vividly under my eyelids burned the picture of Miss West's sleep-
+laden eyes, her hair, and all the softness of her.  A WOMAN AND
+DESIRABLE kept drumming in my brain.
+
+But I forgot all this, when, nearly at the top, I was thrown up the
+hill of the stairs as if it had suddenly become downhill.  My feet
+flew from stair to stair to escape falling, and I flew, or fell,
+apparently upward, until, at the top, I hung on for dear life while
+the stern of the Elsinore flung skyward on some mighty surge.
+
+Such antics of so huge a ship!  The old stereotyped "toy" describes
+her; for toy she was, the sheerest splinter of a plaything in the
+grip of the elements.  And yet, despite this overwhelming sensation
+of microscopic helplessness, I was aware of a sense of surety.  There
+was the Samurai.  Informed with his will and wisdom, the Elsinore was
+no cat's-paw.  Everything was ordered, controlled.  She was doing
+what he ordained her to do, and, no matter what storm-Titans bellowed
+about her and buffeted her, she would continue to do what he ordained
+her to do.
+
+I glanced into the chart-room.  There he sat, leaned back in a screw-
+chair, his sea-booted legs, wedged against the settee, holding him in
+place in the most violent rolls.  His black oilskin coat glistened in
+the lamplight with a myriad drops of ocean that advertised a recent
+return from deck.  His sou'wester, black and glistening, was like the
+helmet of some legendary hero.  He was smoking a cigar, and he smiled
+and greeted me.  But he seemed very tired and very old--old with
+wisdom, however, not weakness.  The flesh of his face, the pink
+pigment quite washed and worn away, was more transparent than ever;
+and yet never was he more serene, never more the master absolute of
+our tiny, fragile world.  The age that showed in him was not a matter
+of terrestrial years.  It was ageless, passionless, beyond human.
+Never had he appeared so great to me, so far remote, so much a spirit
+visitant.
+
+And he cautioned and advised me, in silver-mellow beneficent voice,
+as I essayed the venture of opening the chart-house door to gain
+outside.  He knew the moment, although I never could have guessed it
+for myself, and gave the word that enabled me to win the poop.
+
+Water was everywhere.  The Elsinore was rushing through a blurring
+whirr of water.  Seas creamed and licked the poop-deck edge, now to
+starboard, now to port.  High in the air, over-towering and
+perilously down-toppling, following-seas pursued our stern.  The air
+was filled with spindrift like a fog or spray.  No officer of the
+watch was in sight.  The poop was deserted, save for two helmsmen in
+streaming oilskins under the half-shelter of the open wheel-house.  I
+nodded good morning to them.
+
+One was Tom Spink, the elderly but keen and dependable English
+sailor.  The other was Bill Quigley, one of a forecastle group of
+three that herded uniquely together, though the other two, Frank
+Fitzgibbon and Richard Oiler, were in the second mate's watch.  The
+three had proved handy with their fists, and clannish; they had
+fought pitched forecastle battles with the gangster clique and won a
+sort of neutrality of independence for themselves.  They were not
+exactly sailors--Mr. Mellaire sneeringly called them the
+"bricklayers"--but they had successfully refused subservience to the
+gangster crowd.
+
+To cross the deck from the chart-house to the break of the poop was
+no slight feat, but I managed it and hung on to the railing while the
+wind stung my flesh with the flappings of my pyjamas.  At this
+moment, and for the moment, the Elsinore righted to an even keel, and
+dashed along and down the avalanching face of a wave.  And as she
+thus righted her deck was filled with water level from rail to rail.
+Above this flood, or knee-deep in it, Mr. Pike and half-a-dozen
+sailors were bunched on the fife-rail of the mizzen-mast.  The
+carpenter, too, was there, with a couple of assistants.
+
+The next roll spilled half a thousand tons of water outboard sheer
+over the starboard-rail, while all the starboard ports opened
+automatically and gushed huge streams.  Then came the opposite roll
+to port, with a clanging shut of the iron doors; and a hundred tons
+of sea sloshed outboard across the port-rail, while all the iron
+doors on that side opened wide and gushed.  And all this time, it
+must not be forgotten, the Elsinore was dashing ahead through the
+sea.
+
+The only sail she carried was three upper-topsails.  Not the tiniest
+triangle of headsail was on her.  I had never seen her with so little
+wind-surface, and the three narrow strips of canvas, bellied to the
+seemingness of sheet-iron with the pressure of the wind, drove her
+before the gale at astonishing speed.
+
+As the water on the deck subsided the men on the fife-rail left their
+refuge.  One group, led by the redoubtable Mr. Pike, strove to
+capture a mass of planks and twisted steel.  For the moment I did not
+recognize what it was.  The carpenter, with two men, sprang upon
+Number Three hatch and worked hurriedly and fearfully.  And I knew
+why Captain West had turned tail to the storm.  Number Three hatch
+was a wreck.  Among other things the great timber, called the
+"strong-back," was broken.  He had had to run, or founder.  Before
+our decks were swept again I could make out the carpenter's emergency
+repairs.  With fresh timbers he was bolting, lashing, and wedging
+Number Three hatch into some sort of tightness.
+
+When the Elsinore dipped her port-rail under and scooped several
+hundred tons of South Atlantic, and then, immediately rolling her
+starboard-rail under, had another hundred tons of breaking sea fall
+in board upon her, all the men forsook everything and scrambled for
+life upon the fife-rail.  In the bursting spray they were quite
+hidden; and then I saw them and counted them all as they emerged into
+view.  Again they waited for the water to subside.
+
+The mass of wreckage pursued by Mr. Pike and his men ground a hundred
+feet along the deck for'ard, and, as the Elsinore's stern sank down
+in some abyss, ground back again and smashed up against the cabin
+wall.  I identified this stuff as part of the bridge.  That portion
+which spanned from the mizzen-mast to the 'midship-house was missing,
+while the starboard boat on the 'midship-house was a splintered mess.
+
+Watching the struggle to capture and subdue the section of bridge, I
+was reminded of Victor Hugo's splendid description of the sailor's
+battle with a ship's gun gone adrift in a night of storm.  But there
+was a difference, I found that Hugo's narrative had stirred me more
+profoundly than was I stirred by this actual struggle before my eyes.
+
+I have repeatedly said that the sea makes one hard.  I now realized
+how hard I had become as I stood there at the break of the poop in my
+wind-shipped, spray-soaked pyjamas.  I felt no solicitude for the
+forecastle humans who struggled in peril of their lives beneath me.
+They did not count.  Ah--I was even curious to see what might happen,
+did they get caught by those crashing avalanches of sea ere they
+could gain the safety of the fife-rail.
+
+And I saw.  Mr. Pike, in the lead, of course, up to his waist in
+rushing water, dashed in, caught the flying wreckage with a turn of
+rope, and fetched it up short with a turn around one of the port
+mizzen-shrouds.  The Elsinore flung down to port, and a solid wall of
+down-toppling green upreared a dozen feet above the rail.  The men
+fled to the fife-rail.  But Mr. Pike, holding his turn, held on,
+looked squarely into the wall of the wave, and received the downfall.
+He emerged, still holding by the turn the captured bridge.
+
+The feeble-minded faun (the stone-deaf man) led the way to Mr. Pike's
+assistance, followed by Tony, the suicidal Greek.  Paddy was next,
+and in order came Shorty, Henry the training-ship boy, and Nancy,
+last, of course, and looking as if he were going to execution.
+
+The deck-water was no more than knee-deep, though rushing with
+torrential force, when Mr. Pike and the six men lifted the section of
+bridge and started for'ard with it.  They swayed and staggered, but
+managed to keep going.
+
+The carpenter saw the impending ocean-mountain first.  I saw him cry
+to his own men and then to Mr. Pike ere he fled to the fife-rail.
+But Mr. Pike's men had no chance.  Abreast of the 'midship-house, on
+the starboard side, fully fifteen feet above the rail and twenty
+above the deck, the sea fell on board.  The top of the 'midship-house
+was swept clean of the splintered boat.  The water, impacting against
+the side of the house, spouted skyward as high as the crojack-yard.
+And all this, in addition to the main bulk of the wave, swept and
+descended upon Mr. Pike and his men.
+
+They disappeared.  The bridge disappeared.  The Elsinore rolled to
+port and dipped her deck full from rail to rail.  Next, she plunged
+down by the head, and all this mass of water surged forward.  Through
+the creaming, foaming surface now and then emerged an arm, or a head,
+or a back, while cruel edges of jagged plank and twisted steel rods
+advertised that the bridge was turning over and over.  I wondered
+what men were beneath it and what mauling they were receiving.
+
+And yet these men did not count.  I was aware of anxiety only for Mr.
+Pike.  He, in a way, socially, was of my caste and class.  He and I
+belonged aft in the high place; ate at the same table.  I was acutely
+desirous that he should not be hurt or killed.  The rest did not
+matter.  They were not of my world.  I imagine the old-time skippers,
+on the middle passage, felt much the same toward their slave-cargoes
+in the fetid 'tween decks.
+
+The Elsinore's bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming
+valley.  Not a man had gained his feet.  Bridge and men swept back
+toward me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds.  And then that
+prodigious, incredible old man appeared out of the water, on his two
+legs, upright, dragging with him, a man in each hand, the helpless
+forms of Nancy and the Faun.  My heart leapt at beholding this mighty
+figure of a man-killer and slave-driver, it is true, but who sprang
+first into the teeth of danger so that his slaves might follow, and
+who emerged with a half-drowned slave in either hand.
+
+I knew augustness and pride as I gazed--pride that my eyes were blue,
+like his; that my skin was blond, like his; that my place was aft
+with him, and with the Samurai, in the high place of government and
+command.  I nearly wept with the chill of pride that was akin to awe
+and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain.
+As for the rest--the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-
+pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs
+of long-conquered races--how could they count?  My heels were iron as
+I gazed on them in their peril and weakness.  Lord!  Lord!  For ten
+thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces
+and enslaved them to the toil of our will.
+
+Again the Elsinore rolled to starboard and to port, while the spume
+spouted to our lower-yards and a thousand tons of South Atlantic
+surged across from rail to rail.  And again all were down and under,
+with jagged plank and twisted steel overriding them.  And again that
+amazing blond-skinned giant emerged, on his two legs upstanding, a
+broken waif like a rat in either hand.  He forced his way through
+rushing, waist-high water, deposited his burdens with the carpenter
+on the fife-rail, and returned to drag Larry reeling to his feet and
+help him to the fife-rail.  Out of the wash, Tony, the Greek, crawled
+on hands and knees and sank down helplessly at the fife-rail.  There
+was nothing suicidal now in his mood.  Struggle as he would, he could
+not lift himself until the mate, gripping his oilskin at the collar,
+with one hand flung him through the air into the carpenter's arms.
+
+Next came Shorty, his face streaming blood, one arm hanging useless,
+his sea-boots stripped from him.  Mr. Pike pitched him into the fife-
+rail, and returned for the last man.  It was Henry, the training-ship
+boy.  Him I had seen, unstruggling, motionless, show at the surface
+like a drowned man and sink again as the flood surged aft and smashed
+him against the cabin.  Mr. Pike, shoulder-deep, twice beaten to his
+knees and under by bursting seas, caught the lad, shouldered him, and
+carried him away for'ard.
+
+An hour later, in the cabin, I encountered Mr. Pike going into
+breakfast.  He had changed his clothes, and he had shaved!  Now how
+could one treat a hero such as he save as I treated him when I
+remarked off-handedly that he must have had a lively watch?
+
+"My," he answered, equally off-handedly, "I did get a prime soaking."
+
+That was all.  He had had no time to see me at the poop-rail.  It was
+merely the day's work, the ship's work, the MAN'S work--all capitals,
+if you please, in MAN.  I was the only one aft who knew, and I knew
+because I had chanced to see.  Had I not been on the poop at that
+early hour no one aft ever would have known those gray, storm-morning
+deeds of his.
+
+"Anybody hurt?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, some of the men got wet.  But no bones broke.  Henry'll be laid
+off for a day.  He got turned over in a sea and bashed his head.  And
+Shorty's got a wrenched shoulder, I think.--But, say, we got Davis
+into the top bunk!  The seas filled him full and he had to climb for
+it.  He's all awash and wet now, and you oughta seen me praying for
+more."  He paused and sighed.  "I'm getting old, I guess.  I oughta
+wring his neck, but somehow I ain't got the gumption.  Just the same,
+he'll be overside before we get in."
+
+"A month's wages against a pound of tobacco he won't," I challenged.
+
+"No," said Mr. Pike slowly.  "But I'll tell you what I will do.  I'll
+bet you a pound of tobacco even, or a month's wages even, that I'll
+have the pleasure of putting a sack of coal to his feet that never
+will come off."
+
+"Done," said I.
+
+"Done," said Mr. Pike.  "And now I guess I'll get a bite to eat."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+
+The more I see of Miss West the more she pleases me.  Explain it in
+terms of propinquity, or isolation, or whatever you will; I, at
+least, do not attempt explanation.  I know only that she is a woman
+and desirable.  And I am rather proud, in a way, to find that I am
+just a man like any man.  The midnight oil, and the relentless
+pursuit I have endured in the past from the whole tribe of women,
+have not, I am glad to say, utterly spoiled me.
+
+I am obsessed by that phrase--a WOMAN AND DESIRABLE.  It beats in my
+brain, in my thought.  I go out of my way to steal a glimpse of Miss
+West through a cabin door or vista of hall when she does not know I
+am looking.  A woman is a wonderful thing.  A woman's hair is
+wonderful.  A woman's softness is a magic.--Oh, I know them for what
+they are, and yet this very knowledge makes them only the more
+wonderful.  I know--I would stake my soul--that Miss West has
+considered me as a mate a thousand times to once that I have so
+considered her.  And yet--she is a woman and desirable.
+
+And I find myself continually reminded of Richard Le Gallienne's
+inimitable quatrain:
+
+
+"Were I a woman, I would all day long
+Sing my own beauty in some holy song,
+Bend low before it, hushed and half afraid,
+And say 'I am a woman' all day long."
+
+
+Let me advise all philosophers suffering from world-sickness to take
+a long sea voyage with a woman like Miss West.
+
+In this narrative I shall call her "Miss West" no more.  She has
+ceased to be Miss West.  She is Margaret.  I do not think of her as
+Miss West.  I think of her as Margaret.  It is a pretty word, a
+woman-word.  What poet must have created it!  Margaret!  I never tire
+of it.  My tongue is enamoured of it.  Margaret West!  What a name to
+conjure with!  A name provocative of dreams and mighty connotations.
+The history of our westward-faring race is written in it.  There is
+pride in it, and dominion, and adventure, and conquest.  When I
+murmur it I see visions of lean, beaked ships, of winged helmets, and
+heels iron-shod of restless men, royal lovers, royal adventurers,
+royal fighters.  Yes, and even now, in these latter days when the sun
+consumes us, still we sit in the high seat of government and command.
+
+Oh--and by the way--she is twenty-four years old.  I asked Mr. Pike
+the date of the Dixie's collision with the river steamer in San
+Francisco Bay.  This occurred in 1901.  Margaret was twelve years old
+at the time.  This is 1913.  Blessings on the head of the man who
+invented arithmetic!  She is twenty-four.  Her name is Margaret, and
+she is desirable.
+
+
+There are so many things to tell about.  Where and how this mad
+voyage, with a mad crew, will end is beyond all surmise.  But the
+Elsinore drives on, and day by day her history is bloodily written.
+And while murder is done, and while the whole floating drama moves
+toward the bleak southern ocean and the icy blasts of Cape Horn, I
+sit in the high place with the masters, unafraid, I am proud to say,
+in an ecstasy, I am proud to say, and I murmur over and over to
+MYSELF--MARGARET, A WOMAN; MARGARET, AND DESIRABLE.
+
+But to resume.  It is the first day of June.  Ten days have passed
+since the pampero.  When the strong back on Number Three hatch was
+repaired Captain West came back on the wind, hove to, and rode out
+the gale.  Since then, in calm, and fog, and damp, and storm, we have
+won south until to-day we are almost abreast of the Falklands.  The
+coast of the Argentine lies to the West, below the sea-line, and some
+time this morning we crossed the fiftieth parallel of south latitude.
+Here begins the passage of Cape Horn, for so it is reckoned by the
+navigators--fifty south in the Atlantic to fifty south in the
+Pacific.
+
+And yet all is well with us in the matter of weather.  The Elsinore
+slides along with favouring winds.  Daily it grows colder.  The great
+cabin stove roars and is white-hot, and all the connecting doors are
+open, so that the whole after region of the ship is warm and
+comfortable.  But on the deck the air bites, and Margaret and I wear
+mittens as we promenade the poop or go for'ard along the repaired
+bridge to see the chickens on the 'midship-house.  The poor, wretched
+creatures of instinct and climate!  Behold, as they approach the
+southern mid-winter of the Horn, when they have need of all their
+feathers, they proceed to moult, because, forsooth, this is the
+summer time in the land they came from.  Or is moulting determined by
+the time of year they happen to be born?  I shall have to look into
+this.  Margaret will know.
+
+Yesterday ominous preparations were made for the passage of the Horn.
+All the braces were taken from the main deck pin-rails and geared and
+arranged so that they may be worked from the tops of the houses.
+
+Thus, the fore-braces run to the top of the forecastle, the main-
+braces to the top of the 'midship-house, and the mizzen-braces to the
+poop.  It is evident that they expect our main deck frequently to be
+filled with water.  So evident is it that a laden ship when in big
+seas is like a log awash, that fore and aft, on both sides, along the
+deck, shoulder-high, life-lines have been rigged.  Also, the two iron
+doors, on port and starboard, that open from the cabin directly upon
+the main deck, have been barricaded and caulked.  Not until we are in
+the Pacific and flying north will these doors open again.
+
+And while we prepare to battle around the stormiest headland in the
+world our situation on board grows darker.  This morning Petro
+Marinkovich, a sailor in Mr. Mellaire's watch, was found dead on
+Number One hatch.  The body bore several knife-wounds and the throat
+was cut.  It was palpably done by some one or several of the
+forecastle hands; but not a word can be elicited.  Those who are
+guilty of it are silent, of course; while others who may chance to
+know are afraid to speak.
+
+Before midday the body was overside with the customary sack of coal.
+Already the man is a past episode.  But the humans for'ard are tense
+with expectancy of what is to come.  I strolled for'ard this
+afternoon, and noted for the first time a distinct hostility toward
+me.  They recognize that I belong with the after-guard in the high
+place.  Oh, nothing was said; but it was patent by the way almost
+every man looked at me, or refused to look at me.  Only Mulligan
+Jacobs and Charles Davis were outspoken.
+
+"Good riddance," said Mulligan Jacobs.  "The Guinea didn't have the
+spunk of a louse.  And he's better off, ain't he?  He lived dirty,
+an' he died dirty, an' now he's over an' done with the whole dirty
+game.  There's men on board that oughta wish they was as lucky as
+him.  Theirs is still a-coming to 'em."
+
+"You mean . . . ?" I queried.
+
+"Whatever you want to think I mean," the twisted wretch grinned
+malevolently into my face.
+
+Charles Davis, when I peeped into his iron room, was exuberant.
+
+"A pretty tale for the court in Seattle," he exulted.  "It'll only
+make my case that much stronger.  And wait till the reporters get
+hold of it!  The hell-ship Elsinore!  They'll have pretty pickin's!"
+
+"I haven't seen any hell-ship," I said coldly.
+
+"You've seen my treatment, ain't you?" he retorted.  "You've seen the
+hell I've got, ain't you?"
+
+"I know you for a cold-blooded murderer," I answered.
+
+"The court will determine that, sir.  All you'll have to do is to
+testify to facts."
+
+"I'll testify that had I been in the mate's place I'd have hanged you
+for murder."
+
+His eyes positively sparkled.
+
+"I'll ask you to remember this conversation when you're under oath,
+sir," he cried eagerly.
+
+I confess the man aroused in me a reluctant admiration.  I looked
+about his mean, iron-walled room.  During the pampero the place had
+been awash.  The white paint was peeling off in huge scabs, and iron-
+rust was everywhere.  The floor was filthy.  The place stank with the
+stench of his sickness.  His pannikin and unwashed eating-gear from
+the last meal were scattered on the floor:  His blankets were wet,
+his clothing was wet.  In a corner was a heterogeneous mass of soggy,
+dirty garments.  He lay in the very bunk in which he had brained
+O'Sullivan.  He had been months in this vile hole.  In order to live
+he would have to remain months more in it.  And while his rat-like
+vitality won my admiration, I loathed and detested him in very
+nausea.
+
+"Aren't you afraid?" I demanded.  "What makes you think you will last
+the voyage?  Don't you know bets are being made that you won't?"
+
+So interested was he that he seemed to prick up his ears as he raised
+on his elbow.
+
+"I suppose you're too scared to tell me about them bets," he sneered.
+
+"Oh, I've bet you'll last," I assured him.
+
+"That means there's others that bet I won't," he rattled on hastily.
+"An' that means that there's men aboard the Elsinore right now
+financially interested in my taking-off."
+
+At this moment the steward, bound aft from the galley, paused in the
+doorway and listened, grinning.  As for Charles Davis, the man had
+missed his vocation.  He should have been a land-lawyer, not a sea-
+lawyer.
+
+"Very well, sir," he went on.  "I'll have you testify to that in
+Seattle, unless you're lying to a helpless sick man, or unless you'll
+perjure yourself under oath."
+
+He got what he was seeking, for he stung me to retort:
+
+"Oh, I'll testify.  Though I tell you candidly that I don't think
+I'll win my bet."
+
+"You loose 'm bet sure," the steward broke in, nodding his head.
+"That fellow him die damn soon."
+
+"Bet with'm, sir," David challenged me.  "It's a straight tip from
+me, an' a regular cinch."
+
+The whole situation was so gruesome and grotesque, and I had been
+swept into it so absurdly, that for the moment I did not know what to
+do or say.
+
+"It's good money," Davis urged.  "I ain't goin' to die.  Look here,
+steward, how much you want to bet?"
+
+"Five dollar, ten dollar, twenty dollar," the steward answered, with
+a shoulder-shrug that meant that the sum was immaterial.
+
+"Very well then, steward.  Mr. Pathurst covers your money, say for
+twenty.  Is it a go, sir?"
+
+"Why don't you bet with him yourself?" I demanded.
+
+"Sure I will, sir.  Here, you steward, I bet you twenty even I don't
+die."
+
+The steward shook his head.
+
+"I bet you twenty to ten," the sick man insisted.  "What's eatin'
+you, anyway?"
+
+"You live, me lose, me pay you," the steward explained.  "You die, I
+win, you dead; no pay me."
+
+Still grinning and shaking his head, he went his way.
+
+"Just the same, sir, it'll be rich testimony," David chuckled.  "An'
+can't you see the reporters eatin' it up?"
+
+The Asiatic clique in the cook's room has its suspicions about the
+death of Marinkovich, but will not voice them.  Beyond shakings of
+heads and dark mutterings, I can get nothing out of Wada or the
+steward.  When I talked with the sail-maker, he complained that his
+injured hand was hurting him and that he would be glad when he could
+get to the surgeons in Seattle.  As for the murder, when pressed by
+me, he gave me to understand that it was no affair of the Japanese or
+Chinese on board, and that he was a Japanese.
+
+But Louis, the Chinese half-caste with the Oxford accent, was more
+frank.  I caught him aft from the galley on a trip to the lazarette
+for provisions.
+
+"We are of a different race, sir, from these men," he said; "and our
+safest policy is to leave them alone.  We have talked it over, and we
+have nothing to say, sir, nothing whatever to say.  Consider my
+position.  I work for'ard in the galley; I am in constant contact
+with the sailors; I even sleep in their section of the ship; and I am
+one man against many.  The only other countryman I have on board is
+the steward, and he sleeps aft.  Your servant and the two sail-makers
+are Japanese.  They are only remotely kin to us, though we've agreed
+to stand together and apart from whatever happens."
+
+"There is Shorty," I said, remembering Mr. Pike's diagnosis of his
+mixed nationality.
+
+"But we do not recognize him, sir," Louis answered suavely.  "He is
+Portuguese; he is Malay; he is Japanese, true; but he is a mongrel,
+sir, a mongrel and a bastard.  Also, he is a fool.  And please, sir,
+remember that we are very few, and that our position compels us to
+neutrality."
+
+"But your outlook is gloomy," I persisted.  "How do you think it will
+end?"
+
+"We shall arrive in Seattle most probably, some of us.  But I can
+tell you this, sir:  I have lived a long life on the sea, but I have
+never seen a crew like this.  There are few sailors in it; there are
+bad men in it; and the rest are fools and worse.  You will notice I
+mention no names, sir; but there are men on board whom I do not care
+to antagonize.  I am just Louis, the cook.  I do my work to the best
+of my ability, and that is all, sir."
+
+"And will Charles Davis arrive in Seattle?" I asked, changing the
+topic in acknowledgment of his right to be reticent.
+
+"No, I do not think so, sir," he answered, although his eyes thanked
+me for my courtesy.  "The steward tells me you have bet that he will.
+I think, sir, it is a poor bet.  We are about to go around the Horn.
+I have been around it many times.  This is midwinter, and we are
+going from east to west.  Davis' room will be awash for weeks.  It
+will never be dry.  A strong healthy man confined in it could well
+die of the hardship.  And Davis is far from well.  In short, sir, I
+know his condition, and he is in a shocking state.  Surgeons might
+prolong his life, but here in a wind-jammer it is shortened very
+rapidly.  I have seen many men die at sea.  I know, sir.  Thank you,
+sir."
+
+And the Eurasian Chinese-Englishman bowed himself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+
+Things are worse than I fancied.  Here are two episodes within the
+last seventy-two hours.  Mr. Mellaire, for instance, is going to
+pieces.  He cannot stand the strain of being on the same vessel with
+the man who has sworn to avenge Captain Somers's murder, especially
+when that man is the redoubtable Mr. Pike.
+
+For several days Margaret and I have been remarking the second mate's
+bloodshot eyes and pain-lined face and wondering if he were sick.
+And to-day the secret leaked out.  Wada does not like Mr. Mellaire,
+and this morning, when he brought me breakfast, I saw by the wicked,
+gleeful gleam in his almond eyes that he was spilling over with some
+fresh, delectable ship's gossip.
+
+For several days, I learned, he and the steward have been solving a
+cabin mystery.  A gallon can of wood alcohol, standing on a shelf in
+the after-room, had lost quite a portion of its contents.  They
+compared notes and then made of themselves a Sherlock Holmes and a
+Doctor Watson.  First, they gauged the daily diminution of alcohol.
+Next they gauged it several times daily, and learned that the
+diminution, whenever it occurred, was first apparent immediately
+after meal-time.  This focussed their attention on two suspects--the
+second mate and the carpenter, who alone sat in the after-room.  The
+rest was easy.  Whenever Mr. Mellaire arrived ahead of the carpenter
+more alcohol was missing.  When they arrived and departed together,
+the alcohol was undisturbed.  The carpenter was never alone in the
+room.  The syllogism was complete.  And now the steward stores the
+alcohol under his bunk.
+
+But wood alcohol is deadly poison.  What a constitution this man of
+fifty must have!  Small wonder his eyes have been bloodshot.  The
+great wonder is that the stuff did not destroy him.
+
+I have not whispered a word of this to Margaret; nor shall I whisper
+it.  I should like to put Mr. Pike on his guard; and yet I know that
+the revealing of Mr. Mellaire's identity would precipitate another
+killing.  And still we drive south, close-hauled on the wind, toward
+the inhospitable tip of the continent.  To-day we are south of a line
+drawn between the Straits of Magellan and the Falklands, and to-
+morrow, if the breeze holds, we shall pick up the coast of Tierra del
+Fuego close to the entrance of the Straits of Le Maire, through which
+Captain West intends to pass if the wind favours.
+
+The other episode occurred last night.  Mr. Pike says nothing, yet he
+knows the crew situation.  I have been watching some time now, ever
+since the death of Marinkovich; and I am certain that Mr. Pike never
+ventures on the main deck after dark.  Yet he holds his tongue,
+confides in no man, and plays out the bitter perilous game as a
+commonplace matter of course and all in the day's work.
+
+And now to the episode.  Shortly after the close of the second dog-
+watch last evening I went for'ard to the chickens on the 'midship-
+house on an errand for Margaret.  I was to make sure that the steward
+had carried out her orders.  The canvas covering to the big chicken
+coop had to be down, the ventilation insured, and the kerosene stove
+burning properly.  When I had proved to my satisfaction the
+dependableness of the steward, and just as I was on the verge of
+returning to the poop, I was drawn aside by the weird crying of
+penguins in the darkness and by the unmistakable noise of a whale
+blowing not far away.
+
+I had climbed around the end of the port boat, and was standing
+there, quite hidden in the darkness, when I heard the unmistakable
+age-lag step of the mate proceed along the bridge from the poop.  It
+was a dim starry night, and the Elsinore, in the calm ocean under the
+lee of Tierra del Fuego, was slipping gently and prettily through the
+water at an eight-knot clip.
+
+Mr. Pike paused at the for'ard end of the housetop and stood in a
+listening attitude.  From the main deck below, near Number Two hatch,
+across the mumbling of various voices, I could recognize Kid Twist,
+Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine--the three gangsters.  But Steve
+Roberts, the cow-boy, was also there, as was Mr. Mellaire, both of
+whom belonged in the other watch and should have been turned in; for,
+at midnight, it would be their watch on deck.  Especially wrong was
+Mr. Mellaire's presence, holding social converse with members of the
+crew--a breach of ship ethics most grievous.
+
+I have always been cursed with curiosity.  Always have I wanted to
+know; and, on the Elsinore, I have already witnessed many a little
+scene that was a clean-cut dramatic gem.  So I did not discover
+myself, but lurked behind the boat.
+
+Five minutes passed.  Ten minutes passed.  The men still talked.  I
+was tantalized by the crying of the penguins, and by the whale,
+evidently playful, which came so close that it spouted and splashed a
+biscuit-toss away.  I saw Mr. Pike's head turn at the sound; he
+glanced squarely in my direction, but did not see me.  Then he
+returned to listening to the mumble of voices from beneath.
+
+Now whether Mulligan Jacobs just happened along, or whether he was
+deliberately scouting, I do not know.  I tell what occurred.  Up-and-
+down the side of the 'midship-house is a ladder.  And up this ladder
+Mulligan Jacobs climbed so noiselessly that I was not aware of his
+presence until I heard Mr. Pike snarl
+
+"What the hell you doin' here?"
+
+Then I saw Mulligan Jacobs in the gloom, within two yards of the
+mate.
+
+"What's it to you?" Mulligan Jacobs snarled back.  The voices below
+hushed.  I knew every man stood there tense and listening.  No; the
+philosophers have not yet explained Mulligan Jacobs.  There is
+something more to him than the last word has said in any book.  He
+stood there in the darkness, a fragile creature with curvature of the
+spine, facing alone the first mate, and he was not afraid.
+
+Mr. Pike cursed him with fearful, unrepeatable words, and again
+demanded what he was doing there.
+
+"I left me plug of tobacco here when I was coiling down last," said
+the little twisted man--no; he did not say it.  He spat it out like
+so much venom.
+
+"Get off of here, or I'll throw you off, you and your tobacco," raged
+the mate.
+
+Mulligan Jacobs lurched closer to Mr. Pike, and in the gloom and with
+the roll of the ship swayed in the other's face.
+
+"By God, Jacobs!" was all the mate could say.
+
+"You old stiff," was all the terrible little cripple could retort.
+
+Mr. Pike gripped him by the collar and swung him in the air.
+
+"Are you goin' down?--or am I goin' to throw you down?" the mate
+demanded.
+
+I cannot describe their manner of utterance.  It was that of wild
+beasts.
+
+"I ain't ate outa your hand yet, have I?" was the reply.
+
+Mr. Pike tried to say something, still holding the cripple suspended,
+but he could do no more than strangle in his impotence of rage.
+
+"You're an old stiff, an old stiff, an old stiff," Mulligan Jacobs
+chanted, equally incoherent and unimaginative with brutish fury.
+
+"Say it again and over you go," the mate managed to enunciate
+thickly.
+
+"You're an old stiff," gasped Mulligan Jacobs.  He was flung.  He
+soared through the air with the might of the fling, and even as he
+soared and fell through the darkness he reiterated:
+
+"Old stiff!  Old stiff !"
+
+He fell among the men on Number Two hatch, and there were confusion
+and movement below, and groans.
+
+Mr. Pike paced up and down the narrow house and gritted his teeth.
+Then he paused.  He leaned his arms on the bridge-rail, rested his
+head on his arms for a full minute, then groaned:
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear."  That was all.  Then he went
+aft, slowly, dragging his feet along the bridge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+
+The days grow gray.  The sun has lost its warmth, and each noon, at
+meridian, it is lower in the northern sky.  All the old stars have
+long since gone, and it would seem the sun is following them.  The
+world--the only world I know--has been left behind far there to the
+north, and the hill of the earth is between it and us.  This sad and
+solitary ocean, gray and cold, is the end of all things, the falling-
+off place where all things cease.  Only it grows colder, and grayer,
+and penguins cry in the night, and huge amphibians moan and slubber,
+and great albatrosses, gray with storm-battling of the Horn, wheel
+and veer.
+
+
+"Land ho!" was the cry yesterday morning.  I shivered as I gazed at
+this, the first land since Baltimore a few centuries ago.  There was
+no sun, and the morning was damp and cold with a brisk wind that
+penetrated any garment.  The deck thermometer marked 30--two degrees
+below freezing-point; and now and then easy squalls of snow swept
+past.
+
+All of the land that was to be seen was snow.  Long, low chains of
+peaks, snow-covered, arose out of the ocean.  As we drew closer,
+there were no signs of life.  It was a sheer, savage, bleak, forsaken
+land.  By eleven, off the entrance of Le Maire Straits, the squalls
+ceased, the wind steadied, and the tide began to make through in the
+direction we desired to go.
+
+Captain West did not hesitate.  His orders to Mr. Pike were quick and
+tranquil.  The man at the wheel altered the course, while both
+watches sprang aloft to shake out royals and skysails.  And yet
+Captain West knew every inch of the risk he took in this graveyard of
+ships.
+
+When we entered the narrow strait, under full sail and gripped by a
+tremendous tide, the rugged headlands of Tierra del Fuego dashed by
+with dizzying swiftness.  Close we were to them, and close we were to
+the jagged coast of Staten Island on the opposite shore.  It was
+here, in a wild bight, between two black and precipitous walls of
+rock where even the snow could find no lodgment, that Captain West
+paused in a casual sweep of his glasses and gazed steadily at one
+place.  I picked the spot up with my own glasses and was aware of an
+instant chill as I saw the four masts of a great ship sticking out of
+the water.  Whatever craft it was, it was as large as the Elsinore,
+and it had been but recently wrecked.
+
+"One of the German nitrate ships," said Mr. Pike.  Captain West
+nodded, still studying the wreck, then said:
+
+"She looks quite deserted.  Just the same, Mr. Pike, send several of
+your best-sighted sailors aloft, and keep a good lookout yourself.
+There may be some survivors ashore trying to signal us."
+
+But we sailed on, and no signals were seen.  Mr. Pike was delighted
+with our good fortune.  He was guilty of walking up and down, rubbing
+his hands and chuckling to himself.  Not since 1888, he told me, had
+he been through the Straits of Le Maire.  Also, he said that he knew
+of shipmasters who had made forty voyages around the Horn and had
+never once had the luck to win through the straits.  The regular
+passage is far to the east around Staten Island, which means a loss
+of westing, and here, at the tip of the world, where the great west
+wind, unobstructed by any land, sweeps round and around the narrow
+girth of earth, westing is the thing that has to be fought for mile
+by mile and inch by inch.  The Sailing Directions advise masters on
+the Horn passage:  Make Westing.  WHATEVER YOU DO, MAKE WESTING.
+
+When we emerged from the straits in the early afternoon the same
+steady breeze continued, and in the calm water under the lee of
+Tierra del Fuego, which extends south-westerly to the Horn, we
+slipped along at an eight-knot clip.
+
+Mr. Pike was beside himself.  He could scarcely tear himself from the
+deck when it was his watch below.  He chuckled, rubbed his hands, and
+incessantly hummed snatches from the Twelfth Mass.  Also, he was
+voluble.
+
+"To-morrow morning we'll be up with the Horn.  We'll shave it by a
+dozen or fifteen miles.  Think of it!  We'll just steal around!  I
+never had such luck, and never expected to.  Old girl Elsinore,
+you're rotten for'ard, but the hand of God is at your helm."
+
+Once, under the weather cloth, I came upon him talking to himself.
+It was more a prayer.
