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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..01801e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67242 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67242) diff --git a/old/67242-0.txt b/old/67242-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8ac02d5..0000000 --- a/old/67242-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4725 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales of the clipper ships, by Cicely -Fox Smith - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Tales of the clipper ships - -Author: Cicely Fox Smith - -Release Date: January 24, 2022 [eBook #67242] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Steve Mattern, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was - produced from images made available by the HathiTrust - Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE CLIPPER -SHIPS *** - - - - - - TALES OF THE CLIPPER SHIPS - - [Illustration: THE “MAID OF ATHENS” - - “LIKE SOME LOVELY BUT WILFUL LADY FALLEN AMONG EVIL COMPANIONS” (p. 22)] - - - - - TALES OF THE - CLIPPER SHIPS - - BY - C. FOX SMITH - - WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY - PHIL W. SMITH - - [Illustration: colophon] - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - 1926 - - - - - PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE “MAID OF ATHENS” 3 - -THE END OF AN ARGUMENT 71 - -ORANGES 91 - -SEATTLE SAM SIGNS ON 107 - -PADDY DOYLE’S BOOTS 123 - -THE UNLUCKY “ALTISIDORA” 133 - - - - - “The End of an Argument” and “Seattle Sam Signs On” have appeared - in the “Blue Peter,” to whose Editor the customary acknowledgments - are hereby made. - - - - -THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE “MAID -OF ATHENS” - - - - -TALES OF THE CLIPPER SHIPS - - - - -THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE “MAID OF ATHENS” - - -I - -Old Thomas Featherstone was dead: he was also buried. - -The knot of frowsy females--that strange and ghoulish sisterhood which -frequents such dismal spots as faithfully as dramatic critics the first -nights of theatres--who stood monotonously rocking perambulators on -their back wheels outside the cemetery gates, were unanimously of -opinion that it had been a skinny show. Indeed, Mrs. Wilkins, who was by -way of considering herself what reporters like to call the “doyenne” of -the gathering, said as much by way of consolation to her special crony -Mrs. Pettefer, coming up hot and breathless, five minutes too late for -the afternoon’s entertainment. - -“No flars” (thus Mrs. Wilkins), “not one! Not so much as a w’ite -chrysant’! You ’aven’t missed much, me dear, I tell you.” - -Mrs. Pettefer, her hand to her heaving bosom, said there was some called -it waste, to be sure, but she did like to see flars ’erself. - -“You’d otter’ave seen ’em when they buried the lickle girl yesterday,” -pursued Mrs. Wilkins. - -“I _was_ put out, missin’ that, but there, I ’ad to take ar Florence to -the ’orspittle for ’er aneroids,” sighed Mrs. Pettefer, glancing -malevolently at “ar Florence” as if she would gladly have buried her, -without flars, too, by way of paying her out. “I do love a lickle -child’s fruneral.” - -“Mask o’ flars, the corfin was,” went on Mrs. Wilkins. “The harum lilies -was lovely. And one big reaf like an ’arp. W’ite ribbinks on the ’orses, -an’ all....” - -The connoisseurs in grief dispersed. The driver of the hearse replaced -the black gloves of ceremony by the woollen ones of comfort, for the day -was raw and promised fog later: pulled out a short clay and lit it, -climbed to his box and, whipping up his horses (bays with black -points--“none of your damned prancing Belgians for me,” had been one of -Old Featherstone’s last injunctions), set off at a brisk trot, he to tea -and onions over the stables, they to the pleasant warmth of their stalls -and their waiting oats and hay. Four of old Thomas’s nearest relatives -piled into the first carriage, four more of his remoter kindred into the -second, and the lawyer--Hobbs, Senior, of Hobbs, Keating & Hobbs, of -Chancery Lane--who had lingered behind to settle accounts with the -officiating clergyman, came hurrying down the path between ranks of -tombstones, glimmering pale and ghostly in the greying November -afternoon, to make up a mixed bag in the third and last with Captain -David Broughton, master of the deceased’s ship “Maid of Athens,” and Mr. -Jenkinson, the managing clerk from the office in Billiter Square. - -The lawyer was a small, spare man, halting a little from sciatica. -Given a pepper-and-salt coat with wide tails, and a straw in his mouth, -he would have filled the part of a racing tipster to perfection; but in -his sombre funeral array, with his knowing, birdlike way of holding his -head, and his sharp, darting, observant glance, he resembled nothing so -much as a lame starling; and he chattered like a starling, too, as the -carriage rattled away in the wake of the others through the darkening -streets towards the respectable northern suburb where old Featherstone -had lived and died. - -“Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen,” he said, settling himself in his -place as the coachman slammed the door on the party. “Well, well ... -everything’s passed off very nicely, don’t you think?” - -Both Captain Broughton and Mr. Jenkinson, after due consideration, -agreed that “it” had passed off very nicely indeed; though, to be sure, -it would be hard to say precisely what conceivable circumstance might -have occurred to make it do otherwise. - -Little Jenkinson sat with his back to the horses. He was the kind of -person who sits with his back to the horses all through life: the kind -of neat, punctual little man to be found in its thousands in the -business offices of the City. He carried, as it were, a perpetual pen -behind his ear. A clerk to his finger-tips--say that of him, and you -have said all; unless perhaps that in private life he was very likely a -bit of a domestic tyrant in some brick box of a semi-detached villa -Tooting or Balham way, who ran his finger along the sideboard every -morning to see if his wife had dusted it properly. - -Captain Broughton sat stiffly erect in the opposite corner of the -carriage, with its musty aroma of essence-of-funerals--that -indescribable blend of new black clothes and moth-balls and damp -horsehair and smelling salts and faded flowers. His square hands, -cramped into unaccustomed black kid gloves which already showed a white -split across the knuckles, lay awkwardly, palms uppermost, on his knees. -“Damn the things,” he said to himself for the fiftieth time, -contemplating their empty finger-tips, sticking out flat as the ends of -half-filled pea-pods, “why don’t they make ’em so that a man can get his -hands into ’em?” - -A square-set man, a shade under medium height, with a neat beard, once -fair, now faded to a sandy grey, and eyes of the clear ice-blue which -suggested a Scandinavian ancestry, he carried his sixty-odd years well. -A typical shipmaster, one would say at a first glance: a steady man, a -safe man, from whom nothing unexpected need be looked for, one way or -the other. And then, perhaps, those ice-blue eyes would give you pause, -and the thought would cross your mind that there might be certain -circumstances in which the owner of those eyes might conceivably become -no longer a safe and steady quantity, but an unknown and even an -uncomfortable one. - -“Don’t mind admitting I’m glad it’s over,” rattled on the little lawyer; -“depressing affairs, these funerals, to my thinking. Horrible. Good for -business, though--our business and doctors’ business, what! More people -get their death through attendin’ other people’s funerals than one likes -to think of. It’s the standing, you know. That’s what does it. Standing -on damp ground. Nothing worse--nothing! And then no hats. That’s where -our friends the Jews have the pull of us Gentiles--eh, Mr. Jenkinson? -If a Jew wants to show respect, he keeps his hat on. Curious, ain’t it? -Ever hear the story about the feller--Spurgeon, was it--or Dr. -Parker--Spurgeon, I think--one or t’other of ’em, anyway, don’t much -matter, really--and the two fellers that kept their hats on while he was -preachin’? ‘If I were to go to a synagogue,’ says Spurgeon--yes, I’m -pretty sure it was Spurgeon--‘if I went to a synagogue,’ says he, ‘I -should keep my hat on; and therefore I should be glad if those two young -Jews in the back of the church would take theirs off in _my_ -synagogue’--ha ha ha--good, wasn’t it?... - -“And talking about getting cold at funerals, I’ll let you into a little -secret. I always wear an extra singlet, myself, for funerals. Yes; and a -body belt. Got ’em on now. Fact. My wife laughs at me. But I say, ‘Oh, -you may laugh, my dear, but you’d laugh the other side of your face if I -came home with lumbago and you had to sit up half the night ironing my -back.’ Ever try that for lumbago? A common flat iron--_you_ know. Hot as -you can bear it. Best thing going--ab-so-lutely....” - -He paused while he rubbed a clear place in the windows which their -breath had misted and peered out like a child going to a party. - -“Nearly there, I think,” he went on. “Between ourselves, I think the old -gentleman’s going to cut up remarkably well. Six figures, I shouldn’t -wonder. Not a bit, I shouldn’t.... A shrewd man, Captain Broughton, -don’t you agree?” - -Captain Broughton in his dark corner made a vague noise which might be -taken to indicate that he did agree. Not that it mattered, really, -whether he agreed or not. The little lawyer was one of those people who -was so fond of hearing his own voice that he never even noticed if -anyone was listening to him; which was all to the good when you were -feverishly busy with your own thoughts. - -“Ah, yes,” he resumed, “a very shrewd, capable man of business! Saw the -way things were going in the shipping world and got out in time. ‘The -sailing ship is done’ (those were his very words to me). ‘If I’d been -thirty years younger I’d have started a fleet of steam kettles with the -best of ’em. But not now--not at my time of life. You can’t teach an old -dog new tricks.’ Those were his very words.... - -“Ah, ha, here we are at last! Between ourselves, a glass o’ the old -gentleman’s port won’t come amiss. Fine cellar he kept--fine cellar! ‘I -don’t go in for a lot of show, Hobbs,’ I remember him saying once, ‘but -I like what I have _good_....’” - - -II - -Old Featherstone’s home was a dull, ugly, solid, inconvenient Victorian -house in a dull crescent of similar houses. It stands there still--it -has been more fortunate than Featherstone’s Wharf in Limehouse and the -little dark office in Billiter Square with “T. Featherstone” on its -dusty wire blinds and the half model of the “Parisina” facing you as you -went in. They are gone; but the house I saw only the other day--its -rhododendrons perhaps a shade dingier, a trifle more straggly, and -“bright young society” (for the place is a select boarding -establishment for City gents nowadays) gyrating to the blare of a -loudspeaker in what was aforetime old Thomas Featherstone’s dining-room. -And the legend “Pulo Way,” in tarnished gilt on black, still gleams in -the light of the street lamp opposite on the two square stone -gateposts--bringing a sudden momentary vision of dark seas and strange -stars, of ships becalmed under the lee of the land, of light puffs of -warm, spicy air stealing out from unseen shores as if they breathed -fragrance in their sleep; so that the vague shapes of “Lyndhurst” and -“Chatsworth” and “Bellavista” seem the humped outlines of islands -sheltering one knows not what of wonder and peril and romance.... - -A maidservant had come in and lighted the gas in the dining-room, -lowered the drab venetian blinds in the bay window, and drawn the heavy -stamped plush curtains which hung stiffly under the gilt cornice. -Broughton sipped his glass of wine and ate a sandwich, surveying the -familiar room with that curious illogical sense of surprised resentment -which humanity always feels in the presence of the calm indifference of -inanimate things to its own transiency and mortality. - -He knew it well, that rather gloomy apartment with its solid Victorian -air of ugly, substantial comfort. He had been there before many times. -It had been one of Thomas Featherstone’s unvarying customs to invite his -skippers to a ceremonial dinner whenever their ships were in London -River. An awful sort of business, Broughton had always secretly thought -these functions; and, like the lawyer on the present occasion, had been -heartily glad when they were over. The bill of fare never varied--roast -beef, baked potatoes, some kind of a boiled pudding, almonds and -raisins, and a bottle of port to follow. “Special Captain’s port,” that -turbulent Irishman, Pat Shaughnessy, of the “Mazeppa,” irreverently -termed it: adding, with his great laugh, “You bet the old divvle don’t -fetch out his best vintage for hairy shellbacks like us!” - -Thirteen--no, it must be fourteen--of those dinners Broughton could -remember. They had been annual affairs so long as the “Maid of Athens” -could hold her own against the steamers in the Australian wool trade. -Latterly, since she had been driven to tramping the world for charters, -they had become movable feasts, and between the last two there had been -a gap of nearly three years. - -Broughton’s eyes travelled slowly from one detail to another--the -mahogany chairs ranged at precise intervals against the dull red of the -flock-papered walls; the round table whose gleaming brass toes peeped -modestly from beneath the voluminous tapestry table cover; the “lady’s -and gent’s easies” sitting primly on opposite sides of the vast yawning -cavern of the fire-place; the mantelpiece where the black marble clock -ticked leisurely between its flanking Marly horses and the pair of -pagoda vases, with their smirking ladies and fierce bewhiskered -warriors, that one of the old man’s captains had brought years ago from -Foochow; the mahogany sideboard whose plate-glass mirror gave back every -minutest detail of the room in reverse; the inlaid glass-fronted -bookcase with its smug rows of gilt-tooled, leather-bound books--the -Waverley Novels, Falconer’s “Shipwreck,” Byron’s poems. - -Thomas Featherstone seldom used any other room but this. He possessed a -drawing-room: a bleak chill shrine of the middle-class elegancies where -the twittering Victorian niece who kept house for him--a characterless -worthy woman with the red nose which bespeaks a defective digestion--was -wont to dispense tepid tea and flabby muffins on her periodical “At -Home” days. He had no study: he had his office for his work, he said, -and that was enough for him. He had been brought up to sit in the -dining-room at home in his father’s, the ship-chandler’s, house in -Stepney, and he had carried the custom with him into the days of his -prosperity. - -So there he had sat, evening after evening, with his gold spectacles -perched on his high nose, reading “Lloyd’s List” and the commercial -columns of “The Times,” the current issues of which were even now in the -brass newspaper rack by his empty chair: occasionally playing a hand of -picquet with the twittering niece. He was a man of an almost inhuman -punctuality of habit. People had been known to set their watches by Old -Featherstone. At nine o’clock every morning of the week round came the -brougham to drive him into the City. At twelve o’clock he sallied forth -from Billiter Square to the “London Tavern,” and the table that he -always occupied there. At half-past one, back to the office; or, if one -of his ships were due, to the West India Docks, where they generally -berthed. At five the brougham appeared in Billiter Square to transport -him to “Pulo Way” again. - -A strange, colourless, monotonous sort of life, one would think; and one -which had singularly little in common with the wider aspects of the -business in which his money had been made. Of the romantic side of -shipping, or indeed of its human side, he seemed to have no conception -at all. A consignment of balas rubies, of white elephants, of Manchester -goods, of pig iron, they were all one to him--so many items in a bill of -lading, no more, no less. Ships carried his house-flag to the four -corners of the earth: no one of them had ever carried him farther than -the outward-bound pilot. No matter what outlandish ports they visited, -it stirred his blood not a whit. Perhaps it was one of the secrets of -his success: for imagination, nine times out of ten, is a dangerous sort -of commodity, commercially considered; and if Old Featherstone had gone -a-gallivanting off to Tuticorin or Amoy or Punta Arenas or Penang or -Port au Prince or any other alluringly-named place with which his ships -trafficked, instead of sitting in Billiter Square and looking after his -business--why, no doubt his business would have been vastly the -sufferer! And, indeed, since he found such adventure as his soul needed -no farther afield than between the marbled covers of his own ledgers, -there would have been no sense in looking for it elsewhere. - -You saw the old man’s portrait yonder over the mantelpiece, behind the -marble clock and the Marly horses--keen eyes under bushy eyebrows, side -whiskers, Gladstone collar, slightly sardonic smile. Broughton indulged -in a passing speculation as to what they did with his glass eye when -they buried him. The picture was the work of an unknown artist. “If I’d -been fool enough to pay for a big name,” old Thomas had been wont to -say, “I’d have got a worse picture for three times the money”; and the -old man had not forgotten to drive a hard bargain, the recollection of -which had perhaps a little coloured the artist’s mood. The unknown had -caught his sitter in a characteristic attitude: sitting erect and rigid, -his hands clasped one above the other on the silver knob of his -favourite Malacca walking-stick. A shrewd old man, you would say, a -shrewd, hard, narrow old man, and not have been far wrong in your -estimate; though, as even his enemies were bound to admit, he was not -without his moments of vision, his odd surprising streaks of generosity. - -A man of but little education--he had run as a child daily to a little -school in Stepney, kept by the widow and daughters of a shipmaster, and -later had gone for a year or two to an Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen -somewhere off the East India Dock Road--he was wont to say, and to say -as if it were something to boast of, that he had never read but two -books in his life--Falconer’s “Shipwreck” and Byron’s poems, both of -which he knew from cover to cover. For the latter he had a profound and -astonishing admiration, so much so that all his ships were named after -Byronic heroes and heroines. - -The “junk store” some wag once called the Featherstone fleet: and the -gibe was not far wide of the mark. Anyone who has the patience and the -curiosity to search the pages of a fifty-or sixty-year-old “Lloyd’s -Register” will find in that melancholy record of human achievement and -human effort blown like dead leaves on the winds of time and change -sufficient reason for the nickname. Everywhere it is the same -tale--“Mazeppa” _ex_ “Electric Telegraph,” “Bride of Abydos” _ex_ -“Navarino,” “Zuleika” _ex_ “Roderick Random,” “Thyrza” _ex_ “Rebel -Maid.” Old Featherstone had at one time more than fifty ships under his -house-flag, not one of which had been built to his order. “The man who -succeeds,” was one of his sayings, “is the man who knows best how to -profit by other men’s mistakes.” - -The doctrine was one which he put very effectively into practice. He had -an almost uncanny nose for bargains; but, what was more than that, he -was gifted in a most amazing degree with that peculiar and indefinable -quality best described as “ship sense”--an ability amounting well-nigh -to a genius for knowing a good ship from a bad one which is seldom found -but in seamen, and is rare even among them. - -Someone once asked him the secret of his gift, but I doubt if he got -much satisfaction out of the answer. - -“Ask me another,” snapped out the old man in his dry, staccato fashion. -“I’ve got a brother can waggle his ears like a jackass. How does _he_ do -that? _I_ don’t know. _He_ don’t know. Same thing in my case, exactly.” - -And certainly where he got it is something of a mystery. But since there -had been Featherstones buried for generations where time and grime -combine to make a hallowed shade in the old parish church of Stepney, -there may well have been seafaring blood in the family, and likely -enough the founder of the little bow-windowed shop in Wapping Wall was -himself a retired ship’s carpenter. - -Whatever the explanation, there was undeniably the fact. He bought -steamers that didn’t pay and had never paid and that experts said never -would pay: ripped the guts out of them, and in a couple of years they -had paid for themselves. He bought unlucky ships, difficult ships, ships -with a bad name of every sort and kind. Ships that broke their captains’ -hearts and their owners’ fortunes, ships that wouldn’t steer, that -wouldn’t wear, that wouldn’t stay. And never once did his bargain turn -out a bad one. - - -III - -From Old Featherstone’s portrait, and that painted ironical smile which -still had the power to call up in him a feeling of vague discomfort, -Broughton’s eyes travelled on to the portraits of ships which--Old -Featherstone excepted--were the room’s sole artistic adornment. - -Over there in the corners--one each side of the portrait--were the old -“Childe Harold” and “Don Juan.” They were the first ships Old -Featherstone bought, in the distant days when he was still young -Featherstone, a smart young clerk in Daly’s office, whose astonishing -rise to fortune was yet on the knees of the gods. - -They were old frigate-built East Indiamen, both of them, the “General -Bunbury” and “Earl Clapham,” from some Bombay or Moulmein dockyard: teak -through and through, but as leaky as sieves with sheer age and years of -labouring in seaways. Young Featherstone bought them for a song: gutted -them, packed their roomy ’tween-decks with emigrants like herrings in a -barrel, and hurried them backwards and forwards as fast as he dared -between London and Australia while the gold rush of the ’sixties was at -its hottest. He was in too big a hurry even to give them new figureheads -to match their new names, with the result that a portly British general -and a highly respectable peer of Evangelistic tendencies had to endure -the indignity of an enforced masquerade, the one as the wandering -“Childe,” the other as the disreputable “Don” of many amours. - -Goodness knows how these two old ships’ venerable ribs managed to stick -together running down the Easting: nor indeed how it was that they -didn’t carry their freight of hopeful fortune seekers to the bottom -before they were well clear of the Channel. However, by hook or by -crook, stick together they did, long enough at any rate to lay the -foundation of Featherstone’s success. The “Childe Harold”--she who was -the “General Bunbury”--created a bit of a sensation in the last lap of -her third voyage by sinking, poor old soul, in the West India Dock -entrance at the head of a whole fleet of shipping crowding in on the -tide. The “Don Juan”--the backsliding “Earl Clapham”--came to grief, by -a stroke of luck, just off the Mauritius, and her old bones (it must -have taken a small forest of teak to build her) fetched double what -Featherstone had paid for her for building material. But they had served -their purpose. Thereafter, Featherstone never looked behind him. - -The old “Giaour”--_she_ started life as a steamer, in the days when -steam was suffering from over-inflation, and a good many speculators -were scalding their fingers badly with it. The “Cottonopolis,” of the -defunct “Spreadeagle” Line--that was how she began. Her accommodation -was the talk of the town, said to be the most lavish ever seen--a wash -basin to every six cabins--but she devoured such quantities of fuel, as -well as turning out such a brute in a seaway that her passenger list was -never more than half full, that the shareholders were glad to get rid of -her at a loss. There she was--an ugly great lump of a ship, with masts -that had a peculiar rake to them, something after the style of a Chinese -junk. Sail, too ... like a witch, she did!... Then the little -“Thyrza”--_she_ was a pretty little butterfly of a thing; but she was as -near being a mistake as any purchase Featherstone ever made. He had -bought her, so it was believed, with the intention at the back of his -mind of winning the China tea race; but the tea trade petering out, he -put her into the wool fleet instead. Broughton had seen the dainty -little ship many a time: a regular picture she used to look, beating up -to the Heads just as old Captain Winter had painted her. Rare hand with -a paint-brush that old chap was, and no mistake! Give him one good look -at a ship, and he’d get her likeness to a gantline ... notice things -about her, too, sometimes, that even her own skipper hadn’t found -out.... - -There was the “Manfred”--the unluckiest ship, surely, that ever left the -ways! The “Young Tamlin” was the name she used to go by, in the days -when she used to kill two or three men every trip. That was before Old -Featherstone got hold of her, of course: and her owners--she belonged to -a little one-ship company--got the jumps about it and sold her. Sold her -cheap, too ... but, bless you, that stopped her gallop all right! She -drowned no more men afterwards. - -And--last of all--the “Maid of Athens.” ... - -Broughton’s own ship--the pride of his heart, the apple of his eye, the -guiding motive, the absorbing interest of his life for more than -twenty-five years. - -Broughton didn’t care much about that picture--never had done, though he -didn’t trouble to tell the old man so. No use asking for trouble: and he -was a contrary old devil if you crossed him! A Chinese ship-chandler’s -affair, it was, and moreover it showed the “Maid” with a spencer at the -main which she never carried: at least, not in Broughton’s time. A good -long time that meant, too ... ah well! They had grown old together, his -ship and he! - -He remembered the day he got command of her as clearly as if it were -yesterday. He was chief officer of the “Haidée” at the time--getting -along in years, too, and beginning to wonder if he would ever have the -luck to get a ship of his own. She was a nice little ship, the “Haidée,” -the last of Daly’s fleet, and Featherstone bought her after old Daly, -who had given him a stool in his office years before, shot himself in -that very office in Fenchurch Street when the news came of the wreck of -the “Allan-a-Dale,” his favourite ship, on the Calf of Man. Quite a nice -little ship, but nothing out of the common about her: nothing a man -could