+
+"If only she don't pipe up," he kept repeating.  "If only she don't
+pipe up."
+
+Mr. Mellaire was quite different.
+
+"It never happens," he told me.  "No ship ever went around like this.
+You watch her come.  She always comes a-smoking out of the sou'west."
+
+"But can't a vessel ever steal around?" I asked.
+
+"The odds are mighty big against it, sir," he answered.  "I'll give
+you a line on them.  I'll wager even, sir, just a nominal bet of a
+pound of tobacco, that inside twenty-four hours we'll he hove to
+under upper-topsails.  I'll wager ten pounds to five that we're not
+west of the Horn a week from now; and, fifty to fifty being the
+passage, twenty pounds to five that two weeks from now we're not up
+with fifty in the Pacific."
+
+As for Captain West, the perils of Le Maire behind, he sat below, his
+slippered feet stretched before him, smoking a cigar.  He had nothing
+to say whatever, although Margaret and I were jubilant and dared
+duets through all of the second dog-watch.
+
+
+And this morning, in a smooth sea and gentle breeze, the Horn bore
+almost due north of us not more than six miles away.  Here we were,
+well abreast and reeling off westing.
+
+"What price tobacco this morning?" I quizzed Mr. Mellaire.
+
+"Going up," he came back.  "Wish I had a thousand bets like the one
+with you, sir."
+
+I glanced about at sea and sky and gauged the speed of our way by the
+foam, but failed to see anything that warranted his remark.  It was
+surely fine weather, and the steward, in token of the same, was
+trying to catch fluttering Cape pigeons with a bent pin on a piece of
+thread.
+
+For'ard, on the poop, I encountered Mr. Pike.  It WAS an encounter,
+for his salutation was a grunt.
+
+"Well, we're going right along," I ventured cheerily.
+
+He made no reply, but turned and stared into the gray south-west with
+an expression sourer than any I had ever seen on his face.  He
+mumbled something I failed to catch, and, on my asking him to repeat
+it, he said:
+
+"It's breeding weather.  Can't you see it?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"What d'ye think we're taking off the kites for?" he growled.
+
+I looked aloft.  The skysails were already furled; men were furling
+the royals; and the topgallant-yards were running down while
+clewlines and buntlines bagged the canvas.  Yet, if anything, our
+northerly breeze fanned even more gently.
+
+"Bless me if I can see any weather," I said.
+
+"Then go and take a look at the barometer," he grunted, as he turned
+on his heel and swung away from me.
+
+In the chart-room was Captain West, pulling on his long sea-boots.
+That would have told me had there been no barometer, though the
+barometer was eloquent enough of itself.  The night before it had
+stood at 30.10.  It was now 28.64.  Even in the pampero it had not
+been so low as that.
+
+"The usual Cape Horn programme," Captain West smiled to me, as he
+stood up in all his lean and slender gracefulness and reached for his
+long oilskin coat.
+
+Still I could scarcely believe.
+
+"Is it very far away?" I inquired.
+
+He shook his head, and forebore in the act of speaking to lift his
+hand for me to listen.  The Elsinore rolled uneasily, and from
+without came the soft and hollow thunder of sails emptying themselves
+against the masts and gear.
+
+We had chatted a bare five minutes, when again he lifted his head.
+This time the Elsinore heeled over slightly and remained heeled over,
+while the sighing whistle of a rising breeze awoke in the rigging.
+
+"It's beginning to make," he said, in the good old Anglo-Saxon of the
+sea.
+
+And then I heard Mr. Pike snarling out orders, and in my heart
+discovered a growing respect for Cape Horn--Cape Stiff, as the
+sailors call it.
+
+An hour later we were hove to on the port tack under upper-topsails
+and foresail.  The wind had come out of the south-west, and our
+leeway was setting us down upon the land.  Captain West gave orders
+to the mate to stand by to wear ship.  Both watches had been taking
+in sail, so that both watches were on deck for the manoeuvre.
+
+It was astounding, the big sea that had arisen in so short a time.
+The wind was blowing a gale that ever, in recurring gusts, increased
+upon itself.  Nothing was visible a hundred yards away.  The day had
+become black-gray.  In the cabin lamps were burning.  The view from
+the poop, along the length of the great labouring ship, was
+magnificent.  Seas burst and surged across her weather-rail and kept
+her deck half filled, despite the spouting ports and gushing
+scuppers.
+
+On each of the two houses and on the poop the ship's complement, all
+in oilskins, was in groups.  For'ard, Mr. Mellaire had charge.  Mr.
+Pike took charge of the 'midship-house and the poop.  Captain West
+strolled up and down, saw everything, said nothing; for it was the
+mate's affair.
+
+When Mr. Pike ordered the wheel hard up, he slacked off all the
+mizzen-yards, and followed it with a partial slacking of the main-
+yards, so that the after-pressures were eased.  The foresail and
+fore-lower- and-upper-topsails remained flat in order to pay the head
+off before the wind.  All this took time.  The men were slow, not
+strong, and without snap.  They reminded me of dull oxen by the way
+they moved and pulled.  And the gale, ever snorting harder, now
+snorted diabolically.  Only at intervals could I glimpse the group on
+top the for'ard-house.  Again and again, leaning to it and holding
+their heads down, the men on the 'midship-house were obliterated by
+the drive of crested seas that burst against the rail, spouted to the
+lower-yards, and swept in horizontal volumes across to leeward.  And
+Mr. Pike, like an enormous spider in a wind-tossed web, went back and
+forth along the slender bridge that was itself a shaken thread in the
+blast of the storm.
+
+So tremendous were the gusts that for the time the Elsinore refused
+to answer.  She lay down to it; she was swept and racked by it; but
+her head did not pay off before it, and all the while we drove down
+upon that bitter, iron coast.  And the world was black-gray, and
+violent, and very cold, with the flying spray freezing to ice in
+every lodgment.
+
+We waited.  The groups of men, head down to it, waited.  Mr. Pike,
+restless, angry, his blue eyes as bitter as the cold, his mouth as
+much a-snarl as the snarl of the elements with which he fought,
+waited.  The Samurai waited, tranquil, casual, remote.  And Cape Horn
+waited, there on our lee, for the bones of our ship and us.
+
+And then the Elsinore's bow paid off.  The angle of the beat of the
+gale changed, and soon, with dreadful speed, we were dashing straight
+before it and straight toward the rocks we could not see.  But all
+doubt was over.  The success of the manoeuvre was assured.  Mr.
+Mellaire, informed by messenger along the bridge from Mr. Pike,
+slacked off the head-yards.  Mr. Pike, his eye on the helmsman, his
+hand signalling the order, had the wheel put over to port to check
+the Elsinore's rush into the wind as she came up on the starboard
+tack.  All was activity.  Main- and mizzen-yards were braced up, and
+the Elsinore, snugged down and hove to, had a lee of thousands of
+miles of Southern Ocean.
+
+And all this had been accomplished in the stamping ground of storm,
+at the end of the world, by a handful of wretched weaklings, under
+the drive of two strong mates, with behind them the placid will of
+the Samurai.
+
+It had taken thirty minutes to wear ship, and I had learned how the
+best of shipmasters can lose their ships without reproach.  Suppose
+the Elsinore had persisted in her refusal to payoff?  Suppose
+anything had carried away?  And right here enters Mr. Pike.  It is
+his task ever to see that every rope and block and all the myriad
+other things in the vast and complicated gear of the Elsinore are in
+strength not to carry away.  Always have the masters of our race
+required henchmen like Mr. Pike, and it seems the race has well
+supplied those henchmen.
+
+Ere I went below I heard Captain West tell Mr. Pike that while both
+watches were on deck it would be just as well to put a reef in the
+foresail before they furled it.  The mainsail and the crojack being
+off, I could see the men black on the fore-yard.  For half-an-hour I
+lingered, watching them.  They seemed to make no progress with the
+reef.  Mr. Mellaire was with them, having direct supervision of the
+job, while Mr. Pike, on the poop, growled and grumbled and spat
+endless blasphemies into the flying air.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"Two watches on a single yardarm and unable to put a reef in a
+handkerchief like that!" he snorted.  "What'll it be if we're off
+here a month?"
+
+"A month!" I cried.
+
+"A month isn't anything for Cape Stiff," he said grimly.  "I've been
+off here seven weeks and then turned tail and run around the other
+way."
+
+"Around the world?" I gasped.
+
+"It was the only way to get to 'Frisco," he answered.  "The Horn's
+the Horn, and there's no summer seas that I've ever noticed in this
+neighbourhood."
+
+My fingers were numb and I was chilled through when I took a last
+look at the wretched men on the fore-yard and went below to warm up.
+
+A little later, as I went in to table, through a cabin port I stole a
+look for'ard between seas and saw the men still struggling on the
+freezing yard.
+
+The four of us were at table, and it was very comfortable, in spite
+of the Elsinore's violent antics.  The room was warm.  The storm-
+racks on the table kept each dish in its place.  The steward served
+and moved about with ease and apparent unconcern, although I noticed
+an occasional anxious gleam in his eyes when he poised some dish at a
+moment when the ship pitched and flung with unusual wildness.
+
+And now and again I thought of the poor devils on the yard.  Well,
+they belonged there by right, just as we belonged here by right in
+this oasis of the cabin.  I looked at Mr. Pike and wagered to myself
+that half-a-dozen like him could master that stubborn foresail.  As
+for the Samurai, I was convinced that alone, not moving from his
+seat, by a tranquil exertion of will, he could accomplish the same
+thing.
+
+The lighted sea-lamps swung and leaped in their gimbals, ever
+battling with the dancing shadows in the murky gray.  The wood-work
+creaked and groaned.  The jiggermast, a huge cylinder of hollow steel
+that perforated the apartment through deck above and floor beneath,
+was hideously vocal with the storm.  Far above, taut ropes beat
+against it so that it clanged like a boiler-shop.  There was a
+perpetual thunder of seas falling on our deck and crash of water
+against our for'ard wall; while the ten thousand ropes and gears
+aloft bellowed and screamed as the storm smote them.
+
+And yet all this was from without.  Here, at this well-appointed
+table, was no draught nor breath of wind, no drive of spray nor wash
+of sea.  We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the
+storm.  Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the
+clang of the jiggermast.  Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well
+enough to attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the
+inefficients futilely freezing on the yard.  As for me, I looked
+about at the four of us--blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and
+royal blond--and somehow it seemed that I had long since lived this,
+and that with me and in me were all my ancestors, and that their
+lives and memories were mine, and that all this vexation of the sea
+and air and labouring ship was of old time and a thousand times
+before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+
+"How are you for a climb?" Margaret asked me, shortly after we had
+left the table.
+
+She stood challengingly at my open door, in oilskins, sou'wester, and
+sea-boots.
+
+"I've never seen you with a foot above the deck since we sailed," she
+went on.  "Have you a good head?"
+
+I marked my book, rolled out of my bunk in which I had been wedged,
+and clapped my hands for Wada.
+
+"Will you?" she cried eagerly.
+
+"If you let me lead," I answered airily, "and if you will promise to
+hold on tight.  Whither away?"
+
+"Into the top of the jigger.  It's the easiest.  As for holding on,
+please remember that I have often done it.  It is with you the doubt
+rests."
+
+"Very well," I retorted; "do you lead then.  I shall hold on tight."
+
+"I have seen many a landsman funk it," she teased.  "There are no
+lubber-holes in our tops."
+
+"And most likely I shall," I agreed.  "I've never been aloft in my
+life, and since there is no hole for a lubber."
+
+She looked at me, half believing my confession of weakness, while I
+extended my arms for the oilskin which Wada struggled on to me.
+
+On the poop it was magnificent, and terrible, and sombre.  The
+universe was very immediately about us.  It blanketed us in storming
+wind and flying spray and grayness.  Our main deck was impassable,
+and the relief of the wheel came aft along the bridge.  It was two
+o'clock, and for over two hours the frozen wretches had laid out upon
+the fore-yard.  They were still there, weak, feeble, hopeless.
+Captain West, stepping out in the lee of the chart-house, gazed at
+them for several minutes.
+
+"We'll have to give up that reef," he said to Mr. Pike.  "Just make
+the sail fast.  Better put on double gaskets."
+
+And with lagging feet, from time to time pausing and holding on as
+spray and the tops of waves swept over him, the mate went for'ard
+along the bridge to vent his scorn on the two watches of a four-
+masted ship that could not reef a foresail.
+
+It is true.  They could not do it, despite their willingness, for
+this I have learned:  THE MEN DO THEIR WEAK BEST WHENEVER THE ORDER
+IS GIVEN TO SHORTEN SAIL.  It must be that they are afraid.  They
+lack the iron of Mr. Pike, the wisdom and the iron of Captain West.
+Always, have I noticed, with all the alacrity of which they are
+capable, do they respond to any order to shorten down.  That is why
+they are for'ard, in that pigsty of a forecastle, because they lack
+the iron.  Well, I can say only this:  If nothing else could have
+prevented the funk hinted at by Margaret, the sorry spectacle of
+these ironless, spineless creatures was sufficient safeguard.  How
+could I funk in the face of their weakness--I, who lived aft in the
+high place?
+
+Margaret did not disdain the aid of my hand as she climbed upon the
+pin-rail at the foot of the weather jigger-rigging.  But it was
+merely the recognition of a courtesy on her part, for the next moment
+she released her mittened hand from mine, swung boldly outboard into
+the face of the gale, and around against the ratlines.  Then she
+began to climb.  I followed, almost unaware of the ticklishness of
+the exploit to a tyro, so buoyed up was I by her example and by my
+scorn of the weaklings for'ard.  Where men could go, I could go.
+What men could do, I could do.  And no daughter of the Samurai could
+out-game me.
+
+Yet it was slow work.  In the windward rolls against the storm-gusts
+one was pinned helplessly, like a butterfly, against the rigging.  At
+such times, so great was the pressure one could not lift hand nor
+foot.  Also, there was no need for holding on.  As I have said, one
+was pinned against the rigging by the wind.
+
+Through the snow beginning to drive the deck grew small beneath me,
+until a fall meant a broken back or death, unless one landed in the
+sea, in which case the result would be frigid drowning.  And still
+Margaret climbed.  Without pause she went out under the overhanging
+platform of the top, shifted her holds to the rigging that went aloft
+from it, and swung around this rigging, easily, carelessly, timing
+the action to the roll, and stood safely upon the top.
+
+I followed.  I breathed no prayers, knew no qualms, as I presented my
+back to the deck and climbed out under the overhang, feeling with my
+hands for holds I could not see.  I was in an ecstasy.  I could dare
+anything.  Had she sprung into the air, stretched out her arms, and
+soared away on the breast of the gale, I should have unhesitatingly
+followed her.
+
+As my head outpassed the edge of the top so that she came into view,
+I could see she was looking at me with storm-bright eyes.  And as I
+swung around the rigging lightly and joined her, I saw approval in
+her eyes that was quickly routed by petulance.
+
+"Oh, you've done this sort of thing before," she reproached, calling
+loudly, so that I might hear, her lips close to my ear.
+
+I shook a denial with my head that brightened her eyes again.  She
+nodded and smiled, and sat down, dangling her sea-boots into snow-
+swirled space from the edge of the top.  I sat beside her, looking
+down into the snow that hid the deck while it exaggerated the depth
+out of which we had climbed.
+
+We were all alone there, a pair of storm petrels perched in mid air
+on a steel stick that arose out of snow and that vanished above into
+snow.  We had come to the tip of the world, and even that tip had
+ceased to be.  But no.  Out of the snow, down wind, with motionless
+wings, driving fully eighty or ninety miles an hour, appeared a huge
+albatross.  He must have been fifteen feet from wing-tip to wing-tip.
+He had seen his danger ere we saw him, and, tilting his body on the
+blast, he carelessly veered clear of collision.  His head and neck
+were rimed with age or frost--we could not tell which--and his bright
+bead-eye noted us as he passed and whirled away on a great circle
+into the snow to leeward.
+
+Margaret's hand shot out to mine.
+
+"It alone was worth the climb!" she cried.  And then the Elsinore
+flung down, and Margaret's hand clutched tighter for holding, while
+from the hidden depths arose the crash and thunder of the great west
+wind drift upon our decks.
+
+Quickly as the snow-squall had come, it passed with the same sharp
+quickness, and as in a flash we could see the lean length of the ship
+beneath us--the main deck full with boiling flood, the forecastle-
+head buried in a bursting sea, the lookout, stationed for very life
+back on top the for'ard-house, hanging on, head down, to the wind-
+drive of ocean, and, directly under us, the streaming poop and Mr.
+Mellaire, with a handful of men, rigging relieving tackles on the
+tiller.  And we saw the Samurai emerge in the lee of the chart-house,
+swaying with casual surety on the mad deck, as he spoke what must
+have been instructions to Mr. Pike.
+
+The gray circle of the world had removed itself from us for several
+hundred yards, and we could see the mighty sweep of sea.  Shaggy
+gray-beards, sixty feet from trough to crest, leapt out of the
+windward murky gray, and in unending procession rushed upon the
+Elsinore, one moment overtoppling her slender frailness, the next
+moment splashing a hundred tons of water on her deck and flinging her
+skyward as they passed beneath and foamed and crested from sight in
+the murky gray to leeward.  And the great albatrosses veered and
+circled about us, beating up into the bitter violence of the gale and
+sweeping grandly away before it far faster than it blew.
+
+Margaret forbore from looking to challenge me with eloquent,
+questioning eyes.  With numb fingers inside my thick mitten, I drew
+aside the ear-flap of her sou'wester and shouted:
+
+"It is nothing new.  I have been here before.  In the lives of all my
+fathers have I been here.  The frost is on my cheek, the salt bites
+my nostrils, the wind chants in my ears, and it is an old happening.
+I know, now, that my forbears were Vikings.  I was seed of them in
+their own day.  With them I have raided English coasts, dared the
+Pillars of Hercules, forayed the Mediterranean, and sat in the high
+place of government over the soft sun-warm peoples.  I am Hengist and
+Horsa; I am of the ancient heroes, even legendary to them.  I have
+bearded and bitten the frozen seas, and, aforetime of that, ere ever
+the ice-ages came to be, I have dripped my shoulders in reindeer
+gore, slain the mastodon and the sabre-tooth, scratched the record of
+my prowess on the walls of deep-buried caves--ay, and suckled she-
+wolves side by side with my brother-cubs, the scars of whose fangs
+are now upon me."
+
+She laughed deliciously, and a snow-squall drove upon us and cut our
+cheeks, and the Elsinore flung over and down as if she would never
+rise again, while we held on and swept through the air in a dizzying
+arc.  Margaret released a hand, still laughing, and pressed aside my
+ear-flap.
+
+"I don't know anything about it," she cried.  "It sounds like poetry.
+But I believe it.  It has to be, for it has been.  I have heard it
+aforetime, when skin-clad men sang in fire-circles that pressed back
+the frost and night."
+
+"And the books?" she queried maliciously, as we prepared to descend.
+
+"They can go hang, along with all the brain-sick, world-sick fools
+that wrote them," I replied.
+
+Again she laughed deliciously, though the wind tore the sound away as
+she swung out into space, muscled herself by her arms while she
+caught footholds beneath her which she could not see, and passed out
+of my sight under the perilous overhang of the top.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+
+"What price tobacco?" was Mr. Mellaire's greeting, when I came on
+deck this morning, bruised and weary, aching in every bone and muscle
+from sixty hours of being tossed about.
+
+The wind had fallen to a dead calm toward morning, and the Elsinore,
+her several spread sails booming and slatting, rolled more miserably
+than ever.  Mr. Mellaire pointed for'ard of our starboard beam.  I
+could make out a bleak land of white and jagged peaks.
+
+"Staten Island, the easterly end of it," said Mr. Mellaire.
+
+And I knew that we were in the position of a vessel just rounding
+Staten Island preliminary to bucking the Horn.  And, yet, four days
+ago, we had run through the Straits of Le Maire and stolen along
+toward the Horn.  Three days ago we had been well abreast of the Horn
+and even a few miles past.  And here we were now, starting all over
+again and far in the rear of where we had originally started.
+
+
+The condition of the men is truly wretched.  During the gale the
+forecastle was washed out twice.  This means that everything in it
+was afloat and that every article of clothing, including mattresses
+and blankets, is wet and will remain wet in this bitter weather until
+we are around the Horn and well up in the good-weather latitudes.
+The same is true of the 'midship-house.  Every room in it, with the
+exception of the cook's and the sail-makers' (which open for'ard on
+Number Two hatch), is soaking.  And they have no fires in their rooms
+with which to dry things out.
+
+I peeped into Charles Davis's room.  It was terrible.  He grinned to
+me and nodded his head.
+
+"It's just as well O'Sullivan wasn't here, sir," he said.  "He'd a-
+drowned in the lower bunk.  And I want to tell you I was doing some
+swimmin' before I could get into the top one.  And salt water's bad
+for my sores.  I oughtn't to be in a hole like this in Cape Horn
+weather.  Look at the ice, there, on the floor.  It's below freezin'
+right now in this room, and my blankets are wet, and I'm a sick man,
+as any man can tell that's got a nose."
+
+"If you'd been decent to the mate you might have got decent treatment
+in return," I said.
+
+"Huh!" he sneered.  "You needn't think you can lose me, sir.  I can
+grow fat on this sort of stuff.  Why, sir, when I think of the court
+doin's in Seattle I just couldn't die.  An' if you'll listen to me,
+sir, you'll cover the steward's money.  You can't lose.  I'm advisin'
+you, sir, because you're a sort of decent sort.  Anybody that bets on
+my going over the side is a sure loser."
+
+"How could you dare ship on a voyage like this in your condition?" I
+demanded.
+
+"Condition?" he queried with a fine assumption of innocence.  "Why,
+that is why I did ship.  I was in tiptop shape when I sailed.  All
+this come out on me afterward.  You remember seem' me aloft, an' up
+to my neck in water.  And I trimmed coal below, too.  A sick man
+couldn't do it.  And remember, sir, you'll have to testify to how I
+did my duty at the beginning before I took down."
+
+"I'll bet with you myself if you think I'm goin' to die," he called
+after me.
+
+Already the sailors show marks of the hardship they are enduring.  It
+is surprising, in so short a time, how lean their faces have grown,
+how lined and seamed.  They must dry their underclothing with their
+body heat.  Their outer garments, under their oilskins, are soggy.
+And yet, paradoxically, despite their lean, drawn faces, they have
+grown very stout.  Their walk is a waddle, and they bulge with
+seaming corpulency.  This is due to the amount of clothing they have
+on.  I noticed Larry, to-day, had on two vests, two coats, and an
+overcoat, with his oilskin outside of that.  They are elephantine in
+their gait for, in addition to everything else, they have wrapped
+their feet, outside their sea-boots, with gunny sacking.
+
+It IS cold, although the deck thermometer stood at thirty-three to-
+day at noon.  I had Wada weigh the clothing I wear on deck.  Omitting
+oilskins and boots, it came to eighteen pounds.  And yet I am not any
+too warm in all this gear when the wind is blowing.  How sailors,
+after having once experienced the Horn, can ever sign on again for a
+voyage around is beyond me.  It but serves to show how stupid they
+must be.
+
+I feel sorry for Henry, the training-ship boy.  He is more my own
+kind, and some day he will make a henchman of the afterguard and a
+mate like Mr. Pike.  In the meantime, along with Buckwheat, the other
+boy who berths in the 'midship-house with him, he suffers the same
+hardship as the men.  He is very fair-skinned, and I noticed this
+afternoon, when he was pulling on a brace, that the sleeves of his
+oil-skins, assisted by the salt water, have chafed his wrists till
+they are raw and bleeding and breaking out in sea-boils.  Mr.
+Mellaire tells me that in another week there will be a plague of
+these boils with all hands for'ard.
+
+"When do you think we'll be up with the Horn again?" I innocently
+queried of Mr. Pike.
+
+He turned upon me in a rage, as if I had insulted him, and positively
+snarled in my face ere he swung away without the courtesy of an
+answer.  It is evident that he takes the sea seriously.  That is why,
+I fancy, he is so excellent a seaman.
+
+
+The days pass--if the interval of sombre gray that comes between the
+darknesses can be called day.  For a week, now, we have not seen the
+sun.  Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is
+conjectural.  Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and
+a hundred miles south of it.  And then came another sou'west gale
+that tore our f ore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-
+ropes and swept us away to a conjectured longitude east of Staten
+Island.
+
+Oh, I know now this Great West Wind that blows for ever around the
+world south of 55.  And I know why the chart-makers have capitalized
+it, as, for instance, when I read "The Great West Wind Drift."  And I
+know why the Sailing Directions advise:  "WHATEVER YOU DO, MAKE
+WESTING! MAKE WESTING!"
+
+And the West Wind and the drift of the West Wind will not permit the
+Elsinore to make westing.  Gale follows gale, always from the west,
+and we make easting.  And it is bitter cold, and each gale snorts up
+with a prelude of driving snow.
+
+In the cabin the lamps burn all day long.  No more does Mr. Pike run
+the phonograph, nor does Margaret ever touch the piano.  She
+complains of being bruised and sore.  I have a wrenched shoulder from
+being hurled against the wall.  And both Wada and the steward are
+limping.  Really, the only comfort I can find is in my bunk, so
+wedged with boxes and pillows that the wildest rolls cannot throw me
+out.  There, save for my meals and for an occasional run on deck for
+exercise and fresh air, I lie and read eighteen and nineteen hours
+out of the twenty-four.  But the unending physical strain is very
+wearisome.
+
+How it must be with the poor devils for'ard is beyond conceiving.
+The forecastle has been washed out several times, and everything is
+soaking wet.  Besides, they have grown weaker, and two watches are
+required to do what one ordinary watch could do.  Thus, they must
+spend as many hours on the sea-swept deck and aloft on the freezing
+yards as I do in my warm, dry bunk.  Wada tells me that they never
+undress, but turn into their wet bunks in their oil-skins and sea-
+boots and wet undergarments.
+
+To look at them crawling about on deck or in the rigging is enough.
+They are truly weak.  They are gaunt-cheeked and haggard-gray of
+skin, with great dark circles under their eyes.  The predicted plague
+of sea-boils and sea-cuts has come, and their hands and wrists and
+arms are frightfully afflicted.  Now one, and now another, and
+sometimes several, either from being knocked down by seas or from
+general miserableness, take to the bunk for a day or so off.  This
+means more work for the others, so that the men on their feet are not
+tolerant of the sick ones, and a man must be very sick to escape
+being dragged out to work by his mates.
+
+I cannot but marvel at Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs.  Old and fragile
+as they are, it seems impossible that they can endure what they do.
+For that matter, I cannot understand why they work at all.  I cannot
+understand why any of them toil on and obey an order in this freezing
+hell of the Horn.  Is it because of fear of death that they do not
+cease work and bring death to all of us?  Or is it because they are
+slave-beasts, with a slave-psychology, so used all their lives to
+being driven by their masters that it is beyond their mental power to
+refuse to obey?
+
+And yet most of them, in a week after we reach Seattle, will be on
+board other ships outward bound for the Horn.  Margaret says the
+reason for this is that sailors forget.  Mr. Pike agrees.  He says
+give them a week in the south-east trades as we run up the Pacific
+and they will have forgotten that they have ever been around the
+Horn.  I wonder.  Can they be as stupid as this?  Does pain leave no
+record with them?  Do they fear only the immediate thing?  Have they
+no horizons wider than a day?  Then indeed do they belong where they
+are.
+
+They ARE cowardly.  This was shown conclusively this morning at two
+o'clock.  Never have I witnessed such panic fear, and it was fear of
+the immediate thing--fear, stupid and beast-like.  It was Mr.
+Mellaire's watch.  As luck would have it, I was reading Boas's Mind
+of Primitive Man when I heard the rush of feet over my head.  The
+Elsinore was hove to on the port tack at the time, under very short
+canvas.  I was wondering what emergency had brought the watch upon
+the poop, when I heard another rush of feet that meant the second
+watch.  I heard no pulling and hauling, and the thought of mutiny
+flashed across my mind.
+
+Still nothing happened, and, growing curious, I got into my sea-
+boots, sheepskin coat, and oilskin, put on my sou'wester and mittens,
+and went on deck.  Mr. Pike had already dressed and was ahead of me.
+Captain West, who in this bad weather sleeps in the chart-room, stood
+in the lee doorway of the house, through which the lamplight streamed
+on the frightened faces of the men.
+
+Those of the 'midship-house were not present, but every man Jack of
+the forecastle, with the exception of Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs,
+as I afterwards learned, had joined in the flight aft.  Andy Fay, who
+belonged in the watch below, had calmly remained in his bunk, while
+Mulligan Jacobs had taken advantage of the opportunity to sneak into
+the forecastle and fill his pipe.
+
+"What is the matter, Mr. Pike?" Captain West asked.
+
+Before the mate could reply, Bert Rhine snickered:
+
+"The devil's come aboard, sir."
+
+But his snicker was palpably an assumption of unconcern he did not
+possess.  The more I think over it the more I am surprised that such
+keen men as the gangsters should have been frightened by what had
+occurred.  But frightened they were, the three of them, out of their
+bunks and out of the precious surcease of their brief watch below.
+
+So fear-struck was Larry that he chattered and grimaced like an ape,
+and shouldered and struggled to get away from the dark and into the
+safety of the shaft of light that shone out of the chart-house.
+Tony, the Greek, was just as bad, mumbling to himself and continually
+crossing himself.  He was joined in this, as a sort of chorus, by the
+two Italians, Guido Bombini and Mike Cipriani.  Arthur Deacon was
+almost in collapse, and he and Chantz, the Jew, shamelessly clung to
+each other for support.  Bob, the fat and overgrown youth, was
+sobbing, while the other youth, Bony the Splinter, was shivering and
+chattering his teeth.  Yes, and the two best sailors for'ard, Tom
+Spink and the Maltese Cockney, stood in the background, their backs
+to the dark, their faces yearning toward the light.
+
+More than all other contemptible things in this world there are two
+that I loathe and despise:  hysteria in a woman; fear and cowardice
+in a man.  The first turns me to ice.  I cannot sympathize with
+hysteria.  The second turns my stomach.  Cowardice in a man is to me
+positively nauseous.  And this fear-smitten mass of human animals on
+our reeling poop raised my gorge.  Truly, had I been a god at that
+moment, I should have annihilated the whole mass of them.  No; I
+should have been merciful to one.  He was the Faun.  His bright,
+pain-liquid, and flashing-eager eyes strained from face to face with
+desire to understand.  He did not know what had occurred, and, being
+stone-deaf, had thought the rush aft a response to a call for all
+hands.
+
+I noticed Mr. Mellaire.  He may be afraid of Mr. Pike, and he is a
+murderer; but at any rate he has no fear of the supernatural.  With
+two men above him in authority, although it was his watch, there was
+no call for him to do anything.  He swayed back and forth in balance
+to the violent motions of the Elsinore and looked on with eyes that
+were amused and cynical.
+
+"What does the devil look like, my man?" Captain West asked.
+
+Bert Rhine grinned sheepishly.
+
+"Answer the captain!" Mr. Pike snarled at him.
+
+Oh, it was murder, sheer murder, that leapt into the gangster's eyes
+for the instant, in acknowledgment of the snarl.  Then he replied to
+Captain West:
+
+"I didn't wait to see, sir.  But it's one whale of a devil."
+
+"He's as big as a elephant, sir," volunteered Bill Quigley.  "I
+seen'm face to face, sir.  He almost got me when I run out of the
+fo'c's'le."
+
+"Oh, Lord, sir!" Larry moaned.  "The way he hit the house, sir.  It
+was the call to Judgment."
+
+"Your theology is mixed, my man," Captain West smiled quietly, though
+I could not help seeing how tired was his face and how tired were his
+wonderful Samurai eyes.
+
+He turned to the mate.
+
+"Mr. Pike, will you please go for'ard and interview this devil?
+Fasten him up and tie him down and I'll take a look at him in the
+morning."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mr. Pike; and Kipling's line came to me:
+
+
+"Woman, Man, or God or Devil, was there anything we feared?"
+
+
+And as I went for'ard through the wall of darkness after Mr. Pike and
+Mr. Mellaire along the freezing, slender, sea-swept bridge--not a
+sailor dared to accompany us--other lines of "The Galley Slave"
+drifted through my brain, such as:
+
+
+"Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold
+-
+We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the hold. . . "
+
+
+And:
+
+
+"By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel,
+By the welts the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal . .
+. "
+
+
+And:
+
+
+"Battered chain-gangs of the orlop, grizzled draughts of years gone
+by . . . "
+
+
+And I caught my great, radiant vision of Mr. Pike, galley slave of
+the race, and a driver of men under men greater than he; the faithful
+henchman, the able sailorman, battered and grizzled, branded and
+galled, the servant of the sweep-head that made mastery of the sea.
+I know him now.  He can never again offend me.  I forgive him
+everything--the whiskey raw on his breath the day I came aboard at
+Baltimore, his moroseness when sea and wind do not favour, his
+savagery to the men, his snarl and his sneer.
+
+On top the 'midship-house we got a ducking that makes me shiver to
+recall.  I had dressed too hastily properly to fasten my oilskin
+about my neck, so that I was wet to the skin.  We crossed the next
+span of bridge through driving spray, and were well upon the top of
+the for'ard-house when something adrift on the deck hit the for'ard
+wall a terrific smash.
+
+"Whatever it is, it's playing the devil," Mr. Pike yelled in my ear,
+as he endeavoured to locate the thing by the dry-battery light-stick
+which he carried.
+
+The pencil of light travelled over dark water, white with foam, that
+churned upon the deck.
+
+"There it goes!" Mr. Pike cried, as the Elsinore dipped by the head
+and hurtled the water for'ard.
+
+The light went out as the three of us caught holds and crouched to a
+deluge of water from overside.  As we emerged, from under the
+forecastle-head we heard a tremendous thumping and battering.  Then,
+as the bow lifted, for an instant in the pencil of light that
+immediately lost it, I glimpsed a vague black object that bounded
+down the inclined deck where no water was.  What became of it we
+could not see.
+
+Mr. Pike descended to the deck, followed by Mr. Mellaire.  Again, as
+the Elsinore dipped by the head and fetched a surge of sea-water from
+aft along the runway, I saw the dark object bound for'ard directly at
+the mates.  They sprang to safety from its charge, the light went
+out, while another icy sea broke aboard.
+
+For a time I could see nothing of the two men.  Next, in the light
+flashed from the stick, I guessed that Mr. Pike was in pursuit of the
+thing.  He evidently must have captured it at the rail against the
+starboard rigging and caught a turn around it with a loose end of
+rope.  As the vessel rolled to windward some sort of a struggle
+seemed to be going on.  The second mate sprang to the mate's
+assistance, and, together, with more loose ends, they seemed to
+subdue the thing.
+
+I descended to see.  By the light-stick we made it out to be a large,
+barnacle-crusted cask.
+
+"She's been afloat for forty years," was Mr. Pike's judgment.  "Look
+at the size of the barnacles, and look at the whiskers."
+
+"And it's full of something," said Mr. Mellaire.  "Hope it isn't
+water."
+
+I rashly lent a hand when they started to work the cask for'ard,
+between seas and taking advantage of the rolls and pitches, to the
+shelter under the forecastle-head.  As a result, even through my
+mittens, I was cut by the sharp edges of broken shell.
+
+"It's liquor of some sort," said the mate, "but we won't risk
+broaching it till morning."
+
+"But where did it come from?" I asked.
+
+"Over the side's the only place it could have come from."  Mr. Pike
+played the light over it.  "Look at it!  It's been afloat for years
+and years."
+
+"The stuff ought to be well-seasoned," commented Mr. Mellaire.
+
+Leaving them to lash the cask securely, I stole along the deck to the
+forecastle and peered in.  The men, in their headlong flight, had
+neglected to close the doors, and the place was afloat.  In the
+flickering light from a small and very smoky sea-lamp it was a dismal
+picture.  No self-respecting cave-man, I am sure, would have lived in
+such a hole.
+
+Even as I looked a bursting sea filled the runway between the house
+and rail, and through the doorway in which I stood the freezing water
+rushed waist-deep.  I had to hold on to escape being swept inside the
+room.  From a top bunk, lying on his side, Andy Fay regarded me
+steadily with his bitter blue eyes.  Seated on the rough table of
+heavy planks, his sea-booted feet swinging in the water, Mulligan
+Jacobs pulled at his pipe.  When he observed me he pointed to pulpy
+book-pages that floated about.
+
+"Me library's gone to hell," he mourned as he indicated the flotsam.
+"There's me Byron.  An' there goes Zola an' Browning with a piece of
+Shakespeare runnin' neck an' neck, an' what's left of Anti-Christ
+makin' a bad last.  An' there's Carlyle and Zola that cheek by jowl
+you can't tell 'em apart."