take to particularly, somehow. And yet at the time he had wanted -nothing better than to be her skipper. - -Old Captain Philpot had been queerish all that voyage; he used to nip -brandy on the quiet a lot, and take drugs when he could get them as -well. Soon after they left the Coromandel coast he went out of his mind -altogether, and Broughton found him one day, when he went down to -dinner, crawling round the cabin on all fours and complaining that he -was King Nebuchadnezzar and couldn’t find any grass to eat. - -Good Lord! that was a time, too ... made a man sweat to think of it, -even after all these years! Hurricane after hurricane right through the -Indian Ocean: on deck most of the time, and sitting on the Old Man’s -head when he got rumbustious during the watch below. However, the poor -old chap died as quiet as a child, when he smelt the Western Islands, -and Broughton as chief officer took the vessel into port. - -Old Featherstone came on board, as his custom was, as soon as she was -fairly berthed, and Broughton--tongue-tied and stammering as he always -was on important occasions of the kind--gave an account of his -stewardship. The old man listened with never a word, only just a grunt -or a brusque nod now and again; and when the tale was told made no -comment whatever beyond a curt “Humph! Well, you can’t have command of -this ship. She’s promised to Allinson. Can’t go back on him. Besides, -he’s senior to you.” - -Then, with one foot on the gangway, he turned back and barked out: - -“I’ve bought a new ship. ‘Philopena’ or some such outlandish name. She’s -at Griffin’s Wharf, Millwall. Better go and look at her. You can have -her if you fancy her.” - -Half-way down the gangway he turned again. - -“Come and dine with me at Blackheath on Thursday. Seven o’clock. And -don’t keep me waiting, mind! I’m a punctual man, or I shouldn’t be where -I am.” - -That invitation--invitation? it was more like a Royal command--as -Broughton well knew, set the seal on his promotion. - -The ship was the “Maid of Athens.” - - -IV - -Broughton went in search of her as soon as he had finished up on board -the “Haidée” and turned her over to the care of the old lame shipkeeper. - -He didn’t feel particularly excited; his feeling, naturally enough, was -one of pleasurable anticipation of an improvement in his material -circumstances--no more than that, as he realized with that wistful sense -of flatness and disappointment which inevitably accompanies the -discovery that some long-desired consummation has lost through the lapse -of time its power to excite and to intoxicate the mind. “If this had -happened ten years ago,” he thought rather sadly, “Lord, how full of -myself I should have been!” forgetting that middle age, when it does -make acquaintance with passion, seldom does it by halves. - -He found the “Philopena” in a derelict, melancholy wet dock somewhere -among vacant lots and chemical works down in the Isle of Dogs, along -with a couple of dilapidated coasting colliers and a broken-down tug--a -smoky Thames-side sunset burning like a banked fire behind the -cynical-looking sheds of a shadowy and problematical Griffin--and he -fell in love with her on the instant. - -There is--or perhaps one should rather say was, since it is doubtful if -the Age of Steam has cognizance of such sentimental weaknesses--a -certain kind of thrill, not to be satisfactorily defined in words, -which runs through a man’s whole being when first his eyes fall upon the -one ship which, out of all the thousands which sail the seas, seems -especially made to be the complement of his own being, as surely as a -woman is made for her mate. It is a feeling to which first love is -perhaps the thing most nearly comparable--it can make the most -commonplace of men into a poet; and even that lacks one of its -qualities--its pure and sexless virginity. Other ships there may be more -beautiful; but they leave him cold. They are not for him as she is for -him.... - -That thrill it was--that awakening of two of the root instincts of -mankind, the instinct to cherish, and the instinct to possess--which ran -(surprising even himself) through that most matter-of-fact and -unimaginative of men, David Broughton, when he first set eyes on the -ship that for twenty-odd years to come was destined to provide the main -interest and object of his existence. - -There seemed to be nobody about the wharf, but Broughton untied a leaky -dinghy that he found moored under the piles and pulled out to her. The -nearer he got to her the better he liked her. Stern a bit on the heavy -side, he fancied--with too much weight aft she’d be inclined to run up -into the wind if you didn’t watch her. She’d want some handling, all -right, but it wouldn’t do to be afraid of her, either. Her lines were a -dream! He pulled all round her, viewing her from every angle; and as he -rowed under her keen bow he caught himself fancying that her little -dainty figurehead looked down upon him with a kind of wistful appeal--a -sort of “You won’t go away and leave me, will you?” look that won his -heart on the spot. - -He made the boat fast to the crazy Jacob’s ladder and swung himself on -board. She was filthily dirty, appallingly neglected, with that -unspeakably forlorn and abandoned look which ships seem to get after a -long lay-up in port. The grime and litter everywhere made his heart -ache. The Dagoes had had her for the last year or two, and her little -cabin reeked of garlic and stale cigar smoke. The shipkeeper, a -drink-sodden old ruffian with a horrible red-running eye, who was -probably none too pleased at the prospect of losing his job now his -temporary home was sold, followed Broughton round grumbling and -croaking. Lor’ bless you, _she_ wouldn’t sail, not she! No more’n a -mule’ll go if he don’t want to! There was plenty had had a try at her, -and they all told the same tale. Somethink wrong with the way she was -built, must be ... or else they’d laid her keel of a Friday or -summat.... - -Broughton smiled to himself. Somehow, he thought, that ship was going to -sail for him! He couldn’t have explained the feeling for the life of -him, but there it was. - -And so, in point of fact, things turned out. Just as a horse which is an -unmanageable fiend in the hands of a crack jockey will let some snip of -a stable lad do what he will with him--just as a dog made savage by -ill-usage will attach himself for life (and perhaps--who knows?--beyond) -to someone who first masters him and then shows him kindness--so did -this little wild “Philopena” under her new name of “Maid of Athens” show -no sign of the tricks and vices, whatever they might be, which had -brought her, like some lovely but wilful lady fallen among evil -companions, to the obscene desolation of that forlorn Millwall wet -dock. Twenty-five years ago ... ah, well, they had been happy years, on -the whole! A reserved and rather lonely man, not over fond of company, -Broughton had drifted into a negatively disastrous sort of marriage in -his young days with a woman considerably older than himself. With the -best will in the world to do so, he had been unable to feel any but a -superficial grief at her death a few years later; and in the house where -his married stepdaughter now lived he always felt like a stranger on -sufferance during his brief periods ashore. But he had found an abiding -content in the daily routine of his life at sea. He gave himself up to -his ship without grudging. She was his one interest in life, his hobby, -his love. He laid out his spare cash on little items of personal -adornment for her as for a loved woman, and on the new gear of which Old -Featherstone stinted her as his natural tendency to stinginess increased -with age. - -It was a brother skipper, Tom Pellatt, of Maclean’s pretty little -clipper “Phoebe Maclean”--a silly, noisy chap Broughton privately -thought him--who had first put the idea into his head that the “Maid of -Athens” might one day become his own property in name as she already was -in spirit. - -Pellatt had been dining on board when both ships were in Sydney Harbour, -and just as he was going he said: - -“Tell you what, Broughton, you’ve been the making of this ship; and if -old Nethermillstone don’t leave her to you in his will he damn well -ought to, that’s all!” - -Broughton put the suggestion aside with a laugh. Pellatt, who was one of -those people who, as the phrase goes, “talk as they warm,” and simply -said it out of a desire to say something complimentary and pleasing to -his host--Broughton’s absorption in his ship being something of a -standing joke among his fellow-captains when his back was -turned--probably forgot he had ever said it before he got back to his -own ship. But the words had sown their seed. - -At first Broughton only played with the idea at odd moments: he would do -this, he would do that, if the ship were his--treating it as a pleasant -kind of game of make-believe wherewith to beguile an idle minute; but -always with the mental proviso that, of course, no one but a silly -gabbling ass like Pellatt would ever have thought of such a thing. - -Then, gradually, he began to wonder if it really was such a ridiculous -notion, after all. Old Featherstone’s business would die with him, that -was very certain. Hadn’t he said as much himself, the last time -Broughton dined at Blackheath, about the time young Daly, whose father -Featherstone had worked for in his clerking days, came such a holy -mucker in the Bankruptcy Court? - -“I don’t intend to leave my house-flag to be trailed through the mire!” -he had said. - -And hadn’t he said, too, not once but many times: - -“I shall never sell the ‘Maid of Athens’!” - -Presently, from being a desirable but remote possibility, he began to -consider it in the light of a probability; and from that it was but a -short step to take to begin to look upon it as a right. Who, he asked -himself, had a stronger claim to the ship than he--if, indeed, half so -strong? - -He began by degrees to make his plans more definitely. It was no longer -“if the ship were mine,” but “when she is mine.” He hugged the thought -to him, fed upon it, lived with it night and day. He hoped he could -honestly say he had never wished Old Featherstone’s death; but when the -news of his death had come he had not been able to repress a thrill of -exultation as the thought rose to the surface of his mind, “Now, at -last, she will surely be mine!” - -It had been the old man himself who had finally turned what had until -then been no more than a vague hope into a virtual certainty. - -It was on the occasion of that last dinner at Blackheath, a matter of -six weeks ago, just before the attack of bronchitis that had finished -the old fellow off. There he had sat in his big easy-chair by the fire, -looking incredibly frail and shrunken, his eyes, for all that, as keen -as ever in their sunken caves as they wandered from Broughton’s face to -the counterfeit presentment of the “Maid of Athens” riding proudly on -her painted sea. - -“Well, Broughton,” he had snapped out, suddenly, for a moment almost -like his old self again, “you’ve thought a lot of the old ship, haven’t -you?” - -Broughton, taken by surprise, and feeling, no doubt, just a little -guilty about those secret aircastles of his, said, stammering, well, -yes, he supposed he had. - -And there the matter stopped. Not much, perhaps; but straws show which -way the wind blows. Broughton thought he was justified in reading a -certain significance into the incident. - -And again, on the way up to the funeral that morning, he had looked in -at a little club he belonged to, and met half a dozen skippers of his -acquaintance: always the same tale--“Hello, Broughton! Off to plant old -Feathers, I suppose! Hope he’s come down handsome in his will.” - -“Bless you, I’m not expecting anything!” had been Broughton’s answer, as -much to the jealous Fates as to them.... Well, it would soon be settled -now one way or the other. He didn’t really, in his heart of hearts, -believe in the possibility of that other way at all; but he included -it in his mind as a matter of form--again with that vague -half-superstitious notion of propitiating some watchful and sardonic -Destiny. - -He was surprised to find himself so little excited now that the great -moment had arrived. He had had to keep a tight hand on himself on the -way up from the cemetery, lest he should betray his fever of nervous -impatience to his companions, and he had been relieved when the lawyer’s -constant flow of chatter obviated the necessity of his taking any share -in the conversation. Now, he was glad to find, he had got himself well -under control. He was even able to derive a certain quiet interest from -observing the suppressed eagerness on the decorous countenances of Old -Featherstone’s relations. A so-so lot, on the whole! Broughton thought -by the looks of ’em that old Thomas must have had the lion’s share of -the family wits. - -Funny that a man should spend all his life piling money up, and then -have no one to leave it to that he really cared for! “My brother’s -children’ll get my money when I’m gone,” Old Featherstone used to say; -“don’t think much of ’em, but there it is! I hope they’ll enjoy -spending it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.” ... - -The little lawyer sipped the last of his port, drew his chair up to the -table, and rummaged in the depths of his shabby brown bag with the air -of grave importance of a conjurer about to produce rabbits from a hat. - -Ah, here was the rabbit--a blue, folded paper which he unfolded, -flattened with immense deliberation, and began to read in the dead -silence which had suddenly fallen on the room. - -By George, thought Broughton, the old fellow was warm and no mistake! -Houses here, houses there, shares in this railway, that bank, the other -mine. It didn’t interest him much personally, but it was as good as a -play to see the pale gooseberry eyes of that grocer-looking chap bulging -with excitement until they bade fair to drop out of his head. - -“The house ‘Pulo Way’ and the contents thereof (with the exception of -certain items specified elsewhere),” droned on the lawyer’s unmusical, -monotonous voice, “to Rosina Barratt for her life.” ... Rosina -Barratt--that was the dyspeptic niece. Broughton felt glad to know he’d -done the proper thing by her. She deserved it. A decent woman: and he -must have been a crotchety old devil to live with in his latter days! - -Good Lord, what an interminable rigmarole this legal business was! -Broughton moved restlessly in his seat. The ships--the ships! Was he -never coming to them? - -His own name, starting at him out of the midst of the formal -phraseology, made his heart miss a beat. Here it was at last: but -no--not yet---- - -“To Captain David Broughton my oil painting of the clipper ship ‘Maid of -Athens’ in gold frame, knowing his regard for the ship and that he will -value the painting on that account....” - -Broughton just managed to bite back a laugh in time. If the old chap had -known what he really thought about that picture! - -The lawyer droned on. Somebody got that black clock on the -mantelpiece--somebody else the old man’s Malacca cane--two hundred -pounds to little Jenkinson--a hundred to the lawyer. The little clerk -sat up and smirked like a Sunday School kid that hears its name read out -for a prize; but the lawyer, Broughton thought not without a touch of -amusement, didn’t look any too well pleased with his. - -The ships--the ships--what about the ships?... - -“I desire that my two ships, ‘Maid of Athens’ and ‘Thyrza,’ shall be -sold within twelve months after my decease, and the proceeds of the sale -divided amongst the legatees aforesaid in the same proportion as the -rest of my estate.” - -It seemed to Broughton that the lawyer’s respectfully modulated tones -went roaring and echoing round the room, with a note of derision in them -like the ironical laughter of fiends. A black mist swam before his eyes -for a minute or two, obscuring the prim Victorian dining-room and its -familiar contents--a mist through which the three lit gas-globes on the -brass chandelier shone large, round, and haloed like sun-dogs in the Far -North. - -The mist, clearing, left everything distinct again. The thundering voice -subsided again to its former dry monotone. The lawyer brought his -reading to a close, folded his eyeglasses, and replaced his documents -in his bag. A discreet murmur of excited talk broke out among the -relatives. - -The dyspeptic niece, important in the consciousness of her legacy, came -twittering up to Broughton as he rose to go. - -“_So_ kind of you to come, Captain Broughton! My uncle would have -appreciated your being here. And you’ll let me know where to send your -picture, won’t you? I’m so glad it’s going to you. One likes to think -things are going to those who will appreciate them.” - -The picture! Broughton nearly laughed in the woman’s face--nearly told -her to keep the damned picture. But he thought better of it--it wasn’t -the poor silly creature’s fault, after all! - -The lawyer hailed him as he stood on the steps, buttoning his overcoat, -while he waited for his hansom. - -“Can’t I give you a lift anywhere, Captain Broughton? Going to be a -foggy night, I fancy.” - -Broughton shook his head with a curt “No, thanks--walking!” - -The little lawyer, who was a shrewd observer of men and, like most -chatterboxes, a kindly soul, and who was, moreover, none too pleased -with his own legacy, shook his head and sighed as he watched the -square-set figure disappear into the fog and darkness. - -“That man’s had a bit of a knock,” he reflected. “Wonder if he’s got -anything to live on? Not much, I dare say. Wouldn’t have hurt that -stingy old devil to leave him a hundred or two.... Ah well....” - - -V - -Broughton strode away through the foggy suburban streets. He was afraid -he’d been a bit offhand with that lawyer chap. Well, he couldn’t help -that! He felt he couldn’t stand his gabble--not at present. - -He wanted above everything else to be alone. He didn’t feel as if he -could face the well-meant curiosity and the equally well-meant sympathy -of those men who had wished him luck that morning. His wound had struck -too deep for such superficial salves to be other than an added -irritation. Normally inclined to err on the side of amiability, he felt -just now at odds with all the rest of humankind. He could fancy the -whispers that would follow him--“There goes poor Broughton--feeling -pretty sickish, you bet!” - -The first staggering sensation of blank and bewildered disappointment -had passed away, and in its place there surged up within him a cold tide -of black anger against Old Featherstone. - -So the old devil had been laughing at him in his sleeve that night--even -as he was laughing at him now, very likely, in whatever unholy place he -was gone to! He had guessed his thoughts, he supposed, in that damned -uncanny way he had. If the dead face now lying under the cold cemetery -mould had lain in Broughton’s pathway now he would have ground his heel -into the sardonic smile that still curled its stiff and silent lips. - -Him and his blasted picture!... A thing that wasn’t worth giving -wall-space to! A damned ship-chandler’s daub! Why, give him a few -splashes of ship’s paint and a brush and he’d make a better fist at it -himself! - -He strode blindly on, through interminable crescents of smug villas, -their pavements greasy with fallen leaves, along dreary streets of -shabby “semis,” without noticing or caring where he was going: swinging -his neatly rolled umbrella regardless of the fine rain which had begun -to fall and was gathering in a million glistening drops on his black -coat. His mood cried aloud for the relief of physical effort, of -physical discomfort. Now and then he was brought up short by a blank -wall that drove him back upon his traces; now and then he cannoned -unnoticing into passing pedestrians, who turned, conscious of something -unusual in his manner, to watch him out of sight, then continued their -way wondering if he were drunk or mad. - -Presently the streets of dull “semis” gave place to streets of seedy -rows, with here and there a corner off-licence or a fried-fish shop -discharging its warm oily odours upon the chill air; and at last, -turning a corner, he found himself suddenly in a wide road whose greasy -pavements were lined with stalls and flares, yelling salesmen, and -groups of draggle-tailed women. - -He looked about him stupidly, uncertain of his bearings, though the -blare of a ship’s syren striking on his ear told him that he was not far -from the river. He was suddenly aware that he was wet and hungry and -very tired, and that his feet in his best boots hurt him abominably, for -he was no better a walker than most sailormen. He asked a passing -pedestrian where he was. - -“Lower Road, Deptford.”... Why, he was less than a quarter of an -hour’s walk from the Surrey Commercial Docks, where the “Maid of Athens” -was even now lying, having just finished discharging the cargo of -linseed she had loaded at the River Plate. He couldn’t do better than -get on to the ship, he decided; he had been knocked out of time, and no -mistake, and there he would be able to sit down quietly and think things -over. - -The fog, which had been comparatively light on the higher ground, had -been steadily growing denser as he neared the river. There were haloes -round the flares that roared above the street stalls, and the lighted -shop windows were mere luminous blurs in the surrounding murk. - -“Want to mind where you’re steppin’ to-night, Cap’n,” the watchman -hailed him as he passed the dock gates; “it’s thick, an’ no -mistake--thick as ever I see it!” - -Thick wasn’t the word for it! Once away from the fights and noise of the -road, the darkness seemed like something you could feel--a solid mass of -clammy, clinging moisture, catching at the throat like a cold hand, -getting into the backs of your eyes and making them ache and smart. You -couldn’t see your hand before your face. - -Broughton groped his way along the narrow, slimy causeway which lay -between the stacks of piled-up lumber, exuding their sharp, damp, -resinous fragrance, and the intense darkness, broken occasionally by a -vague tremulous reflection where some ship’s lights contrived to pierce -it, which brooded over the unseen waters of the dock. Lights showed -forlornly here and there at the openings of the lanes which led away -between the piled deals--abysses of blackness as dark as the Magellanic -nebulæ. Ship’s portholes gleamed round and watchful as the eyes of huge -monsters of the slime. Bollards started up suddenly out of the fog like -menacing figures, and cranes straddled the path like black Apollyons in -some marine Pilgrim’s Progress. Once Broughton pulled himself up only -just in time to save himself from stepping over the edge of a yawning -pit of nothingness in which the water lipped unseen against the slimy -piles. The thought involuntarily crossed his mind that perhaps he might -have done worse; but he put it from him resolutely. His code, a simple -one, did not admit suicide as a permissible solution of the problems of -life. - -All work was long since over, and the docks were as silent and deserted -as the grave--nothing to be heard but the steady drip-drip of the rain, -once the distant tinkle of a banjo on board some vessel out in the dock, -and now and again the melancholy wail of a steamer groping her way up -river. The “Maid of Athens” lay right at the far end of one of the older -basins; she was all still and dark but for the oil lamp that burned -smokily at the head of the gangway, and a faint glow from the galley -which showed where the old shipkeeper sat alone with his pipe and his -memories. - -Old Mike came hobbling out at the sound of Broughton’s step on the -plank. - -“’Strewth, Cap’n,” he exclaimed in astonishment, “you’ve chose a grand -night to come down an’ no fatal error! Will I make a bit o’ fire in the -cabin an’ brew ye a cup o’ tea? Sure you’re wet to the skin!” - -“Poor old chap!” Broughton thought, as he watched him busying himself -about his fire-lighting with the gnarled and shaking hands that had -hauled on so many a tackle-fall in their day. It would be a hard blow -for him when he knew that ship was to be sold. He had served in -Featherstone’s ships many years as A.B. and latterly as bos’n, until a -fall from aloft put an end to his seagoing days; and this little job of -shipkeeping was one of the very few planks between him and the -workhouse. - -The world was none too kind to old men who had outlived their -usefulness. What was it that old flintstone had said: “You can’t teach -an old dog new tricks”? Well, that was true enough, anyway! - -He called to mind an incident that had happened in Sydney his last -voyage there. An old man had come up to him begging for a job. He didn’t -care what--night watchman, anything; and he had opened his coat to show -that he had neither waistcoat nor shirt beneath it. - -“You don’t remember me, Broughton,” the old fellow had said; and, -looking closer, he had recognized in that incredibly seedy wreck one of -his own old skippers--before whose almost godlike aloofness and majesty -he had once trembled in mingled fear and awe. It was a pitiful tale he -had to tell. He had been thrown out of a berth at sixty-five, through -his ship being lost by no fault of his own, and couldn’t get in -anywhere. That proud, arrogant old man, full of small vanities!... -Broughton had had little enough cause in the past to think of him over -kindly; but the memory of the encounter had remained with him for weeks -at the time, and returned to trouble him now with an added -significance. - -Old Mike’s bit o’ fire smouldered a little and went out, leaving -nothing but an acrid stink to mark its passing. The well-stewed -tea in the enamel cup at his elbow, with the two ragged slices of -margarine-plastered bread beside it in the slopped saucer, grew cold -unheeded. Outside, the rain dripped down like slow tears. And there he -sat, with his clenched hands before him on the table, staring into the -Past. - -There wasn’t a plank of her, not a rivet, not a rope-yarn that didn’t -mean something to him. True, Old Featherstone had given his money for -her: and if he knew that old man aright he hadn’t given a brass farthing -more than he could help. But he--what had he given to her? Money--well, -he had given that, too, since Old Featherstone had turned mean, though -his twenty pounds a month hadn’t run to a great deal. But that was -neither here nor there. Things money could never buy he was thinking of, -sitting there in the cold, fog-dimmed cabin. - -The years of his life had gone into her--affection, understanding, -ungrudging service, sleepless nights and anxious days. What wonder that -she seemed almost like a part of himself? What wonder that to a man of -his rigid, slow-moving type of mind a future in which she had no part -was a thing unthinkable? - -His memory passed on to all the mates and second mates who had -faced him at meals over that very cabin. A regular procession of -them--Marston--Reid--what was the name of that chap with the light -eyelashes?--Barnes, was it?--Digby--he was a decent chap, now--went into -steam years ago and was chief officer in one of the B. I. ships last -time Broughton heard of him. That was what _he_ ought to have done. He -had known it at the back of his mind all along. But he couldn’t leave -her--he couldn’t leave her! - -Well, well, there was no use meeting trouble half-way! What was it old -Waterhouse, his first skipper in his brassbound days, used to say? “If -you’re jammed on a lee shore and can’t stay, why, then try wearing. If -that don’t work, try boxing her off. But whatever you do, do something! -Don’t sit down and howl!” - -They used to laugh at him and mimic him behind his back, cheeky young -devils; but it was damned good advice for all that. He was on a lee -shore now right enough; but there was bound to be a way out somewhere if -he kept his head. - -An intense drowsiness and weariness had begun to creep over him--just -such a leaden desire for sleep as he had experienced in that same cabin -many a time after days of incessant and anxious battling with gales and -seas. His unmade bed looked singularly unenticing, so, dragging a -blanket from the pile upon it, he kicked off his sodden boots and lay -down on the cabin settee. - -A rising wind had begun to moan and sigh in the rigging, driving the -rain in sheets against the skylight ... there was a way out, a way out -... if he could only think of it ... somewhere.... - - -VI - -He awoke to a flood of bright sunshine streaming in through the -skylight. The wind had driven fog and rain before it, leaving a virginal -and new-washed world under a sky of pale, remote blue. - -Broughton heaved himself off the settee, catching a glimpse of -himself--haggard, rumpled, and unkempt--in the mirror over the -sideboard, as he did so. - -“By George!” he said to himself, viewing his reflection, “Marianne would -have looked down her nose at me if I’d turned up at Sibella Road like -this. She’d have thought I’d been having a thick night, and small blame -to her!” - -There was no doubt that he presented a sorry spectacle. His trousers -were still damp and splashed with mud-stains; his collar was creased and -black with fog. He was stiff and tired in body; but his mind, naturally -resilient, was infinitely refreshed by the long hours of sleep. - -His spirits rose every minute. He whistled to himself as he rummaged out -a blue suit from his cabin, washed, and shaved. He even indulged in a -smile as he recalled the little lawyer and his two singlets. - -After all, looked at in the light of day, things might have been a whole -lot worse. There was always a chance that one of the three or four -British firms who still owned sailing ships might buy the old girl. She -had a great name; and people were beginning to be a bit sentimental -about sailing ships now they were mostly gone. Or one of the big -steamship lines might take her on for training purposes. If either of -those things happened, it wasn’t likely they would want to put anyone -else in command. It was common knowledge, though he said it himself, -that no one could get what he could out of her. They would very likely -put her into the nitrate trade. Of course it would be a bit of a -come-down, still--any port in a storm! He remembered how sick he had -been about it the first time she loaded coal at Newcastle. He had felt -like going down on his knees and apologizing to her for the outrage! Or, -again, there was lumber--plenty of charters were to be had up the West -Coast. True, her size was against her; with her reputation and twice her -tonnage she wouldn’t have had to wait long for a purchaser. But she -would be a good investment, for all that. Why, damn it all, if he had -the money loose he’d buy her himself without thinking twice about it! -But twenty pounds a month doesn’t leave much margin for such luxuries as -buying ships. - -He paused half in and half out of his coat, struck by a sudden idea. - -His half-brother Edward! Why, he was the very man--just the very man! -Rolling in money that he made at that warehouse where he sold staylaces -or something up in the City! The blighter was as sharp as a -needle--always had been from the time when he used to drive bargains -over blood alleys with the other kids at school. He’d see the advantage -of a proposition like this fast enough! He could either lend the money -on reasonable interest on the security of the ship, or if he liked he -could buy her himself and let Broughton manage her for him. - -He hurried over the rest of his toilet, swallowed a cup of tea and a -rasher old Mike had got ready for him, and started off for the City, all -on fire with his new project. - -How did that piece of poetry go that Old Featherstone got the ship’s -name from? He had read it once, but he wasn’t much at poetry: he -couldn’t make much of it. - - “Maid of Athens, ere we part----” - -That was it! He repeated the line once or twice under his breath, -finding in it a new and surprising significance. He ran his hand -caressingly along the smoothness of her teak rail, sleek and glossy and -warm in the sun as a living thing. - - “Maid of Athens, ere we part----” - -“There’s a deuce of a lot of water to go under the bridge before it -comes to that, old lady!” he said aloud. - -By the time he reached the dock gates the proposition had grown so rosy -that his only fear was lest someone else should discover its -attractiveness and get in ahead of him. By the time he got off the bus -in Saint Paul’s Churchyard it seemed to him that he was doing his -half-brother a really good turn in allowing him the first chance of so -advantageous a business opportunity. - -The spruce-looking master mariner who gave in his name at a little hole -marked “Inquiries” on the ground-floor of a warehouse just behind the -Church of Saint Sempronius Without was a very different person from the -haggard being who had glared back at him from the glass an hour ago. - -Edward Broughton’s place of business was a large, modern edifice each of -whose many ground-floor windows displayed a device representing a nude -youth running like hell over the surface of a miniature globe, holding -in his extended hand a suit of Elasto Underwear--“Fits where it Hits.” -This famous slogan it was which had made Elasto Underwear and Edward -Broughton’s fortune; for he was by way of doing very well indeed, was -Edward, and had even been spoken of as a possible Lord Mayor. David -remembered him in the old days, when he was at home from sea, as a pert -little snipe of a youngster with red cheeks and sticking-out eyes. - -A stylish youth, looking like a clothed edition of the young gentleman -on the placards, ushered him into a small, glass-sided compartment and -left him alone there with two little plaster images wearing miniature -suits of Elasto Underwear. One was after--a long way after--Michael -Angelo’s David, the other (also a long way) after the Venus of Milo. - -Broughton looked round him with all the sailorman’s lordly contempt of -the ways of traders. He looked out through the glass sides of his cage -on long vistas of desks where girls sat at typewriters and between which -there scurried young exquisites with sleek hair and champagne-coloured -socks--dozens of them, presumably engaged on the one all-important task -of distributing Elasto Underwear to the civilized and uncivilized world. - -So this was where brother Edward made all his money! Rum sort of -show--“Fits where it Hits,” indeed--what a darned silly idea! And how -much longer were they going to keep him waiting? - -His eyes wandered for the twentieth time to the clock. Half-past -eleven--he had been here half an hour. The two underclothed statuettes -were beginning to get on his nerves. He should smash ’em if he stopped -there much longer. - -Issuing forth fuming from his plate-glass seclusion, he stopped one of -the hurrying exquisites. - -“Does Mr. Broughton know I am here?” he asked. - -“Y-yes, sir!” The youth could not have said what made him tack that -“sir” on. “You see, he’s very busy in a morning, if you haven’t an -appointment. And this week the auditors are here. Could you leave your -name and call again?” - -“I see. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Will you have the goodness to tell him -again, please? Say that Captain Broughton would like to see him--on -business--important business.” - -The lad hesitated for a moment between dread of his employer and a sense -of something masterful, something which demanded obedience, about this -brown-faced, quiet stranger. The stranger won, and with a “Very good, -sir,” the messenger disappeared among the desks. - -Presently he returned. Mr. Broughton would see his visitor now. - -David’s half-brother sat in a vast lighted room behind a vast -leather-covered table. He still had the round red cheeks and prominent -eyes of his youth, but he was almost bald and showed an incipient -corporation. - -A youth laden with two huge ledgers backed out of the presence as David -entered. Like the King, by Jove! Brother Edward was getting into no end -of a big pot. - -“Oh, good morning, David!” He waved his caller graciously to a seat. -“This is quite an unaccustomed honour. I’m afraid you’ve come at rather -a busy time--the auditors, and so forth. I hardly ever see anybody -except by appointment. But I can give you ten minutes. And now--what can -I do for you?” - -The words were pleasant enough in a way; but that “What can I do for -you?” signified as plainly as if he had said it, “What does this fellow -want with me, I wonder?” - -There is no enmity so undying as that which dates from the nursery. -There is no dislike so unconquerable as that which exists between people -who are kin but not kind. Had David Broughton been more of a man of the -world he would have known as much; and that while it is true that blood -is thicker than water, it is also true that upon occasion it can be more -bitter than gall. - -The undercurrent of suspicion which was unmistakable beneath the smooth -surface of Edward Broughton’s words flicked David on the raw. Perhaps it -was that, perhaps the long chilling wait in the plate-glass ante-room -had something to do with it. For whatever reason, when he opened his -mouth to explain his errand, he found that all his eloquence had -deserted him. - -He was going to make a mess of it: he knew it as soon as he began to -speak. Where were all the telling facts, the effective data he had -marshalled so brilliantly as he rode up to the City on the bus? -Gone--all gone; he found himself stammering out his case haltingly, -baldly, unconvincingly. He could feel it in his bones. - -Edward Broughton pursed up his lips, as his half-brother’s last phrase -petered out in futility, and blew out his cheeks. He lay back in the -large chair and spread his neat little legs out under the large table, -placing together his finger-tips--the flattened finger-tips of the -money-grubber. - -“I--see! I--see! You want me to buy this--er--ship?” - -“Well, yes,” David admitted. “I suppose that’s about the length of it, -or--or--as I said just now--lend me the money on the security of the -ship----” - -Edward Broughton studied his nails for a few seconds in silence. He used -to bite ’em as a kid, David suddenly remembered, and have bitter aloes -put on to stop him. - -Then slowly, solemnly, he shook his head. - -“No, no! I’m afraid it’s nothing in my line, David.” - -“But, dash it all, man!”--Broughton’s temper was beginning to get the -better of him. He was annoyed with himself because he felt he had -bungled his chances: more because he felt that he had made a mistake in -coming to this fellow at all. Ancient family aversions reared their -forgotten heads. And the intolerant impatience of the autocrat rose in -resentment of opposition. “Dash it all, man, it’s a good investment! I -shouldn’t have thought about mentioning it to you if it hadn’t been.” He -couldn’t help that sly dig. - -“What precisely is your idea of a good investment?” - -“Well, I should say it would pay a good five per cent--at a low -estimate....” - -Edward raised his eyebrows with a superior little smile of indulgent -amusement. - -“Five per cent. Why, my dear man, I won’t look at anything that doesn’t -bring in twenty at least. No, I’m very sorry for you. If I could really -see my way to help you I would, for the sake of old times and so on. But -one must keep sentiment out of business. It doesn’t do. And, honestly, I -can see nothing in it. It isn’t even as if this ship were a fairly new -ship. One must move with the times, you know. The late Mr. Featherstone -was a very keen man of business, and as you yourself said just now, -he’d been selling his ships for years. He knew his business, no doubt, -as well as I know mine. And my motto is, ‘Let the cobbler stick to his -last!’ His Elasto, eh? Ha ha--not bad that!... No, I’m awfully sorry! I -quite see your position. I’ve often thought you were making a big -mistake--you ought to have gone in with one of the steamer companies. -But I’ll do what I can for you. I’ll put in a word for you, with -pleasure. I know one or two directors----” - -“Sorry! Help you! Put in a word for you!” What did the little blighter -mean? A little snipe whose ear-hole he’d wrung many a time! - -Broughton rose, breathing heavily. He restrained with difficulty a -fraternal impulse to reach across the leather-covered table and pull the -little beggar’s nose. - -“Damn it all,” he rapped out, “who asked you for your pity or your -advice, I’d like to know? When I want ’em, I won’t forget to ask for -’em, and that’ll be never. I come to you, as I might go to any other -business man, with a business proposition. It doesn’t interest you; very -well, there’s no more to be said. But as for your advice--_and_ your -money--you can keep ’em and be damned to you!” - -He passed out between the lines of sniggering, nudging, whispering -clerks, his head held high, though his heart was sick with anger and -humiliation. So that was what the little beast had thought he was after. -Keeping a berth warm for himself. He went hot all over at the thought. -He did not even know that he had--for his voice, which he had raised -considerably in the heat of the moment, had carried to the farthest -corners of the outer office--provided the employees of Elasto, Limited, -with one of the most enjoyable moments of their somewhat dull business -career. - - -VII - -The “Maid of Athens” left Northfleet six weeks later with a cargo of -cement for British Columbia, where she was to load lumber for some port -as yet unspecified, in accordance with a charter made before Old -Featherstone’s death. - -The day had dawned grey and melancholy. A mist of fine, drizzling rain -blotted out the low, monotonous shores of the estuary, and the -crew--dull and dispirited, the last night’s drink not yet out of -them--hove the anchor short with hardly a pretence of a shanty. But a -fresh, sharp wind began to blow from the north-east as the light grew, -and presently the ship was romping down Channel with everything set. - -Broughton stood on the poop beside the Channel pilot, watching the -familiar coast of so many landfalls slip rapidly by. Like him, the -red-faced, stocky man at his side had watched the ship grow old. His -name figured many a time, in Broughton’s stiff, precise handwriting, in -those shabby, leather-backed volumes which recorded her unconsidered -Odyssey: - - “6 a.m. Dull and rainy. Landed Mr. Gardiner, Channel pilot.” - - “Start point bearing N. 6 miles. Pilot Gardiner left.” - - “Off Dungeness, 3 a.m. Took Mr. Gardiner, pilot, off North - Foreland.” - -Bald, unadorned entries, dull statements of plain fact set down by plain -men with no knowledge of phrase-turning; yet there is more eloquence in -them than in all the word-spinnings of literature to those who read -aright. What sagas unsung they stand for! What departures fraught with -hopes and dreams, with remorse and parting and farewell! What landfalls -that were the triumphant climax of long endurance, of patient toil, of -cold, hunger, heat, thirst, not to be told in words! What difficulties -met and surmounted, what battles fought and won! - -The ship glistened white and clean in the morning sun. The men were hard -at work washing down decks, ridding her of the last traces of the grime -accumulated during her long period in port. Ah, thought Broughton, it -was good to be at sea again! The doubts and anxieties of the last six -weeks seemed to slip away from him as the river mud slipped from the -ship’s keel into the clean Channel tide. The accustomed sights and -sounds, the familiar lift and quiver of his ship under him, were like a -kind of enchanted circle within which he stood secure against the dark -forces of destruction and change. He was a king again in his own little -kingdom. The very act of entering up the day’s work in the log book--the -taking of sights--all the small duties and ceremonies that make up a -shipmaster’s life--helped to create in him an illusion of security. He -was like a man awakened from a terrifying dream of judgment, reassuring -himself by the sight and touch of common things that the world still -goes on its accustomed way. A strange sense of peace and permanency -wrapped him round--the peace of an ancient and established order of -things seeming so set and rooted that nothing could ever end it. It -seemed incredible that all this microcosm should pass away--that the -uncounted watches should ever go by and the ship’s faithful bells tell -them no more. She appeared to borrow a certain quality of immortality -from the winds and the sea and the stars, the eternal things which had -been the commonplaces of her wandering years. - -Most of all, it was the fact of being once more occupied that brought -him solace. By what queer doctrine of theologians, by what sheer -translator’s error, did man’s inheritance of daily labour come to be -accounted as the penalty of his first folly and sin? Work--surely the -one merciful gift vouchsafed to Adam by an angry Deity when he went -weeping forth from Paradise! Work--with its kindly weariness of body, -compelling the weary brain to rest. Work, the everlasting anodyne, the -unfailing salve for man’s most unbearable sorrows--which shall last when -pleasure and lust and wealth are so many Dead Sea apples in the mouth, a -comfort and a refuge when all human loves and loyalties shall fade and -fail. - -Five days after the “Maid of Athens” took her departure from the Lizard -it began to breeze up from the north-west. At three bells in the first -watch the royals and topgallantsails had to come in, then the jibs; and -when dark fell she was running before wind and sea under fore and main -topsails and reefed foresail. But she liked rough weather, and under her -reduced canvas she was going along very safely and easily, so Broughton -decided to turn in for an hour’s rest in order to be ready for the -strenuous night he anticipated. - -“I am going to turn in for an hour or so,” he said, turning to the mate; -“call me in that time, if I am not awake before. And sooner if anything -out of the way should happen. I think we shall have a dirty night by the -look of it.” - -The mate was a poor creature--weak, but with the self-assertiveness that -generally goes with weakness. Broughton felt he would not like to rely -upon him in an emergency. - -But he had had very little sleep since the ship sailed--nor, indeed, -during the weeks which had elapsed since Featherstone’s funeral. He -shrank instinctively from being alone. It was then that his anxieties -began to crowd upon him afresh, and that the threat of the future seemed -to touch him like the shadow of some boding wing. But now that sudden -overpowering heaviness of the eyelids which must inevitably, sooner or -later, follow upon a continued sleeplessness, descended upon him. He -felt that he could hardly keep awake--no, not though the very skies -should fall. - -He was sound asleep almost as soon as he had lain down--lost in a -labyrinth of ridiculous and confusing dreams in which all sorts of -unexpected people and events kept melting into one another in the most -illogical and inconsequent fashion, which yet seemed, according to that -peculiar fourth-dimensional standard of values which prevails in the -dream-world, perfectly proper and reasonable. - -Old Featherstone figured in these dreams: so also did the dining-room at -“Pulo Way.” Only somehow Old Featherstone kept turning into somebody -else; first it was Hobbs the lawyer, then old Mike Brophy the -shipkeeper, then an old mate of his called Peters, whom he hadn’t seen -or thought of even for years. And then the dining-room had become the -cabin of the “Maid of Athens,” and Peters, who had changed into old -Captain Waterhouse, was sitting at the head of the table reading -Featherstone’s will. He was shouting at the top of his voice, and -Broughton was straining his ears to catch what he was saying and -couldn’t make out a word of it because of the roar of the wind. And then -the floor began to heave and slant, and the pictures on the walls--for -the cabin had turned back into a dining-room again--to tumble all about -his ears--and the next moment he was sitting up broad awake, his feet -and back braced to meet the next lurch of the vessel, the wind and sea -making a continuous thunder outside, and a pile of books cascading down -upon him from a shelf over his head. - -He knew well enough--his seaman’s instinct told him almost before he was -fully awake--precisely what had happened. It was just the very -possibility which had been in his mind when he turned in. The -mate--aided no doubt by a timorous and inefficient helmsman--had let the -ship’s head run up into the wind and she had promptly broached to. The -“Maid” always carried a good deal of weather helm, and wanted careful -watching with a following wind and sea. He remembered an incident which -had occurred years ago, while he was running down the Easting--a bad -helmsman had lost his head through watching the following seas instead -of his course, and let the ship run away with him. Broughton had been -close to him when it happened. He struck the man a blow that sent him -rolling in the scuppers, and himself seized the spokes and jammed the -helm up. The mate, in the meantime, had let the topsail halyards run -without waiting for the order, and, freed from the weight of her -canvas, the ship paid off and the danger was over. - -The memory flashed through his mind and was gone during the few seconds -it took him to grope his way to the door and emerge into the roaring, -thundering darkness beyond. - -The ship lay sprawled in the trough of the sea, like a horse fallen at a -fence. Her lee rail was buried four feet deep, and her lower yards were -hidden almost to the slings in the seething, churned-up whiteness which -surrounded her. The night was black as pitch. A pale glimmer showed -faintly from the binnacle, and the sickly red and green of the -side-lights gleamed wan and fitful amid the watery desolation. But -otherwise the only fight was that which seemed to be given by the white -crests of the endless procession of galloping seas which came tearing -out of the night to pour themselves over the helpless vessel. - -The wheel appeared to be still intact; in the darkness Broughton thought -he could still make out the hunched figure of the helmsman beside it. -That was so much. If the spars held.... - -As he emerged from the shelter of the chart-room the full force of the -wind struck him like a steady push from some huge, invisible hand. He -waited for a lull and made a dash for the wheel. - -The lull was for a few moments only--a few moments during which the ship -lay in the lee of a tremendous sea, which, towering up fifty feet above -her, held her for a brief space in its perilous and betraying shelter. -The next instant it broke clean over her--a great mass of green marbled -water that filled her decks, carried her boats away like matchboxes -down a flooded gutter, and swept her decks from end to end with a -triumphant trampling as of a conquering army. - -“This finishes it!” Broughton thought. - -He was swept clean off his feet; rolled over and over; buried in foam; -engulfed in what seemed to him like the whole Atlantic ocean; carried, -as he believed, right down to Davy Jones’s locker, where the light of -day would never reach him again.... - -The next thing he knew he was lying jammed against the lee rail of the -poop, his legs hanging outboard, his arm hooked round a cleat, -presumably by some subconscious instinct of self-preservation, for he -had no recollection of putting it there. The water was pouring past him -in a green cataract, and dragging at him like clutching fingers. He was -alive. The ship was alive. “Good old girl!” Broughton said to himself. -He began to struggle to his feet. Something moved beside him and clawed -at his ankles. - -“Oh, Lord!” said a voice out of the darkness--the mate’s voice. “Oh, -Lord--I thought I was a goner!” - -“Oh--you!” said Broughton. “Get off my feet, damn you!” - -“Oh, Lord!” said the voice again. - -“Pull yourself together!” Broughton rapped out. “What were you doing? -Why didn’t you call me?” - -“There wasn’t time,” moaned the mate. “She was going along all right, -and the next minute--oh, Lord, I was nearly overboard!” - -“Think you’re at a bloody revival meeting?” snapped Broughton. He shook -him off, and, holding by the rail, fought his way up the slanting deck -to the wheel. - -The young second mate came butting head down through the murk. - -“Fore upper topsail’s gone out of the bolt-ropes, sir!” - -Broughton smiled grimly to himself. Old Featherstone’s skinflint ways -had turned out good policy for once. If that fore upper topsail had -held, as it would have done if it had been the stout Number One canvas -his soul craved, instead of a flimsy patched affair only fit for the -Tropics, they might all have been with Davy Jones by now. - -“Take the best hands you can find to the braces,” Broughton ordered. “I -must try to get her away before it. Mister!”