+
+Here the Elsinore lay down to starboard, and the water in the
+forecastle poured out against my legs and hips.  My wet mittens
+slipped on the iron work, and I swept down the runway into the
+scuppers, where I was turned over and over by another flood that had
+just boarded from windward.
+
+I know I was rather confused, and that I had swallowed quite a deal
+of salt water, ere I got my hands on the rungs of the ladder and
+climbed to the top of the house.  On my way aft along the bridge I
+encountered the crew coming for'ard.  Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike were
+talking in the lee of the chart-house, and inside, as I passed below,
+Captain West was smoking a cigar.
+
+After a good rub down, in dry pyjamas, I was scarcely back in my bunk
+with the Mind of Primitive Man before me, when the stampede over my
+head was repeated.  I waited for the second rush.  It came, and I
+proceeded to dress.
+
+The scene on the poop duplicated the previous one, save that the men
+were more excited, more frightened.  They were babbling and
+chattering all together.
+
+"Shut up!" Mr. Pike was snarling when I came upon them.  "One at a
+time, and answer the captain's question."
+
+"It ain't no barrel this time, sir," Tom Spink said.  "It's alive.
+An' if it ain't the devil it's the ghost of a drownded man.  I see 'm
+plain an' clear.  He's a man, or was a man once--"
+
+"They was two of 'em, sir," Richard Giller, one of the "bricklayers,"
+broke in.
+
+"I think he looked like Petro Marinkovich, sir," Tom Spink went on.
+
+"An' the other was Jespersen--I seen 'm," Giller added.
+
+"They was three of 'em, sir," said Nosey Murphy.  "O'Sullivan, sir,
+was the other one.  They ain't devils, sir.  They're drownded men.
+They come aboard right over the bows, an' they moved slow like
+drownded men.  Sorensen seen the first one first.  He caught my arm
+an' pointed, an' then I seen 'm.  He was on top the for'ard-house.
+And Olansen seen 'm, an' Deacon, sir, an' Hackey.  We all seen 'm,
+sir . . . an' the second one; an' when the rest run away I stayed
+long enough to see the third one.  Mebbe there's more.  I didn't wait
+to see."
+
+Captain West stopped the man.
+
+"Mr. Pike," he said wearily, "will you straighten this nonsense out."
+
+"Yes, sir," Mr. Pike responded, then turned on the man.  "Come on,
+all of you!  There's three devils to tie down this time."
+
+But the men shrank away from the order and from him.
+
+"For two cents . . . " I heard Mr. Pike growl to himself, then choke
+off utterance.
+
+He flung about on his heel and started for the bridge.  In the same
+order as on the previous trip, Mr. Mellaire second, and I bringing up
+the rear, we followed.  It was a similar journey, save that we caught
+a ducking midway on the first span of bridge as well as a ducking on
+the 'midship-house.
+
+We halted on top the for'ard-house.  In vain Mr. Pike flashed his
+light-stick.  Nothing was to be seen nor heard save the white-flecked
+dark water on our deck, the roar of the gale in our rigging, and the
+crash and thunder of seas falling aboard.  We advanced half-way
+across the last span of bridge to the f ore-castle head, and were
+driven to pause and hang on at the foremast by a bursting sea.
+
+Between the drives of spray Mr. Pike flashed his stick.  I heard him
+exclaim something.  Then he went on to the forecastle-head, followed
+by Mr. Mellaire, while I waited by the foremast, clinging tight, and
+endured another ducking.  Through the emergencies I could see the
+pencil of light, appearing and disappearing, darting here and there.
+Several minutes later the mates were back with me.
+
+"Half our head-gear's carried away," Mr. Pike told me.  "We must have
+run into something."
+
+"I felt a jar, right after you' went below, sir, last time," said Mr.
+Mellaire.  "Only I thought it was a thump of sea."
+
+"So did I feel it," the mate agreed.  "I was just taking off my
+boots.  I thought it was a sea.  But where are the three devils?"
+
+"Broaching the cask," the second mate suggested.
+
+We made the forecastle-head, descended the iron ladder, and went
+for'ard, inside, underneath, out of the wind and sea.  There lay the
+cask, securely lashed.  The size of the barnacles on it was
+astonishing.  They were as large as apples and inches deep.  A down-
+fling of bow brought a foot of water about our boots; and as the bow
+lifted and the water drained away, it drew out from the shell-crusted
+cask streamers of seaweed a foot or so in length.
+
+Led by Mr. Pike and watching our chance between seas, we searched the
+deck and rails between the forecastle-head and the for'ard-house and
+found no devils.  The mate stepped into the forecastle doorway, and
+his light-stick cut like a dagger through the dim illumination of the
+murky sea-lamp.  And we saw the devils.  Nosey Murphy had been right.
+There were three of them.
+
+Let me give the picture:  A drenched and freezing room of rusty,
+paint-scabbed iron, low-roofed, double-tiered with bunks, reeking
+with the filth of thirty men, despite the washing of the sea.  In a
+top bunk, on his side, in sea-boots and oilskins, staring steadily
+with blue, bitter eyes, Andy Fay; on the table, pulling at a pipe,
+with hanging legs dragged this way and that by the churn of water,
+Mulligan Jacobs, solemnly regarding three men, sea-booted and bloody,
+who stand side by side, of a height and not duly tall, swaying in
+unison to the Elsinore's down-flinging and up-lifting.
+
+But such men!  I know my East Side and my East End, and I am
+accustomed to the faces of all the ruck of races, yet with these
+three men I was at fault.  The Mediterranean had surely never bred
+such a breed; nor had Scandinavia.  They were not blonds.  They were
+not brunettes.  Nor were they of the Brown, or Black, or Yellow.
+Their skin was white under a bronze of weather.  Wet as was their
+hair, it was plainly a colourless, sandy hair.  Yet their eyes were
+dark--and yet not dark.  They were neither blue, nor gray, nor green,
+nor hazel.  Nor were they black.  They were topaz, pale topaz; and
+they gleamed and dreamed like the eyes of great cats.  They regarded
+us like walkers in a dream, these pale-haired storm-waifs with pale,
+topaz eyes.  They did not bow, they did not smile, in no way did they
+recognize our presence save that they looked at us and dreamed.
+
+But Andy Fay greeted us.
+
+"It's a hell of a night an' not a wink of sleep with these goings-
+on," he said.
+
+"Now where did they blow in from a night like this?" Mulligan Jacobs
+complained.
+
+"You've got a tongue in your mouth," Mr. Pike snarled.  "Why ain't
+you asked 'em?"
+
+"As though you didn't know I could use the tongue in me mouth, you
+old stiff," Jacobs snarled back.
+
+But it was no time for their private feud.  Mr. Pike turned on the
+dreaming new-comers and addressed them in the mangled and aborted
+phrases of a dozen languages such as the world-wandering Anglo-Saxon
+has had every opportunity to learn but is too stubborn-brained and
+wilful-mouthed to wrap his tongue about.
+
+The visitors made no reply.  They did not even shake their heads.
+Their faces remained peculiarly relaxed and placid, incurious and
+pleasant, while in their eyes floated profounder dreams.  Yet they
+were human.  The blood of their injuries stained them and clotted on
+their clothes.
+
+"Dutchmen," snorted Mr. Pike, with all due contempt for other breeds,
+as he waved them to make themselves at home in any of the bunks.
+
+Mr. Pike's ethnology is narrow.  Outside his own race he is aware of
+only three races:  niggers, Dutchmen, and Dagoes.
+
+Again our visitors proved themselves human.  They understood the
+mate's invitation, and, glancing first at one another, they climbed
+into three top-bunks and closed their eyes.  I could swear the first
+of them was asleep in half a minute.
+
+"We'll have to clean up for'ard, or we'll be having the sticks about
+our ears," the mate said, already starting to depart.  "Get the men
+along, Mr. Mellaire, and call out the carpenter."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+
+And no westing!  We have been swept back three degrees of casting
+since the night our visitors came on board.  They are the great
+mystery, these three men of the sea.  "Horn Gypsies," Margaret calls
+them; and Mr. Pike dubs them "Dutchmen."  One thing is certain, they
+have a language of their own which they talk with one another.  But
+of our hotch-potch of nationalities fore and aft there is no person
+who catches an inkling of their language or nationality.
+
+Mr. Mellaire raised the theory that they were Finns of some sort, but
+this was indignantly denied by our big-footed youth of a carpenter,
+who swears he is a Finn himself.  Louis, the cook, avers that
+somewhere over the world, on some forgotten voyage, he has
+encountered men of their type; but he can neither remember the voyage
+nor their race.  He and the rest of the Asiatics accept their
+presence as a matter of course; but the crew, with the exception of
+Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs, is very superstitious about the new-
+comers, and will have nothing to do with them.
+
+"No good will come of them, sir," Tom Spink, at the wheel, told us,
+shaking his head forebodingly.
+
+Margaret's mittened hand rested on my arm as we balanced to the easy
+roll of the ship.  We had paused from our promenade, which we now
+take each day, religiously, as a constitutional, between eleven and
+twelve.
+
+"Why, what is the matter with them?" she queried, nudging me privily
+in warning of what was coming.
+
+"Because they ain't men, Miss, as we can rightly call men.  They
+ain't regular men."
+
+"It was a bit irregular, their manner of coming on board," she
+gurgled.
+
+"That's just it, Miss," Tom Spink exclaimed, brightening perceptibly
+at the hint of understanding.  "Where'd they come from?  They won't
+tell.  Of course they won't tell.  They ain't men.  They're spirits--
+ghosts of sailors that drowned as long ago as when that cask went
+adrift from a sinkin' ship, an' that's years an' years, Miss, as
+anybody can see, lookin' at the size of the barnacles on it."
+
+"Do you think so?" Margaret queried.
+
+"We all think so, Miss.  We ain't spent our lives on the sea for
+nothin'.  There's no end of landsmen don't believe in the Flyin'
+Dutchman.  But what do they know?  They're just landsmen, ain't they?
+They ain't never had their leg grabbed by a ghost, such as I had, on
+the Kathleen, thirty-five years ago, down in the hole 'tween the
+water-casks.  An' didn't that ghost rip the shoe right off of me?
+An' didn't I fall through the hatch two days later an' break my
+shoulder?"
+
+"Now, Miss, I seen 'em makin' signs to Mr. Pike that we'd run into
+their ship hove to on the other tack.  Don't you believe it.  There
+wasn't no ship."
+
+"But how do you explain the carrying away of our head-gear?" I
+demanded.
+
+"There's lots of things can't be explained, sir," was Tom Spink's
+answer.  "Who can explain the way the Finns plays tom-fool tricks
+with the weather?  Yet everybody knows it.  Why are we havin' a hard
+passage around the Horn, sir?  I ask you that.  Why, sir?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Because of the carpenter, sir.  We've found out he's a Finn.  Why
+did he keep it quiet all the way down from Baltimore?"
+
+"Why did he tell it?" Margaret challenged.
+
+"He didn't tell it, Miss--leastways, not until after them three
+others boarded us.  I got my suspicions he knows more about 'm than
+he's lettin' on.  An' look at the weather an' the delay we're
+gettin'.  An' don't everybody know the Finns is regular warlocks an'
+weather-breeders?"
+
+My ears pricked up.
+
+"Where did you get that word warlock?" I questioned.
+
+Tom Spink looked puzzled.
+
+"What's wrong with it, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing.  It's all right.  But where did you get it?"
+
+"I never got it, sir.  I always had it.  That's what Finns is--
+warlocks."
+
+"And these three new-comers--they aren't Finns?" asked Margaret.
+
+The old Englishman shook his head solemnly.
+
+"No, Miss.  They're drownded sailors a long time drownded.  All you
+have to do is look at 'm.  An' the carpenter could tell us a few if
+he was minded."
+
+
+Nevertheless, our mysterious visitors are a welcome addition to our
+weakened crew.  I watch them at work.  They are strong and willing.
+Mr. Pike says they are real sailormen, even if he doesn't understand
+their lingo.  His theory is that they are from some small old-country
+or outlander ship, which, hove to on the opposite tack to the
+Elsinore, was run down and sunk.
+
+I have forgotten to say that we found the barnacled cask nearly
+filled with a most delicious wine which none of us can name.  As soon
+as the gale moderated Mr. Pike had the cask brought aft and broached,
+and now the steward and Wada have it all in bottles and spare
+demijohns.  It is beautifully aged, and Mr. Pike is certain that it
+is some sort of a mild and unheard-of brandy.  Mr. Mellaire merely
+smacks his lips over it, while Captain West, Margaret, and I
+steadfastly maintain that it is wine.
+
+The condition of the men grows deplorable.  They were always poor at
+pulling on ropes, but now it takes two or three to pull as much as
+one used to pull.  One thing in their favour is that they are well,
+though grossly, fed.  They have all they want to eat, such as it is,
+but it is the cold and wet, the terrible condition of the forecastle,
+the lack of sleep, and the almost continuous toil of both watches on
+deck.  Either watch is so weak and worthless that any severe task
+requires the assistance of the other watch.  As an instance, we
+finally managed a reef in the fore-sail in the thick of a gale.  It
+took both watches two hours, yet Mr. Pike tells me that under similar
+circumstances, with an average crew of the old days, he has seen a
+single watch reef the foresail in twenty minutes.
+
+I have learned one of the prime virtues of a steel sailing-ship.
+Such a craft, heavily laden, does not strain her seams open in bad
+weather and big seas.  Except for a tiny leak down in the fore-peak,
+with which we sailed from Baltimore and which is bailed out with a
+pail once in several weeks, the Elsinore is bone-dry.  Mr. Pike tells
+me that had a wooden ship of her size and cargo gone through the
+buffeting we have endured, she would be leaking like a sieve.
+
+And Mr. Mellaire, out of his own experience, has added to my respect
+for the Horn.  When he was a young man he was once eight weeks in
+making around from 50 in the Atlantic to 50 in the Pacific.  Another
+time his vessel was compelled to put back twice to the Falklands for
+repairs.  And still another time, in a wooden ship running back in
+distress to the Falklands, his vessel was lost in a shift of gale in
+the very entrance to Port Stanley.  As he told me:
+
+"And after we'd been there a month, sir, who should come in but the
+old Lucy Powers.  She was a sight!--her foremast clean gone out of
+her and half her spars, the old man killed from one of the spars
+falling on him, the mate with two broken arms, the second mate sick,
+and what was left of the crew at the pumps.  We'd lost our ship, so
+my skipper took charge, refitted her, doubled up both crews, and we
+headed the other way around, pumping two hours in every watch clear
+to Honolulu."
+
+The poor wretched chickens!  Because of their ill-judged moulting
+they are quite featherless.  It is a marvel that one of them
+survives, yet so far we have lost only six.  Margaret keeps the
+kerosene stove going, and, though they have ceased laying, she
+confidently asserts that they are all layers and that we shall have
+plenty of eggs once we get fine weather in the Pacific.
+
+There is little use to describe these monotonous and perpetual
+westerly gales.  One is very like another, and they follow so fast on
+one another's heels that the sea never has a chance to grow calm.  So
+long have we rolled and tossed about that the thought, say, of a
+solid, unmoving billiard-table is inconceivable.  In previous
+incarnations I have encountered things that did not move, but . . .
+they were in previous incarnations.
+
+We have been up to the Diego Ramirez Rocks twice in the past ten
+days.  At the present moment, by vague dead reckoning, we are two
+hundred miles east of them.  We have been hove down to our hatches
+three times in the last week.  We have had six stout sails, of the
+heaviest canvas, furled and double-gasketed, torn loose and stripped
+from the yards.  Sometimes, so weak are our men, not more than half
+of them can respond to the call for all hands.
+
+Lars Jacobson, who had his leg broken early in the voyage, was
+knocked down by a sea several days back and had the leg rebroken.
+Ditman Olansen, the crank-eyed Norwegian, went Berserker last night
+in the second dog-watch and pretty well cleaned out his half of the
+forecastle.  Wada reports that it required the bricklayers,
+Fitzgibbon and Gilder, the Maltese Cockney, and Steve Roberts, the
+cowboy, finally to subdue the madman.  These are all men of Mr.
+Mellaire's watch.  In Mr. Pike's watch John Hackey, the San Francisco
+hoodlum, who has stood out against the gangsters, has at last
+succumbed and joined them.  And only this morning Mr. Pike dragged
+Charles Davis by the scruff of the neck out of the forecastle, where
+he had caught him expounding sea-law to the miserable creatures.  Mr.
+Mellaire, I notice on occasion, remains unduly intimate with the
+gangster clique.  And yet nothing serious happens.
+
+And Charles Davis does not die.  He seems actually to be gaining in
+weight.  He never misses a meal.  From the break of the poop, in the
+shelter of the weather cloth, our decks a thunder and rush of
+freezing water, I often watch him slip out of his room between seas,
+mug and plate in hand, and hobble for'ard to the galley for his food.
+He is a keen judge of the ship's motions, for never yet have I seen
+him get a serious ducking.  Sometimes, of course, he may get
+splattered with spray or wet to the knees, but he manages to be out
+of the way whenever a big graybeard falls on board.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+
+A wonderful event to-day!  For five minutes, at noon, the sun was
+actually visible.  But such a sun!--a pale and cold and sickly orb
+that at meridian was only 90 degrees 18 minutes above the horizon.
+And within the hour we were taking in sail and lying down to the
+snow-gusts of a fresh south-west gale.
+
+WHATEVER YOU DO, MAKE WESTING! MAKE WESTING!--this sailing rule of
+the navigators for the Horn has been bitten out of iron.  I can
+understand why shipmasters, with a favouring slant of wind, have left
+sailors, fallen overboard, to drown without heaving-to to lower a
+boat.  Cape Horn is iron, and it takes masters of iron to win around
+from east to west.
+
+And we make easting!  This west wind is eternal.  I listen
+incredulously when Mr. Pike or Mr. Mellaire tells of times when
+easterly winds have blown in these latitudes.  It is impossible.
+Always does the west wind blow, gale upon gale and gales everlasting,
+else why the "Great West Wind Drift" printed on the charts!  We of
+the afterguard are weary of this eternal buffeting.  Our men have
+become pulpy, washed-out, sore-corroded shadows of men.  I should not
+be surprised, in the end, to see Captain West turn tail and run
+eastward around the world to Seattle.  But Margaret smiles with
+surety, and nods her head, and affirms that her father will win
+around to 50 in the Pacific.
+
+How Charles Davis survives in that wet, freezing, paint-scabbed room
+of iron in the 'midship-house is beyond me--just as it is beyond me
+that the wretched sailors in the wretched forecastle do not lie down
+in their bunks and die, or, at least, refuse to answer the call of
+the watches.
+
+Another week has passed, and we are to-day, by observation, sixty
+miles due south of the Straits of Le Maire, and we are hove-to, in a
+driving gale, on the port tack.  The glass is down to 28.58, and even
+Mr. Pike acknowledges that it is one of the worst Cape Horn snorters
+he has ever experienced.
+
+In the old days the navigators used to strive as far south as 64
+degrees or 65 degrees, into the Antarctic drift ice, hoping, in a
+favouring spell, to make westing at a prodigious rate across the
+extreme-narrowing wedges of longitude.  But of late years all
+shipmasters have accepted the hugging of the land all the way around.
+Out of ten times ten thousand passages of Cape Stiff from east to
+west, this, they have concluded, is the best strategy.  So Captain
+West hugs the land.  He heaves-to on the port tack until the leeward
+drift brings the land into perilous proximity, then wears ship and
+heaves-to on the port tack and makes leeway off shore.
+
+I may be weary of all this bitter movement of a labouring ship on a
+frigid sea, but at the same time I do not mind it.  In my brain burns
+the flame of a great discovery and a great achievement.  I have found
+what makes all the books go glimmering; I have achieved what my very
+philosophy tells me is the greatest achievement a man can make.  I
+have found the love of woman.  I do not know whether she cares for
+me.  Nor is that the point.  The point is that in myself I have risen
+to the greatest height to which the human male animal can rise.
+
+I know a woman and her name is Margaret.  She is Margaret, a woman
+and desirable.  My blood is red.  I am not the pallid scholar I so
+proudly deemed myself to be.  I am a man, and a lover, despite the
+books.  As for De Casseres--if ever I get back to New York, equipped
+as I now am, I shall confute him with the same ease that he has
+confuted all the schools.  Love is the final word.  To the rational
+man it alone gives the super-rational sanction for living.  Like
+Bergson in his overhanging heaven of intuition, or like one who has
+bathed in Pentecostal fire and seen the New Jerusalem, so I have trod
+the materialistic dictums of science underfoot, scaled the last peak
+of philosophy, and leaped into my heaven, which, after all, is within
+myself.  The stuff that composes me, that is I, is so made that it
+finds its supreme realization in the love of woman.  It is the
+vindication of being.  Yes, and it is the wages of being, the payment
+in full for all the brittleness and frailty of flesh and breath.
+
+And she is only a woman, like any woman, and the Lord knows I know
+what women are.  And I know Margaret for what she is--mere woman; and
+yet I know, in the lover's soul of me, that she is somehow different.
+Her ways are not as the ways of other women, and all her ways are
+delightful to me.  In the end, I suppose, I shall become a nest-
+builder, for of a surety nest-building is one of her pretty ways.
+And who shall say which is the worthier--the writing of a whole
+library or the building of a nest?
+
+The monotonous days, bleak and gray and soggy cold, drag by.  It is
+now a month since we began the passage of the Horn, and here we are,
+not so well forward as a month ago, because we are something like a
+hundred miles south of the Straits of Le Maire.  Even this position
+is conjectural, being arrived at by dead reckoning, based on the
+leeway of a ship hove-to, now on the one tack, now on the other, with
+always the Great West Wind Drift making against us.  It is four days
+since our last instrument-sight of the sun.
+
+This storm-vexed ocean has become populous.  No ships are getting
+round, and each day adds to our number.  Never a brief day passes
+without our sighting from two or three to a dozen hove-to on port
+tack or starboard tack.  Captain West estimates there must be at
+least two hundred sail of us.  A ship hove-to with preventer tackles
+on the rudder-head is unmanageable.  Each night we take our chance of
+unavoidable and disastrous collision.  And at times, glimpsed through
+the snow-squalls, we see and curse the ships, east-bound, that drive
+past us with the West Wind and the West Wind Drift at their backs.
+And so wild is the mind of man that Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire still
+aver that on occasion they have known gales to blow ships from east
+to west around the Horn.  It surely has been a year since we of the
+Elsinore emerged from under the lee of Tierra Del Fuego into the
+snorting south-west gales.  A century, at least, has elapsed since we
+sailed from Baltimore.
+
+
+And I don't give a snap of my fingers for all the wrath and fury of
+this dim-gray sea at the tip of the earth.  I have told Margaret that
+I love her.  The tale was told in the shelter of the weather cloth,
+where we clung together in the second dog-watch last evening.  And it
+was told again, and by both of us, in the bright-lighted chart-room
+after the watches had been changed at eight bells.  Yes, and her face
+was storm-bright, and all of her was very proud, save that her eyes
+were warm and soft and fluttered with lids that just would flutter
+maidenly and womanly.  It was a great hour--our great hour.
+
+A poor devil of a man is most lucky when, loving, he is loved.
+Grievous indeed must be the fate of the lover who is unloved.  And I,
+for one, and for still other reasons, congratulate myself upon the
+vastitude of my good fortune.  For see, were Margaret any other sort
+of a woman, were she . . . well, just the lovely and lovable and
+adorably snuggly sort who seem made just precisely for love and
+loving and nestling into the strong arms of a man--why, there
+wouldn't be anything remarkable or wonderful about her loving me.
+But Margaret is Margaret, strong, self-possessed, serene, controlled,
+a very mistress of herself.  And there's the miracle--that such a
+woman should have been awakened to love by me.  It is almost
+unbelievable.  I go out of my way to get another peep into those
+long, cool, gray eyes of hers and see them grow melting soft as she
+looks at me.  She is no Juliet, thank the Lord; and thank the Lord I
+am no Romeo.  And yet I go up alone on the freezing poop, and under
+my breath chant defiantly at the snorting gale, and at the graybeards
+thundering down on us, that I am a lover.  And I send messages to the
+lonely albatrosses veering through the murk that I am a lover.  And I
+look at the wretched sailors crawling along the spray-swept bridge
+and know that never in ten thousand wretched lives could they
+experience the love I experience, and I wonder why God ever made
+them.
+
+
+"And the one thing I had firmly resolved from the start," Margaret
+confessed to me this morning in the cabin, when I released her from
+my arms, "was that I would not permit you to make love to me."
+
+"True daughter of Herodias," I gaily gibed, "so such was the drift of
+your thoughts even as early as the very start.  Already you were
+looking upon me with a considerative female eye."
+
+She laughed proudly, and did not reply.
+
+"What possibly could have led you to expect that I would make love to
+you?" I insisted.
+
+"Because it is the way of young male passengers on long voyages," she
+replied.
+
+"Then others have . . . ?"
+
+"They always do," she assured me gravely.
+
+And at that instant I knew the first ridiculous pang of jealousy; but
+I laughed it away and retorted:
+
+"It was an ancient Chinese philosopher who is first recorded as
+having said, what doubtlessly the cave men before him gibbered,
+namely, that a woman pursues a man by fluttering away in advance of
+him."
+
+"Wretch!" she cried.  "I never fluttered.  When did I ever flutter!"
+
+"It is a delicate subject . . . " I began with assumed hesitancy.
+
+"When did I ever flutter?" she demanded.
+
+I availed myself of one of Schopenhauer's ruses by making a shift.
+
+"From the first you observed nothing that a female could afford to
+miss observing," I charged.  "I'll wager you knew as quickly as I the
+very instant when I first loved you."
+
+"I knew the first time you hated me," she evaded.
+
+"Yes, I know, the first time I saw you and learned that you were
+coming on the voyage," I said.  "But now I repeat my challenge.  You
+knew as quickly as I the first instant I loved you."
+
+Oh, her eyes were beautiful, and the repose and certitude of her were
+tremendous, as she rested her hand on my arm for a moment and in a
+low, quiet voice said:
+
+"Yes, I . . . I think I know.  It was the morning of that pampero off
+the Plate, when you were thrown through the door into my father's
+stateroom.  I saw it in your eyes.  I knew it.  I think it was the
+first time, the very instant."
+
+I could only nod my head and draw her close to me.  And she looked up
+at me and added:
+
+"You were very ridiculous.  There you sat, on the bed, holding on
+with one hand and nursing the other hand under your arm, staring at
+me, irritated, startled, utterly foolish, and then . . . how, I don't
+know . . . I knew that you had just come to know . . . "
+
+"And the very next instant you froze up," I charged ungallantly.
+
+"And that was why," she admitted shamelessly, then leaned away from
+me, her hands resting on my shoulders, while she gurgled and her lips
+parted from over her beautiful white teeth.
+
+One thing I, John Pathurst, know:  that gurgling laughter of hers is
+the most adorable laughter that was ever heard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+
+I wonder.  I wonder.  Did the Samurai make a mistake?  Or was it the
+darkness of oncoming death that chilled and clouded that star-cool
+brain of his, and made a mock of all his wisdom?  Or was it the
+blunder that brought death upon him beforehand?  I do not know, I
+shall never know; for it is a matter no one of us dreams of hinting
+at, much less discussing.
+
+I shall begin at the beginning--yesterday afternoon.  For it was
+yesterday afternoon, five weeks to a day since we emerged from the
+Straits of Le Maire into this gray storm-ocean, that once again we
+found ourselves hove to directly off the Horn.  At the changing of
+the watches at four o'clock, Captain West gave the command to Mr.
+Pike to wear ship.  We were on the starboard tack at the time, making
+leeway off shore.  This manoeuvre placed us on the port tack, and the
+consequent leeway, to me, seemed on shore, though at an acute angle,
+to be sure.
+
+In the chart-room, glancing curiously at the chart, I measured the
+distance with my eye and decided that we were in the neighbourhood of
+fifteen miles off Cape Horn.
+
+"With our drift we'll be close up under the land by morning, won't
+we?" I ventured tentatively.
+
+"Yes," Captain West nodded; "and if it weren't for the West Wind
+Drift, and if the land did not trend to the north-east, we'd be
+ashore by morning.  As it is, we'll be well under it at daylight,
+ready to steal around if there is a change, ready to wear ship if
+there is no change."
+
+It did not enter my head to question his judgment.  What he said had
+to be.  Was he not the Samurai?
+
+And yet, a few minutes later, when he had gone below, I noticed Mr.
+Pike enter the chart-house.  After several paces up and down, and a
+brief pause to watch Nancy and several men shift the weather cloth
+from lee to weather, I strolled aft to the chart-house.  Prompted by
+I know not what, I peeped through one of the glass ports.
+
+There stood Mr. Pike, his sou'wester doffed, his oilskins streaming
+rivulets to the floor, while he, dividers and parallel rulers in
+hand, bent over the chart.  It was the expression of his face that
+startled me.  The habitual sourness had vanished.  All that I could
+see was anxiety and apprehension . . . yes, and age.  I had never
+seen him look so old; for there, at that moment, I beheld the wastage
+and weariness of all his sixty-nine years of sea-battling and sea-
+staring.
+
+I slipped away from the port and went along the deck to the break of
+the poop, where I held on and stood staring through the gray and
+spray in the conjectural direction of our drift.  Somewhere, there,
+in the north-east and north, I knew was a broken, iron coast of rocks
+upon which the graybeards thundered.  And there, in the chart-room, a
+redoubtable sailorman bent anxiously over a chart as he measured and
+calculated, and measured and calculated again, our position and our
+drift.
+
+And I knew it could not be.  It was not the Samurai but the henchman
+who was weak and wrong.  Age was beginning to tell upon him at last,
+which could not be otherwise than expected when one considered that
+no man in ten thousand had weathered age so successfully as he.
+
+I laughed at my moment's qualm of foolishness and went below, well
+content to meet my loved one and to rest secure in her father's
+wisdom.  Of course he was right.  He had proved himself right too
+often already on the long voyage from Baltimore.
+
+At dinner Mr. Pike was quite distrait.  He took no part whatever in
+the conversation, and seemed always to be listening to something from
+without--to the vexing clang of taut ropes that came down the hollow
+jiggermast, to the muffled roar of the gale in the rigging, to the
+smash and crash of the seas along our decks and against our iron
+walls.
+
+Again I found myself sharing his apprehension, although I was too
+discreet to question him then, or afterwards alone, about his
+trouble.  At eight he went on deck again to take the watch till
+midnight, and as I went to bed I dismissed all forebodings and
+speculated as to how many more voyages he could last after this
+sudden onslaught of old age.
+
+I fell asleep quickly, and awoke at midnight, my lamp still burning,
+Conrad's Mirror of the Sea on my breast where it had dropped from my
+hands.  I heard the watches change, and was wide awake and reading
+when Mr. Pike came below by the booby-hatch and passed down my hail
+by my open door, on his way to his room.
+
+In the pause I had long since learned so well I knew he was rolling a
+cigarette.  Then I heard him cough, as he always did, when the
+cigarette was lighted and the first inhalation of smoke flushed his
+lungs.
+
+At twelve-fifteen, in the midst of Conrad's delightful chapter, "The
+Weight of the Burden," I heard Mr. Pike come along the hall.
+
+Stealing a glance over the top of my book, I saw him go by, sea-
+booted, oilskinned, sou'westered.  It was his watch below, and his
+sleep was meagre in this perpetual bad weather, yet he was going on
+deck.
+
+I read and waited for an hour, but he did not return; and I knew that
+somewhere up above he was staring into the driving dark.  I dressed
+fully, in all my heavy storm-gear, from sea-boots and sou'-wester to
+sheepskin under my oilskin coat.  At the foot of the stairs I noted
+along the hall that Margaret's light was burning.  I peeped in--she
+keeps her door open for ventilation--and found her reading.
+
+"Merely not sleepy," she assured me.
+
+Nor in the heart of me do I believe she had any apprehension.  She
+does not know even now, I am confident, the Samurai's blunder--if
+blunder it was.  As she said, she was merely not sleepy, although
+there is no telling in what occult ways she may have received though
+not recognized Mr. Pike's anxiety.
+
+At the head of the stairs, passing along the tiny hall to go out the
+lee door of the chart-house, I glanced into the chart-room.  On the
+couch, lying on his back, his head uncomfortably high, I thought,
+slept Captain West.  The room was warm from the ascending heat of the
+cabin, so that he lay unblanketed, fully dressed save for oilskins
+and boots.  He breathed easily and steadily, and the lean, ascetic
+lines of his face seemed softened by the light of the low-turned
+lamp.  And that one glance restored to me all my surety and faith in
+his wisdom, so that I laughed at myself for having left my warm bed
+for a freezing trip on deck.
+
+Under the weather cloth at the break of the poop I found Mr.
+Mellaire.  He was wide awake, but under no strain.  Evidently it had
+not entered his mind to consider, much less question, the manoeuvre
+of wearing ship the previous afternoon.
+
+"The gale is breaking," he told me, waving his mittened hand at a
+starry segment of sky momentarily exposed by the thinning clouds.
+
+But where was Mr. Pike?  Did the second mate know he was on deck?  I
+proceeded to feel Mr. Mellaire out as we worked our way aft, along
+the mad poop toward the wheel.  I talked about the difficulty of
+sleeping in stormy weather, stated the restlessness and semi-insomnia
+that the violent motion of the ship caused in me, and raised the
+query of how bad weather affected the officers.
+
+"I noticed Captain West, in the chart-room, as I came up, sleeping
+like a baby," I concluded.
+
+We leaned in the lee of the chart-house and went no farther.
+
+"Trust us to sleep just the same way, Mr. Pathurst," the second mate
+laughed.  "The harder the weather the harder the demand on us, and
+the harder we sleep.  I'm dead the moment my head touches the pillow.
+It takes Mr. Pike longer, because he always finishes his cigarette
+after he turns in.  But he smokes while he's undressing, so that he
+doesn't require more than a minute to go deado.  I'll wager he hasn't
+moved, right now, since ten minutes after twelve."
+
+So the second mate did not dream the first was even on deck.  I went
+below to make sure.  A small sea-lamp was burning in Mr. Pike's room,
+and I saw his bunk unoccupied.  I went in by the big stove in the
+dining-room and warmed up, then again came on deck.  I did not go
+near the weather cloth, where I was certain Mr. Mellaire was; but,
+keeping along the lee of the poop, I gained the bridge and started
+for'ard.
+
+I was in no hurry, so I paused often in that cold, wet journey.  The
+gale was breaking, for again and again the stars glimmered through
+the thinning storm-clouds.  On the 'midship-house was no Mr. Pike.  I
+crossed it, stung by the freezing, flying spray, and carefully
+reconnoitred the top of the for'ard-house, where, in such bad
+weather, I knew the lookout was stationed.  I was within twenty feet
+of them, when a wider clearance of starry sky showed me the figures
+of the lookout, whoever he was, and of Mr. Pike, side by side.  Long
+I watched them, not making my presence known, and I knew that the old
+mate's eyes were boring like gimlets into the windy darkness that
+separated the Elsinore from the thunder-surfed iron coast he sought
+to find.
+
+Coming back to the poop I was caught by the surprised Mr. Mellaire.
+
+"Thought you were asleep, sir," he chided.
+
+"I'm too restless," I explained.  "I've read until my eyes are tired,
+and now I'm trying to get chilled so that I can fall asleep while
+warming up in my blankets."
+
+"I envy you, sir," he answered.  "Think of it!  So much of all night
+in that you cannot sleep.  Some day, if ever I make a lucky strike, I
+shall make a voyage like this as a passenger, and have all watches
+below.  Think of it!  All blessed watches below!  And I shall, like
+you, sir, bring a Jap servant along, and I'll make him call me at
+every changing of the watches, so that, wide awake, I can appreciate
+my good fortune in the several minutes before I roll over and go to
+sleep again."
+
+We laughed good night to each other.  Another peep into the chart-
+room showed me Captain West sleeping as before.  He had not moved in
+general, though all his body moved with every roll and fling of the
+ship.  Below, Margaret's light still burned, but a peep showed her
+asleep, her book fallen from her hands just as was the so frequent
+case with my books.
+
+And I wondered.  Half the souls of us on the Elsinore slept.  The
+Samurai slept.  Yet the old first mate, who should have slept, kept a
+bitter watch on the for'ard-house.  Was his anxiety right?  Could it
+be right?  Or was it the crankiness of ultimate age?  Were we
+drifting and leewaying to destruction?  Or was it merely an old man
+being struck down by senility in the midst of his life-task?