--this to the mate, who had -by this time picked himself out of the scuppers and came scrambling up -the deck--“take half a dozen hands down to see to the cargo, and do what -you can to secure it if it looks like shifting.” - -The helmsman, a big heavy Swede, was still clinging to the wheel like a -limpet; partly because it appeared to him good to have something to hold -on to, partly because his wits worked so slowly that it hadn’t yet -occurred to him to let go. Broughton grasped the spokes and the two men -threw every ounce of their strength into the task of putting the helm -over. - -Gusts of cheery obscenity came out of the darkness forward as the crew -fought to get the spars round. “Good men!” Broughton said between his -teeth. “‘Maid of Athens, ere we part,’ eh? Not yet, old girl--not yet!” - -It seemed as if the helpless ship knew the feel of the familiar hand on -her helm, and strove with all her might to respond to it. She struggled; -she almost rose. Then, wind and sea beating her down anew, she slid -down into the trough again. - -Again and again she tried to heave herself free from the weight of water -that dragged her down; again and again she slipped back again, like a -fallen horse trying vainly to get a footing on a slippery road. The two -men wrestled with the wheel in grim silence. It kicked and strove in -their grasp like a living thing. But at last, slowly, the ship quivered, -righted herself. She shook the seas impatiently from her flanks as the -reefed foresail filled. Inch by inch the yards came round to windward. -The fight was over. - -By daybreak the gale had all but blown itself out. The sea still ran -high, but the wind had fallen, and a watery sun was trying to break -through the hurrying clouds. The hands were already at work bending a -new foretopsail, and their short, staccato cries came on the wind like -the mewings of gulls. - -“Life in the old dog yet, Mr. Kennedy!” said Broughton to the second -mate. He struck his hands together, exulting. The struggle seemed to him -a good omen. If she could live through a night like that, surely she -could also survive those obscurer dangers which threatened her. His -shoulders ached like the shoulders of Atlas from the battle with the -kicking wheel. He had not known such physical effort since his -apprentice days. The fight had put new heart into him. By God, it had -been worth it, he told himself. It made a man feel that it was worth -while to be alive.... - -A few days later the “Maid of Athens” picked up the north-east Trades, -and carried them with her almost down to the Line through a succession -of golden days and star-dusted nights. She loitered through the -doldrums--found her Trades again just south of the Line--wrestled with -the Westerlies off the Horn--and, speeding northward again through the -flying-fish weather, made the Strait of Juan de Fuca a hundred and nine -days out. - - -VIII - -The “Maid of Athens” discharged her cargo of cement at Vancouver, and -went over to the Puget Sound wharf at Victoria to load lumber for Chile. - -She was there for nearly a month before she left her berth on a fine -October afternoon, and anchored in the Royal Roads, where the pilot -would board her next morning to take her down to Flattery. - -Broughton went ashore in the evening for the last time, and walked up to -his agent’s offices in Wharf Street. He was burningly anxious to be at -sea again. The old restlessness was strong upon him that he had felt -before leaving London River, and a number of small vexatious delays had -whetted his impatience to the breaking point. - -“Letter for you, Cap’n,” the clerk hailed him. “I thought maybe you’d be -around, or I’d have sent it over to you.” - -Broughton turned the letter in his hands for a minute or two before -opening it. He recognized the prim, clerkly hand at once. It was from -Jenkinson. A cold wave of apprehension flooded over him. Some mysterious -kind of telepathy told him that it contained unwelcome tidings. - -He slit the envelope at last, unfolded the sheet, and read it through. -Then he read it again, and still again--uncomprehendingly, as if it were -something in a foreign and unknown language: - -“ ...Sorry to say the old ship has now been sold ... firm at Gibraltar -... understand she is to be converted into a coal hulk....” - -Broughton crumpled the sheet in his hand with a fierce gesture, staring -out with unseeing eyes into a world aglow with the glory of sunset. It -was the worst--the very worst--he had ever dreamed of! Why hadn’t he let -her go, he wondered, that night in the North Atlantic? Why had he -dragged her back from a decent death for a fate like this? He could have -stuck it if she had gone to the shipbreakers. It would have hurt like -hell, but he could have stuck it. But this; it made him think, somehow, -of those old pitiful horses you saw being shipped across to Belgium with -their bones sticking through their skins. People used to have their old -horses shot when they were past work. They were different now. It was -all money--money--money! They thought nothing of fidelity, of loyalty, -of long service. They cared no more for their ships than for so many -slop pails.... - -Wasn’t it the old Vikings that used to take their old ships out to sea -and burn them? There was a fine end for a ship now--a fine, clean, -splendid death for a ship that had been a great ship in her day! He -remembered once, years ago, watching a ship burn to the water’s edge in -the Indian Ocean. He wasn’t much more than a nipper at the time, but he -had never forgotten it. The calm night, and the stars, and the ship -flaring up to heaven like a torch. He didn’t think he would have minded, -somehow, seeing his old ship go like that. But this--oh, he had got to -find a way out of it somehow.... - -“Bad news, Cap’n?” came the clerk’s inquiring voice. - -Broughton pulled himself together with an effort. - -“No, no, thanks!” Mechanically he made his adieux and passed out into -the street. He didn’t know where he was going. He never remembered how -he found his way to the Outer Wharf where his boat was waiting. - -But he must have got there somehow, for now he was sitting in the -stern-sheets and looking out across the water to the ship lying at -anchor, with eyes to which sorrow and the shadow of parting seemed to -have given a strange new apprehension of beauty. How lovely she looked, -he thought, with the little pink clouds seeming to be caught in her -rigging, and the gulls flying and calling all about her! It was queer -that he should notice things like that so much, now that he was going to -lose her. He had known the time when he would have taken it all for -granted. Now, he kept seeing all kinds of little things in a kind of -new, clear light, as if he saw them for the first time---- - - * * * * * - -Let young Kennedy tell the rest of the tale--in his cabin in a Blue -Funnel liner, years afterwards; the unforgettable, indefinable smell of -China drifting up from the Chinese emigrants’ quarters, the gabble of -the stokers at their interminable fan-tan on the forecastle mingling -with the piping of the gulls along the wharf sheds. - -“I could see at once” (thus young Kennedy) “that something had gone -wrong with the Old Man. He looked ten years older since I had seen him -a couple of hours before. He came up the ladder very slowly and heavily, -passed me by without speaking--I might have been a stanchion standing -there for all the notice he took of me--and went down into the cabin -almost as if he were walking in his sleep. - -“Something--I don’t exactly know what--intuition, perhaps, you’d call -it--made me trump up an excuse to follow him. I didn’t like the looks of -him, somehow. - -“I found him sitting in his chair by the table, staring straight before -him with that same fixed look as if he didn’t really see anything. - -“He didn’t so much as turn his head when I went in, and at first when I -spoke he didn’t seem to hear me. I spoke again, a little louder, and he -gave a sort of start, as if he had been suddenly roused out of a sleep. - -“‘Yes--no!’ he said in a dazed kind of way. ‘Yes--no’ (like that); and -then suddenly, in a very loud, harsh voice, quite different from his -ordinary way of speaking: ‘A hulk! A hulk! They are going to make a coal -hulk of her!’ - -“The words seemed to be fairly ripped out of him. He didn’t seem to be -speaking to me. It was more as if he were trying to make himself believe -something that was too bad to realize. - -“I managed to say something--I forget just what: that it was rotten -luck, perhaps. I doubt if he heard me, anyhow, for he went on in the -same strange voice, like someone talking to himself. - -“‘She’s good for twenty years yet!’ And then, in a sort of choking -voice, ‘Mine--mine, by God, mine!’ - -“Well, I just turned at that and bolted. I felt I couldn’t stand any -more. It seemed like eavesdropping on a man’s soul. - -“I didn’t see him again until the next morning, when the tug came -alongside as soon as it was light. He came on deck looking as if nothing -had happened. I never said anything, of course--no more did he; and from -that day to this I don’t really know--though I rather fancy he did--if -he remembered what had passed between us. - -“We had a fine passage down to Iquique, where we discharged our lumber -and loaded nitrates for the U.K. The Old Man had got very fussy about -the ship. He had every inch of her teak scraped and oiled while we were -running down the Trades, and everything made as smart as could be aloft; -and while we were lying at Iquique he had her figurehead, which was a -very pretty one, all done over--pure white, of course. I did the best -part of it myself, for I used to be reckoned rather a swell in the -slap-dab business in those days, though I say it myself! - -“Well, we finished our loading and left, and all the ships cheered us -down the tier; and I don’t wonder, for the old ship looked a picture. - -“The Old Man and I had got to be quite friends. I suppose we were as -near being pals as a skipper and a second mate ever could be. He was -working on a new rail for the poop ladder--all fancy ropework and so -on--and he used to bring it up on deck and yarn away to me about old -times hour by the length. I fancy he rather liked me, but up till then -he had always had a kind of stand-offish, you-keep-your-place-young-man -way with him; and for my part I’d always looked on him with that sort -of mixture of holy awe when he was there and disrespect behind his back -a fellow has for the skipper he’s served his time under. I suppose our -both thinking such a lot of the old barky gave us an interest in common. -You see, I’d served my time in her right from the start, so that -naturally she was the ship of all ships for me--still is, for the matter -of that.... Say what you will, she was a great old ship, and he was a -great old skipper!” - -(Kennedy paused. A quiver had crept somehow into his voice, and he had -to get it under control again.) - -“The Old Man” (he went on) “had always been what I should call a careful -skipper. Not nervous--nothing of that sort--but cautious; I never knew -him lose a sail but once, and never a spar. In fact, I used to feel a -bit annoyed with him sometimes because he didn’t go out of his way to -take risks. He was a fine seaman; but there’s no denying the fact he -_was_ cautious. He made some fine passages in the ‘Maid of Athens,’ and -never a bad one. But he didn’t really drive her. I believe he was too -damned fond of her. - -“So that you may imagine it was a bit of a surprise when we began to get -into the high south latitudes and he started to crack on in a way that -made even me open my eyes a little. - -“I well remember the first day I noticed it. It was just on sunset--a -black and red sort of affair with lots of low-hanging clouds, and the -seas came rolling up with that ugly, sickly green on them when the light -caught them that always goes with bad weather. - -“It had been blowing pretty hard all day, and the glass dropping fast. -The ship was labouring heavily and shipping quantities of water; she was -loaded nearly to her marks with nitrates. There stood the skipper--I can -just see him now--with his feet planted wide, holding on to the weather -rigging and looking up aloft, as his way always was when it was blowing -up. - -“I expected him, of course, to order some of the canvas off her, for she -was carrying a fairish amount considering the weather. So I was fairly -taken aback, as you may imagine, when he turned round and said quite -quietly: - -“‘I want the fore upper topsail reefed and set, Mr. Kennedy.’ - -“I was so surprised that I just stood and gaped for a minute or so. He -looked at me in a sort of a challenging way, and said: - -“‘Didn’t you hear the order? What are you waiting for?’ - -“I pulled myself together, said ‘Fore upper topsail it is, sir!’ and off -I went. And I can tell you that for the next half hour or so I had -plenty to occupy me without worrying my head about what the Old Man was -thinking of. - -“Well, we got the sail reefed and set. By this time the ship was ripping -along at a good sixteen knots or more. You could see her wake spread out -a mile behind her like a winding sheet. It was quite dark by this time. -Her lee rail was right under, and making our way aft was like going -through a swimming-bath. - -“The Old Man was still standing just as I had left him, holding on with -both hands to the weather rigging, and bracing his feet against the -slant of the deck. I had hardly got my foot on the poop ladder when he -turned his head and called to me. I could see his lips move, but I could -hear nothing for the noise of the wind and sea. - -“‘Beg pardon, sir,’ I yelled into the din. - -“This time I managed to catch a word or two, but I could make nothing of -it. It sounded like topgallantsails, but in spite of what had just -happened I couldn’t believe my own ears. - -“‘Are you deaf, or what’s the matter with you?’ yells the Old Man then. -‘That’s twice I’ve had occasion to repeat an order. Don’t let it occur -again!’ - -“Well, off I struggled again forrard! ‘What price Bully Forbes of the -“Marco Polo,”’ says I to myself; and I tried to fancy the old B.O.T. -examiner’s face that passed me for second, if I’d answered his pet -question, ‘Running before a gale, what would you do?’ with ‘Cram on more -sail and chance it!’ - -“It took us a good ten minutes to make our way through the broken water -on deck. We’d struggle forward a few yards, then--flop!--would come a -big green one over the rail and send us all jumping for our lives--on -again, and over would come another; still we got there at last, and -after a bit we managed to set the sail. Then came the big tussle, at the -braces up to our necks in water! More than once I thought we were all -gone; but at last everything was O.K., gear turned up and all, and we -hung on to windward as well as we could and put up a silent prayer--at -least I know I did--that the Old Man wouldn’t take it into his head to -fly any more kites just yet. - -“I’d always rather envied the fellows who were at sea twenty years or so -before my time--the chaps who had such wonderful yarns to tell about the -dare-devil skippers and the incredible cracking on in the China tea -ships and the big American clippers. Well, I don’t mind owning I was -getting all of it I wanted for once! - -“Mind you, it didn’t worry me any! On the whole, I liked it. I was a -youngster, with no best girl or anything of that sort to trouble about, -and I enjoyed it. There was something so wonderfully fine and exciting -in the feel of the thing, even when you knew at the back of your mind -that she might go to glory any minute and take the whole blessed -shooting-match along with her. But there wasn’t much time to worry about -details like that; and anyhow, after a certain point you just get beyond -thinking about them one way or the other. It’s all in the day’s work, -and there you are! - -“But our precious mate, I must tell you, didn’t like it a bit--not a -little bit! He was a fellow called Arnot, rather a poisonous little -bounder; I guess he’d none too much nerve to start with, and he’d played -the dickens with what he had while we were in Iquique, running after -what he called “skirts” and soaking _aguardiente_. The skipper’s -carrying on got on his nerves frightfully. He was scared stiff. He went -about dropping dark hints about barratry, and chucking the ship away, -and _he_ wasn’t the man to hold his tongue if he ever got back to -England, and so on. He used to buttonhole me whenever we met and start -burbling away about the Old Man being out of his mind. - -“I ran bung into him one day as I came out of my room. It was blowing -like the dickens and the ship tearing along hell-for-leather. I won’t -say what sail she was carrying, because I don’t want to get the name of -being a liar. She was a wonderful old ship to steer (I hardly ever knew -her need a lee wheel) or she could never have kept going as she did -under all that canvas. If she’d once got off her course it would have -been God help her! - -“Mister Mate and I did one or two impromptu dance steps in each other’s -arms before we got straightened up again. I noticed two things about him -while we were thus engaged. One was that by the smell of him he’d been -imbibing a drop of Dutch courage from a private store I suspected he -kept in his room--the other that he was fairly shaking with fright. - -“‘I s-s-say, you know, th-this is awful! He’s--he’s m-m-mad,’ he -stuttered. You really couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little beast -in a way. I believe he was nearly crying! - -“‘Mad nothing!’ I said. ‘Anyway, mad or sane, he knows a damn sight more -about seamanship than either of us.’ I’d a good mind to add that so far -as he was concerned that wasn’t saying much. - -“Arnot moaned, ‘He’ll drown us all, that’s what he’ll do!’ gave a -despairing little flop with his arms, and dived into his room, for all -the world like a startled penguin. - -“I jolly well wasn’t going to take sides against the skipper with a -little squirt like Arnot, but in my own mind I was far from happy about -him. - -“What _was_ he driving at? God knows!... Sometimes I think one thing, -sometimes another. Was he trying to throw his ship away after all those -years of command? I can’t say. I know I knocked a couple of Mister -Arnot’s teeth into the back of his head for saying so, after it was all -over; but that was more a matter of principle, and by way of relieving -my feelings, than anything else. It looked like it, I must own. And yet -I don’t think it was quite that. It was more, if you understand me, that -he just felt as if things had gone too far for him--so he threw his -cards on the table, and left it to--well, shall we say Providence to -shuffle them! - -“Well, Mister Mate was going to have worse to put up with yet! - -“The big blow lasted off and on for four days, and then it began to ease -off a bit. I went below for a sleep: I was fairly coopered out. I just -flopped down in my wet clothes and was off at once. - -“When I came on deck again for the middle watch we were right in the -thick of a dense white fog. There was a cold wind blowing steadily out -of nowhere, and the ship was still going along, as near as I could -judge, at about thirteen or fourteen knots. The first person I saw was -the old bos’n--a Dutchman, and a real good sailorman, though a bit on -the slow side, like most Dutchmen--standing under the break of the poop -with his nose thrown up to windward, sniffing like an old dog. - -“‘Ice!’ he said. ‘I schmell ice!’ - -“I should think he did ‘schmell’ it! Phoo! but it was cold! The sails -were like boards--as stiff and as hard. I doubt if we could have furled -them if we had wanted to. The helmsman, when the wheel was relieved, -left the skin of his fingers on the spokes. It was a queer, uncanny -experience ... the ship ripping along through that blanket of fog, as -tall and white as the ghost of a ship.... If there had been anyone else -to see her, they might have been excused for thinking they’d met the -‘Flying Dutchman’ a few thousand miles off his usual course. - -“And ice--there was ice everywhere! It must have been all round us, -though we never saw it, only, as the bos’n said, ‘schmelt’ it and heard -it. Sometimes there would be the sound of the seas breaking along it for -miles; sometimes there would be the weird noises--shrieks and -groans--that the bergs make when they are ‘calving’; now and then cracks -like musketry fire--and in the midst of it all the penguins would make -you jump out of your skin with calling out exactly like human voices. - -“There the Old Man stood on the poop, the whole time, more like a frozen -image than a man--his arms laid along the spanker boom, and his chin -resting on them--for hours, never speaking or moving. - -“I went up to him at last and begged him to lie down, promising to call -him if anything happened. He seemed to wake out of a dream just as he -had done that day in the cabin at Victoria. His breath had congealed and -frozen his beard to his sleeve, and he had to give a regular tug to get -it loose. And he had to tear his hand away from the iron of the spar and -leave the skin behind. - -“I got him a cup of coffee, and he drank it down, and then he lay down -on the settee in the chart-room. He called me back as I was leaving him, -as if he were going to say something. But he only said, ‘Never mind--it -is nothing,’ and lay down again. - -“I looked in on him when the mate relieved me at eight bells. He was -still fast asleep, and it came over me all of a sudden how old and tired -he looked. I didn’t see any sense in waking him, so I tiptoed off and -left him. - -“When I woke at seven bells I could tell at once by the movement of the -ship that she had much less way on her. I don’t mind owning I was more -than a little relieved. The Old Man’s cracking on had begun to get on my -nerves a bit since the fog had come on. It was so unusual there was -something uncanny about it. I don’t suppose I should have cared a cuss -if he’d been one of your dare-devil, Hell-or-Melbourne, -what-she-can’t-carry-she-must-drag sort of blighters. But, being the man -he was, that he should suddenly bust out like this--well, it staggered -me. It was like one’s favourite uncle going Fanti. - -“What had really happened, as it turned out, was that Mister Mate had -taken the bull by the horns, and shortened sail while the Old Man was -safely out of the way. It was dead against his orders, and when the -skipper came on deck, which he did just as I turned up, there was a rare -to-do. - -“I never saw a man in such a passion. He was white and shaking with -anger. He went for Arnot in a regular fury. Was he master of his own -ship, or was he not? and so on, and so on. And then Arnot, who had lost -his head altogether, started bawling back at him about barratry and -Board of Trade inquiries. - -“‘You damned insubordinate hound!’ yells the Old Man. I could see the -big veins swell up on his forehead. I thought he would have struck the -mate. - -“And then--something happened. There was a jar and a grinding crash -forward, and we were all thrown sprawling in a heap on the deck. - -“The ship had driven bows on into a berg nearly as big as a continent, -and then slowly slid off again. Nobody was hurt. The men came tumbling -out of the deckhouse where they berthed before you could look round. I -don’t suppose any of them was asleep, for every one was getting a bit -jumpy since we had been among the ice. - -“The first thing I saw when I picked myself up was Arnot crawling out of -the scuppers with such a comical look of surprise that I had to laugh. -Then I saw the Old Man--and the laugh died. - -“I shall never forget his face--miserable and yet lifted up both at -once, if you understand me, like old what’s-his-name--you -know--sacrificing his daughter. There he stood, on the break of the -poop, quite calm and collected, seeing to the swinging out of the boats, -and making sure that they had food and water. Then at the last he went -back to the chart-room to fetch the ship’s papers. - -“He sighed once, and looked round--a long look as if he were saying -good-bye to it all in his heart. He let his hand rest on her rail for a -minute, and I saw his lips move as if he were speaking to himself. Then -he sighed again, and went in. - -“The ship settled down very fast. We waited five minutes--ten minutes. I -began to feel uneasy and went along to see what was detaining him. I -glanced into the chart-room. He was sitting by the table: I could see -his grey head--the hair getting a bit thin on top--just as I’d seen it -scores of times. Nothing wrong that I could see.... - -“Fifteen minutes--twenty--I shoved my head in to tell him the boat was -waiting.... - -“But I never got him told.... He must have had some sort of a -stroke--evidently when he was going to make a last entry in the log, for -the book lay open before him. I wonder what he was going to write in it. -I wonder! Ah, well, no one will ever know that but his Maker. - -“He was still breathing when we got him into the boat, but it was plain -to see that no Board of Trade inquiry would ever trouble him. - -“We only just pulled away from the ship in time. She went down quite -steadily, on a perfectly even keel. I suppose her cargo--she was loaded -right down to her marks--helped to keep her upright. She just settled -quietly down, with a little shiver now and then like a person stepping -into cold water. Her sails kept her up a little until they were soaked -through. She looked--oh, frightfully like a drowning woman! The fog shut -down like a curtain just at the finish, and the last I saw of her was -like a white drowning hand thrown up out of the water. I was glad from -my heart the Old Man couldn’t see her. It was bad enough for me--a young -fellow with all the world before me. I tell you, the salt on my cheeks -wasn’t all sea water! What it would have been like for him---- - -“He was dead by the time a steamer picked us up, twelve hours later, and -we buried him the same day, not many miles from the place where the old -‘Maid of Athens’ went down. - -“Somehow, I think he would have been pleased if he knew.... You see, he -thought a lot of the old ship....” - - - - -THE END OF AN ARGUMENT - - -A good solid point of difference is, on the whole, almost as -satisfactory as an interest in common--which, in the case of Kavanagh, -the mate, and Ferguson, the chief engineer, of the tramp steamer -“Gairloch,” was fortunate, since of the latter commodity they possessed -none at all. - -Kavanagh was by way of being particular about his appearance, and shaved -before the six inches of mirror in his cramped little cabin as -religiously as any brassbound officer of a crack liner. - -Ferguson was hairy and unbrushed both by inclination and principle. - -Kavanagh was neat in his attire. - -Ferguson was at his happiest in a filthy boiler suit, and he had a trick -of using a handful of engineroom waste where other men use a pocket -handkerchief, which annoyed Kavanagh almost to the point of tears. - -Kavanagh’s whole soul revolted against the smelly, smutty little tub -which was for the time being his floating home. It was ungrateful of -him, certainly, for she had done him a good turn after a fashion. But he -couldn’t help it. He was a sail-trained man; and he had remained in -sail, out of a sheer sense of beauty which was no less real for being -entirely inarticulate, long after his own interests indicated that he -should leave it. Then the company with which he had grown up sold the -last of its fleet, and he had perforce to seek employment elsewhere. He -found it at last, though