+
+Too wide awake to think of sleeping, I ensconced myself with The
+Mirror of the Sea at the dining-table.  Nor did I remove aught of my
+storm-gear save the soggy mittens, which I wrung out and hung to dry
+by the stove.  Four bells struck, and six bells, and Mr. Pike had not
+returned below.  At eight bells, with the changing of the watches, it
+came upon me what a night of hardship the old mate was enduring.
+Eight to twelve had been his own watch on deck.  He had now completed
+the four hours of the second mate's watch and was beginning his own
+watch, which would last till eight in the morning--twelve consecutive
+hours in a Cape Horn gale with the mercury at freezing.
+
+Next--for I had dozed--I heard loud cries above my head that were
+repeated along the poop.  I did not know till afterwards that it was
+Mr. Pike's command to hard-up the helm, passed along from for'ard by
+the men he had stationed at intervals on the bridge.
+
+All that I knew at this shock of waking was that something was
+happening above.  As I pulled on my steaming mittens and hurried my
+best up the reeling stairs, I could hear the stamp of men's feet that
+for once were not lagging.  In the chart-house hall I heard Mr. Pike,
+who had already covered the length of the bridge from the for'ard-
+house, shouting:
+
+"Mizzen-braces!  Slack, damn you!  Slack on the run!  But hold a
+turn!  Aft, here, all of you!  Jump!  Lively, if you don't want to
+swim!  Come in, port-braces!  Don't let 'm get away!  Lee-braces!--if
+you lose that turn I'll split your skull!  Lively!  Lively!--Is that
+helm hard over!  Why in hell don't you answer?"
+
+All this I heard as I dashed for the lee door and as I wondered why I
+did not hear the Samurai's voice.
+
+Then, as I passed the chart-room door, I saw him.
+
+He was sitting on the couch, white-faced, one sea-boot in his hands,
+and I could have sworn his hands were shaking.  That much I saw, and
+the next moment was out on deck.
+
+At first, just emerged from the light, I could see nothing, although
+I could hear men at the pin-rails and the mate snarling and shouting
+commands.  But I knew the manoeuvre.  With a weak crew, in the big,
+tail-end sea of a broken gale, breakers and destruction under her
+lee, the Elsinore was being worn around.  We had been under lower-
+topsails and a reefed foresail all night.  Mr. Pike's first action,
+after putting the wheel up, had been to square the mizzen-yards.
+With the wind-pressure thus eased aft, the stern could more easily
+swing against the wind while the wind-pressure on the for'ard-sails
+paid the bow off.
+
+But it takes time to wear a ship, under short canvas, in a big sea.
+Slowly, very slowly, I could feel the direction of the wind altering
+against my cheek.  The moon, dim at first, showed brighter and
+brighter as the last shreds of a flying cloud drove away from before
+it.  In vain I looked for any land.
+
+"Main-braces!--all of you!--jump!" Mr. Pike shouted, himself leading
+the rush along the poop.  And the men really rushed.  Not in all the
+months I had observed them had I seen such swiftness of energy.
+
+I made my way to the wheel, where Tom Spink stood.  He did not notice
+me.  With one hand holding the idle wheel, he was leaning out to one
+side, his eyes fixed in a fascinated stare.  I followed its
+direction, on between the chart-house and the port-jigger shrouds,
+and on across a mountain sea that was very vague in the moonlight.
+And then I saw it!  The Elsinore's stern was flung skyward, and
+across that cold ocean I saw land--black rocks and snow-covered
+slopes and crags.  And toward this land the Elsinore, now almost
+before the wind, was driving.
+
+From the 'midship-house came the snarls of the mate and the cries of
+the sailors.  They were pulling and hauling for very life.  Then came
+Mr. Pike, across the poop, leaping with incredible swiftness, sending
+his snarl before him.
+
+"Ease that wheel there!  What the hell you gawkin' at?  Steady her as
+I tell you.  That's all you got to do!"
+
+From for'ard came a cry, and I knew Mr. Mellaire was on top of the
+for'ard-house and managing the fore-yards.
+
+"Now!"--from Mr. Pike.  "More spokes!  Steady!  Steady!  And be ready
+to check her!"
+
+He bounded away along the poop again, shouting for men for the
+mizzen-braces.  And the men appeared, some of his watch, others of
+the second mate's watch, routed from sleep--men coatless, and
+hatless, and bootless; men ghastly-faced with fear but eager for once
+to spring to the orders of the man who knew and could save their
+miserable lives from miserable death.  Yes--and I noted the delicate-
+handed cook, and Yatsuda, the sail-maker, pulling with his one
+unparalysed hand.  It was all hands to save ship, and all hands knew
+it.  Even Sundry Buyers, who had drifted aft in his stupidity instead
+of being for'ard with his own officer, forebore to stare about and to
+press his abdomen.  For the nonce he pulled like a youngling of
+twenty.
+
+The moon covered again, and it was in darkness that the Elsinore
+rounded up on the wind on the starboard tack.  This, in her case,
+under lower-topsails only, meant that she lay eight points from the
+wind, or, in land terms, at right angles to the wind.
+
+Mr. Pike was splendid, marvellous.  Even as the Elsinore was rounding
+to on the wind, while the head-yards were still being braced, and
+even as he was watching the ship's behaviour and the wheel, in
+between his commands to Tom Spink of "A spoke!  A spoke or two!
+Another!  Steady!  Hold her!  Ease her!" he was ordering the men
+aloft to loose sail.  I had thought, the manoeuvre of wearing
+achieved, that we were saved, but this setting of all three upper-
+topsails unconvinced me.
+
+The moon remained hidden, and to leeward nothing could be seen.  As
+each sail was set, the Elsinore was pressed farther and farther over,
+and I realized that there was plenty of wind left, despite the fact
+that the gale had broken or was breaking.  Also, under this
+additional canvas, I could feel the Elsinore moving through the
+water.  Pike now sent the Maltese Cockney to help Tom Spink at the
+wheel.  As for himself, he took his stand beside the booby-hatch,
+where he could gauge the Elsinore, gaze to leeward, and keep his eye
+on the helmsmen.
+
+"Full and by," was his reiterated command.  "Keep her a good full--a
+rap-full; but don't let her fall away.  Hold her to it, and drive
+her."
+
+He took no notice whatever of me, although I, on my way to the lee of
+the chart-house, stood at his shoulder a full minute, offering him a
+chance to speak.  He knew I was there, for his big shoulder brushed
+my arm as he swayed and turned to warn the helmsmen in the one breath
+to hold her up to it but to keep her full.  He had neither time nor
+courtesy for a passenger in such a moment.
+
+Sheltering by the chart-house, I saw the moon appear.  It grew
+brighter and brighter, and I saw the land, dead to leeward of us, not
+three hundred yards away.  It was a cruel sight--black rock and
+bitter snow, with cliffs so perpendicular that the Elsinore could
+have laid alongside of them in deep water, with great gashes and
+fissures, and with great surges thundering and spouting along all the
+length of it.
+
+Our predicament was now clear to me.  We had to weather the bight of
+land and islands into which we had drifted, and sea and wind worked
+directly on shore.  The only way out was to drive through the water,
+to drive fast and hard, and this was borne in upon me by Mr. Pike
+bounding past to the break of the poop, where I heard him shout to
+Mr. Mellaire to set the mainsail.
+
+Evidently the second mate was dubious, for the next cry of Mr. Pike's
+was:
+
+"Damn the reef!  You'd be in hell first!  Full mainsail!  All hands
+to it!"
+
+The difference was appreciable at once when that huge spread of
+canvas opposed the wind.  The Elsinore fairly leaped and quivered as
+she sprang to it, and I could feel her eat to windward as she at the
+same time drove faster ahead.  Also, in the rolls and gusts, she was
+forced down till her lee-rail buried and the sea foamed level across
+to her hatches.  Mr. Pike watched her like a hawk, and like certain
+death he watched the Maltese Cockney and Tom Spink at the wheel.
+
+"Land on the lee bow!" came a cry from for'ard, that was carried on
+from mouth to mouth along the bridge to the poop.
+
+I saw Mr. Pike nod his head grimly and sarcastically.  He had already
+seen it from the lee-poop, and what he had not seen he had guessed.
+A score of times I saw him test the weight of the gusts on his cheek
+and with all the brain of him study the Elsinore's behaviour.  And I
+knew what was in his mind.  Could she carry what she had?  Could she
+carry more?
+
+Small wonder, in this tense passage of time, that I had forgotten the
+Samurai.  Nor did I remember him until the chart-house door swung
+open and I caught him by the arm.  He steadied and swayed beside me,
+while he watched that cruel picture of rock and snow and spouting
+surf.
+
+"A good full!" Mr. Pike snarled.  "Or I'll eat your heart out.  God
+damn you for the farmer's hound you are, Tom Spink!.  Ease her!  Ease
+her!  Ease her into the big ones, damn you!  Don't let her head fall
+off!  Steady!  Where in hell did you learn to steer?  What cow-farm
+was you raised on?"
+
+Here he bounded for'ard past us with those incredible leaps of his.
+
+"It would be good to set the mizzen-topgallant," I heard Captain West
+mutter in a weak, quavery voice.  "Mr. Pathurst, will you please tell
+Mr. Pike to set the mizzen-topgallant?"
+
+And at that very instant Mr. Pike's voice rang out from the break of
+the poop:
+
+"Mr. Mellaire!--the mizzen-topgallant!"
+
+Captain West's head drooped until his chin rested on his breast, and
+so low did he mutter that I leaned to hear.
+
+"A very good officer," he said.  "An excellent officer.  Mr.
+Pathurst, if you will kindly favour me, I should like to go in.  I .
+. . I haven't got on my boots."
+
+The muscular feat was to open the heavy iron door and hold it open in
+the rolls and plunges.  This I accomplished; but when I had helped
+Captain West across the high threshold he thanked me and waived
+further services.  And I did not know even then he was dying.
+
+Never was a Blackwood ship driven as was the Elsinore during the next
+half-hour.  The full-jib was also set, and, as it departed in shreds,
+the fore-topmast staysail was being hoisted.  For'ard of the
+'midship-house it was made unlivable by the bursting seas.  Mr.
+Mellaire, with half the crew, clung on somehow on top the 'midship-
+house, while the rest of the crew was with us in the comparative
+safety of the poop.  Even Charles Davis, drenched and shivering, hung
+on beside me to the brass ring-handle of the chart-house door.
+
+Such sailing!  It was a madness of speed and motion, for the Elsinore
+drove over and through and under those huge graybeards that thundered
+shore-ward.  There were times, when rolls and gusts worked against
+her at the same moment, when I could have sworn the ends of her
+lower-yardarms swept the sea.
+
+It was one chance in ten that we could claw off.  All knew it, and
+all knew there was nothing more to do but await the issue.  And we
+waited in silence.  The only voice was that of the mate,
+intermittently cursing, threatening, and ordering Tom Spink and the
+Maltese Cockney at the wheel.  Between whiles, and all the while, he
+gauged the gusts, and ever his eyes lifted to the main-topgallant-
+yard.  He wanted to set that one more sail.  A dozen times I saw him
+half-open his mouth to give the order he dared not give.  And as I
+watched him, so all watched him.  Hard-bitten, bitter-natured, sour-
+featured and snarling-mouthed, he was the one man, the henchman of
+the race, the master of the moment.  "And where," was my thought, "O
+where was the Samurai?"
+
+One chance in ten?  It was one in a hundred as we fought to weather
+the last bold tooth of rock that gashed into sea and tempest between
+us and open ocean.  So close were we that I looked to see our far-
+reeling skysail-yards strike the face of the rock.  So close were we,
+no more than a biscuit toss from its iron buttress, that as we sank
+down into the last great trough between two seas I can swear every
+one of us held breath and waited for the Elsinore to strike.
+
+Instead we drove free.  And as if in very rage at our escape, the
+storm took that moment to deal us the mightiest buffet of all.  The
+mate felt that monster sea coming, for he sprang to the wheel ere the
+blow fell.  I looked for'ard, and I saw all for'ard blotted out by
+the mountain of water that fell aboard.  The Elsinore righted from
+the shock and reappeared to the eye, full of water from rail to rail.
+Then a gust caught her sails and heeled her over, spilling half the
+enormous burden outboard again.
+
+Along the bridge came the relayed cry of "Man overboard!"
+
+I glanced at the mate, who had just released the wheel to the
+helmsmen.  He shook his head, as if irritated by so trivial a
+happening, walked to the corner of the half-wheelhouse, and stared at
+the coast he had escaped, white and black and cold in the moonlight.
+
+Mr. Mellaire came aft, and they met beside me in the lee of the
+chart-house.
+
+"All hands, Mr. Mellaire," the mate said, "and get the mainsail off
+of her.  After that, the mizzen-topgallant."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the second.
+
+"Who was it?" the mate asked, as Mr. Mellaire was turning away.
+
+"Boney--he was no good, anyway," came the answer.
+
+That was all.  Boney the Splinter was gone, and all hands were
+answering the command of Mr. Mellaire to take in the mainsail.  But
+they never took it in; for at that moment it started to blow away out
+of the bolt-ropes, and in but few moments all that was left of it was
+a few short, slatting ribbons.
+
+"Mizzen-topgallant-sail!" Mr. Pike ordered.  Then, and for the first
+time, he recognized my existence.
+
+"Well rid of it," he growled.  "It never did set properly.  I was
+always aching to get my hands on the sail-maker that made it."
+
+On my way below a glance into the chart-room gave me the cue to the
+Samurai's blunder--if blunder it can be called, for no one will ever
+know.  He lay on the floor in a loose heap, rolling willy-nilly with
+every roll of the Elsinore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+
+There is so much to write about all at once.  In the first place,
+Captain West.  Not entirely unexpected was his death.  Margaret tells
+me that she was apprehensive from the start of the voyage--and even
+before.  It was because of her apprehension that she so abruptly
+changed her plans and accompanied her father.
+
+What really happened we do not know, but the agreed surmise is that
+it was some stroke of the heart.  And yet, after the stroke, did he
+not come out on deck?  Or could the first stroke have been followed
+by another and fatal one after I had helped him inside through the
+door?  And even so, I have never heard of a heart-stroke being
+preceded hours before by a weakening of the mind.  Captain West's
+mind seemed quite clear, and must have been quite clear, that last
+afternoon when he wore the Elsinore and started the lee-shore drift.
+In which case it was a blunder.  The Samurai blundered, and his heart
+destroyed him when he became aware of the blunder.
+
+At any rate the thought of blunder never enters Margaret's head.  She
+accepts, as a matter of course, that it was all a part of the
+oncoming termination of his sickness.  And no one will ever undeceive
+her.  Neither Mr. Pike, Mr. Mellaire, nor I, among ourselves, mention
+a whisper of what so narrowly missed causing disaster.  In fact, Mr.
+Pike does not talk about the matter at all.--And then, again, might
+it not have been something different from heart disease?  Or heart
+disease complicated with something else that obscured his mind that
+afternoon before his death?  Well, no one knows, and I, for one,
+shall not sit, even in secret judgment, on the event.
+
+
+At midday of the day we clawed off Tierra Del Fuego the Elsinore was
+rolling in a dead calm, and all afternoon she rolled, not a score of
+miles off the land.  Captain West was buried at four o'clock, and at
+eight bells that evening Mr. Pike assumed command and made a few
+remarks to both watches.  They were straight-from-the-shoulder
+remarks, or, as he called them, they were "brass tacks."
+
+Among other things he told the sailors that they had another boss,
+and that they would toe the mark as they never had before.  Up to
+this time they had been loafing in an hotel, but from this time on
+they were going to work.
+
+"On this hooker, from now on," he perorated, "it's going to be like
+old times, when a man jumped the last day of the voyage as well as
+the first.  And God help the man that don't jump.  That's all.
+Relieve the wheel and lookout."
+
+
+And yet the men are in terribly wretched condition.  I don't see how
+they can jump.  Another week of westerly gales, alternating with
+brief periods of calm, has elapsed, making a total of six weeks off
+the Horn.  So weak are the men that they have no spirit left in them-
+-not even the gangsters.  And so afraid are they of the mate that
+they really do their best to jump when he drives them, and he drives
+them all the time.  Mr. Mellaire shakes his head.
+
+"Wait till they get around and up into better weather," he astonished
+me by telling me the other afternoon.  "Wait till they get dried out,
+and rested up, with more sleep, and their sores healed, and more
+flesh on their bones, and more spunk in their blood--then they won't
+stand for this driving.  Mr. Pike can't realize that times have
+changed, sir, and laws have changed, and men have changed.  He's an
+old man, and I know what I am talking about."
+
+"You mean you've been listening to the talk of the men?" I challenged
+rashly, all my gorge rising at the unofficerlike conduct of this
+ship's officer.
+
+The shot went home, for, in a flash, that suave and gentle film of
+light vanished from the surface of the eyes, and the watching,
+fearful thing that lurked behind inside the skull seemed almost to
+leap out at me, while the cruel gash of mouth drew thinner and
+crueller.  And at the same time, on my inner sight, was grotesquely
+limned a picture of a brain pulsing savagely against the veneer of
+skin that covered that cleft of skull beneath the dripping sou'-
+wester.  Then he controlled himself, the mouth-gash relaxed, and the
+suave and gentle film drew again across the eyes.
+
+"I mean, sir," he said softly, "that I am speaking out of a long sea
+experience.  Times have changed.  The old driving days are gone.  And
+I trust, Mr. Pathurst, that you will not misunderstand me in the
+matter, nor misinterpret what I have said."
+
+Although the conversation drifted on to other and calmer topics, I
+could not ignore the fact that he had not denied listening to the
+talk of the men.  And yet, even as Mr. Pike grudgingly admits, he is
+a good sailorman and second mate save for his unholy intimacy with
+the men for'ard--an intimacy which even the Chinese cook and the
+Chinese steward deplore as unseamanlike and perilous.
+
+Even though men like the gangsters are so worn down by hardship that
+they have no heart of rebellion, there remain three of the frailest
+for'ard who will not die, and who are as spunky as ever.  They are
+Andy Fay, Mulligan Jacobs, and Charles Davis.  What strange, abysmal
+vitality informs them is beyond all speculation.  Of course, Charles
+Davis should have been overside with a sack of coal at his feet long
+ago.  And Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs are only, and have always
+been, wrecked and emaciated wisps of men.  Yet far stronger men than
+they have gone over the side, and far stronger men than they are laid
+up right now in absolute physical helplessness in the soggy
+forecastle bunks.  And these two bitter flames of shreds of things
+stand all their watches and answer all calls for both watches.
+
+Yes; and the chickens have something of this same spunk of life in
+them.  Featherless, semi-frozen despite the oil-stove, sprayed
+dripping on occasion by the frigid seas that pound by sheer weight
+through canvas tarpaulins, nevertheless not a chicken has died.  Is
+it a matter of selection?  Are these the iron-vigoured ones that
+survived the hardships from Baltimore to the Horn, and are fitted to
+survive anything?  Then for a De Vries to take them, save them, and
+out of them found the hardiest breed of chickens on the planet!  And
+after this I shall always query that phrase, most ancient in our
+language--"chicken-hearted."  Measured by the Elsinore's chickens, it
+is a misnomer.
+
+Nor are our three Horn Gypsies, the storm-visitors with the dreaming,
+topaz eyes, spunkless.  Held in superstitious abhorrence by the rest
+of the crew, aliens by lack of any word of common speech,
+nevertheless they are good sailors and are always first to spring
+into any enterprise of work or peril.  They have gone into Mr.
+Mellaire's watch, and they are quite apart from the rest of the
+sailors.  And when there is a delay, or wait, with nothing to do for
+long minutes, they shoulder together, and stand and sway to the heave
+of deck, and dream far dreams in those pale, topaz eyes, of a
+country, I am sure, where mothers, with pale, topaz eyes and sandy
+hair, birth sons and daughters that breed true in terms of topaz eyes
+and sandy hair.
+
+But the rest of the crew!  Take the Maltese Cockney.  He is too
+keenly intelligent, too sharply sensitive, successfully to endure.
+He is a shadow of his former self.  His cheeks have fallen in.  Dark
+circles of suffering are under his eyes, while his eyes, Latin and
+English intermingled, are cavernously sunken and as bright-burning as
+if aflame with fever.
+
+Tom Spink, hard-fibred Anglo-Saxon, good seaman that he is, long
+tried and always proved, is quite wrecked in spirit.  He is whining
+and fearful.  So broken is he, though he still does his work, that he
+is prideless and shameless.
+
+"I'll never ship around the Horn again, sir," he began on me the
+other day when I greeted him good morning at the wheel.  "I've sworn
+it before, but this time I mean it.  Never again, sir.  Never again."
+
+"Why did you swear it before?" I queried.
+
+"It was on the Nahoma, sir, four years ago.  Two hundred and thirty
+days from Liverpool to 'Frisco.  Think of it, sir.  Two hundred and
+thirty days!  And we was loaded with cement and creosote, and the
+creosote got loose.  We buried the captain right here off the Horn.
+The grub gave out.  Most of us nearly died of scurvy.  Every man Jack
+of us was carted to hospital in 'Frisco.  It was plain hell, sir,
+that's what it was, an' two hundred and thirty days of it."
+
+"Yet here you are," I laughed; "signed on another Horn voyage."
+
+And this morning Tom Spink confided the following tome:
+
+"If only we'd lost the carpenter, sir, instead of Boney."
+
+I did not catch his drift for the moment; then I remembered.  The
+carpenter was the Finn, the Jonah, the warlock who played tricks with
+the winds and despitefully used poor sailormen.
+
+
+Yes, and I make free to confess that I have grown well weary of this
+eternal buffeting by the Great West Wind.  Nor are we alone in our
+travail on this desolate ocean.  Never a day does the gray thin, or
+the snow-squalls cease that we do not sight ships, west-bound like
+ourselves, hove-to and trying to hold on to the meagre westing they
+possess.  And occasionally, when the gray clears and lifts, we see a
+lucky ship, bound east, running before it and reeling off the miles.
+I saw Mr. Pike, yesterday, shaking his fist in a fury of hatred at
+one such craft that flew insolently past us not a quarter of a mile
+away.
+
+And the men are jumping.  Mr. Pike is driving with those block-square
+fists of his, as many a man's face attests.  So weak are they, and so
+terrible is he, that I swear he could whip either watch single-
+handed.  I cannot help but note that Mr. Mellaire refuses to take
+part in this driving.  Yet I know that he is a trained driver, and
+that he was not averse to driving at the outset of the voyage.  But
+now he seems bent on keeping on good terms with the crew.  I should
+like to know what Mr. Pike thinks of it, for he cannot possibly be
+blind to what is going on; but I am too well aware of what would
+happen if I raised the question.  He would insult me, snap my head
+off, and indulge in a three-days' sea-grouch.  Things are sad and
+monotonous enough for Margaret and me in the cabin and at table,
+without invoking the blight of the mate's displeasure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+
+Another brutal sea-superstition vindicated.  From now on and for
+always these imbeciles of ours will believe that Finns are Jonahs.
+We are west of the Diego de Ramirez Rocks, and we are running west at
+a twelve-knot clip with an easterly gale at our backs.  And the
+carpenter is gone.  His passing, and the coming of the easterly wind,
+were coincidental.
+
+It was yesterday morning, as he helped me to dress, that I was struck
+by the solemnity of Wada's face.  He shook his head lugubriously as
+he broke the news.  The carpenter was missing.  The ship had been
+searched for him high and low.  There just was no carpenter.
+
+"What does the steward think?" I asked.  "What does Louis think?--and
+Yatsuda?"
+
+"The sailors, they kill 'm carpenter sure," was the answer.  "Very
+bad ship this.  Very bad hearts.  Just the same pig, just the same
+dog.  All the time kill.  All the time kill.  Bime-by everybody kill.
+You see."
+
+The old steward, at work in his pantry, grinned at me when I
+mentioned the matter.
+
+"They make fool with me, I fix 'em," he said vindictively.  "Mebbe
+they kill me, all right; but I kill some, too."
+
+He threw back his coat, and I saw, strapped to the left side of his
+body, in a canvas sheath, so that the handle was ready to hand, a
+meat knife of the heavy sort that butchers hack with.  He drew it
+forth- it was fully two feet long--and, to demonstrate its razor-
+edge, sliced a sheet of newspaper into many ribbons.
+
+"Huh!" he laughed sardonically.  "I am Chink, monkey, damn fool, eh?-
+-no good, eh? all rotten damn to hell.  I fix 'em, they make fool
+with me."
+
+And yet there is not the slightest evidence of foul play.  Nobody
+knows what happened to the carpenter.  There are no clues, no traces.
+The night was calm and snowy.  No seas broke on board.  Without doubt
+the clumsy, big-footed, over-grown giant of a boy is overside and
+dead.  The question is:  did he go over of his own accord, or was he
+put over?
+
+At eight o'clock Mr. Pike proceeded to interrogate the watches.  He
+stood at the break of the poop, in the high place, leaning on the
+rail and gazing down at the crew assembled on the main deck beneath
+him.
+
+Man after man he questioned, and from each man came the one story.
+They knew no more about it than did we--or so they averred.
+
+"I suppose you'll be chargin' next that I hove that big lummux
+overboard with me own hands," Mulligan Jacobs snarled, when he was
+questioned.  "An' mebbe I did, bein' that husky an' rampagin' bull-
+like."
+
+The mate's face grew more forbidding and sour, but without comment he
+passed on to John Hackey, the San Francisco hoodlum.
+
+It was an unforgettable scene--the mate in the high place, the men,
+sullen and irresponsive, grouped beneath.  A gentle snow drifted
+straight down through the windless air, while the Elsinore, with
+hollow thunder from her sails, rolled down on the quiet swells so
+that the ocean lapped the mouths of her scuppers with long-drawn,
+shuddering sucks and sobs.  And all the men swayed in unison to the
+rolls, their hands in mittens, their feet in sack-wrapped sea-boots,
+their faces worn and sick.  And the three dreamers with the topaz
+eyes stood and swayed and dreamed together, incurious of setting and
+situation.
+
+And then it came--the hint of easterly air.  The mate noted it first.
+I saw him start and turn his cheek to the almost imperceptible
+draught.  Then I felt it.  A minute longer he waited, until assured,
+when, the dead carpenter forgotten, he burst out with orders to the
+wheel and the crew.  And the men jumped, though in their weakness the
+climb aloft was slow and toilsome; and when the gaskets were off the
+topgallant-sails and the men on deck were hoisting yards and sheeting
+home, those aloft were loosing the royals.
+
+While this work went on, and while the yards were being braced
+around, the Elsinore, her bow pointing to the west, began moving
+through the water before the first fair wind in a month and a half.
+
+Slowly that light air fanned to a gentle breeze while all the time
+the snow fell steadily.  The barometer, down to 28.80, continued to
+fall, and the breeze continued to grow upon itself.  Tom Spink,
+passing by me on the poop to lend a hand at the final finicky
+trimming of the mizzen-yards, gave me a triumphant look.
+Superstition was vindicated.  Events had proved him right.  Fair wind
+had come with the going of the carpenter, which said warlock had
+incontestably taken with him overside his bag of wind-tricks.
+
+Mr. Pike strode up and down the poop, rubbing his hands, which he was
+too disdainfully happy to mitten, chuckling and grinning to himself,
+glancing at the draw of every sail, stealing adoring looks astern
+into the gray of snow out of which blew the favouring wind.  He even
+paused beside me to gossip for a moment about the French restaurants
+of San Francisco and how, therein, the delectable California fashion
+of cooking wild duck obtained.
+
+"Throw 'em through the fire," he chanted.  "That's the way--throw 'em
+through the fire--a hot oven, sixteen minutes--I take mine fourteen,
+to the second--an' squeeze the carcasses."
+
+By midday the snow had ceased and we were bowling along before a
+stiff breeze.  At three in the afternoon we were running before a
+growing gale.  It was across a mad ocean we tore, for the mounting
+sea that made from eastward bucked into the West End Drift and
+battled and battered down the huge south-westerly swell.  And the big
+grinning dolt of a Finnish carpenter, already food for fish and bird,
+was astern there somewhere in the freezing rack and drive.
+
+Make westing!  We ripped it off across these narrowing degrees of
+longitude at the southern tip of the planet where one mile counts for
+two.  And Mr. Pike, staring at his bending topgallant-yards, swore
+that they could carry away for all he cared ere he eased an inch of
+canvas.  More he did.  He set the huge crojack, biggest of all sails,
+and challenged God or Satan to start a seam of it or all its seams.
+
+He simply could not go below.  In such auspicious occasions all
+watches were his, and he strode the poop perpetually with all age-lag
+banished from his legs.  Margaret and I were with him in the chart-
+room when he hurrahed the barometer, down to 28.55 and falling.  And
+we were near him, on the poop, when he drove by an east-bound lime-
+juicer, hove-to under upper-topsails.  We were a biscuit-toss away,
+and he sprang upon the rail at the jigger-shrouds and danced a war-
+dance and waved his free arm, and yelled his scorn and joy at their
+discomfiture to the several oilskinned figures on the stranger
+vessel's poop.
+
+Through the pitch-black night we continued to drive.  The crew was
+sadly frightened, and I sought in vain, in the two dog-watches, for
+Tom Spink, to ask him if he thought the carpenter, astern, had opened
+wide the bag-mouth and loosed all his tricks.  For the first time I
+saw the steward apprehensive.
+
+"Too much," he told me, with ominous rolling head.  "Too much sail,
+rotten bad damn all to hell.  Bime-by, pretty quick, all finish.  You
+see."
+
+"They talk about running the easting down," Mr. Pike chortled to me,
+as we clung to the poop-rail to keep from fetching away and breaking
+ribs and necks.  "Well, this is running your westing down if anybody
+should ride up in a go-devil and ask you."
+
+It was a wretched, glorious night.  Sleep was impossible--for me, at
+any rate.  Nor was there even the comfort of warmth.  Something had
+gone wrong with the big cabin stove, due to our wild running, I
+fancy, and the steward was compelled to let the fire go out.  So we
+are getting a taste of the hardship of the forecastle, though in our
+case everything is dry instead of soggy or afloat.  The kerosene
+stoves burned in our state room, but so smelly was mine that I
+preferred the cold.
+
+To sail on one's nerve in an over-canvassed harbour cat-boat is all
+the excitement any glutton can desire.  But to sail, in the same
+fashion, in a big ship off the Horn, is incredible and terrible.  The
+Great West Wind Drift, setting squarely into the teeth of the
+easterly gale, kicked up a tideway sea that was monstrous.  Two men
+toiled at the wheel, relieving in pairs every half-hour, and in the
+face of the cold they streamed with sweat long ere their half-hour
+shift was up.
+
+Mr. Pike is of the elder race of men.  His endurance is prodigious.
+Watch and watch, and all watches, he held the poop.
+
+"I never dreamed of it," he told me, at midnight, as the great gusts
+tore by and as we listened for our lighter spars to smash aloft and
+crash upon the deck.  "I thought my last whirling sailing was past.
+And here we are!  Here we are!
+
+"Lord!  Lord!  I sailed third mate in the little Vampire before you
+were born.  Fifty-six men before the mast, and the last Jack of 'em
+an able seaman.  And there were eight boys, an' bosuns that was
+bosuns, an' sail-makers an' carpenters an' stewards an' passengers to
+jam the decks.  An' three driving mates of us, an' Captain Brown, the
+Little Wonder.  He didn't weigh a hundredweight, an' he drove us--he
+drove US, three drivin' mates that learned from him what drivin' was.
+
+"It was knock down and drag out from the start.  The first hour of
+puttin' the men to fair perished our knuckles.  I've got the smashed
+joints yet to show.  Every sea-chest broke open, every sea-bag turned
+out, and whiskey bottles, knuckle-dusters, sling-shots, bowie-knives,
+an' guns chucked overside by the armful.  An' when we chose the
+watches, each man of fifty-six of 'em laid his knife on the main-
+hatch an' the carpenter broke the point square off.-Yes, an' the
+little Vampire only eight hundred tons.  The Elsinore could carry her
+on her deck.  But she was ship, all ship, an' them was men's days."
+
+Margaret, save for inability to sleep, did not mind the driving,
+although Mr. Mellaire, on the other hand, admitted apprehension.
+
+"He's got my goat," he confided to me.  "It isn't right to drive a
+cargo-carrier this way.  This isn't a ballasted yacht.  It's a coal-
+hulk.  I know what driving was, but it was in ships made to drive.
+Our iron-work aloft won't stand it.  Mr. Pathurst, I tell you frankly
+that it is criminal, it is sheer murder, to run the Elsinore with
+that crojack on her.  You can see yourself, sir.  It's an after-sail.
+All its tendency is to throw her stern off and her bow up to it.  And
+if it ever happens, sir, if she ever gets away from the wheel for two
+seconds and broaches to . . . "
+
+"Then what?" I asked, or, rather, shouted; for all conversation had
+to be shouted close to ear in that blast of gale.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and all of him was eloquent with the
+unuttered, unmistakable word-finish."
+
+At eight this morning Margaret and I struggled up to the poop.  And
+there was that indomitable, iron old man.  He had never left the deck
+all night.  His eyes were bright, and he appeared in the pink of
+well-being.  He rubbed his hands and chuckled greeting to us, and
+took up his reminiscences.
+
+"In '51, on this same stretch, Miss West, the Flying Cloud, in
+twenty-four hours, logged three hundred and seventy-four miles under
+her topgallant-sails.  That was sailing.  She broke the record, that
+day, for sail an' steam."
+
+"And what are we averaging, Mr. Pike?" Margaret queried, while her
+eyes were fixed on the main deck, where continually one rail and then
+the other dipped under the ocean and filled across from rail to rail,
+only to spill out and take in on the next roll.
+
+"Thirteen for a fair average since five o'clock yesterday afternoon,"
+he exulted.  "In the squalls she makes all of sixteen, which is going
+some, for the Elsinore."
+
+"I'd take the crojack off if I had charge," Margaret criticised.
+
+"So would I, so would I, Miss West," he replied; "if we hadn't been
+six weeks already off the Horn."
+
+She ran her eyes aloft, spar by spar, past the spars of hollow steel
+to the wooden royals, which bent in the gusts like bows in some
+invisible archer's hands.
+
+"They're remarkably good sticks of timber," was her comment.
+
+"Well may you say it, Miss West," he agreed.  "I'd never a-believed
+they'd a-stood it myself.  But just look at 'm!  Just look at 'm!"
+
+There was no breakfast for the men.  Three times the galley had been
+washed out, and the men, in the forecastle awash, contented
+themselves with hard tack and cold salt horse.  Aft, with us, the
+steward scalded himself twice ere he succeeded in making coffee over
+a kerosene-burner.
+
+At noon we picked up a ship ahead, a lime-juicer, travelling in the
+same direction, under lower-topsails and one upper-topsail.  The only
+one of her courses set was the foresail.
+
+The way that skipper's carryin' on is shocking," Mr. Pike sneered.
+"He should be more cautious, and remember God, the owners, the
+underwriters, and the Board of Trade."
+
+Such was our speed that in almost no time we were up with the
+stranger vessel and passing her.  Mr. Pike was like a boy just loosed
+from school.  He altered our course so that we passed her a hundred
+yards away.  She was a gallant sight, but, such was our speed, she
+appeared standing still.  Mr. Pike jumped upon the rail and insulted
+those on her poop by extending a rope's end in invitation to take a
+tow.
+
+Margaret shook her head privily to me as she gazed at our bending
+royal-yards, but was caught in the act by Mr. Pike, who cried out:
+
+"What kites she won't carry she can drag!"
+
+An hour later I caught Tom Spink, just relieved from his shift at the
+wheel and weak from exhaustion.
+
+"What do you think now of the carpenter and his bag of tricks?"  I
+queried.
+
+"Lord lumme, it should a-ben the mate, sir," was his reply.
+
+By five in the afternoon we had logged 314 miles since five the
+previous day, which was two over an average of thirteen knots for
+twenty-four consecutive hours.
+
+"Now take Captain Brown of the little Vampire," Mr. Pike grinned to
+me, for our sailing made him good-natured.  "He never would take in
+until the kites an' stu'n'sails was about his ears.  An' when she was
+blown' her worst an' we was half-fairly shortened down, he'd turn in
+for a snooze, an' say to us, 'Call me if she moderates.'  Yes, and
+I'll never forget the night when I called him an' told him that
+everything on top the houses had gone adrift, an' that two of the
+boats had been swept aft and was kindling-wood against the break of
+the cabin.  'Very well, Mr. Pike,' he says, battin' his eyes and
+turnin' over to go to sleep again.  'Very well, Mr. Pike,' says he.
+'Watch her.  An' Mr. Pike . . .' 'Yes, sir,' says I.  'Give me a
+call, Mr. Pike, when the windlass shows signs of comin' aft.'  That's
+what he said, his very words, an' the next moment, damme, he was
+snorin'."
+
+
+It is now midnight, and, cunningly wedged into my bunk, unable to
+sleep, I am writing these lines with flying dabs of pencil at my pad.
+And no more shall I write, I swear, until this gale is blown out, or
+we are blown to Kingdom Come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+
+The days have passed and I have broken my resolve; for here I am
+again writing while the Elsinore surges along across a magnificent,
+smoky, dusty sea.  But I have two reasons for breaking my word.
+First, and minor, we had a real dawn this morning.  The gray of the
+sea showed a streaky blue, and the cloud-masses were actually pink-
+tipped by a really and truly sun.
+
+Second, and major, WE ARE AROUND THE HORN!  We are north of 50 in the
+Pacific, in Longitude 80.49, with Cape Pillar and the Straits of
+Magellan already south of east from us, and we are heading north-
+north-west.  WE ARE AROUND THE HORN!  The profound significance of
+this can be appreciated only by one who has wind-jammed around from
+east to west.  Blow high, blow low, nothing can happen to thwart us.
+No ship north of 50 was ever blown back.  From now on it is plain
+sailing, and Seattle suddenly seems quite near.
+
+All the ship's company, with the exception of Margaret, is better
+spirited.  She is quiet, and a little down, though she is anything
+but prone to the wastage of grief.  In her robust, vital philosophy
+God's always in heaven.  I may describe her as being merely subdued,
+and gentle, and tender.  And she is very wistful to receive gentle
+consideration and tenderness from me.  She is, after all, the genuine
+woman.  She wants the strength that man has to give, and I flatter
+myself that I am ten times a stronger man than I was when the voyage
+began, because I am a thousand times a more human man since I told
+the books to go hang and began to revel in the human maleness of the
+man that loves a woman and is loved.
+
+Returning to the ship's company.  The rounding of the Horn, the
+better weather that is continually growing better, the easement of
+hardship and toil and danger, with the promise of the tropics and of
+the balmy south-east trades before them--all these factors contribute
+to pick up our men again.  The temperature has already so moderated
+that the men are beginning to shed their surplusage of clothing, and
+they no longer wrap sacking about their sea-boots.  Last evening, in
+the second dog-watch, I heard a man actually singing.
+
+The steward has discarded the huge, hacking knife and relaxed to the
+extent of engaging in an occasional sober romp with Possum.  Wada's
+face is no longer solemnly long, and Louis' Oxford accent is more
+mellifluous than ever.  Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay are the same
+venomous scorpions they have always been.  The three gangsters, with
+the clique they lead, have again asserted their tyrrany and thrashed
+all the weaklings and feeblings in the forecastle.  Charles Davis
+resolutely refuses to die, though how he survived that wet and
+freezing room of iron through all the weeks off the Horn has elicited
+wonder even from Mr. Pike, who has a most accurate knowledge of what
+men can stand and what they cannot stand.
+
+How Nietzsche, with his eternal slogan of "Be hard!  Be hard!" would
+have delighted in Mr. Pike!
+
+And--oh!--Larry has had a tooth removed.  For some days distressed
+with a jumping toothache, he came aft to the mate for relief.  Mr.
+Pike refused to "monkey" with the "fangled" forceps in the medicine-
+chest.  He used a tenpenny nail and a hammer in the good old way to
+which he was brought up.  I vouch for this.  I saw it done.  One blow
+of the hammer and the tooth was out, while Larry was jumping around
+holding his jaw.  It is a wonder it wasn't fractured.  But Mr. Pike
+avers he has removed hundreds of teeth by this method and never known
+a fractured jaw.  Also, he avers he once sailed with a skipper who
+shaved every Sunday morning and never touched a razor, nor any
+cutting-edge, to his face.  What he used, according to Mr. Pike, was
+a lighted candle and a damp towel.  Another candidate for Nietzsche's
+immortals who are hard!
+
+As for Mr. Pike himself, he is the highest-spirited, best-conditioned
+man on board.  The driving to which he subjected the Elsinore was
+meat and drink.  He still rubs his hands and chuckles over the memory
+of it.
+
+"Huh!" he said to me, in reference to the crew; "I gave 'em a taste
+of real old-fashioned sailing.  They'll never forget this hooker--at
+least them that don't take a sack of coal overside before we reach
+port."
+
+"You mean you think we'll have more sea-burials?" I inquired.
+
+He turned squarely upon me, and squarely looked me in the eyes for
+the matter of five long seconds.
+
+"Huh!" he replied, as he turned on his heel.  "Hell ain't begun to
+pop on this hooker."
+
+He still stands his mate's watch, alternating with Mr. Mellaire, for
+he is firm in his conviction that there is no man for'ard fit to
+stand a second mate's watch.  Also, he has kept his old quarters.
+Perhaps it is out of delicacy for Margaret; for I have learned that
+it is the invariable custom for the mate to occupy the captain's
+quarters when the latter dies.  So Mr. Mellaire still eats by himself
+in the big after-room, as he has done since the loss of the
+carpenter, and bunks as before in the 'midship-house with Nancy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+
+Mr. Mellaire was right.  The men would not accept the driving when
+the Elsinore won to easier latitudes.  Mr. Pike was right.  Hell had
+not begun to pop.  But it has popped now, and men are overboard
+without even the kindliness of a sack of coal at their feet.  And yet
+the men, though ripe for it, did not precipitate the trouble.  It was
+Mr. Mellaire.  Or, rather, it was Ditman Olansen, the crank-eyed
+Norwegian.  Perhaps it was Possum.  At any rate, it was an accident,
+in which the several-named, including Possum, played their respective
+parts.
+
+To begin at the beginning.  Two weeks have elapsed since we crossed
+50, and we are now in 37--the same latitude as San Francisco, or, to
+be correct, we are as far south of the equator as San Francisco is
+north of it.  The trouble was precipitated yesterday morning shortly
+after nine o'clock, and Possum started the chain of events that
+culminated in downright mutiny.  It was Mr. Mellaire's watch, and he
+was standing on the bridge, directly under the mizzen-top, giving
+orders to Sundry Buyers, who, with Arthur Deacon and the Maltese
+Cockney, was doing rigging work aloft.
+
+Get the picture and the situation in all its ridiculousness.  Mr.
+Pike, thermometer in hand, was coming back along the bridge from
+taking the temperature of the coal in the for'ard hold.  Ditman
+Olansen was just swinging into the mizzen-top as he went up with
+several turns of rope over one shoulder.  Also, in some way, to the
+end of this rope was fastened a sizable block that might have weighed
+ten pounds.  Possum, running free, was fooling around the chicken-
+coop on top the 'midship-house.  And the chickens, featherless but
+indomitable, were enjoying the milder weather as they pecked at the
+grain and grits which the steward had just placed in their feeding-
+trough.  The tarpaulin that covered their pen had been off for
+several days.
+
+Now observe.  I am at the break of the poop, leaning on the rail and
+watching Ditman Olansen swing into the top with his cumbersome
+burden.  Mr. Pike, proceeding aft, has just passed Mr. Mellaire.
+Possum, who, on account of the Horn weather and the tarpaulin, has
+not seen the chickens for many weeks, is getting reacquainted, and is
+investigating them with that keen nose of his.  And a hen's beak,
+equally though differently keen, impacts on Possum's nose, which is
+as sensitive as it is keen.
+
+I may well say, now that I think it over, that it was this particular
+hen that started the mutiny.  The men, well-driven by Mr. Pike, were
+ripe for an explosion, and Possum and the hen laid the train.
+
+Possum fell away backwards from the coop and loosed a wild cry of
+pain and indignation.  This attracted Ditman Olansen's attention.  He
+paused and craned his neck out in order to see, and, in this moment
+of carelessness, the block he was carrying fetched away from him
+along with the several turns of rope around his shoulder.  Both the
+mates sprang away to get out from under.  The rope, fast to the block
+and following it, lashed about like a blacksnake, and, though the
+block fell clear of Mr. Mellaire, the bight of the rope snatched off
+his cap.
+
+Mr. Pike had already started an oath aloft when his eyes caught sight
+of the terrible cleft in Mr. Mellaire's head.  There it was, for all
+the world to read, and Mr. Pike's and mine were the only eyes that
+could read it.  The sparse hair upon the second mate's crown served
+not at all to hide the cleft.  It began out of sight in the thicker
+hair above the ears, and was exposed nakedly across the whole dome of
+head.
+
+The stream of abuse for Ditman Olansen was choked in Mr. Pike's
+throat.  All he was capable of for the moment was to stare,
+petrified, at that enormous fissure flanked at either end with a
+thatch of grizzled hair.  He was in a dream, a trance, his great
+hands knotting and clenching unconsciously as he stared at the mark
+unmistakable by which he had said that he would some day identify the
+murderer of Captain Somers.  And in that moment I remembered having
+heard him declare that some day he would stick his fingers in that
+mark.
+
+Still as in a dream, moving slowly, right hand outstretched like a
+talon, with the fingers drawn downward, he advanced on the second
+mate with the evident intention of thrusting his fingers into that
+cleft and of clawing and tearing at the brain-life beneath that
+pulsed under the thin film of skin.
+
+The second mate backed away along the bridge, and Mr. Pike seemed
+partially to come to himself.  His outstretched arm dropped to his
+side, and he paused.
+
+"I know you," he said, in a strange, shaky voice, blended of age and
+passion.  "Eighteen years ago you were dismasted off the Plate in the
+Cyrus Thompson.  She foundered, after you were on your beam ends and
+lost your sticks.  You were in the only boat that was saved.  Eleven
+years ago, on the Jason Harrison, in San Francisco, Captain Somers
+was beaten to death by his second mate.  This second mate was a
+survivor of the Cyrus Thompson.  This second mate'd had his skull
+split by a crazy sea-cook.  Your skull is split.  This second mate's
+name was Sidney Waltham.  And if you ain't Sidney Waltham . . . "
+
+At this point Mr. Mellaire, or, rather, Sidney Waltham, despite his
+fifty years, did what only a sailor could do.  He went over the
+bridge-rail side-wise, caught the running gear up-and-down the
+mizzen-mast, and landed lightly on his feet on top of Number Three
+hatch.  Nor did he stop there.  He ran across the hatch and dived
+through the doorway of his room in the 'midship-house.
+
+Such must have been Mr. Pike's profundity of passion, that he paused
+like a somnambulist, actually rubbed his eyes with the back of his
+hand, and seemed to awaken.
+
+But the second mate had not run to his room for refuge.  The next
+moment he emerged, a thirty-two Smith and Wesson in his hand, and the
+instant he emerged he began shooting.
+
+Mr. Pike was wholly himself again, and I saw him perceptibly pause
+and decide between the two impulses that tore at him.  One was to
+leap over the bridge-rail and down at the man who shot at him; the
+other was to retreat.  He retreated.  And as he bounded aft along the
+narrow bridge the mutiny began.  Arthur Deacon, from the mizzen-top,
+leaned out and hurled a steel marlin-spike at the fleeing mate.  The
+thing flashed in the sunlight as it hurtled down.  It missed Mr. Pike
+by twenty feet and nearly impaled Possum, who, afraid of firearms,
+was wildly rushing and ki-yi-ing aft.  It so happened that the sharp
+point of the marlin-spike struck the wooden floor of the bridge, and
+it penetrated the planking with such force that after it had fetched
+to a standstill it vibrated violently for long seconds.
+
+I confess that I failed to observe a tithe of what occurred during
+the next several minutes.  Piece together as I will, after the event,
+I know that I missed much of what took place.  I know that the men
+aloft in the mizzen descended to the deck, but I never saw them
+descend.  I know that the second mate emptied the chambers of his
+revolver, but I did not hear all the shots.  I know that Lars Johnson
+left the wheel, and on his broken leg, rebroken and not yet really
+mended, limped and scuttled across the poop, down the ladder, and
+gained for'ard.  I know he must have limped and scuttled on that bad
+leg of his; I know that I must have seen him; and yet I swear that I
+have no impression of seeing him.
+
+I do know that I heard the rush of feet of men from for'ard along the
+main deck.  And I do know that I saw Mr. Pike take shelter behind the
+steel jiggermast.  Also, as the second mate manoeuvred to port on top
+of Number Three hatch for his last shot, I know that I saw Mr. Pike
+duck around the corner of the chart-house to starboard and get away
+aft and below by way of the booby-hatch.  And I did hear that last
+futile shot, and the bullet also as it ricochetted from the corner of
+the steel-walled chart-house.
+
+As for myself, I did not move.  I was too interested in seeing.  It
+may have been due to lack of presence of mind, or to lack of
+habituation to an active part in scenes of quick action; but at any
+rate I merely retained my position at the break of the poop and
+looked on.  I was the only person on the poop when the mutineers, led
+by the second mate and the gangsters, rushed it.  I saw them swarm up
+the ladder, and it never entered my head to attempt to oppose them.
+Which was just as well, for I would have been killed for my pains,
+and I could never have stopped them.
+
+I was alone on the poop, and the men were quite perplexed to find no
+enemy in sight.  As Bert Rhine went past, he half fetched up in his
+stride, as if to knife me with the sheath knife, sharp-pointed, which
+he carried in his right hand; then, and I know I correctly measured
+the drift of his judgment, he unflatteringly dismissed me as
+unimportant and ran on.
+
+Right here I was impressed by the lack of clear-thinking on any of
+their parts.  So spontaneously had the ship's company exploded into
+mutiny that it was dazed and confused even while it acted.  For
+instance, in the months since we left Baltimore there had never been
+a moment, day or night, even when preventer tackles were rigged, that
+a man had not stood at the wheel.  So habituated were they to this,
+that they were shocked into consternation at sight of the deserted
+wheel.  They paused for an instant to stare at it.  Then Bert Rhine,
+with a quick word and gesture, sent the Italian, Guido Bombini,
+around the rear of the half-wheelhouse.  The fact that he completed
+the circuit was proof that nobody was there.
+
+Again, in the swift rush of events, I must confess that I saw but
+little.  I was aware that more of the men were climbing up the ladder
+and gaining the poop, but I had no eyes for them.  I was watching
+that sanguinary group aft near the wheel and noting the most
+important thing, namely, that it was Bert Rhine, the gangster, and
+not the second mate, who gave orders and was obeyed.
+
+He motioned to the Jew, Isaac Chantz, who had been wounded earlier in
+the voyage by O'Sullivan, and Chantz led the way to the starboard
+chart-house door.  While this was going on, all in flashing fractions
+of seconds, Bert Rhine was cautiously inspecting the lazarette
+through the open booby-hatch.
+
+Isaac Chantz jerked open the chart-house door, which swung outward.
+Things did happen so swiftly!  As he jerked the iron door open a two-
+foot hacking butcher knife, at the end of a withered, yellow hand,
+flashed out and down on him.  It missed head and neck, but caught him
+on top of the left shoulder.
+
+All hands recoiled before this, and the Jew reeled across to the
+rail, his right hand clutching at his wound, and between the fingers
+I could see the blood welling darkly.  Bert Rhine abandoned his
+inspection of the booby-hatch, and, with the second mate, the latter
+still carrying his empty Smith & Wesson, sprang into the press about
+the chart-house door.
+
+O wise, clever, cautious, old Chinese steward!  He made no emergence.
+The door swung emptily back and forth to the rolling of the Elsinore,
+and no man knew but what, just inside, with that heavy, hacking knife
+upraised, lurked the steward.  And while they hesitated and stared at
+the aperture that alternately closed and opened with the swinging of
+the door, the booby-hatch, situated between chart-house and wheel,
+erupted.  It was Mr. Pike, with his .44 automatic Colt.
+
+There were shots fired, other than by him.  I know I heard them, like
+"red-heads" at an old-time Fourth of July; but I do not know who
+discharged them.  All was mess and confusion.  Many shots were being
+fired, and through the uproar I heard the reiterant, monotonous
+explosions from the Colt's .44
+
+I saw the Italian, Mike Cipriani, clutch savagely at his abdomen and
+sink slowly to the deck.  Shorty, the Japanese half-caste, clown that
+he was, dancing and grinning on the outskirts of the struggle, with a
+final grimace and hysterical giggle led the retreat across the poop
+and down the poop-ladder.  Never had I seen a finer exemplification
+of mob psychology.  Shorty, the most unstable-minded of the
+individuals who composed this mob, by his own instability
+precipitated the retreat in which the mob joined.  When he broke
+before the steady discharge of the automatic in the hand of the mate,
+on the instant the rest broke with him.  Least-balanced, his balance
+was the balance of all of them.
+
+Chantz, bleeding prodigiously, was one of the first on Shorty's
+heels.  I saw Nosey Murphy pause long enough to throw his knife at
+the mate.  The missile went wide, with a metallic clang struck the
+brass tip of one of the spokes of the Elsinore's wheel, and clattered
+on the deck.  The second mate, with his empty revolver, and Bert
+Rhine with his sheath-knife, fled past me side by side.
+
+Mr. Pike emerged from the booby-hatch and with an unaimed shot
+brought down Bill Quigley, one of the "bricklayers," who fell at my
+feet.  The last man off the poop was the Maltese Cockney, and at the
+top of the ladder he paused to look back at Mr. Pike, who, holding
+the automatic in both hands, was taking careful aim.  The Maltese
+Cockney, disdaining the ladder, leaped through the air to the main
+deck.  But the Colt merely clicked.  It was the last bullet in it
+that had fetched down Bill Quigley.
+
+And the poop was ours.
+
+Events still crowded so closely that I missed much.  I saw the
+steward, belligerent and cautious, his long knife poised for a slash,
+emerge from the chart-house.  Margaret followed him, and behind her
+came Wada, who carried my .22 Winchester automatic rifle.  As he told
+me afterwards, he had brought it up under instructions from her.
+
+Mr. Pike was glancing with cool haste at his Colt to see whether it
+was jammed or empty, when Margaret asked him the course.
+
+"By the wind," he shouted to her, as he bounded for'ard.  "Put your
+helm hard up or we'll be all aback."
+
+Ah!--yeoman and henchman of the race, he could not fail in his
+fidelity to the ship under his command.  The iron of all his years of
+iron training was there manifest.  While mutiny spread red, and death
+was on the wing, he could not forget his charge, the ship, the
+Elsinore, the insensate fabric compounded of steel and hemp and woven
+cotton that was to him glorious with personality.
+
+Margaret waved Wada in my direction as she ran to the wheel.  As Mr.
+Pike passed the corner of the chart-house, simultaneously there was a
+report from amidships and the ping of a bullet against the steel
+wall.  I saw the man who fired the shot.  It was the cowboy, Steve
+Roberts.
+
+As for the mate, he ducked in behind the sheltering jiggermast, and
+even as he ducked his left hand dipped into his side coat-pocket, so
+that when he had gained shelter it was coming out with a fresh clip
+of cartridges.  The empty clip fell to the deck, the loader clip
+slipped up the hollow butt, and he was good for eight more shots.
+
+Wada turned the little automatic rifle over to me, where I still
+stood under the weather cloth at the break of the poop.
+
+"All ready," he said.  "You take off safety."
+
+"Get Roberts," Mr. Pike called to me.  "He's the best shot for'ard.
+If you can't get 'm, jolt the fear of God into him anyway."
+
+It was the first time I had a human target, and let me say, here and
+now, that I am convinced I am immune to buck fever.  There he was
+before me, less than a hundred feet distant, in the gangway between
+the door to Davis' room and the starboard-rail, manoeuvring for
+another shot at Mr. Pike.
+
+I must have missed Steve Roberts that first time, but I came so near
+him that he jumped.  The next instant he had located me and turned
+his revolver on me.  But he had no chance.  My little automatic was
+discharging as fast as I could tickle the trigger with my fore-
+finger.  The cowboy's first shot went wild of me, because my bullet
+arrived ere he got his swift aim.  He swayed and stumbled backward,
+but the bullets--ten of them--poured from the muzzle of my Winchester
+like water from a garden hose.  It was a stream of lead I played upon
+him.  I shall never know how many times I hit him, but I am confident
+that after he had begun his long staggering fall at least three
+additional bullets entered him ere he impacted on the deck.  And even
+as he was falling, aimlessly and mechanically, stricken then with
+death, he managed twice again to discharge his weapon.
+
+And after he struck the deck he never moved.  I do believe he died in
+the air.
+
+As I held up my gun and gazed at the abruptly-deserted main-deck I
+was aware of Wada's touch on my arm.  I looked.  In his hand were a
+dozen little .22 long, soft-nosed, smokeless cartridges.  He wanted
+me to reload.  I threw on the safety, opened the magazine, and tilted
+the rifle so that he could let the fresh cartridges of themselves
+slide into place.
+
+"Get some more," I told him.
+
+Scarcely had he departed on the errand when Bill Quigley, who lay at
+my feet, created a diversion.  I jumped--yes, and I freely confess
+that I yelled--with startle and surprise, when I felt his paws clutch
+my ankles and his teeth shut down on the calf of my leg.
+
+It was Mr. Pike to the rescue.  I understand now the Western
+hyperbole of "hitting the high places."  The mate did not seem in
+contact with the deck.  My impression was that he soared through the
+air to me, landing beside me, and, in the instant of landing, kicking
+out with one of those big feet of his.  Bill Quigley was kicked clear
+away from me, and the next moment he was flying overboard.  It was a
+clean throw.  He never touched the rail.
+
+Whether Mike Cipriani, who, till then, had lain in a welter, began
+crawling aft in quest of safety, or whether he intended harm to
+Margaret at the wheel, we shall never know; for there was no
+opportunity given him to show his purpose.  As swiftly as Mr. Pike
+could cross the deck with those giant bounds, just that swiftly was
+the Italian in the air and following Bill Quigley overside.
+
+The mate missed nothing with those eagle eyes of his as he returned
+along the poop.  Nobody was to be seen on the main deck.  Even the
+lookout had deserted the forecastle-head, and the Elsinore, steered
+by Margaret, slipped a lazy two knots through the quiet sea.  Mr.
+Pike was apprehensive of a shot from ambush, and it was not until
+after a scrutiny of several minutes that he put his pistol into his
+side coat-pocket and snarled for'ard:
+
+"Come out, you rats!  Show your ugly faces!  I want to talk with
+you!"
+
+Guido Bombini, gesticulating peaceable intentions and evidently
+thrust out by Bert Rhine, was the first to appear.  When it was
+observed that Mr. Pike did not fire, the rest began to dribble into
+view.  This continued till all were there save the cook, the two
+sail-makers, and the second mate.  The last to come out were Tom
+Spink, the boy Buckwheat, and Herman Lunkenheimer, the good-natured
+but simple-minded German; and these three came out only after
+repeated threats from Bert Rhine, who, with Nosey Murphy and Kid
+Twist, was patently in charge.  Also, like a faithful dog, Guido
+Bombini fawned close to him.
+
+"That will do--stop where you are," Mr. Pike commanded, when the crew
+was scattered abreast, to starboard and to port, of Number Three
+hatch.
+
+It was a striking scene.  MUTINY ON THE HIGH SEAS!  That phrase,
+learned in boyhood from my Marryatt and Cooper, recrudesced in my
+brain.  This was it--mutiny on the high seas in the year nineteen
+thirteen--and I was part of it, a perishing blond whose lot was cast
+with the perishing but lordly blonds, and I had already killed a man.
+
+Mr. Pike, in the high place, aged and indomitable; leaned his arm on
+the rail at the break of the poop and gazed down at the mutineers,
+the like of which I'll wager had never been assembled in mutiny
+before.  There were the three gangsters and ex-jailbirds, anything
+but seamen, yet in control of this affair that was peculiarly an
+affair of the sea.  With them was the Italian hound, Bombini, and
+beside them were such strangely assorted men as Anton Sorensen, Lars
+Jacobsen, Frank Fitzgibbon, and Richard Giller--also Arthur Deacon
+the white slaver, John Hackey the San Francisco hoodlum, the Maltese
+Cockney, and Tony the suicidal Greek.
+
+I noticed the three strange ones, shouldering together and standing
+apart from the others as they swayed to the lazy roll and dreamed
+with their pale, topaz eyes.  And there was the Faun, stone deaf but
+observant, straining to understand what was taking place.  Yes, and
+Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay were bitterly and eagerly side by side,
+and Ditman Olansen, crank-eyed, as if drawn by some affinity of
+bitterness, stood behind them, his head appearing between their
+heads.  Farthest advanced of all was Charles Davis, the man who by
+all rights should long since be dead, his face with its wax-like
+pallor startlingly in contrast to the weathered faces of the rest.
+
+I glanced back at Margaret, who was coolly steering, and she smiled
+to me, and love was in her eyes--she, too, of the perishing and
+lordly race of blonds, her place the high place, her heritage
+government and command and mastery over the stupid lowly of her kind
+and over the ruck and spawn of the dark-pigmented breeds.
+
+"Where's Sidney Waltham?" the mate snarled.  "I want him.  Bring him
+out.  After that, the rest of you filth get back to work, or God have
+mercy on you."
+
+The men moved about restlessly, shuffling their feet on the deck.
+
+"Sidney Waltham, I want you--come out!" Mr. Pike called, addressing
+himself beyond them to the murderer of the captain under whom once he
+had sailed.
+
+The prodigious old hero!  It never entered his head that he was not
+the master of the rabble there below him.  He had but one idea, an
+idea of passion, and that was his desire for vengeance on the
+murderer of his old skipper.
+
+"You old stiff!" Mulligan Jacobs snarled back.
+
+"Shut up, Mulligan!" was Bert Rhine's command, in receipt of which he
+received a venomous stare from the cripple.
+
+"Oh, ho, my hearty," Mr. Pike sneered at the gangster.  "I'll take
+care of your case, never fear.  In the meantime, and right now, fetch
+out that dog."
+
+Whereupon he ignored the leader of the mutineers and began calling,
+"Waltham, you dog, come out!  Come out, you sneaking cur!  Come out!"
+
+ANOTHER LUNATIC, was the thought that flashed through my mind;
+another lunatic, the slave of a single idea.  He forgets the mutiny,
+his fidelity to the ship, in his personal thirst for vengeance.
+
+But did he?  Even as he forgot and called his heart's desire, which
+was the life of the second mate, even then, without intention,
+mechanically, his sailor's considerative eye lifted to note the draw
+of the sails and roved from sail to sail.  Thereupon, so reminded, he
+returned to his fidelity.
+
+"Well?" he snarled at Bert Rhine.  "Go on and get for'ard before I
+spit on you, you scum and slum.  I'll give you and the rest of the
+rats two minutes to return to duty."
+
+And the leader, with his two fellow-gangsters, laughed their weird,
+silent laughter.
+
+"I guess you'll listen to our talk, first, old horse," Bert Rhine
+retorted.  "--Davis, get up now and show what kind of a spieler you
+are.  Don't get cold feet.  Spit it out to Foxy Grandpa an' tell 'm
+what's doin'."
+
+"You damned sea-lawyer!" Mr. Pike snarled as Davis opened his mouth
+to speak.
+
+Bert Rhine shrugged his shoulders, and half turned on his heel as if
+to depart, as he said quietly:
+
+"Oh, well, if you don't want to talk . . . "
+
+Mr. Pike conceded a point.
+
+"Go on!" he snarled.  "Spit the dirt out of your system, Davis; but
+remember one thing:  you'll pay for this, and you'll pay through the
+nose.  Go on!"
+
+The sea-lawyer cleared his throat in preparation.
+
+"First of all, I ain't got no part in this," he began.
+
+"I'm a sick man, an' I oughta be in my bunk right now.  I ain't fit
+to be on my feet.  But they've asked me to advise 'em on the law, an'
+I have advised 'em--"
+
+"And the law--what is it?" Mr. Pike broke in.
+
+But Davis was uncowed.
+
+"The law is that when the officers is inefficient, the crew can take
+charge peaceably an' bring the ship into port.  It's all law an' in
+the records.  There was the Abyssinia, in eighteen ninety-two, when
+the master'd died of fever and the mates took to drinkin'--"Go on!"
+Mr. Pike shut him off.  "I don't want your citations.  What d'ye
+want?  Spit it out."
+
+"Well--and I'm talkin' as an outsider, as a sick man off duty that's
+been asked to talk--well, the point is our skipper was a good one,
+but he's gone.  Our mate is violent, seekin' the life of the second
+mate.  We don't care about that.  What we want is to get into port
+with our lives.  An' our lives is in danger.  We ain't hurt nobody.
+You've done all the bloodshed.  You've shot an' killed an' thrown two
+men overboard, as witnesses'll testify to in court.  An' there's
+Roberts, there, dead, too, an' headin' for the sharks--an' what for?
+For defendin' himself from murderous an' deadly attack, as every man
+can testify an' tell the truth, the whole truth, an' nothin' but the
+truth, so help 'm, God--ain't that right, men?"
+
+A confused murmur of assent arose from many of them.
+
+"You want my job, eh?" Mr. Pike grinned.  "An' what are you goin' to
+do with me?"
+
+"You'll be taken care of until we get in an' turn you over to the
+lawful authorities," Davis answered promptly.  "Most likely you can
+plead insanity an' get off easy."
+
+At this moment I felt a stir at my shoulder.  It was Margaret, armed
+with the long knife of the steward, whom she had put at the wheel.
+
+"You've got another guess comin', Davis," Mr. Pike said.  "I've got
+no more talk with you.  I'm goin' to talk to the bunch.  I'll give
+you fellows just two minutes to choose, and I'll tell you your
+choices.  You've only got two choices.  You'll turn the second mate
+over to me an' go back to duty and take what's comin' to you, or
+you'll go to jail with the stripes on you for long sentences.  You've
+got two minutes.  The fellows that want jail can stand right where
+they are.  The fellows that don't want jail and are willin' to work
+faithful, can walk right back to me here on the poop.  Two minutes,
+an' you can keep your jaws stopped while you think over what it's
+goin' to be."
+
+He turned his head to me and said in an undertone, "Be ready with
+that pop-gun for trouble.  An' don't hesitate.  Slap it into 'em--the
+swine that think they can put as raw a deal as this over on us."
+
+It was Buckwheat who made the first move; but so tentative was it
+that it got no farther than a tensing of the legs and a sway forward
+of the shoulders.  Nevertheless it was sufficient to start Herman
+Lunkenheimer, who thrust out his foot and began confidently to walk
+aft.  Kid Twist gained him in a single spring, and Kid Twist, his
+wrist under the German's throat from behind; his knee pressed into
+the German's back, bent the man backward and held him.  Even as the
+rifle came to my shoulder, the hound Bombini drew his knife directly
+beneath Kid Twist's wrist across the up-stretched throat of the man.
+
+It was at this instant that I heard Mr. Pike's "Plug him!" and pulled
+the trigger; and of all ungodly things the bullet missed and caught
+the Faun, who staggered back, sat down on the hatch, and began to
+cough.  And even as he coughed he still strained with pain-eloquent
+eyes to try to understand.
+
+No other man moved.  Herman Lunkenheimer, released by Kid Twist, sank
+down on the deck.  Nor did I shoot again.  Kid Twist stood again by
+the side of Bert Rhine and Guido Bombini fawned near.
+
+Bert Rhine actually visibly smiled.
+
+"Any more of you guys want to promenade aft?" he queried in velvet
+tones.
+
+"Two minutes up," Mr. Pike declared.
+
+"An' what are you goin' to do about it, Grandpa?" Bert Rhine sneered.
+
+In a flash the big automatic was out of the mate's pocket and he was
+shooting as fast as he could pull trigger, while all hands fled to
+shelter.  But, as he had long since told me, he was no shot and could
+effectively use the weapon only at close range--muzzle to stomach
+preferably.
+
+As we stared at the main deck, deserted save for the dead cowboy on
+his back and for the Faun who still sat on the hatch and coughed, an
+eruption of men occurred over the for'ard edge of the 'midship-house.
+
+"Shoot!" Margaret cried at my back.
+
+"Don't!" Mr. Pike roared at me.
+
+The rifle was at my shoulder when I desisted.  Louis, the cook, led
+the rush aft to us across the top of the house and along the bridge.
+Behind him, in single file and not wasting any time, came the
+Japanese sail-makers, Henry the training-ship boy, and the other boy
+Buckwheat.  Tom Spink brought up the rear.  As he came up the ladder
+of the 'midship-house somebody from beneath must have caught him by a
+leg in an effort to drag him back.  We saw half of him in sight and
+knew that he was struggling and kicking.  He fetched clear abruptly,
+gained the top of the house in a surge, and raced aft along the
+bridge until he overtook and collided with Buckwheat, who yelled out
+in fear that a mutineer had caught him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+
+We who are aft, besieged in the high place, are stronger in numbers
+than I dreamed until now, when I have just finished taking the ship's
+census.  Of course Margaret, Mr. Pike, and myself are apart.  We
+alone represent the ruling class.  With us are servants and serfs,
+faithful to their salt, who look to us for guidance and life.
+
+I use my words advisedly.  Tom Spink and Buckwheat are serfs and
+nothing else.  Henry, the training-ship boy, occupies an anomalous
+classification.  He is of our kind, but he can scarcely be called
+even a cadet of our kind.  He will some day win to us and become a
+mate or a captain, but in the meantime, of course, his past is
+against him.  He is a candidate, rising from the serf class to our
+class.  Also, he is only a youth, the iron of his heredity not yet
+tested and proven.
+
+Wada, Louis, and the steward are servants of Asiatic breed.  So are
+the two Japanese sail-makers--scarcely servants, not to be called
+slaves, but something in between.
+
+So, all told, there are eleven of us aft in the citadel.  But our
+followers are too servant-like and serf-like to be offensive
+fighters.  They will help us defend the high place against all
+attack; but they are incapable of joining with us in an attack on the
+other end of the ship.  They will fight like cornered rats to
+preserve their lives; but they will not advance like tigers upon the
+enemy.  Tom Spink is faithful but spirit-broken.  Buckwheat is
+hopelessly of the stupid lowly.  Henry has not yet won his spurs.  On
+our side remain Margaret, Mr. Pike, and myself.  The rest will hold
+the wall of the poop and fight thereon to the death, but they are not
+to be depended upon in a sortie.
+
+At the other end of the ship--and I may as well give the roster, are:
+the second mate, either to be called Mellaire or Waltham, a strong
+man of our own breed but a renegade; the three gangsters, killers and
+jackals, Bert Rhine, Nosey Murphy, and Kid Twist; the Maltese Cockney
+and Tony the crazy Greek; Frank Fitzgibbon and Richard Giller, the
+survivors of the trio of "bricklayers"; Anton Sorensen and Lars
+Jacobsen, stupid Scandinavian sailor-men; Ditman Olansen, the crank-
+eyed Berserk; John Hackey and Arthur Deacon, respectively hoodlum and
+white slaver; Shorty, the mixed-breed clown; Guido Bombini, the
+Italian hound; Andy Pay and Mulligan Jacobs, the bitter ones; the
+three topaz-eyed dreamers, who are unclassifiable; Isaac Chantz, the
+wounded Jew; Bob, the overgrown dolt; the feeble-minded Faun, lung-
+wounded; Nancy and Sundry Buyers, the two hopeless, helpless bosuns;
+and, finally, the sea-lawyer, Charles Davis.
+
+This makes twenty-seven of them against the eleven of us.  But there
+are men, strong in viciousness, among them.  They, too, have their
+serfs and bravos.  Guido Bombini and Isaac Chantz are certainly
+bravos.  And weaklings like Sorensen, and Jacobsen, and Bob, cannot
+be anything else than slaves to the men who compose the gangster
+clique.
+
+I failed to tell what happened yesterday, after Mr. Pike emptied his
+automatic and cleared the deck.  The poop was indubitably ours, and
+there was no possibility of the mutineers making a charge on us in
+broad daylight.  Margaret had gone below, accompanied by Wada, to see
+to the security of the port and starboard doors that open from the
+cabin directly on the main deck.  These are still caulked and tight
+and fastened on the inside, as they have been since the passage of
+Cape Horn began.
+
+Mr. Pike put one of the sail-makers at the wheel, and the steward,
+relieved and starting below, was attracted to the port quarter, where
+the patent log that towed astern was made fast.  Margaret had
+returned his knife to him, and he was carrying it in his hand when
+his attention was attracted astern to our wake.  Mike Cipriani and
+Bill Quigley had managed to catch the lazily moving log-line and were
+clinging to it.  The Elsinore was moving just fast enough to keep
+them on the surface instead of dragging them under.  Above them and
+about them circled curious and hungry albatrosses, Cape hens, and
+mollyhawks.  Even as I glimpsed the situation one of the big birds, a
+ten-footer at least, with a ten-inch beak to the fore, dropped down
+on the Italian.  Releasing his hold with one hand, he struck with his
+knife at the bird.  Feathers flew, and the albatross, deflected by
+the blow, fell clumsily into the water.