only after many long and weary weeks of hanging -about docks and shipping offices--found it as mate of the “Gairloch.” - -He sang the praises of sail without ceasing. And even so did Ferguson -wax lyrical on the theme of the engines of the “Gairloch.” - -She might not, he admitted, be beautiful externally; but, man, she’d -gran’ guts in her! He would then soar into ecstatic and highly technical -rhapsodies concerning those same internal essentials, the technicalities -being further complicated by a copious use of his native Doric, and -decorated freely with a certain adjective of a sanguinary nature of -which he was inordinately fond. - -The argument began something after this fashion: - -The “Gairloch” had not long cleared Victoria Harbour, and was belching -forth an Acheronian smudge from her shabby funnel, as she butted her -ugly hull into the south-westerly swell, when she met a big four-masted -barque coming in to Hastings Mill for a cargo of Pacific Coast lumber. -It was a glorious morning--one of those bright, calm, virginal mornings -that are an especial climatic product of that coast. Everything was -bathed in a flood of clear, pale sunlight. The opaque green waters of -the Strait gleamed and flashed in the sun, and, clear-cut as if they -were no more than a dozen miles away, the snowy summits of the Oregon -ranges stood out dazzling in their whiteness against the blue of the -early morning sky. - -The barque was a tall ship for those days, with royals at fore, main, -and mizen, and her piled-up sails shone white as the distant ranges in -the sunlight that caressed their swelling surfaces. The hands were just -laying aloft to get the canvas off her, and as she surged by with a bone -in her mouth, her wet bows and white figurehead flashing as she lifted -on the swell, Kavanagh’s heart ached anew with an unquenchable longing -for sail. In his mind he followed the noble ship to her moorings, in -fancy heard the familiar nasal chant as sail after sail was furled: - - “We’ll roll up the bunt with a fling--o--oh ... - An’ pa--ay Paddy Doyle for his bo--o--ots....” - -“There’s a ship for you!” he exclaimed to the wide world. - -“Ah see nae beauty in yon,” came a dour voice at his elbow--the voice of -Ferguson. “Ah see nae beauty in thae bluidy windbags, nae mair than in -ma wife’s cla’es hingin’ oot on the cla’es-line o’ a Monday morning.” - -Kavanagh was annoyed. He had not meant his involuntary outburst of -feeling to be overheard--least of all to be overheard by Ferguson. -Sneaking about in carpet slippers.... - -“I dare say this floating abomination is more to your taste,” he -snapped. - -“She’s guid guts in her,” said Ferguson. - -The argument was still going on as merrily as ever while the “Gairloch” -rolled heavily up from the Line through days which grew ever colder and -winds which grew ever more stormy. - -The little ship had struck the Western Ocean in one of the very worst of -his moods. She was making shocking weather of it. She rolled, she -pitched, she wallowed, she did every conceivable thing a deeply laden -and ill-designed ship could do in a seaway. Her iron decks were most of -the time under water, and the atmosphere of the stuffy little cabin, -with every scuttle shut and the lamp smoking villainously as it swung in -its gimbals, resembled that of the infernal regions. - -But still, whenever Ferguson and Kavanagh met, the argument continued -without abatement. They went on with it grimly, with their legs hooked -on those of the cabin table, and their backs braced against the backs of -their chairs, while, in spite of the fiddles that had graced the board -for weeks, every roll of the ship added yet further contributions of -cold potato and congealed meat to the dreary confusion of the cabin -floor. - -And so they might have gone on to the crack of doom had nothing happened -to interrupt them. - -In this case what happened was the sighting of the derelict. - -It was about the end of the morning watch, one dark, dreary morning, -when a late livid dawn was just creeping over the rim of the heaving -waste of waters. Kavanagh was cold, tired, and depressed, and his -reflections, as he stood on the bridge of the “Gairloch,” were in -harmony with the time and the weather. The future stretched before him -no more cheerfully than that expanse of grey Atlantic--dreary, -monotonous, and dismal to a degree. He didn’t expect he would ever get a -command. He ought to have gone into steam earlier. He might have got -into one of the big liner companies. Now---- - -Precisely at this point in his meditations he sighted the deserted -ship--now visible on the crest of a roller, now lost to sight as she -slid drunkenly down into the trough of the sea. - -It was evident at a glance that she was not under control. She was -yawing helplessly hither and thither in the seas, her yards, with the -rags of their sails still fluttering in the wind, pointing as if in mute -appeal to the four quarters of the heavens. - -“‘Maria’--Genoa,” said Kavanagh, with his glasses to his eyes, “and -built on the Clyde by the looks of her.... I think she’s been -abandoned--I don’t make out anyone moving, or any signal.” - -He handed the glasses to Captain Harrison, who had just come on to the -bridge. - -“Aye--she’s derelict right enough,” said the captain after a prolonged -scrutiny. “Well, I’ll have to report her--can’t do anything more. It’s -out of the question taking a ship in tow in a sea like this.” - -He pulled at his sandy-grey beard in his worried way. - -Kavanagh, in his gloomier moments, used to picture himself becoming like -Captain Harrison. He was a harassed-looking little man, who was haunted -by a nightmare-like dread of losing his ship and his ticket. He had a -sickly wife and a brood of young children at home, and his indecision -had prevented him from climbing any higher on the ladder of success than -the rung which was represented by the command of the “Gairloch.” - -“Glass falling,” mumbled the captain into his sparse beard, “sea rising -... in for a night of it....” - -Kavanagh hardly heard him. His eyes glued to his glasses, he gazed with -a passionate intensity at the abandoned vessel. - -It was queer. He couldn’t explain it--couldn’t understand it! But there -was something about that ship that made him feel that, at all costs, he -_must_ save her! He could no more turn tail and leave her to perish than -if there had been human lives at stake. He could no more do it than a -knight of old could calmly ride away and leave a distressed damsel -making signals from a turret top. And, indeed, as her masts dipped and -rose again in the sea, she did somehow seem to be making -signals--personal signals--to him and to no one else: to be saying, -“Come! You’re surely not going to leave me to it, are you?” - -“She’d be well worth salving,” he said, trying to keep some of the -eagerness out of his voice as he turned towards his captain. “Mean a lot -of money ... if you could spare the hands----” - -Captain Harrison shook his head. He looked almost terrified. But -Kavanagh had seen the momentary gleam in his eyes at the mention of the -money, and his hopes rose. - -“I don’t see how I’m going to spare the men,” said the captain, “and -besides what good would these chaps be for a job like that. I doubt if -there’s more than two or three of ’em have ever been in sail at all.” - -“She isn’t a big ship, sir,” urged Kavanagh. “If you could let me have -half a dozen hands I could manage her all right.” - -Captain Harrison pulled a minute longer at his ragged beard; then broke -out hurriedly, as if afraid that his own indecision might get the better -of him again: “Well, have it your own way--your own responsibility, -mind--and you’ll have to ask for volunteers. I’m not going to order men -away on a job like that. Madness, you know, really. I oughtn’t to do -it--oughtn’t to do it----” - -There was, as it turned out, no need to order. Out of the twenty-six -hands comprising the deck department of the “Gairloch” a dozen -volunteered at once, and Kavanagh had a hard job to pick his salvage -crew. - -Truth to tell, there wasn’t much to pick among them! Only two had had a -brief experience in sail. As for the rest, what they lacked in knowledge -they made up in enthusiasm. The donkeyman unexpectedly manifested a -romantic yearning to “’ave a trip in one o’ them there,” but him Captain -Harrison, resolute for once, flatly declined to spare. - -Kavanagh was hard put to it to hide a rueful grin when he saw his crowd -ranged up before him. They were a scratch lot if ever there was one! He -foresaw that it would be up to him to combine as best he could the -duties of mate, second mate, bos’n, and general bottle-washer with those -of temporary skipper of “‘Maria’--Genoa.” - -Scratch lot or not, however, the salvage crew were mightily pleased with -themselves as they pulled away for the barque, and they raised a highly -creditable cheer by way of farewell to their shipmates lined up along -the bulwarks of the “Gairloch.” - -One of the last things Kavanagh saw was Ferguson’s hairy countenance -thrust over the rail. - -“Every yin to his taste!” bawled the engineer. “Ah wouldna trust ma -precious life to thon bluidy auld windbag in the gale o’ wund that’s -gaun to blaw the nicht!” - -His last words were caught up and whirled away on one of the short, -fierce gusts which blew out of the west at ever shorter intervals, and -Kavanagh heard no more. - -A scene of chaos welcomed him as he climbed aboard the “Maria.” She had -a big deck-load of lumber, which had broken adrift, and lay piled up -against the temporary topgallant rail, together with an empty hencoop, a -stove-in barrel, and a number of other miscellaneous items. That in -itself was enough to account for the list of the vessel. Aloft she was -in better case than a casual glance suggested. Her spars were all -intact, in spite of the bad dusting she had evidently been through, but -every sail had been blown out of the bolt-ropes, with the exception of -the fore-lower topsail, and that was split from head to foot. The gale -had evidently struck her when she was carrying a fair amount of canvas, -and Kavanagh conjectured that the crew had turned panicky and made no -attempt to save the ship, but had jumped at the chance of being taken -off by some passing vessel. - -He signalled to the “Gairloch,” which was still standing by, that he was -able to carry on, and with a farewell hoot of her siren she rolled off -again on her homeward road. Soon her smoke was lost to view in the -gathering dusk. The derelict was on her own now, for good or ill. - -Kavanagh set his crew to work at once heaving the deck-load over the -side, and himself went below, accompanied by one of his few “sail” men, -a young seaman named Rawlings, to investigate matters below. - -The sense of desolation which always pervades any place inhabited by man -when man’s presence is removed was strong upon him as soon as he began -to descend the companion which led to the saloon. That he had looked -for, however, and silence he had also looked for: so that it was with an -unpleasant sensation of shock that he became suddenly aware of a strange -voice speaking in rapid and monotonous tones, and in some language, too, -which he could not at all make out. - -There was someone on board all the time, then! And yet--it was a -peculiar sort of voice--a voice with a strange, a hardly human ring in -it--unnatural, uncanny. Kavanagh stopped short half-way down the -companion. His scalp crept; indeed, he felt convinced that his cap must -be standing at least a quarter of an inch off his head. He restrained, -not without difficulty, a primitive impulse to bolt up on deck again--an -impulse which the consciousness of Rawlings’ round eyes and open mouth -just behind him helped him to check. - -The voice ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the silence which -followed it was worse than the sound. - -“Wot the ’ell is it?” came the hoarse voice of Rawlings. - -“Sounds like someone crazy,” pronounced Kavanagh; “sick, perhaps, and -they couldn’t get him away----” - -He pulled himself together with an effort, and they completed the -descent into the saloon. - -They stood together, Rawlings and he, in the little saloon, panelled -with bird’s-eye maple in the style once considered the last word in -elegant ship decoration, with its shabby padded settees, its mahogany -table marked with the rings of many glasses, its spotted and tarnished -mirrors, and its teak medicine chest in the corner. - -It was a sorrowful, haunted little place. A smell of stale cigar-smoke -hung about it. The air was chilly, yet stuffy. The uncanny silence of -the deserted ship was all around--a silence only intensified by the -monotonous booming and crashing of the seas, and the occasionally -spasmodic thrashing of a loose block on the deck overhead. - -The mysterious voice broke forth anew in a torrent of unintelligible -speech. The sound came this time almost as a relief to the tension. It -was so unmistakably real, now that it was at closer quarters, that half -its terrors fled. - -“Whatever it is,” exclaimed Kavanagh, “it’s in here!” - -Flinging open a door on his right hand, he stepped boldly in. - -The next moment he burst into a shout of laughter. It was a large and -imposing stateroom with a big teak bed--evidently the captain’s, a relic -of the days when the captain of a crack sailing ship was decidedly a -somebody, and when, moreover, he frequently took his wife to sea with -him. And in the middle of the bed was a brass cage containing the owner -of the voice--a fine sulphur-crested cockatoo, which was even now -pouring forth a flood of the choicest polyglot oaths Kavanagh had ever -heard. - -It was astonishing what a reaction that bird brought about. All the -haunted air of the ship seemed to have been effectually dispelled. -Kavanagh’s spirits began to rise unreasonably as he continued his tour -of his new command. - -The sail locker yielded up only the remains of a fine-weather suit, -mostly patches. Kavanagh whistled softly to himself as he fingered the -thin canvas, and thought about the swiftly falling glass and the fierce -gusts which blew ever more frequently out of the angry winter sunset. - -Still, there was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad job, so, -leaving one of his best men at the wheel, he set about the task of -getting off the rags of the fore-lower topsail and bending the new (or -rather the whole) sail in its place. - -And what a job that was! Never to the day of his death will Kavanagh -forget it. He had worked with scratch crews in his time, but never -before with a crowd like those well-meaning steamer deck-hands who had -never seen a sail in their lives at such close quarters. - -Swearing, struggling, hanging on with teeth and nails, they sweated and -toiled on their unaccustomed perch, until at last--it seemed like a -miracle--all was as snug aloft as was possible in the circumstances. The -chaos on deck was reduced to something approaching order, though the -ship still lay over to it rather more than Kavanagh liked. And now, the -watch being set and look-outs posted, he had time to do what he had been -longing to do--find out, if he could, what the old ship’s past had been. - -He felt convinced that she was the product of some crack Aberdeen or -Clydeside builder, for, in spite of her dirty and neglected condition, -there was about her the unmistakable air of decayed gentility. The brass -on capstan and wheel was so caked with rust and paint that the letters -of the builder’s name could not be discerned, and it was only by chance, -while making an inspection of the miscellaneous junk in the lazarette, -that he made the great discovery. - -This was, in the first place, nothing more important than an old ship’s -bell with a crescent-shaped fragment broken out. It had evidently been -thrown down there when it was replaced by a new one. It was thick with -dirt and verdigris; but, pressed for time as he was, an instinct of -curiosity made him linger while he scraped off some of the deposit with -his knife to see if anything lay beneath. - -His first find was a date--1869. - -“Hallo! This gets interesting!” he exclaimed. “Here’s a letter--‘D’--no, -‘P,’ ‘L’ something, an ‘M,’ another ‘M’----” - -His breath began to come fast with excitement. He scraped away harder -than ever. - -“It _can’t_ be,” he gasped, sitting back on his heels, “but, by George, -it _is_!... The ‘Plinlimmon’!” - -Possibly few people outside that comparatively restricted circle which -is closely interested in sailing ships and their records could -understand the feeling of almost reverential awe with which the mate of -the “Gairloch” gazed at the dim lettering on that old broken bell. To -most laymen--indeed, to many seamen of the more modern school--it would -have stood for nothing but an old outworn ship--a good ship, no doubt, -in her day, a day long since over and done. - -But to Kavanagh and to his like the name “Plinlimmon” had a very -different significance. - -Some ships there are whose names remain as names to conjure with long -after they themselves are gone--names about which yarns will be spun and -songs sung while still any live who have felt their spell. Such a ship -was the “James Baines” of mighty memory; such also were the glorious -“Thermopylæ,” the lovely “Mermerus”; such the evergreen “Cutty Sark” and -her forerunner “The Tweed.” And--though perhaps in a lesser degree--such -was also the “Plinlimmon.” - -And to Kavanagh she was even more. - -She was like something belonging peculiarly to his own youth. She was -inextricably interwoven with the memories of his boyhood, of his first -voyage--those memories which for him now held the wistful golden glamour -of youth departed. - -For, though he had never before this moment beheld her with his bodily -eyes, he had been brought up, as it were, in the “Plinlimmon” tradition. -There had been an old fellow in his first ship--they called him Old -Paul. He had served in the “Plinlimmon” in the days when she was -commanded by the famous “Bully” Rogers: had, indeed, enjoyed the signal -honour of being kicked off the poop by that nautical demigod. He was a -hoary old ruffian, was Old Paul, but a seaman of the old stamp; and he -had that curious, almost poetic, delight in the beauty of a ship which -belonged to so many unlettered old seadogs in the days of sail. - -Kavanagh had sat and listened to that old man’s yarns for many and many -an hour. The name “Plinlimmon” recalled to him a hundred memories he had -thought forgotten. He almost seemed to hear the ghostly echo of the -gruff old voice: “Ah, them was ships, them was, sonny.... When Bully -Rogers set a sail, w’y, ’e _set_ it.... Number One canvas, ’is royals -was, an’ they ’ad to stop there till it blew outer the bolt-ropes.... -‘Hell or Melbourne’ ... that was the game in them days in the ol’ -‘Plinlimmon.’...” - -Why, he had all but forgotten Old Paul.... Where was the old chap now, -he wondered.... Dead, no doubt, long ago.... He must have been seventy -and more then, though he never owned to more than fifty-two.... - -But in the meantime there were other things to think of. The ship to -bring into port ... the glass falling ... the wind and sea rising.... He -turned away from the old bell and its memories and went back on deck. - -The light was all but gone, and before the strength of the westerly wind -the old ship was foaming gallantly along under her scanty sail, leaving -a seething white wake faintly luminous in the dusk--the wind all the -while in her rigging humming the song of the storm. - -Just for a moment Kavanagh’s heart sank at the thought of that fine -weather lower topsail. Oh, for a bolt or two of Bully Rogers’ Number One -canvas, he thought; but it was only for a moment. - -A curious exaltation gripped him.... “By God, she _shall_ do it!” he -said to the sea and the darkness. - - * * * * * - -Looking back in after years upon the events of the next few days, -Kavanagh could never feel quite certain how long they really occupied. - -Time--there _was_ no time! There was just a never-ending succession of -low, hurrying, ragged-edged clouds chasing over a confusion of -white-crested waves that came charging perpetually out of the dim -vapour that shrouded the meeting of sea and sky. There must have been -days--there must have been nights. But he hardly noticed either their -coming or their going. He was intent, his whole being was intent, on one -thing, and one thing only--saving that old ship from her old rival the -sea. - -How they worked, those amazing, those indomitable steamboat-men! It was -as if the spirits of all the “Plinlimmon’s” old sailors had come back to -join in the struggle. They fought with strange monsters in the shape of -sails and ropes, they groped in tangles and labyrinths of unaccustomed -rigging; and their great hearts kept them going. While there was breath -in their bodies to work they pumped, and when they could do no more they -dropped in their tracks and slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion. - -Once the whole crew was washed overboard clinging to the lee forebrace, -only to be sucked back again with the next roll of the ship. Once -Kavanagh heard a man pouring out a flood of the vilest oaths in a tone -of mild expostulation, as he nursed a hand streaming with blood which -had been jammed between a block and the pin-rail. And once he remembered -seeing that lower topsail, bent with such pains and peril, simply fade -out of the bolt-ropes and be seen no more. It didn’t split or tear. It -just vanished.... - -But there always seemed to him to be a sort of dream-like atmosphere -about the whole thing. He was never quite sure what did happen and what -didn’t happen. It was impossible on the face of it, for instance, that -Old Paul should have been there hauling with the rest--yet at the time -Kavanagh was quite sure that he saw him. It was also impossible that -there should have been a dozen men on the yard when there were only half -a dozen in the whole blessed ship--yet Kavanagh was equally sure at the -time that he saw and counted them. He even remembered some of their -faces--a huge fellow with a bare, tattooed chest, in particular, that he -hadn’t seen about the ship before.... Not that he ever mentioned it to -anyone else. He might have been asleep and dreamed it, for all he knew. -Still, it served a useful purpose at the time. It put heart into him. -And he needed it before the end!... - -At last--at long last--came a grey dawn that broke through ragged clouds -upon a sea heaving as with spent passion, upon a handful of weary, -indomitable men, upon an old ship that still lived! - -Kavanagh was suddenly aware that he was tired--dog-tired; that his -wrists were red-raw with the chafing of his oilskins; that the weight of -uncounted days and nights without sleep was weighing down his eyelids -like lead. - -But he had won--he had won! And he had commanded the “Plinlimmon”! -Whatever the years to come might bring or take away, they could never -rob him of that glory. They could bring him no greater prize. - -There was a yell from the look-out, and a faint answering shout came -back out of the grey dawn. - -“The ba-arque, aho-oy!” - -A boat scraped against the ship’s side. One by one, a succession of -familiar faces topped the “Plinlimmon’s” rail. The “Gairloch’s” -donkeyman, the “Gairloch’s” cook, the “Gairloch’s” boy clutching and -being desperately clutched by the “Gairloch’s” cat! - -Last of all, Ferguson climbed heavily over the rail and sat down on a -spare spar, wiping his face with a lump of waste. - -“A steamer--a Dago--rin the auld girl doon,” he said, “an’ the swine -sheered off an’ left us to droon, for all he knew.” - -He paused a moment, then went on, his voice rising suddenly to a lament: - -“She wasna muckle to look at ... but, man, she’d gran’ guts in her!” - -Kavanagh let him have the last word. In the circumstances, he felt he -could afford it. - - - - -ORANGES - - -The clipper ship “Parisina” lay becalmed off the Western Islands. The -gallant Nor’-East Trade which had hummed steadily through her royals for -ten blue and golden days and star-sown nights had tailed away -ignominiously into a succession of fitful, faint, and baffling airs -which kept the wearied crew constantly hauling the yards at the bidding -of every shift of the variable breeze, and withal scarcely served to -give the clipper leeway; and had died off last of all into a flat calm. - -She lay there as still as if she were at anchor. Her sails drooped -against the masts with no more movement than banners slowly dropping to -silent dust in the nave of some great cathedral. Their shadows on the -white deck were clearly defined as shapes cut out of black paper. There -was no sound aloft, not so much as the churring of a rope stirring in -its sheave: only a faint creak by whiles, as the ship lifted -imperceptibly on the long, low swing of the ocean. - -A light haze hung over the outlines of the islands and over the horizon -beyond, so that it was impossible to define where sea ended and sky -began. A couple of fruit schooners about half a mile distant hovered -above their own motionless reflections, like butterflies poised above -flowers. So complete was the calm that even they could not catch a -breath sufficient to keep them moving. They looked almost as if they -were suspended in some new element, neither water nor air, yet -partaking of the character of both. - -Old “Sails” sat on the forehatch, spectacles on nose, stitching busily -away at the bolt-rope of a royal which had come out second best from an -argument with the stormy westerlies. A tall, thin, old man, he looked as -he sat there with his shanks folded under him like one of those -long-legged crabs the Cornish folk call “Gramfer Jenkins.” He had a -short, white beard stained with chewing tobacco, and as he worked his -jaws moved rhythmically in time with the movements of his active needle. - -A boat had pulled out from the nearest island with baskets of fruit, and -its owner, a swarthy negroid Portuguese with a bright handkerchief bound -pirate-wise about his frizzy hair, was driving bargains with the men of -the watch below amid much rough banter and chaff. The men laughed, -called, shouted to one another, threw the fruit from hand to hand, eager -as children. - -From the main deck came the steady slish-scrape of holystones; the mate -had taken advantage of the opportunity the calm offered of bringing the -“Parisina’s” already bone-white planking nearer to that unattainable -perfection of immaculate cleanliness which only exists in the dreams of -New England housewives and particular-minded mates of sailing vessels. -Mr. Billing, the mate, was an insignificant little man with sandy hair -and a peculiar habit of sniffing to himself like a beetle-hunting -hedgehog. He sniffed now as he hovered with a perpetual fussy -watchfulness among the humped figures of his watch, squatting over their -task like worshipping bronzes. Mr. Billing was of the housewifely type -of mate. A man secretly of little courage and no initiative, he disliked -the “Parisina’s” paces intensely. He was nervous of ships as some -lifelong horsemen are nervous of horses. Calms, on the other hand, with -the consequent time they afforded for ritual scouring and painting of -wood and metal, he delighted in much as a house-proud woman of the -suburbs delights in spring cleaning. - -The men growled among themselves, sailor fashion, as they worked. “Gimme -ol’ Stiff afore this ’ere bloody scrubbin’,” said one. “Same ’ere,” said -another. “Why can’t it blow up ag’in, I says? A year an’ a ’arf’s -bloomin’ pay I’ve got comin’ to me at Green’s ’Ome, an’ if it wasn’t for -this ’ere blessed calm I’d be six ’undred mile nearer spendin’ of it by -now.” “Sailorizin’s all right,” grumbled a third. “It’s this ’ere darned -’ouse-maidin’ as gets my goat.” - -Up in the “Parisina’s” tiny chart-room Captain Fareweather--he was known -through all the ports of the Southern Hemisphere, for good and -sufficient reasons, as “Old Foul-weather”--carefully wetted his finger, -and with a furrowed brow turned a leaf and prepared to make a fresh -entry in the “Parisina’s” log-book. - -Old Foul-weather was not fond of his pen, a fact to which the crabbed -and painful handwriting which filled the preceding pages bore eloquent -testimony. Spelling was an anguish to him; and indeed it is doubtful -whether the hours of endurance and anxiety which the entries in the book -represented were one half as irksome to him as the labour of recording -them. But there were on this occasion other reasons for his look of -depression. - -Captain Fareweather detested calms as much as his mate liked them. It -might be said of him that he had one absorbing passion in his life. He -lived that the “Parisina” might make good passages; especially, perhaps, -that she might beat her rival, the “Alcazar.” If she did, life was worth -living, if she didn’t, it was not. Certainly it was not for those -unfortunate beings who happened to be his shipmates for the time being. - -“’Tain’t good reading,” said Old Foul-weather to himself, as he -carefully blotted the new entry--it consisted of one word, “Same”--and -replaced ink and pen. - -He traced the lines of the uncongenial record with a stumpy forefinger. - -“‘Winds puffey and varible. Ship scarcely moveing.’ - -“‘Very light airs.’ - -“‘Dead calm.’ - -“Wonder where old Jones and his blooming ‘Alcazar’ are,” he reflected. -He sighed and closed the book. - -No faintest air entered the stuffy little room. The voices of the men as -they growled and grumbled over their work came clearly to him through -the open port. From below there drifted up a pleasant tinkle and chink -of crockery and cutlery as the steward laid the cabin dinner. - -Through the open companion he could see the helmsman lolling beside the -wheel, his outstretched arm resting along its rim, his fingers loosely -gripping the spokes. He had for once the easiest job in the ship. It was -not always so, for, though the “Parisina,” rightly handled, steered like -a lamb, she needed humouring as much as a horse with a fine mouth. He -was a handsome fellow, swarthy and black-eyed; under the thick growth of -hair on his broad chest showed faintly some tattooed device in red and -blue, a relic of his younger and less hirsute years. - -A barefooted apprentice padded up the poop ladder and struck one bell: a -mellow note that hung trembling on the still air, till it quivered away -into silence high up among the sleeping royals. The boy wore a patched -shirt and ragged dungaree trousers, and his arms and legs were burned -black as mahogany by the tropic sun. He was a tall lad, with the lanky -grace of adolescence; a faint down was just showing on his upper lip, -and the sun gleaming upon the growth of fair hair on his arms and chest -made him look as if powdered with gold dust. - -Captain Fareweather sighed, put the log-book by, and descended to the -cabin. McAllister, the second mate, a big-boned Aberdonian, perennially -hungry, was already there, with one eye on the hash the steward had just -set before the Old Man’s chair. He composed his features into an -appropriate cast of pious decorum as the captain took his seat and -placed his hand before his eyes for his customary grace. This rite was -silent and lengthy; but Captain Fareweather’s officers knew better than -to betray impatience or inattention while it lasted. Legend said that a -second mate, greatly daring, had once begun to nibble his bread before -the captain had finished, and at once there had come a voice from the -behind the hand, like the voice of Mitche Manitou the Mighty, “Ye -irreverential devil, can’t ye see I’m sayin’ grace?” - -It was an uncomfortable meal. The skipper was moody, and McAllister was -horribly nervous in consequence. The few small pebbles of conversation -he cast into the silence fell with an appalling splash which instantly -covered him with scarlet confusion to the tips of his large red ears, -and it was with profound thankfulness that he welcomed the appearance of -the mate with a basket of oranges. - -“I thought you’d like a few,” explained Mr. Billing, “for dinner. -They’re good. A bumboat feller brought ’em alongside.” - -“Bluid oranges,” exclaimed McAllister. He dug his strong square teeth -into the glistening rind, and the red juice squirted over his bony -knuckles. “They’ve ay the best flavour.” - -They seemed to light up the cabin like golden lamps, warm, glowing, -still with the sunlight glory about them. Their fragrance filled the -place, aromatic, pungent, cloying. - -“I don’t care for ’em,” said the Captain suddenly. “The smell of -’em--too strong.” - -He pushed back his chair as he spoke. - -“Stuffy,” he muttered; “glad when we can get way on her again.” - -He stumped off up the companion ladder: a square, stocky figure of a -man, short-necked, broad of shoulder. The two mates looked at each other -significantly. - -“What bug’s bit the auld deevil now?” said McAllister in a -conspiratorial whisper. - -“God knows!” returned Mr. Billing. “He’s always this way when he can’t -be at his cracking on. Old madman!” - -“He’s a fine seaman, though,” replied McAllister. “I’ll say that for -him.” - -“Fine seaman!” breathed Mr. Billing bitterly. “You wait till he shakes -the sticks out of her one fine night. That’s all.” - -Old Foul-weather stood leaning on the poop railing, looking out across -the still expanse of the waters with eyes which did not see the -haze-dimmed islands or the motionless schooners poised above their -reflected selves. Strange--something had stirred in its sleep a little -while since at the sight of those very schooners--something had turned -in its sleep and sighed at the sight of the young apprentice in his -sunburned youth. And just now, with the scent of the oranges, it had -stirred, turned again, sighed again, awakened--the memory of Conchita! - - * * * * * - -Conchita--why, he hadn’t thought of her for years. He wouldn’t like to -say how many years. He had had plenty of other things to occupy his -mind. Work, for one thing. And ships. Plenty of other women had come -into his life and gone out of it, too, since then. Queer, how things -came back to you; so that they seemed all of a sudden to have happened -no longer ago than yesterday.... - -He was in just such a schooner as one of those yonder at the time. The -“John and Jane” her name was--a pretty little thing, sailed like a -witch, too. Lost, he had heard, a year or two ago on a voyage over to -Newfoundland with a cargo of salt. It had been his first voyage South. -He had been in nothing but billyboys and Geordie brigs until then. He -had run his last ship in London. The skipper was a hard-mouthed old -ruffian, the mate a trifle worse. Between them the boy Jim had a tough -time of it. Then one day the captain caught him in the act of purloining -the leg of a duck destined for his own dinner; and, pursuing him with a -short length of rope with the amiable intention of flaying hell out of -him, fell head foremost on the top of his own ballast and lay for dead. -He wasn’t dead: far from it. But young Jim thought he was. So he pulled -himself ashore in the dinghy and set off along Wapping High Street with -only the vaguest idea where he was going. - -He stuck to the water-side as a hunted fox sticks to cover. The Tower he -passed quickly by: it looked too much like a lock-up, he thought. -Presently he came to a church, and a big clock sticking out over the -roadway; and close by a wharf where schooners were loading, and among -them the “John and Jane.” - -He liked the looks of her. She was clean and fresh and sweet-smelling. -And the mate, who was superintending the lowering of some cases into the -hold, had a red, jolly face that took his fancy. - -The boy Jim peered down into the hold. It was full almost to the -hatch-coamings. She must be going to sail soon. - -The red-faced mate had given his last order, and was coming down the -gangway with the virtuous and anticipatory look of one at ease with his -own conscience after a spell of arduous toil, and about to reward -himself for the same with liquid refreshment. - -Young Fareweather stepped forward, his heart thumping. - -“Was you wanting a hand, mister?” - -The red-faced man looked at him consideringly. - -“A hand? A s’rimp, you mean!” He guffawed slapping his hands on his fat -thighs, a man well pleased with his own joke. - -“Ah con do a mon’s work, though,” the youngster insisted. - -“Ye can, can ye? Can ye steer.” - -“Aye, Ah con that.” - -“Can ye reef an’ furl, splice a rope-yarn, peel potatoes and cook the -cabin dinner of a Sunday?” - -“Ah con that.” - -The mate roared. - -“Sort of a admirayble bright ’un, I can see,” he said. “Well, I tell you -what. Here’s the skipper comin’ down the wharf. We’ll see what he says.” - -The captain, a fierce-looking little man with bushy eyebrows, indulged -in a smile at the recital of Jim’s reputed accomplishments. - -“Take him if ye like,” he said, “and, listen, you, boy” (bending the -bushy brows on Jim), “if you’re tellin’ lies, it’s the rope’s-end you’ll -taste, my lad.” - -He spent the night curled up on a box in the corner of the galley, -listening with one ear to the yarns of the old one-eyed shipkeeper, the -other cocked for the ominous tread of the dreaded policeman. But dawn -came, and brought no policeman, and by noon the “John and Jane” was -dropping downstream with the tide. - -It seemed to the boy Jim like a foretaste of Heaven. The captain was a -kindly man for all his appearance of ferocity, the mate easier still. No -one got kicked; nobody went without his grub--incidentally he was -relieved to find that nothing further was said about cooking the cabin -dinner; wonder of wonders, nobody was so much as sworn at seriously. -True, the amiable mate was the most foul-mouthed man he had ever come -across before or since. But then, hard words break no bones, especially -on board ship, and the mate’s repertoire was generally looked on as -something in the nature of a polite accomplishment: something like -conjuring tricks or making pictures out of ink blots. - -It was all a wonder to him, just as Oporto, whither the “John and Jane” -was bound, was a wonder to him after the cold stormy North Sea, the -bleak streets of Newcastle and Wapping which so far had been his only -idea of seaports. The schooner, as has already been said, was an easy -ship, and in port the hands had plenty of time to themselves. He liked -the sun, the light, the warmth, the colour. He liked the laughing, lazy, -careless children of the South. He liked the many-coloured houses that -climbed the steep streets of the old town--and the bathing in the great -river--and the little stuffy wineshops with their mixed smell of sour -wine and sawdust and stale cigar-smoke and onions--and the bells that -chimed day long, night long, from hidden convents in green gardens -behind high walls. And the oranges---- - -The day he first saw Conchita, he had gone off for a walk by himself, -and, the day being hot, had lain down by the roadside to rest. And as he -lay there half asleep, lulled by the shrill song of the cicalas in the -grass all round him, plop! something bounced on to his chest, rolled a -little way, and lay still. - -He reached out his hand and picked it up. An orange! Its skin was still -warm with the sun, and it had that indefinable bloom on it that belongs -to all fruit newly gathered. And then he looked round to see where it -had come from, and saw--Conchita! - -Conchita with her dark, vivacious little face, her eyes black as sloes, -her red lips open in a wide laugh that showed a row of perfect -teeth--Conchita with her full white sleeves under her stiff embroidery -jacket, her wide gay-coloured petticoats, her dainty white-stockinged -ankles and little slippered feet; why, she was almost like a talking -doll, Jim thought, that he had seen in a big toyshop in Newcastle, and -wished he had the money to buy for his sister! He felt as awkward, as -clumsy with her as a boy with a doll. Goodness knows how they understood -one another, those two young things! There is a sort of freemasonry, -somehow or other, among young things that laughs at such difficulties as -language. She knew a little broken English, which she was immensely -proud of. She had picked it up at school from an English playmate. But -Jim knew nothing but his own East Coast brand of his native speech. -However, understand one another they did, somehow or other. He learnt -her name, of course, and how she laughed at his attempts to say it as -she said it! He learned, also, that she was sixteen, and that she was to -be married some day to old João the muleteer, but that she did not like -him because of “ees faze--o-ah, long, lak’ dees!” And she stretched out -her arms to their full extent to indicate it. But she “lak’ Ing-lees -sailor, o-ah ver-ree, ver-ree much”--and she “giv’ you--o-ah, ever so -many orange--lak’ dees!” And she made a wide circle with her arms to -show their number. - -The boy went back to his ship in a kind of dream. Her warm Southern -nature was riper far than his. He was swept clean off his feet by the -fervour of her unashamed yet innocent lovemaking--by the feel of her -warm body, of her warm lips, of her rounded cheeks soft and glowing, as -sun-warmed oranges. Of course he went again--and many times again--and -then there came the last night before the “John and Jane” was to sail. - -It had been arranged that for once he was not to go alone. Perhaps -Conchita, strange little blend of impulse and sophistication, had judged -it best that their leave-taking should not be an _affaire à deux_. Jim -was to bring some of his shipmates along: and Conchita would bring also -some of the other girls. And it would “be fon--o-ah, yees, soch fon!” - -He remembered the queer feeling of shrinking that came over him as they -set out on that fatal expedition. What had happened he never really -knew. Perhaps one of his shipmates had blabbed about it in the little -wineshop on the quay; perhaps one of the other girls. What mattered was -that somehow the jealous João, with the “faze long, lak’ dees,” had -heard of it! - -They went stumbling and whispering up the lane that led out of the town. -He could remember the warm scent of that autumn night and the way the -wind went sighing through the broad, dark leaves of the orange groves -and the gnarled cork trees that bordered the stony mule-track by which -they climbed. They passed a little inn by the wayside, where a man was -playing a guitar and singing an interminable ballad full of wailing, -sobbing notes, in the melancholy minor key common to folk-melodies the -world over. - -The moon was shining through the trees when they came to the rendezvous. -They had brought sacks with them, and the girls shook the fragrant -globes down while they gathered them into heaps. - -And then, suddenly, all was changed. It was like a nightmare. There were -lights, and people shouting. The girls screamed. Conchita cried out, -“Run, run!” She clung round his neck, fondling his face, weeping. There -was a fierce face, a lifted hand, something that sang as it fled. And -Conchita was all of a sudden limp in his arms, her face, with a look of -hurt surprise in its wide eyes and fallen mouth, drooping backward like -a flower broken on its stalk. She seemed to be sinking, sinking away -from him, like a drowned thing sinking into deep water.... - -He did not know who dragged that limp thing from his numb arms. He did -not know who hustled him away, shouting in his ear, “Run, ye damned -fool, run! Them bloody Dagoes’ll knife the lot of us.” He remembered -being hurried down the lane, and past the lighted inn where the man was -still at his interminable wailing songs. And then--no more, until he -came to himself under the smelly oil lamp in the familiar forecastle. - -The “John and Jane” sailed at dawn.... - - * * * * * - -Captain Fareweather sighed, shifted his elbows on the rail, stiffened -himself suddenly, and stood erect. The look of the sea had changed. Its -surface was blurred as if a hand had been drawn gently across it. - -One after the other the two schooners began to steal slowly, very slowly -across his line of vision. He cast an eye aloft. There was a slight -tremor in the hitherto motionless clew of the main royal. - -He sniffed the coming wind as a dog sniffs the scent of its accustomed -quarry; then he walked briskly across to the break of the poop and, -leaning his hands on the rail, called to the mate. - -“Mister!” - -“Sir?” - -“Stand by to square away your main yard! I think we’ll get a breeze -afore two bells.” - -He walked the poop fore and aft, rubbing his hands and whistling a -little tune. - -There was a scamper of bare feet on the planking. Men sang out as they -hauled on the braces, “Yo-heu-yoi-hee!” Blocks sang shrill as fifes, -reef points beat a tattoo on the tautened canvas. The sails filled with -loud clappings. Out of the north-east came the wind--shattering the calm -mirror of the sea into a million splinters--filling the royals like the -cheeks of the trumpeting angels of the Judgment--burying under its -mounded confusion the very memory of the vanished calm, even as the -years lay mounded over the dead face of Conchita, whom the gods loved -too well.... - -“We’ll beat that bloody ‘Alcazar’ yet, mister,” said Captain -Fareweather. - - - - -SEATTLE SAM SIGNS ON - - -“It’s what I’m always tellin’ you, Mike,” said Captain Bascomb severely, -“you’re too rough with ’em.” - -Mr. Michael Doyle, mate of the skysail yarder “Bride of Abydos,” was -usually nearly as handy with his tongue as he was with his fists, which -was saying a good deal. But on this occasion he was, for once in his -life, fairly stumped. He opened and shut his mouth several times like a -landed fish, but, like a fish, remained speechless. - -“Too rough with ’em, that’s what you are,” pursued the skipper. “You -should use a bit o’ tact. You shouldn’t keep kickin’ ’em. I’m a humane -man myself, and I tell you I take it very hard--very hard indeed I -do--to have my ship avoided as if we’d got plague on board just because -I’ve got a rip-roarin’ great gazebo of a mate from the County Cork that -doesn’t know when to keep his feet to himself. When I was a nipper they -learned me to count ten before I kicked. That’s what you want to do. -Twenty for the matter o’ that.” - -Captain Bascomb was a hard case, though anyone overhearing the foregoing -remarks might have thought otherwise. He was also a tough nut. Men who -spoke from personal experience said, and said with deep emotion, that he -was both these things, as well as other things less fitted for polite -mention: so presumably it was true. - -Now, while there are undeniably times and seasons when it is a valuable -asset for a shipmaster to have the character of a tough nut and a hard -case, there are equally conceivable circumstances when such a reputation -may be a decidedly inconvenient possession. And it was precisely such a -set of circumstances which had arisen on the day in late autumn when the -conversation just recorded took place. - -The “Bride of Abydos” lay alongside the lumber mill wharf at Victoria. -Her cargo of lumber was all on board. And she would have been ready to -sail for home on the next morning’s tide but for one trifling and -inconvenient particular--namely, that she was without a crew. - -This regrettable discrepancy was due to two principal reasons. In the -first place, the rumour of a discovery of gold, or copper, or aluminium, -or something of a metallic nature up in the Rocky Mountains had had the -inevitable effect of inducing the ship’s company of the “Bride of -Abydos” to abandon as one man their nautical calling, and depart for the -interior of British Columbia with an unbounded enthusiasm which would -only be surpassed by the enthusiasm with which they would doubtless -return to it in less than three months’ time. - -But it would be useless to deny that Captain Bascomb’s fame as a tough -nut--a fame to which the ungrudging tributes of his late crew had given -a considerable local fillip--was the outstanding cause for the coyness -manifested by eligible substitutes about coming forward to fill the -vacant berths in the “Bride of Abydos’s” forecastle. - -Hence it was that gloom sat upon Captain Bascomb’s brow, and a -reflected gloom upon that of Mr. Michael Doyle--a gloom which was -graphically expressed by the steward when he imparted to the black -doctor in confidence the news that the Old Man was lookin’ about as -pleasant as a calf’s daddy. - -Mr. Doyle delicately brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat, and cleared -his throat cautiously by way of preparing the ground for another -conversational opening. - -“What do you keep making that row for?” demanded the skipper. “You put -me in mind of a cock chicken that’s just learnin’ to crow! If you do it -again I’ll mix you some cough stuff--and I’ll see you swallow it too.” - -“I was only goin’ to say----” began Mr. Doyle in aggrieved tones. - -“Goin’ to say, were you? Well, if you’ve got anything to say that’ll -show me how to make a crew that can work the ‘Bride of Abydos’ out of a -nigger grub sp’iler and a hen-faced boob of an eavesdropping Cockney -steward”--here he paused to relieve his feelings by adroitly launching a -cuspidor at the inquiring countenance of Cockney George as it protruded -from the pantry door--“you can say it,” continued the skipper; “if not, -you needn’t! I’m in no mood for polite conversation, and that’s a fact.” - -Silence and profound gloom descended once again upon the cabin and its -occupants, while the fluttered and indignant George, still palpitating -at the recollection of his narrow escape from the captain’s unexpected -projectile, slippered gingerly off to enjoy a growl with the black cook, -who was sitting in his galley crooning the songs of Zion in a discreet -undertone to the carefully muted strains of his concertina. - -And just at that moment the gangway creaked loudly beneath a heavy -tread, and a stranger stepped on board. - -He was a large man with a large, flabby face, in which a large cigar was -carelessly stuck as if to indicate the approximate position of the -mouth: a loose-lipped mouth which looked, if possible, even more -unpleasant when it smiled than when it scowled. - -“Say, looks like someone’s feelin’ kinder peeved,” observed the -new-comer, pushing the skipper’s late missile with his toe. “Cap’n -aboard, stooard?” - -“Ho, yus, he’s on board right enough,” responded George. “Frowed this -’ere at me ’ead just now, ’e did. Whatcher want?” he inquired -suspiciously. “’Cos if it’s tracks or anyfink o’ that, I ain’t goin’ to -let you in, not on your sweet life I ain’t! Ever see a blinkin’ gorilla -wiv the toofache? ’Cos that’s ’im--see! Just abart as safe to go near as -wot ’e is--see! You take my tip and ’op it! Beat it for the tall -timbers! Go while the goin’s good!” - -“That’s right all right,” responded the stranger cordially. “I guess -I’ll just walk right in and introdooce myself.” - -He stepped briskly along the alleyway and tapped on the cabin door. - -A growl like that of a wounded jaguar was the only response, but, taking -this as a permission to enter, the visitor projected his head, not -without caution, round the edge of the door. - -“G’ mornin’, Cap’n--g’ mornin’, mister,” he said heartily. “Pardon me -breezin’ along this way, but I’ve a hunch you and me might be able to -do business. I understand you’re in a bit of a difficulty regardin’ a -crew.” - -Captain Bascomb regarded him for a few seconds without speaking. A -remarkable variety of emotions might have been seen chasing one another -across his countenance as he did so--surprise, incredulity, and joy -chief among them. - -“I am,” he said slowly. “I am, and that’s a fact, Mr.