+
+Quite methodically, just as part of the day's work, the steward
+chopped down with his knife, catching the log-line between the steel
+edge and the rail.  At once, no longer buoyed up by the Elsinore's
+two-knot drag ahead, the wounded men began to swim and flounder.  The
+circling hosts of huge sea-birds descended upon them, with
+carnivorous beaks striking at their heads and shoulders and arms.  A
+great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey
+as they strove for the living meat.  And yet, somehow, I was not very
+profoundly shocked.  These were the men whom I had seen eviscerate
+the shark and toss it overboard, and shout with joy as they watched
+it devoured alive by its brethren.  They had played a violent, cruel
+game with the things of life, and the things of life now played upon
+them the same violent, cruel game.  As they that rise by the sword
+perish by the sword, just so did these two men who had lived cruelly
+die cruelly.
+
+"Oh, well," was Mr. Pike's comment, "we've saved two sacks of mighty
+good coal."
+
+
+Certainly our situation might be worse.  We are cooking on the coal-
+stove and on the oil-burners.  We have servants to cook and serve for
+us.  And, most important of all, we are in possession of all the food
+on the Elsinore.
+
+Mr. Pike makes no mistake.  Realizing that with our crowd we cannot
+rush the crowd at the other end of the ship, he accepts the siege,
+which, as he says, consists of the besieged holding all food supplies
+while the besiegers are on the imminent edge of famine.
+
+"Starve the dogs," he growls.  "Starve 'm until they crawl aft and
+lick our shoes.  Maybe you think the custom of carrying the stores
+aft just happened.  Only it didn't.  Before you and I were born it
+was long-established and it was established on brass tacks.  They
+knew what they were about, the old cusses, when they put the grub in
+the lazarette."
+
+Louis says there is not more than three days' regular whack in the
+galley; that the barrel of hard-tack in the forecastle will quickly
+go; and that our chickens, which they stole last night from the top
+of the 'midship-house, are equivalent to no more than an additional
+day's supply.  In short, at the outside limit, we are convinced the
+men will be keen to talk surrender within the week.
+
+We are no longer sailing.  In last night's darkness we helplessly
+listened to the men loosing headsail-halyards and letting yards go
+down on the run.  Under orders of Mr. Pike I shot blindly and many
+times into the dark, but without result, save that we heard the
+bullets of answering shots strike against the chart-house.  So to-day
+we have not even a man at the wheel.  The Elsinore drifts idly on an
+idle sea, and we stand regular watches in the shelter of chart-house
+and jiggermast.  Mr. Pike says it is the laziest time he has had on
+the whole voyage.
+
+I alternate watches with him, although when on duty there is little
+to be done, save, in the daytime, to stand rifle in hand behind the
+jiggermast, and, in the night, to lurk along the break of the poop.
+Behind the chart-house, ready to repel assault, are my watch of four
+men:  Tom Spink, Wada, Buckwheat, and Louis.  Henry, the two Japanese
+sail-makers, and the old steward compose Mr. Pike's watch.
+
+It is his orders that no one for'ard is to be allowed to show
+himself, so, to-day, when the second mate appeared at the corner of
+the 'midship-house, I made him take a quick leap back with the thud
+of my bullet against the iron wall a foot from his head.  Charles
+David tried the same game and was similarly stimulated.
+
+Also, this evening, after dark, Mr. Pike put block-and-tackle on the
+first section of the bridge, heaved it out of place, and lowered it
+upon the poop.  Likewise he hoisted in the ladder at the break of the
+poop that leads down to the main deck.  The men will have to do some
+climbing if they ever elect to rush us.
+
+I am writing this in my watch below.  I came off duty at eight
+o'clock, and at midnight I go on deck to stay till four to-morrow
+morning.  Wada shakes his head and says that the Blackwood Company
+should rebate us on the first-class passage paid in advance.  We are
+working our passage, he contends.
+
+Margaret takes the adventure joyously.  It is the first time she has
+experienced mutiny, but she is such a thorough sea-woman that she
+appears like an old hand at the game.  She leaves the deck to the
+mate and me; but, still acknowledging his leadership, she has taken
+charge below and entirely manages the commissary, the cooking, and
+the sleeping arrangements.  We still keep our old quarters, and she
+has bedded the new-comers in the big after-room with blankets issued
+from the slop-chest.
+
+In a way, from the standpoint of her personal welfare, the mutiny is
+the best thing that could have happened to her.  It has taken her
+mind off her father and filled her waking hours with work to do.
+This afternoon, standing above the open booby-hatch, I heard her
+laugh ring out as in the old days coming down the Atlantic.  Yes, and
+she hums snatches of songs under her breath as she works.  In the
+second dog-watch this evening, after Mr. Pike had finished dinner and
+joined us on the poop, she told him that if he did not soon re-rig
+his phonograph she was going to start in on the piano.  The reason
+she advanced was the psychological effect such sounds of revelry
+would have on the starving mutineers.
+
+
+The days pass, and nothing of moment happens.  We get nowhere.  The
+Elsinore, without the steadying of her canvas, rolls emptily and
+drifts a lunatic course.  Sometimes she is bow on to the wind, and at
+other times she is directly before it; but at all times she is
+circling vaguely and hesitantly to get somewhere else than where she
+is.  As an illustration, at daylight this morning she came up into
+the wind as if endeavouring to go about.  In the course of half an
+hour she worked off till the wind was directly abeam.  In another
+half hour she was back into the wind.  Not until evening did she
+manage to get the wind on her port bow; but when she did, she
+immediately paid off, accomplished the complete circle in an hour,
+and recommenced her morning tactics of trying to get into the wind.
+
+And there is nothing for us to do save hold the poop against the
+attack that is never made.  Mr. Pike, more from force of habit than
+anything else, takes his regular observations and works up the
+Elsinore's position.  This noon she was eight miles east of
+yesterday's position, yet to-day's position, in longitude, was within
+a mile of where she was four days ago.  On the other hand she
+invariably makes nothing at the rate of seven or eight miles a day.
+
+Aloft, the Elsinore is a sad spectacle.  All is confusion and
+disorder.  The sails, unfurled, are a slovenly mess along the yards,
+and many loose ends sway dismally to every roll.  The only yard that
+is loose is the main-yard.  It is fortunate that wind and wave are
+mild, else would the iron-work carry away and the mutineers find the
+huge thing of steel about their ears.
+
+There is one thing we cannot understand.  A week has passed, and the
+men show no signs of being starved into submission.  Repeatedly and
+in vain has Mr. Pike interrogated the hands aft with us.  One and
+all, from the cook to Buckwheat, they swear they have no knowledge of
+any food for'ard, save the small supply in the galley and the barrel
+of hardtack in the forecastle.  Yet it is very evident that those
+for'ard are not starving.  We see the smoke from the galley-stove and
+can only conclude that they have food to cook.
+
+Twice has Bert Rhine attempted a truce, but both times his white
+flag, as soon as it showed above the edge of the 'midship-house, was
+fired upon by Mr. Pike.  The last occurrence was two days ago.  It is
+Mr. Pike's intention thoroughly to starve them into submission, but
+now he is beginning to worry about their mysterious food supply.
+
+Mr. Pike is not quite himself.  He is obsessed, I know beyond any
+doubt, with the idea of vengeance on the second mate.  On divers
+occasions, now, I have come unexpectedly upon him and found him
+muttering to himself with grim set face, or clenching and unclenching
+his big square fists and grinding his teeth.  His conversation
+continually runs upon the feasibility of our making a night attack
+for'ard, and he is perpetually questioning Tom Spink and Louis on
+their ideas of where the various men may be sleeping--the point of
+which always is:  WHERE IS THE SECOND MATE LIKELY TO BE SLEEPING?
+
+No later than yesterday afternoon did he give me most positive proof
+of his obsession.  It was four o'clock, the beginning of the first
+dog-watch, and he had just relieved me.  So careless have we grown,
+that we now stand in broad daylight at the exposed break of the poop.
+Nobody shoots at us, and, occasionally, over the top of the for'ard-
+house, Shorty sticks up his head and grins or makes clownish faces at
+us.  At such times Mr. Pike studies Shorty's features through the
+telescope in an effort to find signs of starvation.  Yet he admits
+dolefully that Shorty is looking fleshed-up.
+
+But to return.  Mr. Pike had just relieved me yesterday afternoon,
+when the second mate climbed the forecastle-head and sauntered to the
+very eyes of the Elsinore, where he stood gazing overside.
+
+"Take a crack at 'm," Mr. Pike said.
+
+It was a long shot, and I was taking slow and careful aim, when he
+touched my arm.
+
+"No; don't," he said.
+
+I lowered the little rifle and looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"You might hit him," he explained.  "And I want him for myself."
+
+
+Life is never what we expect it to be.  All our voyage from Baltimore
+south to the Horn and around the Horn has been marked by violence and
+death.  And now that it has culminated in open mutiny there is no
+more violence, much less death.  We keep to ourselves aft, and the
+mutineers keep to themselves for'ard.  There is no more harshness, no
+more snarling and bellowing of commands; and in this fine weather a
+general festival obtains.
+
+Aft, Mr. Pike and Margaret alternate with phonograph and piano; and
+for'ard, although we cannot see them, a full-fledged "foo-foo" band
+makes most of the day and night hideous.  A squealing accordion that
+Tom Spink says was the property of Mike Cipriani is played by Guido
+Bombini, who sets the pace and seems the leader of the foo-foo.
+There are two broken-reeded harmonicas.  Someone plays a jew's-harp.
+Then there are home-made fifes and whistles and drums, combs covered
+with paper, extemporized triangles, and bones made from ribs of salt
+horse such as negro minstrels use.
+
+The whole crew seems to compose the band, and, like a lot of monkey-
+folk rejoicing in rude rhythm, emphasizes the beat by hammering
+kerosene cans, frying-pans, and all sorts of things metallic or
+reverberant.  Some genius has rigged a line to the clapper of the
+ship's bell on the forecastle-head and clangs it horribly in the big
+foo-foo crises, though Bombini can be heard censuring him severely on
+occasion.  And to cap it all, the fog-horn machine pumps in at the
+oddest moments in imitation of a big bass viol.
+
+And this is mutiny on the high seas!  Almost every hour of my deck-
+watches I listen to this infernal din, and am maddened into desire to
+join with Mr. Pike in a night attack and put these rebellious and
+inharmonious slaves to work.
+
+Yet they are not entirely inharmonious.  Guido Bombini has a
+respectable though untrained tenor voice, and has surprised me by a
+variety of selections, not only from Verdi, but from Wagner and
+Massenet.  Bert Rhine and his crowd are full of rag-time junk, and
+one phrase that has caught the fancy of all hands, and which they
+roar out at all times, is:  "IT'S A BEAR!  IT'S A BEAR!  IT'S A
+BEAR!"  This morning Nancy, evidently very strongly urged, gave a
+doleful rendering of Flying Cloud.  Yes, and in the second dog-watch
+last evening our three topaz-eyed dreamers sang some folk-song
+strangely sweet and sad.
+
+And this is mutiny!  As I write I can scarcely believe it.  Yet I
+know Mr. Pike keeps the watch over my head.  I hear the shrill
+laughter of the steward and Louis over some ancient Chinese joke.
+Wada and the sail-makers, in the pantry, are, I know, talking
+Japanese politics.  And from across the cabin, along the narrow
+halls, I can hear Margaret softly humming as she goes to bed.
+
+But all doubts vanish at the stroke of eight bells, when I go on deck
+to relieve Mr. Pike, who lingers a moment for a "gain," as he calls
+it.
+
+"Say," he said confidentially, "you and I can clean out the whole
+gang.  All we got to do is sneak for'ard and turn loose.  As soon as
+we begin to shoot up, half of 'em'll bolt aft--lobsters like Nancy,
+an' Sundry Buyers, an' Jacobsen, an' Bob, an' Shorty, an' them three
+castaways, for instance.  An' while they're doin' that, an' our bunch
+on the poop is takin' 'em in, you an' me can make a pretty big hole
+in them that's left.  What d'ye say?"
+
+I hesitated, thinking of Margaret.
+
+"Why, say," he urged, "once I jumped into that fo'c's'le, at close
+range, I'd start right in, blim-blam-blim, fast as you could wink,
+nailing them gangsters, an' Bombini, an' the Sheeny, an' Deacon, an'
+the Cockney, an' Mulligan Jacobs, an' . . . an' . . . Waltham."
+
+"That would be mine," I smiled.  "You've only eight shots in your
+Colt."
+
+Mr. Pike considered a moment, and revised his list.  "All right," he
+agreed, "I guess I'll have to let Jacobs go.  What d'ye say?  Are you
+game?"
+
+Still I hesitated, but before I could speak he anticipated me and
+returned to his fidelity.
+
+"No, you can't do it, Mr. Pathurst.  If by any luck they got the both
+of us . . . No; we'll just stay aft and sit tight until they're
+starved to it . . . But where they get their tucker gets me.  For'ard
+she's as bare as a bone, as any decent ship ought to be, and yet look
+at 'em, rolling hog fat.  And by rights they ought to a-quit eatin' a
+week ago."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+
+Yes, it is certainly mutiny.  Collecting water from the leaders of
+the chart-house in a shower of rain this morning, Buckwheat exposed
+himself, and a long, lucky revolver-shot from for'ard caught him in
+the shoulder.  The bullet was small-calibre and spent ere it reached
+him, so that he received no more than a flesh-wound, though he
+carried on as if he were dying until Mr. Pike hushed his noise by
+cuffing his ears.
+
+I should not like to have Mr. Pike for my surgeon.  He probed for the
+bullet with his little finger, which was far too big for the
+aperture; and with his little finger, while with his other hand he
+threatened another ear-clout, he gouged out the leaden pellet.  Then
+he sent the boy below, where Margaret took him in charge with
+antiseptics and dressings.
+
+I see her so rarely that a half-hour alone with her these days is an
+adventure.  She is busy morning to night in keeping her house in
+order.  As I write this, through my open door I can hear her laying
+the law down to the men in the after-room.  She has issued
+underclothes all around from the slop-chest, and is ordering them to
+take a bath in the rain-water just caught.  And to make sure of their
+thoroughness in the matter, she has told off Louis and the steward to
+supervise the operation.  Also, she has forbidden them smoking their
+pipes in the after-room.  And, to cap everything, they are to scrub
+walls, ceiling, everything, and then start to-morrow morning at
+painting.  All of which serves to convince me almost that mutiny does
+not obtain and that I have imagined it.
+
+But no.  I hear Buckwheat blubbering and demanding how he can take a
+bath in his wounded condition.  I wait and listen for Margaret's
+judgment.  Nor am I disappointed.  Tom Spink and Henry are told off
+to the task, and the thorough scrubbing of Buckwheat is assured.
+
+
+The mutineers are not starving.  To-day they have been fishing for
+albatrosses.  A few minutes after they caught the first one its
+carcase was flung overboard.  Mr. Pike studied it through his sea-
+glasses, and I heard him grit his teeth when he made certain that it
+was not the mere feathers and skin but the entire carcass.  They had
+taken only its wing-bones to make into pipe-stems.  The inference was
+obvious:  STARVING MEN WOULD NOT THROW MEAT AWAY IN SUCH FASHION.
+
+But where do they get their food?  It is a sea-mystery in itself,
+although I might not so deem it were it not for Mr. Pike.
+
+"I think, and think, till my brain is all frazzled out," he tells me;
+"and yet I can't get a line on it.  I know every inch of space on the
+Elsinore, and know there isn't an ounce of grub anywhere for'ard, and
+yet they eat!  I've overhauled the lazarette.  As near as I can make
+it out, nothing is missing.  Then where do they get it?  That's what
+I want to know.  Where do they get it?"
+
+I know that this morning he spent hours in the lazarette with the
+steward and the cook, overhauling and checking off from the lists of
+the Baltimore agents.  And I know that they came up out of the
+lazarette, the three of them, dripping with perspiration and baffled.
+The steward has raised the hypothesis that, first of all, there were
+extra stores left over from the previous voyage, or from previous
+voyages, and, next, that the stealing of these stores must have taken
+place during the night-watches when it was Mr. Pike's turn below.
+
+At any rate, the mate takes the food mystery almost as much to heart
+as he takes the persistent and propinquitous existence of Sidney
+Waltham.
+
+I am coming to realize the meaning of watch-and-watch.  To begin
+with, I spend on deck twelve hours, and a fraction more, of each
+twenty-four.  A fair portion of the remaining twelve is spent in
+eating, in dressing, and in undressing, and with Margaret.  As a
+result, I feel the need for more sleep than I am getting.  I scarcely
+read at all, now.  The moment my head touches the pillow I am asleep.
+Oh, I sleep like a baby, eat like a navvy, and in years have not
+enjoyed such physical well-being.  I tried to read George Moore last
+night, and was dreadfully bored.  He may be a realist, but I solemnly
+aver he does not know reality on that tight, little, sheltered-life
+archipelago of his.  If he could wind-jam around the Horn just one
+voyage he would be twice the writer.
+
+And Mr. Pike, for practically all of his sixty-nine years, has stood
+his watch-and-watch, with many a spill-over of watches into watches.
+And yet he is iron.  In a struggle with him I am confident that he
+would break me like so much straw.  He is truly a prodigy of a man,
+and, so far as to-day is concerned, an anachronism.
+
+The Faun is not dead, despite my unlucky bullet.  Henry insisted that
+he caught a glimpse of him yesterday.  To-day I saw him myself.  He
+came to the corner of the 'midship-house and gazed wistfully aft at
+the poop, straining and eager to understand.  In the same way I have
+often seen Possum gaze at me.
+
+It has just struck me that of our eight followers five are Asiatic
+and only three are our own breed.  Somehow it reminds me of India and
+of Clive and Hastings.
+
+And the fine weather continues, and we wonder how long a time must
+elapse ere our mutineers eat up their mysterious food and are starved
+back to work.
+
+We are almost due west of Valparaiso and quite a bit less than a
+thousand miles off the west coast of South America.  The light
+northerly breezes, varying from north-east to west, would, according
+to Mr. Pike, work us in nicely for Valparaiso if only we had sail on
+the Elsinore.  As it is, sailless, she drifts around and about and
+makes nowhere save for the slight northerly drift each day.
+
+
+Mr. Pike is beside himself.  In the past two days he has displayed
+increasing possession of himself by the one idea of vengeance on the
+second mate.  It is not the mutiny, irksome as it is and helpless as
+it makes him; it is the presence of the murderer of his old-time and
+admired skipper, Captain Somers.
+
+The mate grins at the mutiny, calls it a snap, speaks gleefully of
+how his wages are running up, and regrets that he is not ashore,
+where he would be able to take a hand in gambling on the reinsurance.
+But the sight of Sidney Waltham, calmly gazing at sea and sky from
+the forecastle-head, or astride the far end of the bowsprit and
+fishing for sharks, saddens him.  Yesterday, coming to relieve me, he
+borrowed my rifle and turned loose the stream of tiny pellets on the
+second mate, who coolly made his line secure ere he scrambled in-
+board.  Of course, it was only one chance in a hundred that Mr. Pike
+might have hit him, but Sidney Waltham did not care to encourage the
+chance.
+
+And yet it is not like mutiny--not like the conventional mutiny I
+absorbed as a boy, and which has become classic in the literature of
+the sea.  There is no hand-to-hand fighting, no crash of cannon and
+flash of cutlass, no sailors drinking grog, no lighted matches held
+over open powder-magazines.  Heavens!--there isn't a single cutlass
+nor a powder-magazine on board.  And as for grog, not a man has had a
+drink since Baltimore.
+
+
+Well, it is mutiny after all.  I shall never doubt it again.  It may
+be nineteen-thirteen mutiny on a coal-carrier, with feeblings and
+imbeciles and criminals for mutineers; but at any rate mutiny it is,
+and at least in the number of deaths it is reminiscent of the old
+days.  For things have happened since last I had opportunity to write
+up this log.  For that matter, I am now the keeper of the Elsinore's
+official log as well, in which work Margaret helps me.
+
+And I might have known it would happen.  At four yesterday morning I
+relieved Mr. Pike.  When in the darkness I came up to him at the
+break of the poop, I had to speak to him twice to make him aware of
+my presence.  And then he merely grunted acknowledgment in an absent
+sort of way.
+
+The next moment he brightened up, and was himself save that he was
+too bright.  He was making an effort.  I felt this, but was quite
+unprepared for what followed.
+
+"I'll be back in a minute," he said, as he put his leg over the rail
+and lightly and swiftly lowered himself down into the darkness.
+
+There was nothing I could do.  To cry out or to attempt to reason
+with him would only have drawn the mutineers' attention.  I heard his
+feet strike the deck beneath as he let go.  Immediately he started
+for'ard.  Little enough precaution he took.  I swear that clear to
+the 'midship-house I heard the dragging age-lag of his feet.  Then
+that ceased, and that was all.
+
+I repeat.  That was all.  Never a sound came from for'ard.  I held my
+watch till daylight.  I held it till Margaret came on deck with her
+cheery "What ho of the night, brave mariner?"  I held the next watch
+(which should have been the mate's) till midday, eating both
+breakfast and lunch behind the sheltering jiggermast.  And I held all
+afternoon, and through both dog-watches, my dinner served likewise on
+the deck.
+
+And that was all.  Nothing happened.  The galley-stove smoked three
+times, advertising the cooking of three meals.  Shorty made faces at
+me as usual across the rim of the for'ard-house.  The Maltese Cockney
+caught an albatross.  There was some excitement when Tony the Greek
+hooked a shark off the jib-boom, so big that half a dozen tailed on
+to the line and failed to land it.  But I caught no glimpse of Mr.
+Pike nor of the renegade Sidney Waltham.
+
+In short, it was a lazy, quiet day of sunshine and gentle breeze.
+There was no inkling to what had happened to the mate.  Was he a
+prisoner?  Was he already overside?  Why were there no shots?  He had
+his big automatic.  It is inconceivable that he did not use it at
+least once.  Margaret and I discussed the affair till we were well a-
+weary, but reached no conclusion.
+
+She is a true daughter of the race.  At the end of the second dog-
+watch, armed with her father's revolver, she insisted on standing the
+first watch of the night.  I compromised with the inevitable by
+having Wada make up my bed on the deck in the shelter of the cabin
+skylight just for'ard of the jiggermast.  Henry, the two sail-makers
+and the steward, variously equipped with knives and clubs, were
+stationed along the break of the poop.
+
+And right here I wish to pass my first criticism on modern mutiny.
+On ships like the Elsinore there are not enough weapons to go around.
+The only firearms now aft are Captain West's .38 Colt revolver, and
+my .22 automatic Winchester.  The old steward, with a penchant for
+hacking and chopping, has his long knife and a butcher's cleaver.
+Henry, in addition to his sheath-knife, has a short bar of iron.
+Louis, despite a most sanguinary array of butcher-knives and a big
+poker, pins his cook's faith on hot water and sees to it that two
+kettles are always piping on top the cabin stove.  Buckwheat, who on
+account of his wound is getting all night in for a couple of nights,
+cherishes a hatchet.
+
+The rest of our retainers have knives and clubs, although Yatsuda,
+the first sail-maker, carries a hand-axe, and Uchino, the second
+sail-maker, sleeping or waking, never parts from a claw-hammer.  Tom
+Spink has a harpoon.  Wada, however, is the genius.  By means of the
+cabin stove he has made a sharp pike-point of iron and fitted it to a
+pole.  To-morrow be intends to make more for the other men.
+
+It is rather shuddery, however, to speculate on the terrible
+assortment of cutting, gouging, jabbing and slashing weapons with
+which the mutineers are able to equip themselves from the carpenter's
+shop.  If it ever comes to an assault on the poop there will be a
+weird mess of wounds for the survivors to dress.  For that matter,
+master as I am of my little rifle, no man could gain the poop in the
+day-time.  Of course, if rush they will, they will rush us in the
+night, when my rifle will be worthless.  Then it will be blow for
+blow, hand-to-hand, and the strongest pates and arms will win.
+
+But no.  I have just bethought me.  We shall be ready for any night-
+rush.  I'll take a leaf out of modern warfare, and show them not only
+that we are top-dog (a favourite phrase of the mate), but WHY we are
+top-dog.  It is simple--night illumination.  As I write I work opt
+the idea--gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few
+cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow
+metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a
+trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are
+exploded in the gunpowder and fire set to the gasoline-soaked oakum
+and to the flares and candles.  It will be brain as well as brawn
+against mere brawn.
+
+
+I have worked like a Trojan all day, and the idea is realized.
+Margaret helped me out with suggestions, and Tom Spink did the
+sailorizing.  Over our head, from the jiggermast, the steel stays
+that carry the three jigger-trysails descend high above the break of
+the poop and across the main deck to the mizzenmast.  A light line
+has been thrown over each stay, and been thrown repeatedly around so
+as to form an unslipping knot.  Tom Spink waited till dark, when he
+went aloft and attached loose rings of stiff wire around the stays
+below the knots.  Also he bent on hoisting-gear and connected
+permanent fastenings with the sliding rings.  And further, between
+rings and fastenings, is a slack of fifty feet of light line.
+
+This is the idea:  after dark each night we shall hoist our three
+metal wash-basins, loaded with inflammables, up to the stays.  The
+arrangement is such that at the first alarm of a rush, by pulling a
+cord the trigger is pulled that ignites the powder, and the very same
+pull operates a trip-device that lets the rings slide down the steel
+stays.  Of course, suspended from the rings, are the illuminators,
+and when they have run down the stays fifty feet the lines will
+automatically bring them to rest.  Then all the main deck between the
+poop and the mizzen-mast will be flooded with light, while we shall
+be in comparative darkness.
+
+Of course each morning before daylight we shall lower all this
+apparatus to the deck, so that the men for'ard will not guess what we
+have up our sleeve, or, rather, what we have up on the trysail-stays.
+Even to-day the little of our gear that has to be left standing
+aroused their curiosity.  Head after head showed over the edge of the
+for'ard-house as they peeped and peered and tried to make out what we
+were up to.  Why, I find myself almost looking forward to an attack
+in order to see the device work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+
+And what has happened to Mr. Pike remains a mystery.  For that
+matter, what has happened to the second mate?  In the past three days
+we have by our eyes taken the census of the mutineers.  Every man has
+been seen by us with the sole exception of Mr. Mellaire, or Sidney
+Waltham, as I assume I must correctly name him.  He has not appeared-
+-does not appear; and we can only speculate and conjecture.
+
+In the past three days various interesting things have taken place.
+Margaret stands watch and watch with me, day and night, the clock
+around; for there is no one of our retainers to whom we can entrust
+the responsibility of a watch.  Though mutiny obtains and we are
+besieged in the high place, the weather is so mild and there is so
+little call on our men that they have grown careless and sleep aft of
+the chart-house when it is their watch on deck.  Nothing ever
+happens, and, like true sailors, they wax fat and lazy.  Even have I
+found Louis, the steward, and Wada guilty of cat-napping.  In fact,
+the training-ship boy, Henry, is the only one who has never lapsed.
+
+Oh, yes, and I gave Tom Spink a thrashing yesterday.  Since the
+disappearance of the mate he had had little faith in me, and had been
+showing vague signs of insolence and insubordination.  Both Margaret
+and I had noted it independently.  Day before yesterday we talked it
+over.
+
+"He is a good sailor, but weak," she said.  "If we let him go on, he
+will infect the rest."
+
+"Very well, I'll take him in hand," I announced valorously.
+
+"You will have to," she encouraged.  "Be hard.  Be hard.  You must be
+hard."
+
+Those who sit in the high places must be hard, yet have I discovered
+that it is hard to be hard.  For instance, easy enough was it to drop
+Steve Roberts as he was in the act of shooting at me.  Yet it is most
+difficult to be hard with a chuckle-headed retainer like Tom Spink--
+especially when he continually fails by a shade to give sufficient
+provocation.  For twenty-four hours after my talk with Margaret I was
+on pins and needles to have it out with him, yet rather than have had
+it out with him I should have preferred to see the poop rushed by the
+gang from the other side.
+
+Not in a day can the tyro learn to employ the snarling immediacy of
+mastery of Mr. Pike, nor the reposeful, voiceless mastery of a
+Captain West.  Truly, the situation was embarrassing.  I was not
+trained in the handling of men, and Tom Spink knew it in his chuckle-
+headed way.  Also, in his chuckle-headed way, he was dispirited by
+the loss of the mate.  Fearing the mate, nevertheless he had depended
+on the mate to fetch him through with a whole skin, or at least
+alive.  On me he has no dependence.  What chance had the gentleman
+passenger and the captain's daughter against the gang for'ard?  So he
+must have reasoned, and, so reasoning, become despairing and
+desperate.
+
+After Margaret had told me to be hard I watched Tom Spink with an
+eagle eye, and he must have sensed my attitude, for he carefully
+forebore from overstepping, while all the time he palpitated just on
+the edge of overstepping.  Yes, and it was clear that Buckwheat was
+watching to learn the outcome of this veiled refractoriness.  For
+that matter, the situation was not being missed by our keen-eyed
+Asiatics, and I know that I caught Louis several times verging on the
+offence of offering me advice.  But he knew his place and managed to
+keep his tongue between his teeth.
+
+At last, yesterday, while I held the watch, Tom Spink was guilty of
+spitting tobacco juice on the deck.
+
+Now it must be understood that such an act is as grave an offence of
+the sea as blasphemy is of the Church.
+
+It was Margaret who came to where I was stationed by the jiggermast
+and told me what had occurred; and it was she who took my rifle and
+relieved me so that I could go aft.
+
+There was the offensive spot, and there was Tom Spink, his cheek
+bulging with a quid.
+
+"Here, you, get a swab and mop that up," I commanded in my harshest
+manner.
+
+Tom Spink merely rolled his quid with his tongue and regarded me with
+sneering thoughtfulness.  I am sure he was no more surprised than was
+I by the immediateness of what followed.  My fist went out like an
+arrow from a released bow, and Tom Spink staggered back, tripped
+against the corner of the tarpaulin-covered sounding-machine, and
+sprawled on the deck.  He tried to make a fight of it, but I followed
+him up, giving him no chance to set himself or recover from the
+surprise of my first onslaught.
+
+Now it so happens that not since I was a boy have I struck a person
+with my naked fist, and I candidly admit that I enjoyed the trouncing
+I administered to poor Tom Spink.  Yes, and in the rapid play about
+the deck I caught a glimpse of Margaret.  She had stepped out of the
+shelter of the mast and was looking on from the corner of the chart-
+house.  Yes, and more; she was looking on with a cool, measuring eye.
+
+Oh, it was all very grotesque, to be sure.  But then, mutiny on the
+high seas in the year nineteen-thirteen is also grotesque.  No lists
+here between mailed knights for a lady's favour, but merely the
+trouncing of a chuckle-head for spitting on the deck of a coal-
+carrier.  Nevertheless, the fact that my lady looked on added zest to
+my enterprise, and, doubtlessly, speed and weight to my blows, and at
+least half a dozen additional clouts to the unlucky sailor.
+
+Yes, man is strangely and wonderfully made.  Now that I coolly
+consider the matter, I realize that it was essentially the same
+spirit with which I enjoyed beating up Tom Spink, that I have in the
+past enjoyed contests of the mind in which I have out-epigrammed
+clever opponents.  In the one case, one proves himself top-dog of the
+mind; in the other, top-dog of the muscle.  Whistler and Wilde were
+just as much intellectual bullies as I was a physical bully yesterday
+morning when I punched Tom Spink into lying down and staying down.
+
+And my knuckles are sore and swollen.  I cease writing for a moment
+to look at them and to hope that they will not stay permanently
+enlarged.
+
+At any rate, Tom Spink took his disciplining and promised to come in
+and be good.
+
+"Sir!" I thundered at him, quite in Mr. Pike's most bloodthirsty
+manner.
+
+"Sir," he mumbled with bleeding lips.  "Yes, sir, I'll mop it up,
+sir.  Yes, sir."
+
+I could scarcely keep from laughing in his face, the whole thing was
+so ludicrous; but I managed to look my haughtiest, and sternest, and
+fiercest, while I superintended the deck-cleansing.  The funniest
+thing about the affair was that I must have knocked Tom Spink's quid
+down his throat, for he was gagging and hiccoughing all the time he
+mopped and scrubbed.
+
+The atmosphere aft has been wonderfully clear ever since.  Tom Spink
+obeys all orders on the jump, and Buckwheat jumps with equal
+celerity.  As for the five Asiatics, I feel that they are stouter
+behind me now that I have shown masterfulness.  By punching a man's
+face I verily believe I have doubled our united strength.  And there
+is no need to punch any of the rest.  The Asiatics are keen and
+willing.  Henry is a true cadet of the breed, Buckwheat will follow
+Tom Spink's lead, and Tom Spink, a proper Anglo-Saxon peasant, will
+lead Buckwheat all the better by virtue of the punching.
+
+
+Two days have passed, and two noteworthy things have happened.  The
+men seem to be nearing the end of their mysterious food supply, and
+we have had our first truce.
+
+I have noted, through the glasses, that no more carcasses of the
+mollyhawks they are now catching are thrown overboard.  This means
+that they have begun to eat the tough and unsavoury creatures,
+although it does not mean, of course, that they have entirely
+exhausted their other stores.
+
+It was Margaret, her sailor's eye on the falling barometer and on the
+"making" stuff adrift in the sky, who called my attention to a coming
+blow.
+
+"As soon as the sea rises," she said, "we'll have that loose main-
+yard and all the rest of the top-hamper tumbling down on deck."
+
+So it was that I raised the white flag for a parley.  Bert Rhine and
+Charles Davis came abaft the 'midship-house, and, while we talked,
+many faces peered over the for'ard edge of the house and many forms
+slouched into view on the deck on each side of the house.
+
+"Well, getting tired?" was Bert Rhine's insolent greeting.  "Anything
+we can do for you?"
+
+"Yes, there is," I answered sharply.  "You can save your heads so
+that when you return to work there will be enough of you left to do
+the work."
+
+"If you are making threats--" Charles Davis began, but was silenced
+by a glare from the gangster.
+
+"Well, what is it?" Bert Rhine demanded.  "Cough it off your chest."
+
+"It's for your own good," was my reply.  "It is coming on to blow,
+and all that unfurled canvas aloft will bring the yards down on your
+heads.  We're safe here, aft.  You are the ones who will run risks,
+and it is up to you to hustle your crowd aloft and make things fast
+and ship-shape."
+
+"And if we don't?" the gangster sneered.
+
+"Why, you'll take your chances, that is all," I answered carelessly.
+"I just want to call your attention to the fact that one of those
+steel yards, end-on, will go through the roof of your forecastle as
+if it were so much eggshell."
+
+Bert Rhine looked to Charles Davis for verification, and the latter
+nodded.
+
+"We'll talk it over first," the gangster announced.
+
+"And I'll give you ten minutes," I returned.  "If at the end of ten
+minutes you've not started taking in, it will be too late.  I shall
+put a bullet into any man who shows himself."
+
+"All right, we'll talk it over."
+
+As they started to go back, I called:
+
+"One moment."
+
+They stopped and turned about.
+
+"What have you done to Mr. Pike?" I asked.
+
+Even the impassive Bert Rhine could not quite conceal his surprise.
+
+"An' what have you done with Mr. Mellaire!" he retorted.  "You tell
+us, an' we'll tell you."
+
+I am confident of the genuineness of his surprise.  Evidently the
+mutineers have been believing us guilty of the disappearance of the
+second mate, just as we have been believing them guilty of the
+disappearance of the first mate.  The more I dwell upon it the more
+it seems the proposition of the Kilkenny cats, a case of mutual
+destruction on the part of the two mates.
+
+"Another thing," I said quickly.  "Where do you get your food?"
+
+Bert Rhine laughed one of his silent laughs; Charles Davis assumed an
+expression of mysteriousness and superiority; and Shorty, leaping
+into view from the corner of the house, danced a jig of triumph.
+
+I drew out my watch.
+
+"Remember," I said, "you've ten minutes in which to make a start."
+
+They turned and went for'ard, and, before the ten minutes were up,
+all hands were aloft and stowing canvas.  All this time the wind, out
+of the north-west, was breezing up.  The old familiar harp-chords of
+a rising gale were strumming along the rigging, and the men, I verily
+believe from lack of practice, were particularly slow at their work.
+
+"It would be better if the upper-and-lower top-sails are set so that
+we can heave to," Margaret suggested.  "They will steady her and make
+it more comfortable for us."
+
+I seized the idea and improved upon it.
+
+"Better set the upper and lower topsails so that we can handle the
+ship," I called to the gangster, who was ordering the men about,
+quite like a mate, from the top of the 'midship-house.
+
+He considered the idea, and then gave the proper orders, although it
+was the Maltese Cockney, with Nancy and Sundry Buyers under him, who
+carried the orders out.