---- I didn’t quite -get your name.” - -“Grover--Samuel Grover--Seattle Sam to most folks around these parts,” -replied the stranger, making bold to enter and take a seat. “Fine ship -you’ve got here, Cap’n!” - -“Ship’s all right,” responded the skipper curtly. - -He didn’t seem able to take his eyes off Mr. Grover’s face. It wasn’t a -beautiful face, either; to be quite candid, it verged upon the -repulsive. But Captain Bascomb gazed at it as if it had been the face of -his first love. Seattle Sam flattered himself he was making a good -impression. - -“See here, Cap’n,” he went on, “I’ve a vurry nice bunch of b’ys up at my -li’l’ place on Cormorant Street. Prime sailormen every one of ’em. And -I’d just love to ship ’em along with you. But”--he leaned forward and -tapped his fat finger on the table--“here’s the snag! Speakin’ as man to -man, Cap’n, you ain’t asackly parpular.” - -“Oh, I’m not, ain’t I?” said Captain Bascomb, bristling. “Well, if -that’s all you’ve come to say, the sooner you beat it out of here the -better! As I was saying to my mate here only just now, I’m in no mood -for polite conversation--not to say personal remarks of an offensive -nature----” - -“Not so fast, Cap’n, not so fast,” said Seattle Sam hastily, taking the -precaution to hook towards him the companion to the captain’s earlier -missile, ostensibly that he might put it to the purpose for which it was -designed, but really in the interests of disarmament. “What I was just -leadin’ up to was this. I guess I can fix things for you good. But I -guess I can’t do it without a sort of a li’l’ frameup.” - -At this point Mr. Doyle reluctantly withdrew, in obedience to a simple -wireless message from his superior, and strain his ears as he might from -his post at the head of the companion he could hear no more than a -mumble of voices drifting up from below. - -The conference was a lengthy one, so much so that Mr. Doyle had long -grown tired of waiting when the tinkle of glasses indicated that it was -drawing to a close. - -“Well, here’s towards ye, Cap’n,” came the slightly raised voice of -Seattle Sam, “an’ to our li’l’ trip together!” - -The captain’s guest had hardly got out of the alleyway before Mr. Doyle -came clattering down the companion with his eyes bulging. - -“Is that big stiff goin’ to sign on wid us?” he inquired in a -reverential whisper, his native Munster more honeyed than ever, as -always in moments of deep emotion. - -“He is, Mike,” returned the skipper, in accents broken by feeling. - -“Can I have him in my watch?” asked Mr. Doyle. - -“Mike, you can.” - -“And can I--can I kick him whenever I like?” pursued the mate in the -supplicating tones of a reciter giving an impersonation of a little -child asking Santa Claus for a toy drum. - -But at this point Captain Bascomb’s feelings overcame him altogether, -and, leaping from his seat, he seized his astonished second in command -firmly yet gracefully round the middle, and proceeded to give a highly -spirited rendering of the Tango Argentina as performed in that country. - -George, who was observing matters from his usual point of vantage, flew -to describe the portent to his crony in the galley. - -“Dat’s a bery dangerous man,” said the doctor, “a bery biolent, -uncontrollabous kin’ of a man, sonny! Ah jus’ done drop mah ol’ pipe in -de cabin soup one mawnin’, an’ Ah tell you Ah wuz skeered for mah life. -An’ Ah tell you what, bo’--Ah’se skeered o’ dat man when he’s lookin’ -ugly, but Ah’se ten times, twenty times, hundred times skeereder when -he’s lookin’ pleased.... An’ when he gits dancin’----” And he rolled his -woolly head till it nearly fell off his shoulders. - -Meanwhile Mr. Samuel Grover was stepping out briskly in the direction of -his boarding-house for seamen in the pleasant thoroughfare known as -Cormorant Street. The name was a singularly appropriate one, for Mr. -Grover and his like had long gorged there upon sailormen. He hummed -pleasantly to himself as he walked, and the rapidity with which he -twirled his cigar round his large loose mouth indicated to those who -knew the man that he was feeling on unusually good terms with himself -and the world. - -“Now, b’ys,” he cried, rubbing his fat hands together as he surveyed the -dozen or so of depressed-looking sailormen who were playing draw poker -for Chinese stinkers in the bar of his modest establishment, “now, b’ys, -I’ve gotten a real fine ship for the lot o’ ye.” - -The old habitués of his place looked at one another with dawning -suspicion. They had encountered this air of extravagant geniality -before. - -“W-w-wot’s name-of-er?” inquired Billy Stutters, so called by reason of -a slight impediment in his speech. It never took him less than a minute -to get up steam, but as soon as he was under way the words came with a -rush, like water from a stopped-up drain whence the obstruction has been -suddenly removed. - -“The ‘Bride of Abbeydoes,’” said Mr. Grover, “and a damn fine ship too.” - -You could have heard a pin drop for a minute or two while his audience -digested this news. Ginger Jack, who was an old man-of-war’s man, and as -hard a case as any of the King’s bad bargains who ever drifted under the -Red Duster, was heard to observe that he warn’t goin’ to sign in no -blinkin’ “Abbeydoes,” nor “Abbeydon’t” neither for the matter o’ that. -Billy Stutters, after a mighty effort, was understood to second the -amendment. - -“Ho, you ain’t, ain’t you?” said Mr. Grover with scathing irony. “An’ -wot makes your Royal ‘Ighnesses that bloomin’ partic’lar, may I ask?” - -“B-b-b-becos-I’ve-bin-in-’er-afore,” said Billy, sulkily, “an’ the -sk-k-kipper-kicked-me!” - -“Did he so?” commented Mr. Grover facetiously. “I thought maybe you was -goin’ to say he kissed you.... Now, look ’ere, b’ys,” he continued, -assuming all the powers of persuasion he could muster; “I guess you’ve -gotten cold feet about the ‘Bride of Abbeydoes.’ You take it from me, -she ain’t so black as what she’s painted. Not by a jugful. I don’t mind -admittin’, man to man, Captain Bascomb’s a hard case. And Mister Doyle, -well, I reckon he’s another. But they’re all right with a crowd of -smart, handy boys like yourselves. You ain’t a bunch o’ greasers or -sodbusters from way back that don’t know a deadeye from a fourfold -purchase. You’re the sort o’ crowd as a skipper won’t find no fault -with, as he’ll be proud to see about his ship. And just to show I’m in -earnest, I’m goin’ to sign on in the ‘Bride of Abbeydoes’ myself. Fair -an’ square. I’m about doo to run across and see the home-folks in -London, England. I’ve a fancy to take a turn at sailorizin’ again. An’ I -like a fast ship. Now then, b’ys, is it a go? That’s the style. The -drinks are on the house!” - -“Nice sort o’ state of affairs,” observed Mr. Grover a little later to -his factotum in the privacy of the den he called his office. “A lot of -ungrateful swabs I’ve been keepin’--keepin’, mind you--for best part of -two weeks, and they ups with their ‘Won’t sign ’ere’ ’n’ ‘Ain’t goin’ to -sail there’ as if they was bloomin’ lords. Well, well! I’ll learn ’em. -Don’t I hope Mr. Bucko Doyle’ll put it across ’em good and hard, that’s -all! - -“Why, in the old days in ’Frisco,” he continued dreamily, “you could -ship a corp and no questions asked. And as for sailormen--well, you -didn’t consult ’em. And quite right too. A lot they know about what’s -good for ’em--a bunch of idle, extravagant swine! Warn’t it all for -their good to get ’em shipped off to sea sharp afore they’d got time to -get into trouble and go fillin’ up the jail, I ask you? And then you get -a lot of meddlin’ psalm-singin’ idjits as don’t know the first thing -about the class o’ men people like me ’ave got to deal with. Psha!” - -And Mr. Grover set about filling a sea-chest with an assortment of old -newspapers and empty bottles which would have struck his future -shipmates, had they been there to see, as a curious outfit for a Cape -Horn passage. - -The next day bright and early he attended with his crowd at the shipping -office, where, having duly heard the ship’s articles mumbled over, the -party appended their signatures and marks thereto and became duly -members of the crew of the “Bride of Abydos.” The morning was fine and -sunny, and every one was in high good-humour. Captain Bascomb’s face was -wreathed in smiles, and the wink to which Seattle Sam treated him when -no one was looking elicited an even huger one in reply. - -All the same, a joke is a joke, and Mr. Grover considered that it was -carrying the joke a bit too far when the third mate, a big apprentice -just out of his time, ordered him to tail on to the topsail halyards or -he’d wonder what hit him. However, he complied with the order with as -good a grace as he could muster, and even went the length of joining -with some heartiness in the time-honoured strains of “Reuben Ranzo.” -“After all,” he reflected, “may as well do the thing properly while -you’re about it.” - -Still, he wasn’t sorry when the time drew near for the little comedy to -come to an end. Dropping, with a sigh of relief, the rope on which he -had been hauling he walked quickly off towards the poop, rubbing his -fat palms tenderly as he went. They had so long been strangers to -anything resembling a job of work that they were already beginning to -blister. - -“Well, Skipper,” he cried gaily, “time to square our li’l’ account and -say so long, I guess!” - -The captain gave him rather a peculiar glance, and led the way in -silence down into the cabin. - -Seattle Sam hesitated a moment. Time was getting short. But a drink was -a drink, after all, and it would have meant going back on the tradition -of a lifetime to refuse one. - -He had hardly entered the saloon before he became vaguely conscious of a -certain lack of cordiality in the atmosphere. The pilot’s dirty glass -was still on the table, but there was no other sign of liquid -refreshment. He could not keep a note of uneasiness out of his voice. - -“Well, Skipper,” he repeated, “so long, and a pleasant voyage!” - -The captain’s eyes met his in a cold stare of absolute repudiation. -Seattle Sam’s extended hand dropped slowly to his side, and the -self-satisfied smirk faded from his face. The captain had taken up a -position between him and the companion. Instinctively he turned towards -the alleyway which led to the main deck. It was blocked by the -substantial form of Mr. Michael Doyle. - -Too late the ghastly truth began to dawn. - -“Talking about squarin’ accounts,” said the skipper slowly, “I’ve got a -little account to square. It’s been waiting a long time too. Matter o’ -fifteen years or so. Take a good look at me! Ever seen me before? Just -cast your mind back a bit to the time when you were ’Frisco Brown’s -runner, and shipped a big husky apprentice out o’ the Golden Gate in a -Yankee blood boat that the ‘Bride of Abydos’ is a day-nursery to!... -I’ve got the scars of that trip about me yet, soul and body, Mister -Seattle Sam, and you’re goin’ to pay for ’em, and compound interest -too!” - -As he spoke, three long wails from the tug’s hooter rent the air, -answered by round after round of cheering from the ship. - -The skipper stood back, while Seattle Sam dashed up on to the poop with -a low howl of rage and terror. - -The tug’s hawser trailed dripping through the water, and she was turning -her nose for home with a mighty churning of her paddles. The crimp -rushed to the rail, waving his arms frantically above his head, and a -yell of derision greeted him from the crew lined along her bulwarks. -They were all in it, then! He was alone, alone, with a man he had -shanghaied, a crew he had tried to swindle, and a sea-chest full of -waste paper wherewith to face the bitter days and nights off the Horn. - -“Bos’n!” yelled the skipper. “Call all hands aft!” - -“Lay aft all hands!” roared the bos’n, and soon a throng of interested -faces looked up at the captain as he stood with his hands planted on the -poop rail. - -His words were few but to the point. - -“Boys, you’ve heard I’m a hard man to sail under. Maybe I am. That’s for -you to find out. I won’t have back chat. I won’t stand for any sojering -or shinaniking. If you’re decent sailormen, and know your work, and do -it, we’ll get on all right. If you’re not, me and my mates are here to -knock ruddy hell out of you. - -“One word more. This man here”--he indicated the trembling form of -Seattle Sam--“came on board my ship yesterday to sell you. I’ll give you -his words. ‘I’ll fool ’em I’m goin’ to sign on myself, and they’ll come -like lambs. Twenty dollars apiece and the men are yours. And I don’t -care if you give ’em ruddy hell!’ Now I say to you, ‘This man’s yours! -Take him, and I wish you joy of your shipmate!’” - -And, grasping Seattle Sam by the collar of his coat and the scruff of -his pants, he propelled him to the top of the poop ladder and gave him a -skilful hoist which dropped him full in the midst of the expectant group -below. - - * * * * * - -The tug’s smoke was a grey feather on the skyline; Flattery a grey cloud -on the port bow. - -The song of the wind in his royals was sweet music in Captain Bascomb’s -ears. So was the rush and gurgle of the waves under the clipper’s keel. -So were all the little noises that a ship makes in a seaway. - -But, oh, sweeter far than them all was a confused turmoil which ever and -anon came vaguely to his hearing--a sound made up of thuds, of cries, of -curses--which indicated beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mr. Samuel -Grover, some time of ’Frisco, and late of Cormorant Street, Victoria, -was undergoing the decidedly painful process of being ground exceeding -small! - - - - -PADDY DOYLE’S BOOTS - -A FORECASTLE YARN - - -You know that junk store on the Sandoval waterfront? A Chink keeps -it--Charley Something or other, don’t remember the rest of his name. If -you don’t know the place I mean, you know plenty more just like it. The -sort of place where you can buy pretty well anything under the sun, -everything second-hand, that is; any mortal thing in the seagoing line -that you can think of, and then some. That’s Charley’s! - -Well, once Larry Keogh (every one used to call him Mike, because his -name wasn’t Michael), and Sandy MacGillivray from Glasgow, and a -Dutchman called Hank were in want of one or two things for a Cape Horn -passage. Their ship was the old “Isle of Skye.” Did you ever meet with -any of them “Isle” barques? They were very fine ships. There was the -“Isle of Skye,” “Isle of Arran,” “Isle of Man,” and a whole lot more I -just forget--all “Isles.” You wouldn’t find any of them now. Some were -lost, some broken up, some went under the Russian or Chilian flag, and -the firm that owned them (MacInnis, the name was) went out of business -at the finish. And as for the old “Isle of Skye” herself, she piled up -on Astoria a little more than a year ago--foreign-owned then, of course. - -Round these three chaps I was speaking about went to Charley’s joint. -Larry and Hank got what they wanted soon enough. At least, they got -what they had money for, which wasn’t very much, Charley not being in -the humour to treat Larry as handsome over some lumps of coral Larry -wanted to trade for clothes. - -This Sandy MacGillivray I mentioned, however, was a bit of a capitalist, -and he was also of an economical disposition; and what with wanting to -lay out his money the best way and not being able to bear the feel of -parting with the cash when he’d found what he wanted to buy, he had his -pals with the one thing and the other teetering about first on one foot -and then on the other, and sick to death of him and his -shilly-shallying. - -At long last he got through; and then nothing would fit but Charley must -give him something in for his bargain. - -“No good, no good!” says the Chink, looking ugly the way only a Chink -can. “You pay me, you go ’long!... P’laps I give you somet’ing you no -like.” - -He grinned and showed his dirty yellow teeth. - -“Ut’s not possible,” said Larry. “Sandy’s the one that’ll take it, if -it’s neither too hot nor too heavy.” - -“All light,” says the Chink, sulky-like. “I give you velly good pair o’ -boots.” - -Hank’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and so did Larry’s, when they -saw what Sandy had got through just having the gall to ask. - -A beautiful pair of sea-boots they were, and brand-new, or very near it, -by the look of them. Sandy thought the old fellow was joshing him; but -it was all right. He was nearly beside himself with delight. He stopped -outside a saloon once on the way to the ship, and stood turning over his -money in his pocket so long that the boys began to think he was going to -celebrate his good fortune in a fitting manner. - -But all he said at the finish was, “It’s a peety to change a five spot. -Once change your money an’ it fair melts awa’” - -Larry sighed. If he’d known about those boots he might have had a bid -for them. And now Sandy had got them for nothing. Larry made him a -sporting offer of his coral in exchange for them, but it was no go. - -“To hell wid ye for a skin-louse!” says Larry, who was getting a bit -nasty by this time. He had a great thirst on him, and no money to -gratify it, and that was the way it took him. “Ye’d take the pennies off -your own father’s eyes, so you would, and he lying dead.” - -Sandy showed the boots to the rest of the crowd, and of course every one -had something to say. But there could be no doubt he had got a wonderful -fine bargain. - -“I wouldn’t wonder but they have a hole in them,” said Larry. The notion -seemed to brighten him up a whole lot. “The water will run in and out of -them boots the way you’ll wish you never saw them. I know no more -uncomfortable thing than a pair of boots and they letting in water on -you.” - -Sandy was a bit upset by this idea of Larry’s, so he filled the boots -with water to see if there was anything in it. Leak--not they! - -“It would be a good thing,” said Larry with a sigh, he was that -disappointed, “if the old drogher herself was as seaworthy as them -boots. As good as new they are, and devil a leak is there in ayther one -of them. But maybe,” he went on, cheering up again a bit, “maybe some -person has been wearing them that died of the plague. It is not a very -pleasant thing, now, to die of the plague. I would not care to be -wearing a pair of boots and I not knowing who had them before me.” - -“Hee-hee,” sniggers Sandy in a mean little way he had. “Hee, hee--ye’ll -no hae the chance o’ wearin’ these.” - -And then it was that old Balto the Finn--he was an old sailorman, this -Balto, and he could remember the real ancient days, the Baltimore -clippers and the East Indiamen--spoke for the first time. - -“From the dead to the dead!” says Balto. “From a dead corpse were they -taken, and to a dead corpse will they go.” - -They are great witches, are Finns, as every one knows. And it seemed -likely enough that the first part of the saying, at least, was true, for -old Charley hadn’t the best of names for the way he got hold of his -stuff. - -Sandy was one of those chaps who go about in fear and trembling of being -robbed; so, after he saw how all the crowd admired the boots, he took to -wearing them all the time ashore and afloat. He went ashore in them the -night before the “Isle of Skye” was to sail. - -He came aboard in them, too, that same night.... - -The tide drifted him against the hawser, and the anchor watch saw him -and hauled him in. Dead as nails, was poor Sandy, and no one knew just -how it came about. It was thought he’d slipped on the wet wharf--it was -a very bad wharf, with a lot of holes and rough places in it. And of -course a man can’t swim in heavy boots.... - -There was a man in the “Isle of Skye” at that time, a Dago. His name was -Tony, short for Antonio. He bought Sandy’s boots very cheap, no one else -seeming to care for them. - -That was a cruel cold passage, and the “Isle of Skye” being loaded right -down to her marks, she was a very wet ship indeed. So that the time came -when more than one in the starboard watch wished they were in that -Dago’s boots after all, and the fanciful feeling about poor Sandy began -to wear off. - -The Old Man was a holy terror for cracking on: he had served his time in -one of the fast clippers in the Australian wool trade, and he never -could get it out of his head that he had to race everything else in the -nitrate fleet. He would sooner see a sail carry away any day than reef -it, and this passage he was worse than ever. - -However, it came on to blow so bad, just off the pitch of the Horn, that -the mate went down and dug the hoary old scoundrel out of his sweet -slumbers, he having dared anybody to take a stitch off her before -turning in. He cursed and he swore; but the end of it was that the watch -laid aloft to reef the fore upper-topsail, and it was then that this -Dago Tony, who was swanking it in the boots as usual, put his foot on a -rotten ratline, and down he came, boots and all. - -There was a lot of talk, and no wonder, about the things which had -happened since Sandy MacGillivray got those boots from the Chink; and -the Old Man getting wind of it, he told Sails to stitch up Tony boots -and all, so as to stop the talk for good. - -“Mind ye,” said the Old Man, “Ah dinna hold wi’ Papish suppersteetions, -but there’s no denyin’ the sea’s a queer place.” - - * * * * * - -Nobody ever expected to see or hear any more of Sandy Mac’s boots. But -there was a man in the starboard watch that nobody liked--a sort of -soft-spoken, soft-handed chap we called Ikey Mo; because he was so fond -of stowing away stuff in his chest every one thought he had a bit of the -Jew in him. - -The day we sighted the Fastnet this fellow showed up in a pair of -sea-boots. - -“Where had ye them boots, Ikey, and we rowling off the pitch of the -Horn?” asked Larry when he saw them. “It’s a queer thing ye never wore -them sooner.” - -“If I’d wore ’em sooner,” says Ikey, “like as not you’d have borrowed -the lend of ’em, an’ maybe got drowned in ’em,” he says, “and then where -should I have been?” - -“I would not,” says Larry. “I would not borrow the lend of the fill of a -tooth from a dirty Sheeny like yourself. ’Tis my belief you took them -boots off the poor dead corpse they belonged to; and by the same token, -if they walk off with you to the same place he’s gone to, it’s no more -than you deserve.” - -The tale soon got round that Ikey had stolen the boots off the dead -Dago, and it made a lot of feeling against him. But he only laughed and -sneered when folks looked askance at him, and at last he left off making -any secret of the thing he’d done. - -“Call yourselves men!” says he. “And scared of a little dead rat of an -Eyetalian that was no great shakes of a man when he was livin’!” - -“Let the fool have his way!” says old Balto the Finn. “From a dead -corpse were they taken, to a dead corpse will they go.” - - * * * * * - -Very, very foggy it was in the Mersey when we run the mudhook out. I -don’t think I ever saw it worse. - -Ikey didn’t care. He was singing at the top of his voice as the shore -boat pushed off: - - “We’ll furl up the bunt with a fling, oh ... - To pay Paddy Doyle for his boo-oots....” - -“Who said ‘boots’?” he shouted, standing up in the boat with his hands -to his mouth. “Where’s the dead corpse now?” - -The fog swallowed up the boat whole, but we could hear his voice coming -through it a long while, all thick and muffled: - - “We’ll all drink brandy and gin, oh ... - And pay Paddy Doyle for his boots....” - -The tug that cut the boat in two picked up five men of the six that were -in her. And the one that was missing was a good swimmer, too. - -But then ... a man can’t swim ... in heavy boots.... - - - - -THE UNLUCKY “ALTISIDORA” - - -I - -When first the legend of the Unlucky “Altisidora” began to take its -place in the great unwritten book of the folk-lore of the sea, old -shellbacks (nodding weather-beaten heads over mugs and glasses in a -thousand sailortown taverns from Paradise Street to Argyle Cut) were -wont to put forward a variety of theories accounting for her character, -according to the particular taste, creed, or nationality of the -theorizer for the time being. - -Her keel was laid on a Friday.... Someone going to work on her had met a -red-haired wumman, or a wumman as skenned (this if the speaker were a -Northumbrian) and hadn’t turned back.... Someone had chalked “To Hell -with the Pope” (this if he were a Roman Catholic) or, conversely, “To -Hell with King William” (in the case of a Belfast Orangeman) on one of -her deck beams.... There was a stiff ’un hid away somewheres inside her, -same as caused all the trouble with the “Great Eastern.”... And so on, -and so forth, usually finishing up with the finely illogical assertion -that you couldn’t expect nothink better, not with a jaw-crackin’ name -like that! - -Anyhow, unlucky she was, you couldn’t get away from it! Didn’t she -drownd her first skipper, when he was going on board one night in -’Frisco Bay? Didn’t her second break his neck in Vallipo, along of -tumbling down an open hatch in the dark? Come to that, didn’t she kill a -coupler chaps a week when she was buildin’ over in Wilson’s Yard, -Rotherhithe? Didn’t she smash up a lumper or two every blessed trip she -made? Hadn’t she got a way of slipping fellers overboard that sneaky and -sly-like no one knowed they was gone until it come coffee time and they -wasn’t there?... Say the skipper was drunk--well, ain’t skippers gone on -board canned up afore now and _not_ been drownded?... Say it was -somebody’s business to see that there hatch was covered or else a light -left alongside of it--well, ain’t hatches been left open in other ships -without folks walkin’ into ’em into the dark?... Say it was only two -fellers as was killed workin’ on her--well, ain’t there been plenty o’ -ships built what _nobody_ got killed workin’ on? Answer me that!... - -So the Unlucky “Altisidora” she became from London River to the -Sandheads--a legend to endure in many an ancient memory long after her -bones were rust. - - * * * * * - -It was in the South-West India Dock that Anderton first set eyes on -her--the sun going down behind Limehouse Church tower in a great flaming -splendour, and lighting up the warehouses, and the dock, and the huddle -of shipping, with an almost unearthly glory. - -Anderton was in great spirits. He had waited a long and weary while for -a ship; haunting the docks and the shipping offices by day, and -spending his evenings--for he had no friends in London and no money to -spare for the usual shore diversions--in the dark little officers’ -messroom at the Sailors’ Home in Well Street and the uninspiring society -of a morose mate from Sunderland, who passed the time toasting lumps of -cheese over the fire in order--so he confided to Anderton in a rare -burst of eloquence--to get his money’s worth out of the damn place. So -that when there dropped suddenly, as it were out of the summer heavens, -the chance of going as second mate in the “Altisidora” he fairly trod on -air. - -It happened in this wise. He had spent a desolating morning tramping -round the docks, offering his valuable services to shipmasters who were -sometimes indifferent, sometimes actively offensive, but without -exception entirely unappreciative. He was beginning to feel as if the -new second mate’s ticket of which he had been so inordinately proud were -a possession slightly less to his credit than a convict’s -ticket-of-leave. Two yards of bony Nova Scotian, topped by a sardonic -grin, had asked him if he had remembered to bring his titty-bottle -along; and a brawny female, with her hands on her hips, bursting forth -upon him from a captain’s cabin, inquired if he took the ship for an -adjectived day nursery. - -He had just beaten a hasty retreat after this last devastating encounter -with what dignity he could muster, and was all but resolved to give up -the fruitless quest and ship before the mast, when he heard a voice -behind him shouting “Mister! Hi, mister!” - -At first Anderton took no notice. For one thing, he was far too much -taken up with his own concerns to be much interested in the outside -world; for another, he was not long enough out of his apprenticeship to -recognize at once the appellation of “Mister” as one likely to apply to -himself. And in any case there seemed no reason at all why the hail -should be intended for him. It was not, therefore, until it had been -repeated several times, each time a shade more insistently, until, -moreover, he realized that there was no one else in sight or earshot for -whom it could conceivably be intended, that the fact forced itself upon -his consciousness that he was the “Mister” concerned, and he stopped to -let the caller come up with him. He did so puffing and blowing. He was a -round, insignificant little man, whom Anderton remembered now having -seen talking to the mate of one of the ships he had visited earlier in -the day. - -“I say,” he gasped, as soon as he was within speaking distance, “aren’t -you--I mean to say, don’t you want a second mate’s berth?” - -Did he