+
+I ordered Tom Spink to the long-idle wheel, and gave him the course,
+which was due east by the steering compass.  This put the wind on our
+port quarter, so that the Elsinore began to move through the water
+before a fair breeze.  And due east, less than a thousand miles away,
+lay the coast of South America and the port of Valparaiso.
+
+Strange to say, none of our mutineers objected to this, and after
+dark, as we tore along before a full-sized gale, I sent my own men up
+on top the chart-house to take the gaskets off the spanker.  This was
+the only sail we could set and trim and in every way control.  It is
+true the mizzen-braces were still rigged aft to the poop, according
+to Horn practice.  But, while we could thus trim the mizzen-yards,
+the sails themselves, in setting or furling, were in the hands of the
+for'ard crowd.
+
+Margaret, beside me in the darkness at the break of the poop, put her
+hand in mine with a warm pressure, as both our tiny watches swayed up
+the spanker and as both of us held our breaths in an effort to feel
+the added draw in the Elsinore's speed.
+
+"I never wanted to marry a sailor," she said.  "And I thought I was
+safe in the hands of a landsman like you.  And yet here you are, with
+all the stuff of the sea in you, running down your easting for port.
+Next thing, I suppose, I'll see you out with a sextant, shooting the
+sun or making star-observations."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+
+Four more days have passed; the gale has blown itself out; we are not
+more than three hundred and fifty miles off Valparaiso; and the
+Elsinore, this time due to me and my own stubbornness, is rolling in
+the wind and heading nowhere in a light breeze at the rate of nothing
+but driftage per hour.
+
+In the height of the gusts, in the three days and nights of the gale,
+we logged as much as eight, and even nine, knots.  What bothered me
+was the acquiescence of the mutineers in my programme.  They were
+sensible enough in the simple matter of geography to know what I was
+doing.  They had control of the sails, and yet they permitted me to
+run for the South American coast.
+
+More than that, as the gale eased on the morning of the third day,
+they actually went aloft, set top-gallant-sails, royals, and
+skysails, and trimmed the yards to the quartering breeze.  This was
+too much for the Saxon streak in me, whereupon I wore the Elsinore
+about before the wind, fetched her up upon it, and lashed the wheel.
+Margaret and I are agreed in the hypothesis that their plan is to get
+inshore until land is sighted, at which time they will desert in the
+boats.
+
+"But we don't want them to desert," she proclaims with flashing eyes.
+"We are bound for Seattle.  They must return to duty.  They've got
+to, soon, for they are beginning to starve."
+
+"There isn't a navigator aft," I oppose.
+
+Promptly she withers me with her scorn.
+
+"You, a master of books, by all the sea-blood in your body should be
+able to pick up the theoretics of navigation while I snap my fingers.
+Furthermore, remember that I can supply the seamanship.  Why, any
+squarehead peasant, in a six months' cramming course at any seaport
+navigation school, can pass the examiners for his navigator's papers.
+That means six hours for you.  And less.  If you can't, after an
+hour's reading and an hour's practice with the sextant, take a
+latitude observation and work it out, I'll do it for you."
+
+"You mean you know?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I mean, from the little I know, that I know I can learn to know a
+meridian sight and the working out of it.  I mean that I can learn to
+know inside of two hours."
+
+Strange to say, the gale, after easing to a mild breeze, recrudesced
+in a sort of after-clap.  With sails untrimmed and flapping, the
+consequent smashing, crashing, and rending of our gear can be
+imagined.  It brought out in alarm every man for'ard.
+
+"Trim the yards!" I yelled at Bert Rhine, who, backed for counsel by
+Charles Davis and the Maltese Cockney, actually came directly beneath
+me on the main deck in order to hear above the commotion aloft.
+
+"Keep a-runnin, an' you won't have to trim," the gangster shouted up
+to me.
+
+"Want to make land, eh?" I girded down at him.  "Getting hungry, eh?
+Well, you won't make land or anything else in a thousand years once
+you get all your top-hamper piled down on deck."
+
+I have forgotten to state that this occurred at midday yesterday.
+
+"What are you goin' to do if we trim?" Charles Davis broke in.
+
+"Run off shore," I replied, "and get your gang out in deep sea where
+it will be starved back to duty."
+
+"We'll furl, an' let you heave to," the gangster proposed.
+
+I shook my head and held up my rifle.  "You'll have to go aloft to do
+it, and the first man that gets into the shrouds will get this."
+
+"Then she can go to hell for all we care," he said, with emphatic
+conclusiveness.
+
+And just then the fore-topgallant-yard carried away--luckily as the
+bow was down-pitched into a trough of sea-and when the slow,
+confused, and tangled descent was accomplished the big stick lay
+across the wreck of both bulwarks and of that portion of the bridge
+between the foremast and the forecastle head.
+
+Bert Rhine heard, but could not see, the damage wrought.  He looked
+up at me challengingly, and sneered:
+
+"Want some more to come down?"
+
+It could not have happened more apropos.  The port-brace, and
+immediately afterwards the starboard-brace, of the crojack-yard-
+carried away.  This was the big, lowest spar on the mizzen, and as
+the huge thing of steel swung wildly back and forth the gangster and
+his followers turned and crouched as they looked up to see.  Next,
+the gooseneck of the truss, on which it pivoted, smashed away.
+Immediately the lifts and lower-topsail sheets parted, and with a
+fore-and-aft pitch of the ship the spar up-ended and crashed to the
+deck upon Number Three hatch, destroying that section of the bridge
+in its fall.
+
+All this was new to the gangster--as it was to me--but Charles Davis
+and the Maltese Cockney thoroughly apprehended the situation.
+
+"Stand out from under!" I yelled sardonically; and the three of them
+cowered and shrank away as their eyes sought aloft for what new spar
+was thundering down upon them.
+
+The lower-topsail, its sheets parted by the fall of the crojack-yard,
+was tearing out of the bolt-ropes and ribboning away to leeward and
+making such an uproar that they might well expect its yard to carry
+away.  Since this wreckage of our beautiful gear was all new to me, I
+was quite prepared to see the thing happen.
+
+The gangster-leader, no sailor, but, after months at sea, intelligent
+enough and nervously strong enough to appreciate the danger, turned
+his head and looked up at me.  And I will do him the credit to say
+that he took his time while all our world of gear aloft seemed
+smashing to destruction.
+
+"I guess we'll trim yards," he capitulated.
+
+"Better get the skysails and royals off," Margaret said in my ear.
+
+"While you're about it, get in the skysails and royals!" I shouted
+down.  "And make a decent job of the gasketing!"
+
+Both Charles Davis and the Maltese Cockney advertised their relief in
+their faces as they heard my words, and, at a nod from the gangster,
+they started for'ard on the run to put the orders into effect.
+
+Never, in the whole voyage, did our crew spring to it in more lively
+fashion.  And lively fashion was needed to save our gear.  As it was,
+they cut away the remnants of the mizzen-lower-topsail with their
+sheath-knives, and they loosed the main-skysail out of its bolt-
+ropes.
+
+The first infraction of our agreement was on the main-lower-topsail.
+This they attempted to furl.  The carrying away of the crojack and
+the blowing away of the mizzen-lower-topsail gave me freedom to see
+and aim, and when the tiny messengers from my rifle began to spat
+through the canvas and to spat against the steel of the yard, the men
+strung along it desisted from passing the gaskets.  I waved my will
+to Bert Rhine, who acknowledged me and ordered the sail set again and
+the yard trimmed.
+
+"What is the use of running off-shore?" I said to Margaret, when the
+kites were snugged down and all yards trimmed on the wind.  "Three
+hundred and fifty miles off the land is as good as thirty-five
+hundred so far as starvation is concerned."
+
+So, instead of making speed through the water toward deep sea, I hove
+the Elsinore to on the starboard tack with no more than leeway
+driftage to the west and south.
+
+But our gallant mutineers had their will of us that very night.  In
+the darkness we could hear the work aloft going on as yards were run
+down, sheets let go, and sails dewed up and gasketed.  I did try a
+few random shots, and all my reward was to hear the whine and creak
+of ropes through sheaves and to receive an equally random fire of
+revolver-shots.
+
+It is a most curious situation.  We of the high place are masters of
+the steering of the Elsinore, while those for'ard are masters of the
+motor power.  The only sail that is wholly ours is the spanker.  They
+control absolutely--sheets, halyards, clewlines, buntlines, braces,
+and down-hauls--every sail on the fore and main.  We control the
+braces on the mizzen, although they control the canvas on the mizzen.
+For that matter, Margaret and I fail to comprehend why they do not go
+aloft any dark night and sever the mizzen-braces at the yard-ends.
+All that prevents this, we are decided, is laziness.  For if they did
+sever the braces that lead aft into our hands, they would be
+compelled to rig new braces for'ard in some fashion, else, in the
+rolling, would the mizzenmast be stripped of every spar.
+
+And still the mutiny we are enduring is ridiculous and grotesque.
+There was never a mutiny like it.  It violates all standards and
+precedents.  In the old classic mutinies, long ere this, attacking
+like tigers, the seamen should have swarmed over the poop and killed
+most of us or been most of them killed.
+
+Wherefore I sneer at our gallant mutineers, and recommend trained
+nurses for them, quite in the manner of Mr. Pike.  But Margaret
+shakes her head and insists that human nature is human nature, and
+that under similar circumstances human nature will express itself
+similarly.  In short, she points to the number of deaths that have
+already occurred, and declares that on some dark night, sooner or
+later, whenever the pinch of hunger sufficiently sharpens, we shall
+see our rascals storming aft.
+
+And in the meantime, except for the tenseness of it, and for the
+incessant watchfulness which Margaret and I alone maintain, it is
+more like a mild adventure, more like a page out of some book of
+romance which ends happily.
+
+It is surely romance, watch and watch for a man and a woman who love,
+to relieve each other's watches.  Each such relief is a love passage
+and unforgettable.  Never was there wooing like it--the muttered
+surmises of wind and weather, the whispered councils, the kissed
+commands in palms of hands, the dared contacts of the dark.
+
+Oh, truly, I have often, since this voyage began, told the books to
+go hang.  And yet the books are at the back of the race-life of me.
+I am what I am out of ten thousand generations of my kind.  Of that
+there is no discussion.  And yet my midnight philosophy stands the
+test of my breed.  I must have selected my books out of the ten
+thousand generations that compose me.  I have killed a man--Steve
+Roberts.  As a perishing blond without an alphabet I should have done
+this unwaveringly.  As a perishing blond with an alphabet, plus the
+contents in my brain of the philosophizing of all philosophers, I
+have killed this same man with the same unwaveringness.  Culture has
+not emasculated me.  I am quite unaffected.  It was in the day's
+work, and my kind have always been day-workers, doing the day's work,
+whatever it might be, in high adventure or dull ploddingness, and
+always doing it.
+
+Never would I ask to set back the dial of time or event.  I would
+kill Steve Roberts again, under the same circumstances, as a matter
+of course.  When I say I am unaffected by this happening I do not
+quite mean it.  I am affected.  I am aware that the spirit of me is
+informed with a sober elation of efficiency.  I have done something
+that had to be done, as any man will do what has to be done in the
+course of the day's work.
+
+Yes, I am a perishing blond, and a man, and I sit in the high place
+and bend the stupid ones to my will; and I am a lover, loving a royal
+woman of my own perishing breed, and together we occupy, and shall
+occupy, the high place of government and command until our kind
+perish from the earth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+
+Margaret was right.  The mutiny is not violating standards and
+precedents.  We have had our hands full for days and nights.  Ditman
+Olansen, the crank-eyed Berserker, has been killed by Wada, and the
+training-ship boy, the one lone cadet of our breed, has gone overside
+with the regulation sack of coal at his feet.  The poop has been
+rushed.  My illuminating invention has proved a success.  The men are
+getting hungry, and we still sit in command in the high place.
+
+First of all the attack on the poop, two nights ago, in Margaret's
+watch.  No; first, I have made another invention.  Assisted by the
+old steward, who knows, as a Chinese ought, a deal about fireworks,
+and getting my materials from our signal rockets and Roman candles, I
+manufactured half a dozen bombs.  I don't really think they are very
+deadly, and I know our extemporized fuses are slower than our voyage
+is at the present time; but nevertheless the bombs have served the
+purpose, as you shall see.
+
+And now to the attempt to rush the poop.  It was in Margaret's watch,
+from midnight till four in the morning, when the attack was made.
+Sleeping on the deck by the cabin skylight, I was very close to her
+when her revolver went off, and continued to go off.
+
+My first spring was to the tripping-lines on my illuminators.  The
+igniting and releasing devices worked cleverly.  I pulled two of the
+tripping-lines, and two of the contraptions exploded into light and
+noise and at the same time ran automatically down the jigger-trysail-
+stays, and automatically fetched up at the ends of their lines.  The
+illumination was instantaneous and gorgeous.  Henry, the two sail-
+makers, and the steward--at least three of them awakened from sound
+sleep, I am sure--ran to join us along the break of the poop.  All
+the advantage lay with us, for we were in the dark, while our foes
+were outlined against the light behind them.
+
+But such light!  The powder crackled, fizzed, and spluttered and
+spilled out the excess of gasolene from the flaming oakum balls so
+that streams of fire dripped down on the main deck beneath.  And the
+stuff of the signal-flares dripped red light and blue and green.
+
+There was not much of a fight, for the mutineers were shocked by our
+fireworks.  Margaret fired her revolver haphazardly, while I held my
+rifle for any that gained the poop.  But the attack faded away as
+quickly as it had come.  I did see Margaret overshoot some man,
+scaling the poop from the port-rail, and the next moment I saw Wada,
+charging like a buffalo, jab him in the chest with the spear he had
+made and thrust the boarder back and down.
+
+That was all.  The rest retreated for'ard on the dead run, while the
+three trysails, furled at the foot of the stays next to the mizzen
+and set on fire by the dripping gasolene, went up in flame and burned
+entirely away and out without setting the rest of the ship on fire.
+That is one of the virtues of a ship steel-masted and steel-stayed.
+
+And on the deck beneath us, crumpled, twisted, face hidden so that we
+could not identify him, lay the man whom Wada had speared.
+
+And now I come to a phase of adventure that is new to me.  I have
+never found it in the books.  In short, it is carelessness coupled
+with laziness, or vice versa.  I had used two of my illuminators.
+Only one remained.  An hour later, convinced of the movement aft of
+men along the deck, I let go the third and last and with its
+brightness sent them scurrying for'ard.  Whether they were attacking
+the poop tentatively to learn whether or not I had exhausted my
+illuminators, or whether or not they were trying to rescue Ditman
+Olansen, we shall never know.  The point is:  they did come aft; they
+were compelled to retreat by my illuminator; and it was my last
+illuminator.  And yet I did not start in, there and then, to
+manufacture fresh ones.  This was carelessness.  It was laziness.
+And I hazarded our lives, perhaps, if you please, on a psychological
+guess that I had convinced our mutineers that we had an inexhaustible
+stock of illuminators in reserve.
+
+The rest of Margaret's watch, which I shared with her, was
+undisturbed.  At four I insisted that she go below and turn in, but
+she compromised by taking my own bed behind the skylight.
+
+At break of day I was able to make out the body, still lying as last
+I had seen it.  At seven o'clock, before breakfast, and while
+Margaret still slept, I sent the two boys, Henry and Buckwheat, down
+to the body.  I stood above them, at the rail, rifle in hand and
+ready.  But from for'ard came no signs of life; and the lads, between
+them, rolled the crank-eyed Norwegian over so that we could recognize
+him, carried him to the rail, and shoved him stiffly across and into
+the sea.  Wada's spear-thrust had gone clear through him.
+
+But before twenty-four hours were up the mutineers evened the score
+handsomely.  They more than evened it, for we are so few that we
+cannot so well afford the loss of one as they can.  To begin with--
+and a thing I had anticipated and for which I had prepared my bombs--
+while Margaret and I ate a deck-breakfast in the shelter of the
+jiggermast a number of the men sneaked aft and got under the overhang
+of the poop.  Buckwheat saw them coming and yelled the alarm, but it
+was too late.  There was no direct way to get them out.  The moment I
+put my head over the rail to fire at them, I knew they would fire up
+at me with all the advantage in their favour.  They were hidden.  I
+had to expose myself.
+
+Two steel doors, tight-fastened and caulked against the Cape Horn
+seas, opened under the overhang of the poop from the cabin on to the
+main deck.  These doors the men proceeded to attack with sledge-
+hammers, while the rest of the gang, sheltered by the 'midship-house,
+showed that it stood ready for the rush when the doors were battered
+down.
+
+Inside, the steward guarded one door with his hacking knife, while
+with his spear Wada guarded the other door.  Nor, while I had
+dispatched them to this duty, was I idle.  Behind the jiggermast I
+lighted the fuse of one of my extemporized bombs.  When it was
+sputtering nicely I ran across the poop to the break and dropped the
+bomb to the main deck beneath, at the same time making an effort to
+toss it in under the overhang where the men battered at the port-
+door.  But this effort was distracted and made futile by a popping of
+several revolver shots from the gangways amidships.  One IS jumpy
+when soft-nosed bullets putt-putt around him.  As a result, the bomb
+rolled about on the open deck.
+
+Nevertheless, the illuminators had earned the respect of the
+mutineers for my fireworks.  The sputtering and fizzling of the fuse
+were too much for them, and from under the poop they ran for'ard like
+so many scuttling rabbits.  I know I could have got a couple with my
+rifle had I not been occupied with lighting the fuse of a second
+bomb.  Margaret managed three wild shots with her revolver, and the
+poop was immediately peppered by a scattering revolver fire from
+for'ard.
+
+Being provident (and lazy, for I have learned that it takes time and
+labour to manufacture home-made bombs), I pinched off the live end of
+the fuse in my hand.  But the fuse of the first bomb, rolling about
+on the main deck, merely fizzled on; and as I waited I resolved to
+shorten my remaining fuses.  Any of the men who fled, had he had the
+courage, could have pinched off the fuse, or tossed the bomb
+overboard, or, better yet, he could have tossed it up amongst us on
+the poop.
+
+It took fully five minutes for that blessed fuse to burn its slow
+length, and when the bomb did go off it was a sad disappointment.  I
+swear it could have been sat upon with nothing more than a jar to
+one's nerves.  And yet, in so far as the intimidation goes, it did
+its work.  The men have not since ventured under the overhang of the
+poop.
+
+That the mutineers were getting short of food was patent.  The
+Elsinore, sailless, drifted about that morning, the sport of wind and
+wave; and the gang put many lines overboard for the catching of
+molly-hawks and albatrosses.  Oh, I worried the hungry fishers with
+my rifle.  No man could show himself for'ard without having a bullet
+whop against the iron-work perilously near him.  And still they
+caught birds--not, however, without danger to themselves, and not
+without numerous losses of birds due to my rifle.
+
+Their procedure was to toss their hooks and bait over the rail from
+shelter and slowly to pay the lines out as the slight windage of the
+Elsinore's hull, spars, and rigging drifted her through the water.
+When a bird was hooked they hauled in the line, still from shelter,
+till it was alongside.  This was the ticklish moment.  The hook,
+merely a hollow and acute-angled triangle of sheet-copper floating on
+a piece of board at the end of the line, held the bird by pinching
+its curved beak into the acute angle.  The moment the line slacked
+the bird was released.  So, when alongside, this was the problem:  to
+lift the bird out of the water, straight up the side of the ship,
+without once jamming and easing and slacking.  When they tried to do
+this from shelter invariably they lost the bird.
+
+They worked out a method.  When the bird was alongside the several
+men with revolvers turned loose on me, while one man, overhauling and
+keeping the line taut, leaped to the rail and quickly hove the bird
+up and over and inboard.  I know this long-distance revolver fire
+seriously bothered me.  One cannot help jumping when death, in the
+form of a piece of flying lead, hits the rail beside him, or the mast
+over his head, or whines away in a ricochet from the steel shrouds.
+Nevertheless, I managed with my rifle to bother the exposed men on
+the rail to the extent that they lost one hooked bird out of two.
+And twenty-six men require a quantity of albatrosses and mollyhawks
+every twenty-four hours, while they can fish only in the daylight.
+
+As the day wore along I improved on my obstructive tactics.  When the
+Elsinore was up in the eye of the wind, and making sternway, I found
+that by putting the wheel sharply over, one way or the other, I could
+swing her bow off.  Then, when she had paid off till the wind was
+abeam, by reversing the wheel hard across to the opposite hard-over I
+could take advantage of her momentum away from the wind and work her
+off squarely before it.  This made all the wood-floated triangles of
+bird-snares tow aft along her sides.
+
+The first time I was ready for them.  With hooks and sinkers on our
+own lines aft, we tossed out, grappled, captured, and broke off nine
+of their lines.  But the next time, so slow is the movement of so
+large a ship, the mutineers hauled all their lines safely inboard ere
+they towed aft within striking distance of my grapnels.
+
+Still I improved.  As long as I kept the Elsinore before the wind
+they could not fish.  I experimented.  Once before it, by means of a
+winged-out spanker coupled with patient and careful steering, I could
+keep her before it.  This I did, hour by hour one of my men relieving
+another at the wheel.  As a result all fishing ceased.
+
+Margaret was holding the first dog-watch, four to six.  Henry was at
+the wheel steering.  Wada and Louis were below cooking the evening
+meal over the big coal-stove and the oil-burners.  I had just come up
+from below and was standing beside the sounding-machine, not half a
+dozen feet from Henry at the wheel.  Some obscure sound from the
+ventilator must have attracted me, for I was gazing at it when the
+thing happened.
+
+But first, the ventilator.  This is a steel shaft that leads up from
+the coal-carrying bowels of the ship beneath the lazarette and that
+wins to the outside-world via the after-wall of the chart-house.  In
+fact, it occupies the hollow inside of the double walls of the
+afterwall of the chart-house.  Its opening, at the height of a man's
+head, is screened with iron bars so closely set that no mature-bodied
+rat can squeeze between.  Also, this opening commands the wheel,
+which is a scant fifteen feet away and directly across the booby-
+hatch.  Some mutineer, crawling along the space between the coal and
+the deck of the lower hold, had climbed the ventilator shaft and was
+able to take aim through the slits between the bars.
+
+Practically simultaneously, I saw the out-rush of smoke and heard the
+report.  I heard a grunt from Henry, and, turning my head, saw him
+cling to the spokes and turn the wheel half a revolution as he sank
+to the deck.  It must have been a lucky shot.  The boy was perforated
+through the heart or very near to the heart--we have no time for
+post-mortems on the Elsinore.
+
+Tom Spink and the second sail-maker, Uchino, sprang to Henry's side.
+The revolver continued to go off through the ventilator slits, and
+the bullets thudded into the front of the half wheel-house all about
+them.  Fortunately they were not hit, and they immediately scrambled
+out of range.  The boy quivered for the space of a few seconds, and
+ceased to move; and one more cadet of the perishing breed perished as
+he did his day's work at the wheel of the Elsinore off the west coast
+of South America, bound from Baltimore to Seattle with a cargo of
+coal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+
+The situation is hopelessly grotesque.  We in the high place command
+the food of the Elsinore, but the mutineers have captured her
+steering-gear.  That is to say, they have captured it without coming
+into possession of it.  They cannot steer, neither can we.  The poop,
+which is the high place, is ours.  The wheel is on the poop, yet we
+cannot touch the wheel.  From that slitted opening in the ventilator-
+shaft they are able to shoot down any man who approaches the wheel.
+And with that steel wall of the chart-house as a shield they laugh at
+us as from a conning tower.
+
+I have a plan, but it is not worth while putting into execution
+unless its need becomes imperative.  In the darkness of night it
+would be an easy trick to disconnect the steering-gear from the short
+tiller on the rudder-head, and then, by re-rigging the preventer
+tackles, steer from both sides of the poop well enough for'ard to be
+out of the range of the ventilator.
+
+In the meantime, in this fine weather, the Elsinore drifts as she
+lists, or as the windage of her lists and the sea-movement of waves
+lists.  And she can well drift.  Let the mutineers starve.  They can
+best be brought to their senses through their stomachs.
+
+
+And what are wits for, if not for use?  I am breaking the men's
+hungry hearts.  It is great fun in its way.  The mollyhawks and
+albatrosses, after their fashion, have followed the Elsinore up out
+of their own latitudes.  This means that there are only so many of
+them and that their numbers are not recruited.  Syllogism:  major
+premise, a definite and limited amount of bird-meat; minor premise,
+the only food the mutineers now have is bird-meat; conclusion,
+destroy the available food and the mutineers will be compelled to
+come back to duty.
+
+I have acted on this bit of logic.  I began experimentally by tossing
+small chunks of fat pork and crusts of stale bread overside.  When
+the birds descended for the feast I shot them.  Every carcass thus
+left floating on the surface of the sea was so much less meat for the
+mutineers.
+
+But I bettered the method.  Yesterday I overhauled the medicine-
+chest, and I dosed my chunks of fat pork and bread with the contents
+of every bottle that bore a label of skull and cross-bones.  I even
+added rough-on-rats to the deadliness of the mixture--this on the
+suggestion of the steward.
+
+And to-day, behold, there is no bird left in the sky.  True, while I
+played my game yesterday, the mutineers hooked a few of the birds;
+but now the rest are gone, and that is bound to be the last food for
+the men for'ard until they resume duty.
+
+Yes; it is grotesque.  It is a boy's game.  It reads like Midshipman
+Easy, like Frank Mildmay, like Frank Reade, Jr.; and yet, i' faith,
+life and death's in the issue.  I have just gone over the toll of our
+dead since the voyage began.
+
+First, was Christian Jespersen, killed by O'Sullivan when that maniac
+aspired to throw overboard Andy Fay's sea-boots; then O'Sullivan,
+because he interfered with Charles Davis' sleep, brained by that
+worthy with a steel marlin-spike; next Petro Marinkovich, just ere we
+began the passage of the Horn, murdered undoubtedly by the gangster
+clique, his life cut out of him with knives, his carcass left lying
+on deck to be found by us and be buried by us; and the Samurai,
+Captain West, a sudden though not a violent death, albeit occurring
+in the midst of all elemental violence as Mr. Pike clawed the
+Elsinore off the lee-shore of the Horn; and Boney the Splinter,
+following, washed overboard to drown as we cleared the sea-gashing
+rock-tooth where the southern tip of the continent bit into the
+storm-wrath of the Antarctic; and the big-footed, clumsy youth of a
+Finnish carpenter, hove overside as a Jonah by his fellows who
+believed that Finns control the winds; and Mike Cipriani and Bill
+Quigley, Rome and Ireland, shot down on the poop and flung overboard
+alive by Mr. Pike, still alive and clinging to the log-line, cut
+adrift by the steward to be eaten alive by great-beaked albatrosses,
+mollyhawks, and sooty-plumaged Cape hens; Steve Roberts, one-time
+cowboy, shot by me as he tried to shoot me; Herman Lunkenheimer, his
+throat cut before all of us by the hound Bombini as Kid Twist
+stretched the throat taut from behind; the two mates, Mr. Pike and
+Mr. Mellaire, mutually destroying each other in what must have been
+an unwitnessed epic combat; Ditman Olansen, speared by Wada as he
+charged Berserk at the head of the mutineers in the attempt to rush
+the poop; and last, Henry, the cadet of the perishing house, shot at
+the wheel, from the ventilator-shaft, in the course of his day's
+work.
+
+No; as I contemplate this roll-call of the dead which I have just
+made I see that we are not playing a boy's game.  Why, we have lost a
+third of us, and the bloodiest battles of history have rarely
+achieved such a percentage of mortality.  Fourteen of us have gone
+overside, and who can tell the end?
+
+Nevertheless, here we are, masters of matter, adventurers in the
+micro-organic, planet-weighers, sun-analysers, star-rovers, god-
+dreamers, equipped with the human wisdom of all the ages, and yet,
+quoting Mr. Pike, to come down to brass tacks, we are a lot of
+primitive beasts, fighting bestially, slaying bestially, pursuing
+bestially food and water, air for our lungs, a dry space above the
+deep, and carcasses skin-covered and intact.  And over this menagerie
+of beasts Margaret and I, with our Asiatics under us, rule top-dog.
+We are all dogs--there is no getting away from it.  And we, the fair-
+pigmented ones, by the seed of our ancestry rulers in the high place,
+shall remain top-dog over the rest of the dogs.  Oh, there is
+material in plenty for the cogitation of any philosopher on a
+windjammer in mutiny in this Year of our Lord 1913.
+
+
+Henry was the fourteenth of us to go overside into the dark and salty
+disintegration of the sea.  And in one day he has been well avenged;
+for two of the mutineers have followed him.  The steward called my
+attention to what was taking place.  He touched my arm half beyond
+his servant's self, as he gloated for'ard at the men heaving two
+corpses overside.  Weighted with coal, they sank immediately, so that
+we could not identify them.
+
+"They have been fighting," I said.  "It is good that they should
+fight among themselves."
+
+But the old Chinese merely grinned and shook his head.
+
+"You don't think they have been fighting?" I queried.
+
+"No fight.  They eat'm mollyhawk and albatross; mollyhawk and
+albatross eat'm fat pork; two men he die, plenty men much sick, you
+bet, damn to hell me very much glad.  I savve."
+
+And I think he was right.  While I was busy baiting the sea-birds the
+mutineers were catching them, and of a surety they must have caught
+some that had eaten of my various poisons.
+
+The two poisoned ones went over the side yesterday.  Since then we
+have taken the census.  Two men only have not appeared, and they are
+Bob, the fat and overgrown feebling youth, and, of all creatures, the
+Faun.  It seems my fate that I had to destroy the Faun--the poor,
+tortured Faun, always willing and eager, ever desirous to please.
+There is a madness of ill luck in all this.  Why couldn't the two
+dead men have been Charles Davis and Tony the Greek?  Or Bert Rhine
+and Kid Twist? or Bombini and Andy Fay?  Yes, and in my heart I know
+I should have felt better had it been Isaac Chantz and Arthur Deacon,
+or Nancy and Sundry Buyers, or Shorty and Larry.
+
+
+The steward has just tendered me a respectful bit of advice.
+
+"Next time we chuck'm overboard like Henry, much better we use old
+iron."
+
+"Getting short of coal?" I asked.
+
+He nodded affirmation.  We use a great deal of coal in our cooking,
+and when the present supply gives out we shall have to cut through a
+bulkhead to get at the cargo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+
+The situation grows tense.  There are no more sea-birds, and the
+mutineers are starving.  Yesterday I talked with Bert Rhine.  To-day
+I talked with him again, and he will never forget, I am certain, the
+little talk we had this morning.
+
+To begin with, last evening, at five o'clock, I heard his voice
+issuing from between the slits of the ventilator in the after-wall of
+the chart-house.  Standing at the corner of the house, quite out of
+range, I answered him.
+
+"Getting hungry?" I jeered.  "Let me tell you what we are going to
+have for dinner.  I have just been down and seen the preparations.
+Now, listen:  first, caviare on toast; then, clam bouillon; and
+creamed lobster; and tinned lamb chops with French peas--you know,
+the peas that melt in one's mouth; and California asparagus with
+mayonnaise; and--oh, I forgot to mention fried potatoes and cold pork
+and beans; and peach pie; and coffee, real coffee.  Doesn't it make
+you hungry for your East Side?  And, say, think of the free lunch
+going to waste right now in a thousand saloons in good old New York."
+
+I had told him the truth.  The dinner I described (principally coming
+out of tins and bottles, to be sure) was the dinner we were to eat.
+
+"Cut that," he snarled.  "I want to talk business with YOU."
+
+"Right down to brass tacks," I gibed.  "Very well, when are you and
+the rest of your rats going to turn to?"
+
+"Cut that," he reiterated.  "I've got you where 1 want you now.  Take
+it from me, I'm givin' it straight.  I'm not tellin' you how, but
+I've got you under my thumb.  When I come down on you, you'll crack."
+
+"Hell is full of cocksure rats like you," I retorted; although I
+never dreamed how soon he would be writhing in the particular hell
+preparing for him.
+
+"Forget it," he sneered back.  "I've got you where I want you.  I'm
+just tellin' you, that's all."
+
+"Pardon me," I replied, "when I tell you that I'm from Missouri.
+You'll have to show ME."
+
+And as I thus talked the thought went through my mind of how I
+naturally sought out the phrases of his own vocabulary in order to
+make myself intelligible to him.  The situation was bestial, with
+sixteen of our complement already gone into the dark; and the terms I
+employed, perforce, were terms of bestiality.  And I thought, also,
+of I who was thus compelled to dismiss the dreams of the utopians,
+the visions of the poets, the king-thoughts of the king-thinkers, in
+a discussion with this ripened product of the New York City inferno.
+To him I must talk in the elemental terms of life and death, of food
+and water, of brutality and cruelty.
+
+"I give you your choice," he went on.  "Give in now, an' you won't be
+hurt, none of you."
+
+"And if we don't?" I dared airily.
+
+"You'll be sorry you was ever born.  You ain't a mush-head, you've
+got a girl there that's stuck on you.  It's about time you think of
+her.  You ain't altogether a mutt.  You get my drive?"
+
+Ay, I did get it; and somehow, across my brain flashed a vision of
+all I had ever read and heard of the siege of the Legations at
+Peking, and of the plans of the white men for their womenkind in the
+event of the yellow hordes breaking through the last lines of
+defence.  Ay, and the old steward got it; for I saw his black eyes
+glint murderously in their narrow, tilted slits.  He knew the drift
+of the gangster's meaning.
+
+"You get my drive?" the gangster repeated.
+
+And I knew anger.  Not ordinary anger, but cold anger.  And I caught
+a vision of the high place in which we had sat and ruled down the
+ages in all lands, on all seas.  I saw my kind, our women with us, in
+forlorn hopes and lost endeavours, pent in hill fortresses, rotted in
+jungle fastnesses, cut down to the last one on the decks of rocking
+ships.  And always, our women with us, had we ruled the beasts.  We
+might die, our women with us; but, living, we had ruled.  It was a
+royal vision I glimpsed.  Ay, and in the purple of it I grasped the
+ethic, which was the stuff of the fabric of which it was builded.  It
+was the sacred trust of the seed, the bequest of duty handed down
+from all ancestors.
+
+And I flamed more coldly.  It was not red-brute anger.  It was
+intellectual.  It was based on concept and history; it was the
+philosophy of action of the strong and the pride of the strong in
+their own strength.  Now at last I knew Nietzsche.  I knew the
+rightness of the books, the relation of high thinking to high-
+conduct, the transmutation of midnight thought into action in the
+high place on the poop of a coal-carrier in the year nineteen-
+thirteen, my woman beside me, my ancestors behind me, my slant-eyed
+servitors under me, the beasts beneath me and beneath the heel of me.
+God!  I felt kingly.  I knew at last the meaning of kingship.
+
+My anger was white and cold.  This subterranean rat of a miserable
+human, crawling through the bowels of the ship to threaten me and
+mine!  A rat in the shelter of a knot-hole making a noise as beast-
+like as any rat ever made!  And it was in this spirit that I answered
+the gangster.
+
+"When you crawl on your belly, along the open deck, in the broad
+light of day, like a yellow cur that has been licked to obedience,
+and when you show by your every action that you like it and are glad
+to do it, then, and not until then, will I talk with you."
+
+Thereafter, for the next ten minutes, he shouted all the Billingsgate
+of his kind at me through the slits in the ventilator.  But I made no
+reply.  I listened, and I listened coldly, and as I listened I knew
+why the English had blown their mutinous Sepoys from the mouths of
+cannon in India long years ago.
+
+
+And when, this morning, I saw the steward struggling with a five-
+gallon carboy of sulphuric acid, I never dreamed the use he intended
+for it.
+
+In the meantime I was devising another way to overcome that deadly
+ventilator shaft.  The scheme was so simple that I was shamed in that
+it had not occurred to me at the very beginning.  The slitted opening
+was small.  Two sacks of flour, in a wooden frame, suspended by ropes
+from the edge of the chart-house roof directly above, would
+effectually cover the opening and block all revolver fire.
+
+No sooner thought than done.  Tom Spink and Louis were on top the
+chart-house with me and preparing to lower the flour, when we heard a
+voice issuing from the shaft.
+
+"Who's in there now?"  I demanded.  "Speak up."
+
+"I'm givin' you a last chance," Bert Rhine answered.
+
+And just then, around the corner of the house, stepped the steward.
+In his hand he carried a large galvanized pail, and my casual thought
+was that he had come to get rain-water from the barrels.  Even as I
+thought it, he made a sweeping half-circle with the pail and sloshed
+its contents into the ventilator-opening.  And even as the liquid
+flew through the air I knew it for what it was--undiluted sulphuric
+acid, two gallons of it from the carboy.
+
+The gangster must have received the liquid fire in the face and eyes.
+And, in the shock of pain, he must have released all holds and fallen
+upon the coal at the bottom of the shaft.  His cries and shrieks of
+anguish were terrible, and I was reminded of the starving rats which
+had squealed up that same shaft during the first months of the
+voyage.  The thing was sickening.  I prefer that men be killed
+cleanly and easily.
+
+The agony of the wretch I did not fully realize until the steward,
+his bare fore-arms sprayed by the splash from the ventilator slats,
+suddenly felt the bite of the acid through his tight, whole skin and
+made a mad rush for the water-barrel at the corner of the house.  And
+Bert Rhine, the silent man of soundless laughter, screaming below
+there on the coal, was enduring the bite of the acid in his eyes!
+
+We covered the ventilator opening with our flour-device; the screams
+from below ceased as the victim was evidently dragged for'ard across
+the coal by his mates; and yet I confess to a miserable forenoon.  As
+Carlyle has said:  "Death is easy; all men must die"; but to receive
+two gallons of full-strength sulphuric acid full in the face is a
+vastly different and vastly more horrible thing than merely to die.
+Fortunately, Margaret was below at the time, and, after a few
+minutes, in which I recovered my balance, I bullied and swore all our
+hands into keeping the happening from her.
+
+
+Oh, well, and we have got ours in retaliation.  Off and on, through
+all of yesterday, after the ventilator tragedy, there were noises
+beneath the cabin floor or deck.  We heard them under the dining-
+table, under the steward's pantry, under Margaret's stateroom.
+
+This deck is overlaid with wood, but under the wood is iron, or steel
+rather, such as of which the whole Elsinore is builded.
+
+Margaret and I, followed by Louis, Wada, and the steward, walked
+about from place to place, wherever the sounds arose of tappings and
+of cold-chisels against iron.  The tappings seemed to come from
+everywhere; but we concluded that the concentration necessary on any
+spot to make an opening large enough for a man's body would
+inevitably draw our attention to that spot.  And, as Margaret said:
+
+"If they do manage to cut through, they must come up head-first, and,
+in such emergence, what chance would they have against us?"
+
+So I relieved Buckwheat from deck duty, placed him on watch over the
+cabin floor, to be relieved by the steward in Margaret's watches.
+
+In the late afternoon, after prodigious hammerings and clangings in a
+score of places, all noises ceased.  Neither in the first and second
+dog-watches, nor in the first watch of the night, were the noises
+resumed.  When I took charge of the poop at midnight Buckwheat
+relieved the steward in the vigil over the cabin floor; and as I
+leaned on the rail at the break of the poop, while my four hours
+dragged slowly by, least of all did I apprehend danger from the
+cabin--especially when I considered the two-gallon pail of raw
+sulphuric acid ready to hand for the first head that might arise
+through an opening in the floor not yet made.  Our rascals for'ard
+might scale the poop; or cross aloft from mizzenmast to jigger and
+descend upon our heads; but how they could invade us through the
+floor was beyond me.
+
+But they did invade.  A modern ship is a complex affair.  How was I
+to guess the manner of the invasion?
+
+It was two in the morning, and for an hour I had been puzzling my
+head with watching the smoke arise from the after-division of the
+for'ard-house and with wondering why the mutineers should have up
+steam in the donkey-engine at such an ungodly hour.  Not on the whole
+voyage had the donkey-engine been used.  Four bells had just struck,
+and I was leaning on the rail at the break of the poop when I heard a
+prodigious coughing and choking from aft.  Next, Wada ran across the
+deck to me.
+
+"Big trouble with Buckwheat," he blurted at me.  "You go quick."
+
+I shoved him my rifle and left him on guard while I raced around the
+chart-house.  A lighted match, in the hands of Tom Spink, directed
+me.  Between the booby-hatch and the wheel, sitting up and rocking
+back and forth with wringings of hands and wavings of arms, tears of
+agony bursting from his eyes, was Buckwheat.  My first thought was
+that in some stupid way he had got the acid into his own eyes.  But
+the terrible fashion in which he coughed and strangled would quickly
+have undeceived me, had not Louis, bending over the booby-companion,
+uttered a startled exclamation.
+
+I joined him, and one whiff of the air that came up from below made
+me catch my breath and gasp.  I had inhaled sulphur.  On the instant
+I forgot the Elsinore, the mutineers for'ard, everything save one
+thing.
+
+The next I know, I was down the booby-ladder and reeling dizzily
+about the big after-room as the sulphur fumes bit my lungs and
+strangled me.  By the dim light of a sea-lantern I saw the old
+steward, on hands and knees, coughing and gasping, the while he shook
+awake Yatsuda, the first sail-maker.  Uchino, the second sail-maker,
+still strangled in his sleep.
+
+It struck me that the air might be better nearer the floor, and I
+proved it when I dropped on my hands and knees.  I rolled Uchino out
+of his blankets with a quick jerk, wrapped the blankets about my
+head, face, and mouth, arose to my feet, and dashed for'ard into the
+hall.  After a couple of collisions with the wood-work I again
+dropped to the floor and rearranged the blankets so that, while my
+mouth remained covered, I could draw or withdraw, a thickness across
+my eyes.
+
+The pain of the fumes was bad enough, but the real hardship was the
+dizziness I suffered.  I blundered into the steward's pantry, and out
+of it, missed the cross-hall, stumbled through the next starboard
+opening in the long hall, and found myself bent double by violent
+collision with the dining-room table.
+
+But I had my bearings.  Feeling my way around the table and bumping
+most of the poisoned breath out of me against the rotund-bellied
+stove, I emerged in the cross-hall and made my way to starboard.
+Here, at the base of the chart-room stairway, I gained the hall that
+led aft.  By this time my own situation seemed so serious that,
+careless of any collision, I went aft in long leaps.
+
+Margaret's door was open.  I plunged into her room.  The moment I
+drew the blanket-thickness from my eyes I knew blindness and a
+modicum of what Bert Rhine must have suffered.  Oh, the intolerable
+bite of the sulphur in my lungs, nostrils, eyes, and brain!  No light
+burned in the room.  I could only strangle and stumble for'ard to
+Margaret's bed, upon which I collapsed.
+
+She was not there.  I felt about, and I felt only the warm hollow her
+body had left in the under-sheet.  Even in my agony and helplessness
+the intimacy of that warmth her body had left was very dear to me.
+Between the lack of oxygen in my lungs (due to the blankets), the
+pain of the sulphur, and the mortal dizziness in my brain, I felt
+that I might well cease there where the linen warmed my hand.
+
+Perhaps I should have ceased, had I not heard a terrible coughing
+from along the hall.  It was new life to me.  I fell from bed to
+floor and managed to get upright until I gained the hall, where again
+I fell.  Thereafter I crawled on hands and knees to the foot of the
+stairway.  By means of the newel-post I drew myself upright and
+listened.  Near me something moved and strangled.  I fell upon it and
+found in my arms all the softness of Margaret.
+
+How describe that battle up the stairway?  It was a crucifixion of
+struggle, an age-long nightmare of agony.  Time after time, as my
+consciousness blurred, the temptation was upon me to cease all effort
+and let myself blur down into the ultimate dark.  I fought my way
+step by step.  Margaret was now quite unconscious, and I lifted her
+body step by step, or dragged it several steps at a time, and fell
+with it, and back with it, and lost much that had been so hardly
+gained.  And yet out of it all this I remember:  that warm soft body
+of hers was the dearest thing in the world--vastly more dear than the
+pleasant land I remotely remembered, than all the books and all the
+humans I had ever known, than the deck above, with its sweet pure air
+softly blowing under the cool starry sky.
+
+As I look back upon it I am aware of one thing:  the thought of
+leaving her there and saving myself never crossed my mind.  The one
+place for me was where she was.
+
+Truly, this which I write seems absurd and purple; yet it was not
+absurd during those long minutes on the chart-room stairway.  One
+must taste death for a few centuries of such agony ere he can receive
+sanction for purple passages.
+
+And as I fought my screaming flesh, my reeling brain, and climbed
+that upward way, I prayed one prayer:  that the chart-house doors out
+upon the poop might not be shut.  Life and death lay right there in
+that one point of the issue.  Was there any creature of my creatures
+aft with common sense and anticipation sufficient to make him think
+to open those doors?  How I yearned for one man, for one proved
+henchman, such as Mr. Pike, to be on the poop!  As it was, with the
+sole exception of Tom Spink and Buckwheat, my men were Asiatics.
+
+I gained the top of the stairway, but was too far gone to rise to my
+feet.  Nor could I rise upright on my knees.  I crawled like any
+four-legged animal--nay, I wormed my way like a snake, prone to the
+deck.  It was a matter of several feet to the doorway.  I died a
+score of times in those several feet; but ever I endured the agony of
+resurrection and dragged Margaret with me.  Sometimes the full
+strength I could exert did not move her, and I lay with her and
+coughed and strangled my way through to another resurrection.
+
+And the door was open.  The doors to starboard and to port were both
+open; and as the Elsinore rolled a draught through the chart-house
+hall my lungs filled with pure, cool air.  As I drew myself across
+the high threshold and pulled Margaret after me, from very far away I
+heard the cries of men and the reports of rifle and revolver.  And,
+ere I fainted into the blackness, on my side, staring, my pain gone
+so beyond endurance that it had achieved its own anaesthesia, I
+glimpsed, dream-like and distant, the sharply silhouetted poop-rail,
+dark forms that cut and thrust and smote, and, beyond, the mizzen-
+mast brightly lighted by our illuminators.
+
+
+Well, the mutineers failed to take the poop.  My five Asiatics and
+two white men had held the citadel while Margaret and I lay
+unconscious side by side.
+
+The whole affair was very simple.  Modern maritime quarantine demands
+that ships shall not carry vermin that are themselves plague-
+carriers.  In the donkey-engine section of the for'ard house is a
+complete fumigating apparatus.  The mutineers had merely to lay and
+fasten the pipes aft across the coal, to chisel a hole through the
+double-deck of steel and wood under the cabin, and to connect up and
+begin to pump.  Buckwheat had fallen asleep and been awakened by the
+strangling sulphur fumes.  We in the high place had been smoked out
+by our rascals like so many rats.
+
+It was Wada who had opened one of the doors.  The old steward had
+opened the other.  Together they had attempted the descent of the
+stairway and been driven back by the fumes.  Then they had engaged in
+the struggle to repel the rush from for'ard.
+
+Margaret and I are agreed that sulphur, excessively inhaled, leaves
+the lungs sore.  Only now, after a lapse of a dozen hours, can we
+draw breath in anything that resembles comfort.  But still my lungs
+were not so sore as to prevent my telling her what I had learned she
+meant to me.  And yet she is only a woman--I tell her so; I tell her
+that there are at least seven hundred and fifty millions of two-
+legged, long-haired, gentle-voiced, soft-bodied, female humans like
+her on the planet, and that she is really swamped by the immensity of
+numbers of her sex and kind.  But I tell her something more.  I tell
+her that of all of them she is the only one.  And, better yet, to
+myself and for myself, I believe it.  I know it.  The last least part
+of me and all of me proclaims it.
+
+Love IS wonderful.  It is the everlasting and miraculous amazement.
+Oh, trust me, I know the old, hard scientific method of weighing and
+calculating and classifying love.  It is a profound foolishness, a
+cosmic trick and quip, to the contemplative eye of the philosopher--
+yes, and of the futurist.  But when one forsakes such intellectual
+flesh-pots and becomes mere human and male human, in short, a lover,
+then all he may do, and which is what he cannot help doing, is to
+yield to the compulsions of being and throw both his arms around love
+and hold it closer to him than is his own heart close to him.  This
+is the summit of his life, and of man's life.  Higher than this no
+man may rise.  The philosophers toil and struggle on mole-hill peaks
+far below.  He who has not loved has not tasted the ultimate sweet of
+living.  I know.  I love Margaret, a woman.  She is desirable.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+
+In the past twenty-four hours many things have happened.  To begin
+with, we nearly lost the steward in the second dog-watch last
+evening.  Through the slits in the ventilator some man thrust a knife
+into the sacks of flour and cut them wide open from top to bottom.
+In the dark the flour poured to the deck unobserved.
+
+Of course, the man behind could not see through the screen of empty
+sacks, but he took a blind pot-shot at point-blank range when the
+steward went by, slip-sloppily dragging the heels of his slippers.
+Fortunately it was a miss, but so close a miss was it that his cheek
+and neck were burned with powder grains.
+
+At six bells in the first watch came another surprise.  Tom Spink
+came to me where I stood guard at the for'ard end of the poop.  His
+voice shook as he spoke.
+
+"For the love of God, sir, they've come," he said.
+
+"Who?" I asked sharply.
+
+"Them," he chattered.  "The ones that come aboard off the Horn, sir,
+the three drownded sailors.  They're there, aft, sir, the three of
+'em, standin' in a row by the wheel."
+
+"How did they get there?"
+
+"Bein' warlocks, they flew, sir.  You didn't see 'm go by you, did
+you, sir?"
+
+"No," I admitted.  "They never went by me."
+
+Poor Tom Spink groaned.
+
+"But there are lines aloft there on which they could cross over from
+mizzen to jigger," I added.  "Send Wada to me."
+
+When the latter relieved me I went aft.  And there in a row were our
+three pale-haired storm-waifs with the topaz eyes.  In the light of a
+bull's-eye, held on them by Louis, their eyes never seemed more like
+the eyes of great cats.  And, heavens, they purred!  At least, the
+inarticulate noises they made sounded more like purring than anything
+else.  That these sounds meant friendliness was very evident.  Also,
+they held out their hands, palms upward, in unmistakable sign of
+peace.  Each in turn doffed his cap and placed my hand for a moment
+on his head.  Without doubt this meant their offer of fealty, their
+acceptance of me as master.
+
+I nodded my head.  There was nothing to be said to men who purred
+like cats, while sign-language in the light of the bull's-eye was
+rather difficult.  Tom Spink groaned protest when I told Louis to
+take them below and give them blankets.
+
+I made the sleep-sign to them, and they nodded gratefully, hesitated,
+then pointed to their mouths and rubbed their stomachs.
+
+"Drowned men do not eat," I laughed to Tom Spink.  "Go down and watch
+them.  Feed them up, Louis, all they want.  It's a good sign of short
+rations for'ard."
+
+At the end of half an hour Tom Spink was back.
+
+"Well, did they eat?" I challenged him.
+
+But he was unconvinced.  The very quantity they had eaten was a
+suspicious thing, and, further, he had heard of a kind of ghost that
+devoured dead bodies in graveyards.  Therefore, he concluded, mere
+non-eating was no test for a ghost.
+
+The third event of moment occurred this morning at seven o'clock.
+The mutineers called for a truce; and when Nosey Murphy, the Maltese
+Cockney, and the inevitable Charles Davis stood beneath me on the
+main deck, their faces showed lean and drawn.  Famine had been my
+great ally.  And in truth, with Margaret beside me in that high place
+of the break of the poop, as I looked down on the hungry wretches I
+felt very strong.  Never had the inequality of numbers fore and aft
+been less than now.  The three deserters, added to our own nine, made
+twelve of us, while the mutineers, after subtracting Ditman Olansen,
+Bob and the Faun, totalled only an even score.  And of these Bert
+Rhine must certainly be in a bad way, while there were many
+weaklings, such as Sundry Buyers, Nancy, Larry, and Lars Jacobsen.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" I demanded.  "I haven't much time to waste.
+Breakfast is ready and waiting."
+
+Charles Davis started to speak, but I shut him off.
+
+"I'll have nothing out of you, Davis.  At least not now.  Later on,
+when I'm in that court of law you've bothered me with for half the
+voyage, you'll get your turn at talking.  And when that time comes
+don't forget that I shall have a few words to say."
+
+Again he began, but this time was stopped by Nosey Murphy.
+
+"Aw, shut your trap, Davis," the gangster snarled, "or I'll shut it
+for you."  He glanced up to me.  "We want to go back to work, that's
+what we want."
+
+"Which is not the way to ask for it," I answered.
+
+"Sir," he added hastily.
+
+"That's better," I commented.
+
+"Oh, my God, sir, don't let 'm come aft."  Tom Spink muttered
+hurriedly in my ear.  "That'd be the end of all of us.  And even if
+they didn't get you an' the rest, they'd heave me over some dark
+night.  They ain't never goin' to forgive me, sir, for joinin' in
+with the afterguard."
+
+I ignored the interruption and addressed the gangster.
+
+"There's nothing like going to work when you want to as badly as you
+seem to.  Suppose all hands get sail on her just to show good
+intention."
+
+"We'd like to eat first, sir," he objected.
+
+"I'd like to see you setting sail, first," was my reply.  "And you
+may as well get it from me straight that what I like goes, aboard
+this ship."--I almost said "hooker."
+
+Nosey Murphy hesitated and looked to the Maltese Cockney for counsel.
+The latter debated, as if gauging the measure of his weakness while
+he stared aloft at the work involved.  Finally he nodded.
+
+"All right, sir," the gangster spoke up.  "We'll do it . . . but
+can't something be cookin' in the galley while we're doin' it?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"I didn't have that in mind, and I don't care to change my mind now.
+When every sail is stretched and every yard braced, and all that mess
+of gear cleared up, food for a good meal will be served out.  You
+needn't bother about the spanker nor the mizzen-braces.  We'll make
+your work lighter by that much."
+
+In truth, as they climbed aloft they showed how miserably weak they
+were.  There were some too feeble to go aloft.  Poor Sundry Buyers
+continually pressed his abdomen as he toiled around the deck-
+capstans; and never was Nancy's face quite so forlorn as when he
+obeyed the Maltese Cockney's command and went up to loose the mizzen-
+skysail.
+
+In passing, I must note one delicious miracle that was worked before
+our eyes.  They were hoisting the mizzen-upper-topsail-yard by means
+of one of the patent deck-capstans.  Although they had reversed the
+gear so as to double the purchase, they were having a hard time of
+it.  Lars Jacobsen was limping on his twice-broken leg, and with him
+were Sundry Buyers, Tony the Greek, Bombini, and Mulligan Jacobs.
+Nosey Murphy held the turn.
+
+When they stopped from sheer exhaustion Murphy's glance chanced to
+fall on Charles Davis, the one man who had not worked since the
+outset of the voyage and who was not working now.
+
+"Bear a hand, Davis," the gangster called.
+
+Margaret gurgled low laughter in my ear as she caught the drift of
+the episode.
+
+The sea-lawyer looked at the other in amazement ere he answered:
+
+"I guess not."
+
+After nodding Sundry Buyers over to him to take the turn Murphy
+straightened his back and walked close to Davis, then said very
+quietly:
+
+"I guess yes."
+
+That was all.  For a space neither spoke.  Davis seemed to be giving
+the matter judicial consideration.  The men at the capstan panted,
+rested, and looked on--all save Bombini, who slunk across the deck
+until he stood at Murphy's shoulder.
+
+Under such circumstances the decision Charles Davis gave was
+eminently the right one, although even then he offered a compromise.
+
+"I'll hold the turn," he volunteered.
+
+"You'll lump around one of them capstan-bars," Murphy said.
+
+The sea-lawyer made no mistake.  He knew in all absoluteness that he
+was choosing between life and death, and he limped over to the
+capstan and found his place.  And as the work started, and as he
+toiled around and around the narrow circle, Margaret and I
+shamelessly and loudly laughed our approval.  And our own men stole
+for'ard along the poop to peer down at the spectacle of Charles Davis
+at work.
+
+All of which must have pleased Nosey Murphy, for, as he continued to
+hold the turn and coil down, he kept a critical eye on Davis.
+
+"More juice, Davis!" he commanded with abrupt sharpness.
+
+And Davis, with a startle, visibly increased his efforts.
+
+This was too much for our fellows, who, Asiatics and all, applauded
+with laughter and hand-clapping.  And what could I do?  It was a gala
+day, and our faithful ones deserved some little recompense of
+amusement.  So I ignored the breach of discipline and of poop
+etiquette by strolling away aft with Margaret.
+
+At the wheel was one of our storm-waifs.  I set the course due east
+for Valparaiso, and sent the steward below to bring up sufficient
+food for one substantial meal for the mutineers.
+
+"When do we get our next grub, sir?" Nosey Murphy asked, as the
+steward served the supplies down to him from the poop.
+
+"At midday," I answered.  "And as long as you and your gang are good,
+you'll get your grub three times each day.  You can choose your own
+watches any way you please.  But the ship's work must be done, and
+done properly.  If it isn't, then the grub stops.  That will do.  Now
+go for'ard."
+
+"One thing more, sir," he said quickly.  "Bert Rhine is awful bad.
+He can't see, sir.  It looks like he's going to lose his face.  He
+can't sleep.  He groans all the time."
+
+
+It was a busy day.  I made a selection of things from the medicine-
+chest for the acid-burned gangster; and, finding that Murphy knew how
+to manipulate a hypodermic syringe, entrusted him with one.
+
+Then, too, I practised with the sextant and think I fairly caught the
+sun at noon and correctly worked up the observation.  But this is
+latitude, and is comparatively easy.  Longitude is more difficult.
+But I am reading up on it.
+
+All afternoon a gentle northerly fan of air snored the Elsinore
+through the water at a five-knot clip, and our course lay east for
+land, for the habitations of men, for the law and order that men
+institute whenever they organize into groups.  Once in Valparaiso,
+with police flag flying, our mutineers will be taken care of by the
+shore authorities.
+
+Another thing I did was to rearrange our watches aft so as to split
+up the three storm-visitors.  Margaret took one in her watch, along
+with the two sail-makers, Tom Spink, and Louis.  Louis is half white,
+and all trustworthy, so that, at all times, on deck or below, he is
+told off to the task of never letting the topaz-eyed one out of his
+sight.
+
+In my watch are the steward, Buckwheat, Wada, and the other two
+topaz-eyed ones.  And to one of them Wada is told off; and to the
+other is assigned the steward.  We are not taking any chances.
+Always, night and day, on duty or off, these storm-strangers will
+have one of our proved men watching them.
+
+
+Yes; and I tried the stranger men out last evening.  It was after a
+council with Margaret.  She was sure, and I agreed with her, that the
+men for'ard are not blindly yielding to our bringing them in to be
+prisoners in Valparaiso.  As we tried to forecast it, their plan is
+to desert the Elsinore in the boats as soon as we fetch up with the
+land.  Also, considering some of the bitter lunatic spirits for'ard,
+there would be a large chance of their drilling the Elsinore's steel
+sides and scuttling her ere they took to the boats.  For scuttling a
+ship is surely as ancient a practice as mutiny on the high seas.
+
+So it was, at one in the morning, that I tried out our strangers.
+Two of them I took for'ard with me in the raid on the small boats.
+One I left beside Margaret, who kept charge of the poop.  On the
+other side of him stood the steward with his big hacking knife.  By
+signs I had made it clear to him, and to his two comrades who were to
+accompany me for'ard, that at the first sign of treachery he would be
+killed.  And not only did the old steward, with signs emphatic and
+unmistakable, pledge himself to perform the execution, but we were
+all convinced that he was eager for the task.
+
+With Margaret I also left Buckwheat and Tom Spink.  Wada, the two
+sail-makers, Louis, and the two topaz-eyed ones accompanied me.  In
+addition to fighting weapons we were armed with axes.  We crossed the
+main deck unobserved, gained the bridge by way of the 'midship-house,
+and by way of the bridge gained the top of the for'ard-house.  Here
+were the first boats we began work on; but, first of all, I called in
+the lookout from the forecastle-head.
+
+He was Mulligan Jacobs; and he picked his way back across the wreck
+of the bridge where the fore-topgallant-yard still lay, and came up
+to me unafraid, as implacable and bitter as ever.
+
+"Jacobs," I whispered, "you are to stay here beside me until we
+finish the job of smashing the boats.  Do you get that?"
+
+"As though it could fright me," he growled all too loudly.  "Go ahead
+for all I care.  I know your game.  And I know the game of the hell's
+maggots under our feet this minute.  'Tis they that'd desert in the
+boats.  'Tis you that'll smash the boats an' jail 'm kit an' crew."
+
+"S-s-s-h," I vainly interpolated.
+
+"What of it?" he went on as loudly as ever.  "They're sleepin' with
+full bellies.  The only night watch we keep is the lookout.  Even
+Rhine's asleep.  A few jolts of the needle has put a clapper to his
+eternal moanin'.  Go on with your work.  Smash the boats.  'Tis
+nothin' I care.  'Tis well I know my own crooked back is worth more
+to me than the necks of the scum of the world below there."
+
+"If you felt that way, why didn't you join us?" I queried.
+
+"Because I like you no better than them an' not half so well.  They
+are what you an' your fathers have made 'em.  An' who in hell are you
+an' your fathers?  Robbers of the toil of men.  I like them little.
+I like you and your fathers not at all.  Only I like myself and me
+crooked back that's a livin' proof there ain't no God and makes
+Browning a liar."
+
+"Join us now," I urged, meeting him in his mood.  "It will be easier
+for your back."
+
+"To hell with you," was his answer.  "Go ahead an' smash the boats.
+You can hang some of them.  But you can't touch me with the law.
+'Tis me that's a crippled creature of circumstance, too weak to raise
+a hand against any man--a feather blown about by the windy contention
+of men strong in their back an' brainless in their heads."
+
+"As you please," I said.
+
+"As I can't help pleasin'," he retorted, "bein' what I am an' so made
+for the little flash between the darknesses which men call life.  Now
+why couldn't I a-ben a butterfly, or a fat pig in a full trough, or a
+mere mortal man with a straight back an' women to love me?  Go on an'
+smash the boats.  Play hell to the top of your bent.  Like me, you'll
+end in the darkness.  And your darkness'll be--as dark as mine."
+
+"A full belly puts the spunk back into you," I sneered.
+
+"'Tis on an empty belly that the juice of my dislike turns to acid.
+Go on an' smash the boats."
+
+"Whose idea was the sulphur?" I asked.
+
+"I'm not tellin' you the man, but I envied him until it showed
+failure.  An' whose idea was it--to douse the sulphuric into Rhine's
+face?  He'll lose that same face, from the way it's shedding."
+
+"Nor will I tell you," I said.  "Though I will tell you that I am
+glad the idea was not mine."
+
+"Oh, well," he muttered cryptically, "different customs on different
+ships, as the cook said when he went for'ard to cast off the spanker
+sheet."
+
+Not until the job was done and I was back on the poop did I have time
+to work out the drift of that last figure in its terms of the sea.
+Mulligan Jacobs might have been an artist, a philosophic poet, had he
+not been born crooked with a crooked back.
+
+And we smashed the boats.  With axes and sledges it was an easier
+task than I had imagined.  On top of both houses we left the boats
+masses of splintered wreckage, the topaz-eyed ones working most
+energetically; and we regained the poop without a shot being fired.
+The forecastle turned out, of course, at our noise, but made no
+attempt to interfere with us.
+
+And right here I register another complaint against the sea-
+novelists.  A score of men for'ard, desperate all, with desperate
+deeds behind them, and jail and the gallows facing them not many days
+away, should have only begun to fight.  And yet this score of men did
+nothing while we destroyed their last chance for escape.
+
+"But where did they get the grub?" the steward asked me afterwards.
+
+This question he has asked me every day since the first day Mr. Pike
+began cudgelling his brains over it.  I wonder, had I asked Mulligan
+Jacobs the question, if he would have told me?  At any rate, in court
+at Valparaiso that question will be answered.  In the meantime I
+suppose I shall submit to having the steward ask me it daily.
+
+"It is murder and mutiny on the high seas," I told them this morning,
+when they came aft in a body to complain about the destruction of the
+boats and to demand my intentions.
+
+And as I looked down upon the poor wretches from the break of the
+poop, standing there in the high place, the vision of my kind down
+all its mad, violent, and masterful past was strong upon me.
+Already, since our departure from Baltimore, three other men,
+masters, had occupied this high place and gone their way--the
+Samurai, Mr. Pike, and Mr. Mellaire.  I stood here, fourth, no
+seaman, merely a master by the blood of my ancestors; and the work of
+the Elsinore in the world went on.
+
+Bert Rhine, his head and face swathed in bandages, stood there
+beneath me, and I felt for him a tingle of respect.  He, too, in a
+subterranean, ghetto way was master over his rats.  Nosey Murphy and
+Kid Twist stood shoulder to shoulder with their stricken gangster
+leader.  It was his will, because of his terrible injury, to get in
+to land and doctors as quickly as possible.  He preferred taking his
+chance in court against the chance of losing his life, or, perhaps,
+his eyesight.
+
+The crew was divided against itself; and Isaac Chantz, the Jew, his
+wounded shoulder with a hunch to it, seemed to lead the revolt
+against the gangsters.  His wound was enough to convict him in any
+court, and well he knew it.  Beside him, and at his shoulders,
+clustered the Maltese Cockney, Andy Fay, Arthur Deacon, Frank
+Fitzgibbon, Richard Giller, and John Hackey.
+
+In another group, still allegiant to the gangsters, were men such as
+Shorty, Sorensen, Lars Jacobsen, and Larry.  Charles Davis was
+prominently in the gangster group.  A fourth group was composed of
+Sundry Buyers, Nancy, and Tony the Greek.  This group was distinctly
+neutral.  And, finally, unaffiliated, quite by himself, stood
+Mulligan Jacobs--listening, I fancy, to far echoes of ancient wrongs,
+and feeling, I doubt not, the bite of the iron-hot hooks in his
+brain.
+
+"What are you going to do with us, sir?" Isaac Chantz demanded of me,
+in defiance to the gangsters, who were expected to do the talking.
+
+Bert Rhine lurched angrily toward the sound of the Jew's voice.
+Chantz's partisans drew closer to him.
+
+"Jail you," I answered from above.  "And it shall go as hard with all
+of you as I can make it hard."
+
+"Maybe you will an' maybe you won't," the Jew retorted.
+
+"Shut up, Chantz!" Bert Rhine commanded.
+
+"And you'll get yours, you wop," Chantz snarled, "if I have to do it
+myself."
+
+I am afraid that I am not so successfully the man of action that I
+have been priding myself on being; for, so curious and interested was
+I in observing the moving drama beneath me that for the moment I
+failed to glimpse the tragedy into which it was culminating.
+
+"Bombini!" Bert Rhine said.
+
+His voice was imperative.  It was the order of a master to the dog at
+heel.  Bombini responded.  He drew his knife and started to advance
+upon the Jew.  But a deep rumbling, animal-like in its SOUND and
+menace, arose in the throats of those about the Jew.
+
+Bombini hesitated and glanced back across his shoulder at the leader,
+whose face he could not see for bandages and who he knew could not
+see.
+
+"'Tis a good deed--do it, Bombini," Charles Davis encouraged.
+
+"Shut your face, Davis!" came out from Bert Rhine's bandages.
+
+Kid Twist drew a revolver, shoved the muzzle of it first into
+Bombini's side, then covered the men about the Jew.
+
+Really, I felt a momentary twinge of pity for the Italian.  He was
+caught between the mill-stones, "Bombini, stick that Jew," Bert Rhine
+commanded.
+
+The Italian advanced a step, and, shoulder to shoulder, on either
+side, Kid Twist and Nosey Murphy advanced with him.
+
+"I cannot see him," Bert Rhine went on; "but by God I will see him!"
+
+And so speaking, with one single, virile movement he tore away the
+bandages.  The toll of pain he must have paid is beyond measurement.
+I saw the horror of his face, but the description of it is beyond the
+limits of any English I possess.  I was aware that Margaret, at my
+shoulder, gasped and shuddered.
+
+"Bombini!--stick him," the gangster repeated.  "And stick any man
+that raises a yap.  Murphy!  See that Bombini does his work."
+
+Murphy's knife was out and at the bravo's back.  Kid Twist covered
+the Jew's group with his revolver.  And the three advanced.
+
+It was at this moment that I suddenly recollected myself and passed
+from dream to action.
+
+"Bombini!" I said sharply.
+
+He paused and looked up.
+
+"Stand where you are," I ordered, "till I do some talking.--Chantz!
+Make no mistake.  Rhine is boss for'ard.  You take his orders . . .
+until we get into Valparaiso; then you'll take your chances along
+with him in jail.  In the meantime, what Rhine says goes.  Get that,
+and get it straight.  I am behind Rhine until the police come on
+board.--Bombini! do whatever Rhine tells you.  I'll shoot the man who
+tries to stop you.--Deacon!  Stand away from Chantz.  Go over to the
+fife-rail."
+
+All hands knew the stream of lead my automatic rifle could throw, and
+Arthur Deacon knew it.  He hesitated barely a moment, then obeyed.
+
+"Fitzgibbon!--Giller!--Hackey!" I called in turn, and was obeyed.
+"Fay!" I called twice, ere the response came.
+
+Isaac Chantz stood alone, and Bombini now showed eagerness.
+
+"Chantz!" I said; "don't you think it would be healthier to go over
+to the fife-rail and be good?"
+
+He debated the matter not many seconds, resheathed his knife, and
+complied.
+
+The tang of power!  I was minded to let literature get the better of
+me and read the rascals a lecture; but thank heaven I had sufficient
+proportion and balance to refrain.
+
+"Rhine!" I said.
+
+He turned his corroded face up to me and blinked in an effort to see.
+
+"As long as Chantz takes your orders, leave him alone.  We'll need
+every hand to work the ship in.  As for yourself, send Murphy aft in
+half an hour and I'll give him the best the medicine-chest affords.
+That is all.  Go for'ard."
+
+And they shambled away, beaten and dispirited.
+
+"But that man--his face--what happened to him?" Margaret asked of me.
+
+Sad it is to end love with lies.  Sadder still is it to begin love
+with lies.  I had tried to hide this one happening from Margaret, and
+I had failed.  It could no longer be hidden save by lying; and so I
+told her the truth, told her how and why the gangster had had his
+face dashed with sulphuric acid by the old steward who knew white men
+and their ways.
+
+
+There is little more to write.  The mutiny of the Elsinore is over.
+The divided crew is ruled by the gangsters, who are as intent on
+getting their leader into port as I am intent on getting all of them
+into jail.  The first lap of the voyage of the Elsinore draws to a
+close.  Two days, at most, with our present sailing, will bring us
+into Valparaiso.  And then, as beginning a new voyage, the Elsinore
+will depart for Seattle.
+
+
+One thing more remains for me to write, and then this strange log of
+a strange cruise will be complete.  It happened only last night.  I
+am yet fresh from it, and athrill with it and with the promise of it.
+
+Margaret and I spent the last hour of the second dog-watch together
+at the break of the poop.  It was good again to feel the Elsinore
+yielding to the wind-pressure on her canvas, to feel her again
+slipping and sliding through the water in an easy sea.
+
+Hidden by the darkness, clasped in each other's arms, we talked love
+and love plans.  Nor am I shamed to confess that I was all for
+immediacy.  Once in Valparaiso, I contended, we would fit out the
+Elsinore with fresh crew and officers and send her on her way.  As
+for us, steamers and rapid travelling would fetch us quickly home.
+Furthermore, Valparaiso being a place where such things as licences
+and ministers obtained, we would be married ere we caught the fast
+steamers for home.
+
+But Margaret was obdurate.  The Wests had always stood by their
+ships, she urged; had always brought their ships in to the ports
+intended or had gone down with their ships in the effort.  The
+Elsinore had cleared from Baltimore for Seattle with the Wests in the
+high place.  The Elsinore would re-equip with officers and men in
+Valparaiso, and the Elsinore would arrive in Seattle with a West
+still on board.
+
+"But think, dear heart," I objected.  "The voyage will require
+months.  Remember what Henley has said:  'Every kiss we take or give
+leaves us less of life to live.'"
+
+She pressed her lips to mine.
+
+"We kiss," she said.
+
+But I was stupid.
+
+"Oh, the weary, weary months," I complained.  "You dear silly," she
+gurgled.  "Don't you understand?"
+
+"I understand only that it is many a thousand miles from Valparaiso
+to Seattle," I answered.
+
+"You won't understand," she challenged.
+
+"I am a fool," I admitted.  "I am aware of only one thing:  I want
+you.  I want you."
+
+"You are a dear, but you are very, very stupid," she said, and as she
+spoke she caught my hand and pressed the palm of it against her
+cheek.  "What do you feel?" she asked.
+
+"Hot cheeks--cheeks most hot."
+
+"I am blushing for what your stupidity compels me to say," she
+explained.  "You have already said that such things as licences and
+ministers obtain in Valparaiso . . . and . . . and, well . . . "
+
+"You mean . . . ?"  I stammered.
+
+"Just that," she confirmed.
+
+"The honeymoon shall be on the Elsinore from Valparaiso all the way
+to Seattle?" I rattled on.
+
+"The many thousands of miles, the weary, weary months," she teased in
+my own intonations, until I stifled her teasing with my lips.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Mutiny of the "Elsinore", by Jack London
+