want a second mate’s berth, indeed? Did he want the moon out of -the sky--or the first prize in the Calcutta Sweep--or the Cullinan -diamond--or any other seemingly unattainable thing? He retained -sufficient presence of mind, however, not to say so, and (he hoped) not -to look it either, admitting, with a creditable attempt not to sound too -keen on it, that he did in fact happen to be on the look out for such an -opening. - -“Ah, that’s good,” said the stranger, “because, as a matter of fact, -I--it’s most unfortunate, but my second mate’s met with an accident, and -the ship sails to-morrow. Could you join to-night?” - -Manage it? Anderton repressed an impulse to execute a double shuffle on -the edge of the dock, to fling his arms round the little man’s neck and -embrace him, to cast his cap upon the stones and leap upon it. Instead, -he said, with the air of one conferring a favour, that he rather thought -he might. - -“All right, then ... ship ‘Altisidora’ ... South-West India Dock ... ask -for Mr. Rumbold ... tell him you’ve seen me ... Captain Carter.” - -Anderton stood staring after his new captain for several minutes after -his stubby figure had disappeared among the sheds. The thing was -incredible. It was impossible. It must be a dream. Here, only two -minutes before, he had been walking along seriously meditating the -desirability of taking a plunge into the murky waters of the London -Docks, and in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the whole aspect of -life had been changed by a total stranger offering him--more, positively -thrusting upon him--the very thing he had trudged the docks in search of -until his boot-soles were nearly through. - -If he had had time to reflect upon this bewildering gift thrown at him -by wayward fortune it might have occurred to him that--like so many of -that freakish dame’s bounties--there was a catch in it somewhere. He -might have thought, for example, that it was, to say the least, a -surprising fact that--at a time when he knew from bitter personal -experience that the supply of highly qualified and otherwise eminently -desirable second mates evidently greatly exceeded the demand--a -distracted skipper should be rushing round the docks looking for one. -But no such idea as yet damped the first fine flush of his triumph. Why, -indeed, should it? The ship’s name conveyed no sinister meaning to his -mind. He had never heard of her reputation; if he had, he wouldn’t have -cared a button. - -He was, as it happened, destined to get the first hint of it within a -very few minutes. Just outside the dock gates he ran into Dick Charnock, -who had been senior apprentice in the old “Araminta” when Anderton was a -first voyager. Charnock was now mate--chief officer he called -himself--of a stinking little tub of a steam tramp plying to the -Mediterranean ports; and Anderton, remembering the airs he had been wont -to give himself in bygone days, took a special pleasure in announcing -his good fortune. - -Charnock blew his cheeks out and said: - -“O-oh--_her_!” - -“Well?” said Anderton a trifle huffily. “What about her?” - -No one likes to have cold water poured upon an exultant mood. “Beast!” -he thought. “Jealous--that’s what’s the matter with him!” - -“Oh, nothing--nothing!” Charnock replied hastily. “I was just thinking -about something else, that’s all!” - -This was so obviously a lie that it only made matters worse, and they -parted a trifle coolly; Anderton refusing an invitation to enjoy the -pleasures of London that evening, as displayed at Wilson’s Music Hall, -at which he would fairly have jumped less than an hour ago. - -The morose mate was still sitting in the messroom, surrounded by his -customary aura of “frizzly dick,” when he got back to Well Street and -burst in upon him with his news. - -He withdrew the fork from the fire, carefully inspected its burden and -after an interval of profound thought remarked: - -“O-oh--_her_!” - -His “O-oh--_her_” was, if anything, more pregnant with meaning than -Charnock’s. - -“Well?” snapped Anderton. He was by now getting thoroughly exasperated. -“Well? What about ‘Oh--her ‘? What’s wrong with her anyway?” - -The mate thoughtfully blew the ashes off his latest culinary triumph and -thrust it into his mouth. - -“She’s no’ got a gude name!” he said, indistinctly, but none the less -darkly. - -“Not a good name--what’s that mean, pray?” demanded Anderton angrily. - -“Just that,” said the mate laconically, and went on toasting cheese. - -Anderton flung out of the room in a rage. By this time his first -enthusiasm over his unexpected good fortune had received a decided -check, and it was with distinctly mixed feelings that he made his way -Poplar-wards to make personal acquaintance with his new ship. - -What was the meaning behind all these dark hints? Was this mysterious -“Altisidora” a tough ship--a hell-ship? Her skipper didn’t look like it, -though, of course, one had heard of captains who had the Jekyll-and-Hyde -touch about them--butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths ashore, but they -turned into raging devils as soon as they were out of soundings. Anyhow, -he was ready enough for such contingencies. He had been reckoned the -best boxer in the ship as an apprentice, and he would rather welcome -than otherwise an opportunity of displaying his prowess with his -fists.... Was she perhaps a hungry ship? He reflected with a grin that -he had received ample training in the art of tightening his belt in the -old “Araminta.” ... Slow--well, a slow ship had her compensations in the -way of a thumping pay-roll. He remembered the long faces the crew of his -old ship had pulled when the dead horse was not out before she was on -the Line.... Ah, well, he supposed he should know soon enough. One thing -was certain, if she were the most unseaworthy tub in the world, he had -no intention of turning back. His situation had been desperate enough to -call for a desperate remedy. - -There was some kind of a small disturbance--a street row of some -sort--in progress just outside the dock gate, and, despite his -impatience to see his new ship, Anderton stopped to see what was -happening. - -A queer little scarecrow of a man was standing in the roadway, shaking -his clenched fists in denunciation towards the soaring spars of a lofty -clipper, whose poles, rising above the roofs of the warehouses, seemed -to stab the sunset sky. - -“Oh, ye beauty! Oh, ye murdhering bitch!” he shouted. “Lovely ye look, -don’t ye? Who’d think to see ye that ye had it in ye to kill the bes’ -shipmate ever a man had?” - -A passing policeman, thumbs in belt, casting a kindly Olympian eye on -the little man, tapped him on the shoulder. - -“All right--all right now--move on! Never mind about that now, Johnny! -Can’t do with you making your bother ’ere!” - -The little man whirled round on him furiously. - -“Johnny! Johnny is it? Isn’t it Johnny I’m talkin’ about, the bes’ -shipmate ever a man had--smashed like a rotten apple, and no cause at -all for him to fall--oh, ye villain--oh, ye----” - -Olympus grew slightly impatient. - -“Come now, move on! Can’t do with you creatin’ no bother! Move on, I -tell you, if you don’t want me to appre’end you!” - -The little man shuffled off, still muttering to himself, and pausing now -and again in his zigzag progress along the road to flourish his fists at -those contemptuous spars stabbing the sunset. The policeman, catching -Anderton’s eye, tapped his forehead significantly. - -“Case o’ Dhoolallie tap, as we used to say in Injer,” he observed. -“Round ’ere nearly every day, ’e is, carryin’ on same as you saw. -Chronic!” - -Anderton asked him where the “Altisidora” was berthed. A look--was it of -surprise?--flitted across his stolid countenance. Anderton could have -sworn he was going to say “O-oh--her!” But he didn’t. He only said, -“Right straight a’ead--can’t miss ’er----” - -There were quite a number of ships in the dock, of which in those days a -fair proportion were still sailing ships--ships from the Baltic with -windmills sticking up amidships, Dagoes with brightly painted -figureheads and Irish pennants everywhere, Frenchmen with their look of -Gallic smartness and their standing rigging picked out in black and -white; she was none of these anyway. - -Anderton’s eye dwelt longingly on the tall clipper whose spars he had -already seen soaring above the sheds. There, now, was the very ship of -his dreams! He thought life could hold no higher bliss for a sailorman -than to stand upon her poop--to control her, to guide her, to see the -whole of her lovely height and grace moving in obedience to his -commands. He sighed a little at the thought, as he continued to scan the -vista of moored shipping with eyes that hoped and yet feared to find -what they sought. - -“Right straight ahead.” She couldn’t be far off now--why, his ship must -be lying at the very next berth to the beautiful clipper. - -But there wasn’t a next berth: the tall beauty was lying in the very -corner of the dock. Already the straggle of letters among the gilt -scrollwork on her bow had begun to suggest a wild hope he daren’t let -himself entertain. But now it wasn’t a hope--it was a certainty! This -_was_ his ship--this dream, this queen, this perfect thing among ships! -Why, her name was like a song--why hadn’t it struck him before?--and she -was like a song ... the loveliest thing, Anderton thought, he had ever -seen ... rising up there so proud and stately above them all ... her -bare slender skysail poles soaring up, up until the little rosy dapple -in the evening sky seemed almost like a flight of tropical birds resting -on her spars. She dwarfed everything else in the dock. Anderton had -thought his last ship, the ship in which he had served his time, lofty -enough; yet now she seemed almost stumpy by comparison. - -He climbed the gangway and stepped on board. The steward, a hoarse -Cockney with a drooping moustache under a pendulous red nose, and an -expression of ludicrous melancholy which would have been worth a fortune -to a music-hall artist, came out of his little kennel of a pantry to -show him his room, and lingered a while, exuding onions and -conversation. - -“Nice room, sir, ain’t it? Orl been done right froo.... ’Ard lines on -the ovver young feller, weren’t it? Coo! Cargo slings giv’ way when he -was right underneaf--a coupler ’underweight bung on top of ’im! Coo! -Didn’t it jus’ make a mess of ’im? Not ’arf....” - -So that was what had happened to his mysterious predecessor! Well, it -was an ill wind that blew nobody good, Anderton reflected. Poor beggar -... still he couldn’t help it ... and after all---- - -And it _was_ a nice room--no denying that! Heaps of room for his things, -he thought, remembering the little cramped half-deck of the “Araminta” -which he had shared with five other apprentices three short months ago. -The ship belonged to a period which had not yet learned the art of -cutting down its accommodation to the very last possible inch. Her -saloon was a grand affair, with a carved sideboard and panelling of -bird’s-eye maple, and a skylight with stained glass in it, and all the -rest of her fittings were to match. It looked as if he were going to be -in clover! - -A series of tremendous crashes, accompanied by the falling of a heavy -body, broke in upon the steward’s remarks, and he started and looked -round, his toothpick poised in mid-mouth. - -“Coo!” he exclaimed. “’Ere comes our Mister Rumbold--and ain’t he -pickled, too?... Not ’arf!” - -He vanished discreetly into his pantry as the originator of the -disturbance came ricochetting along the alleyway, finally bringing up -against the door-jamb of Anderton’s room, where he came to a precarious -stand. - -He was a man on the shady side of middle age, with a nose which had once -been aquiline and a sandy-white moustache yellowed with tobacco. The -impression he gave--of a dissipated cockatoo--was heightened by the -rumpled crest of stiff hair which protruded from beneath the shore-going -straw hat which he wore halo-fashion, like a saint on the spree, pushed -well back from his forehead. - -“’Lo!” he observed with owl-like gravity. “You--comin’ shee long’f us?” - -Anderton said he believed he was. - -The mate reflected a minute and then said succinctly: - -“Gorrelpyou!” - -Not being able on the spur of the moment to think of a really -satisfactory answer to this rather surprising remark, Anderton took -refuge in silence, and went on stowing his gear. - -“I said ‘Gorrelpyou!’” repeated Mr. Rumbold presently, with a decided -touch of pugnacity in his tone. - -Anderton supposed it was up to him to say something, so he said: - -“Yes, I know. But why?” - -“’Cos--thiship--thishipsh--unlucky--‘Alshdora’!” replied the -mate. “Thashwy. Unlucky--‘Alshdora’! ’N if any man shaysh I’m -drunk--then I shay--my lorshangemmen, I shmit if I can shay -unlucky--unlucky--‘Alshdora’--I’m perfec’ly shober.... I’m perfec’ly -shober--‘n I’m goin’ bed!” - -At this point he let go of the door-jamb to which he had been holding, -and proceeded with astonishing velocity on a diagonal course along the -alleyway, concluding by sprawling all his length on the floor of the -saloon. - -“Wash marry thiship,” he enunciated gravely, sitting up and rubbing his -head. “Furnishershall over blushop. Tablesh--chairsh--sho on. Mush make -inquirations into thish--morramomin’!” - -Here he again collapsed on to the floor, from which he had been slowly -raising himself as he spoke; then, apparently deciding to abandon the -attempt to resume the perpendicular, he set off at a surprising pace on -all fours, and Anderton’s last glimpse of him was the soles of his boots -as he vanished into his cabin. - -He finished stowing his possessions, and then went ashore to make one or -two small purchases. The sun was not quite gone, and the greater part of -the dock was still flooded with rosy light. But the Unlucky “Altisidora” -lay now all in shadow, except for the gilt vane at her main truck which -flashed back the last rays of sunset. She looked aloof, alone, cut off -from her fellows by some mysterious and unmerited doom--a ship under a -dark star. - - -II - -It wasn’t long before she began to live up to her reputation. She -started in quite a small way by fouling her anchor off Gravesend, and -giving every one a peck of trouble clearing it. Incidentally, it was Mr. -Mate’s morning-after head that was responsible for the mess. But that -didn’t matter: it went down to the ship’s account all the same. Her -next exploit was to cut a hay barge in two in the estuary. It was foggy -at the time, the barge’s skipper was drunk, and the “crew”--a boy of -sixteen or so--lost his head when the ship loomed suddenly up right on -top of him, and put his helm up instead of down. But what of that? She -was the Unlucky “Altisidora,” or very likely the barge wouldn’t have -been there at all. Down went another black mark against her name. - -The captain, in the meantime, had apparently gone into retreat like an -Anglican parson. He had dived below as soon as he came on board, and -there he remained, to all intents and purposes as remote and -inaccessible as the Grand Lama of Tibet, until the ship was well to -westward of the Lizard. This, Anderton learned, was his invariable -custom when nearing or leaving land. Mr. Rumbold, the mate, defined his -malady briefly and scornfully as “soundings-itis.” “No nerve--that’s -what’s the matter with him: as much use as the ship’s figurehead and a -damn sight less ornamental!” - -Not that it seemed to make much difference whether he was there or not. -He was a singularly colourless little man, whose very features were so -curiously indeterminate that his face made no more impression on the -mind than if it had been a sheet of blank paper. It seemed to be a -positive agony to him to give an order. Even in ordinary conversation he -was never quite sure which word to put first. He never finished a -sentence or even a phrase straight ahead, but dropped it and made a -fresh start, only to change his mind a second time and run back to pick -up what he had discarded. And this same painful uncertainty was evident -in all he did. His fingers were constantly busy--fiddling with his -beard, smoothing his tie, twiddling the buttons of his coat. Even his -eyes were irresolute--wandering hither and thither as if they couldn’t -decide to look at the same thing two minutes together. He had the look -of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and so, in point of fact, -he was. He had jockeyed himself somehow into the command of the -“Altisidora,” through family influence or something of the kind, and had -lived ever since in momentary dread of his unfitness for his position -being discovered. - -Anderton, for his part, owed to the skipper’s invisibility one of the -most unforgettable moments of his whole life. The pilot had just gone -ashore. The mate was below. To all intent Anderton had the ship to -himself. - -A glorious moment--a magnificent moment! He was nineteen--not six months -out of his time--and he was in sole charge of a ship--and such a ship. -The veriest cockboat might well have gained a borrowed splendour in the -circumstances; but here was no need for the rose-coloured spectacles of -idealizing youth. Tier on tier, her canvas rose rounding and dimpling -against the blue of the sky. She curtseyed, bowed, dipped, and rose on -the long lift of the seas. Her hull quivered like a thing alive. Oh, she -was beautiful! beautiful! Whatever life might yet hold for him of -happiness or success, it could bring again no moment quite so splendid -as this. - -Mr. Rumbold, after a few days of the most appalling moroseness while the -drink was working out of his system, developed, rather to Anderton’s -surprise, into a quite entertaining companion, possessed of the relics -of a good education, a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of unprintable -stories, and a pretty if slightly bitter wit. He was perfectly conscious -of the failing that had made a mess of his career. Anderton guessed from -a hint he let drop one day that he had once had a command and had lost -it, probably through over-indulgence in the good old English pastime -known as “lifting the elbow.” “A sailor’s life would be all right if it -was all like this,” he broke out one day--it was one of those glorious -exhilarating days in the Trades when the whole world seems full of -rejoicing--“it’s the damned seaports that play hell with a fellow, -Anderton, you take my word for it! Drink, my boy, that’s what does -it--drink and little dirty sluts of women--that’s what we risk our lives -every day earning money for! It’s all a big joke--a big bloody joke, my -son--and the only thing to do is to laugh at it!” And off he went again -on one of his Rabelaisian stories. - -The ship fought her way to the southward against a succession of -baffling airs and head winds where the Trades should have been, and a -few degrees north of the Line ran into a belt of flat calm which bade -fair to keep her there until the crack of doom. It wasn’t a case of the -usual unreliable, irritating Doldrum weather. It was a dead flat calm in -which day after day came and went while the sails drooped lifeless -against the masts, and men’s nerves got more and more on edge, and -Anderton began to have visions of the months and the years passing by, -and the weed growing long and green on the “Altisidora’s” hull like the -whiskers of some marine deity, and himself returning, one day, old and -white-haired and toothless, to a world which had forgotten his -existence. To crown all, the melancholy steward at this time suffered a -sad bereavement. His cat was missing--a ginger-and-white specimen, -gaunt, dingy, and singularly unlovely after the manner of most ship’s -cats, but a great favourite with her proud owner, as well as with all -the fo’c’sle. The steward wandered about like a disconsolate ghost, -making sibilant noises of a persuasive nature in all sorts of unexpected -places, which the mate appeared to find peculiarly irritating. The -steward had only to murmur “P’sss--p’sss--p’sss!” under his breath, and -out would come Mr. Rumbold’s head from his cabin with an accompanying -roar of “Damn you--shishing that infernal cat again! If I hear any more -of it I’ll wring your neck!” - -But good and bad times and all times pass over--and there came at last a -day when the “Altisidora’s” idle sails once more filled to a heartening -breeze, and the seas slipped bubbling under her keel, and she sped -rejoicing on her way as if no dark star brooded over her. - -The steward poked his head out of his pantry that morning as Anderton -passed, with a smile that was like a convulsion of nature. - -“Ol’ Ginger’s turned up again, sir!... What do you think of ’er?” - -He indicated a small box in the corner in which a gently palpitating -mass of kittenhood explained how Ginger had been spending her time. The -prodigal in the meantime was parading proudly round the steward’s legs, -thrumming to the end of her thin tail with the cat’s ever-recurring -surprise and delight over the miracle of maternity. - -“Artful, ain’t she?” said the steward. “Right down in the lazareet, she -was! Must ’ave poked ’erself down there w’en I was gettin’ up some -stores las’ week. That’s ’cos I drahned ’er last lot--see? Wot, drahn -these ’ere! No blinkin’ fear! W’y, they’re _black_ ’uns--ketch me -drahnin’ a black cat!” - -Whether the advent of the black kittens had anything to do with it or -not, it certainly seemed for a time as if the luck had turned. Day after -day the ship reeled the knots off behind her at a steady fifteen. Every -one’s spirits rose. “Wot price the hunlucky ‘Altisidora’ now?” said Bill -Green to the man next him on the yard. They were tarring down, their -tar-pots slung round their necks as they worked. “There you go, you -ruddy fool, askin’ for trouble!” replied Mike, the ancient shellback, -wise in the lore of the sea. “Didn’t I tell ye now?” Bill’s tar-pot had -given an unexpected tilt and spread its contents impartially over Bill’s -person and the deck below. “If you was in the Downeaster ‘Elias K. -Slocum’ wot I sailed in once, you’d git a dose o’ belayin’ pin soup for -supper over that, my son, as’d learn you to play tricks with luck.” - -The luck didn’t last long. Possibly a hatful of blind black kittens had -not the efficacy as mascots of a full-grown black Tom. Ginger’s progeny -undeniably looked very small, helpless, squirming morsels to contend -successfully against the Dark Gods. - -The ship was by now getting into the high latitudes, and sail had to be -gradually shortened until she was running down the Easting under lower -topsails and foresail. Anderton had been keeping the middle watch, and -had gone below, tired out, after a night of “All hands on deck.” It -seemed to him that his eyes were no sooner closed than once again the -familiar summons beat upon the doors of his consciousness, and he -stumbled on deck, still only half roused from sleep, to find a scene of -the wildest confusion. - -A sudden shift of wind had caught the ship aback. Both the foremast and -mainmast were hanging over the side in a raffle of rigging, only the -mizen, with the rags of the lower topsail still clinging to the yard, -being left standing. The helmsman had been swept overboard, to be seen -no more, and the ship lay wallowing helplessly in the trough of the sea, -under the grey light of the dreary dawn--a sight to daunt the stoutest -heart. - -It was then that the mate, Mr. Rumbold, revealed a new and hitherto -unsuspected side of his character. Anderton had first known him as a -drunken and shameless sot; next, he had found in him an entertaining -companion and a man of the world whose wide experience of life in its -more sordid aspects compelled the unwilling admiration of youth. But now -he recognized in him a fine and resourceful seaman and a determined and -indomitable leader of men in the face of instant danger. The suddenness -and completeness of the disaster which might well have induced the -numbness of despair, only seemed to arouse in him a spirit in proportion -to the needs of the moment. During the long hours while the ship fought -for her life--during the whole of the next day, when the pumps were kept -going incessantly to free her from the volume of water that had flooded -her hold--when all hands laboured to rig jury-masts and bend sufficient -sail to keep her going before the wind--he it was who continually urged, -encouraged, cajoled, and drove another ounce of effort out of men who -thought they had no more fight left in their bodies. He it was who -worked hardest of all, and who, when things seemed at their worst and -blackest, brought a grin to haggard, worn-out faces with a shanty stave -of an irresistible humour and--be it added--a devastating -unprintableness. - -The ship managed to hobble into Cape Town under her jury rig, where Mr. -Rumbold promptly vanished into his customary haunts, to reappear just -before the ship sailed after her refit, the same sprawling and -disreputable wreck he had been when Anderton first saw him. He never -again showed that side of himself that had come to the surface on the -night of disaster; but Anderton never quite forgot it, and because of -the memory of it he spent many a patient hour in port tracking the mate -to his favourite unsavoury resorts, and dragging him, maudlin, riotous, -or quarrelsome, back again to the ship. - -The “Altisidora” arrived in Sydney a hundred and forty days out. Her -fame had gone before her, and she attracted quite an amount of attention -in the capacity of a nautical curiosity. Moreover, the legend grew -apace, as is the way of legends the world over, and has been since the -beginning of time. Citizens taking the air on the water-front pointed -her out to one another. “That’s the hoodoo ship. Good looker, too, ain’t -she? Drowns half her crew every voyage. Wonder is anyone’ll sign in -her!” - -And so it went on. She wandered from port to port, leaving bits of -herself, like an absent-minded dowager, all over the seven seas. She -lost spars--she lost sails--she lost hencoops, harness casks, Lord knows -what! She scraped bits off wharves; she lost her sheer in open -roadsteads and barged into other ships. She ran short of food and had to -supplicate passing ships for help. When she couldn’t think of anything -else to do she even tried to run down her own tug. And yet in spite of -it all--perhaps, for sailormen are queer beings, because of it all--her -men liked her. They cursed her, they chid her, kindly, without rancour, -as one might chide a charming but erring woman; but they stuck by her -all the same. The old sailmaker, a West Country man who had lost all his -teeth on hard tack, had been with her for years. “You don’t mind sailing -in an unlucky ship, then, Sails,” said Anderton to him one day, when he -was helping him to cut a new upper topsail to replace one of the ship’s -casual losses. - -The old man pushed his spectacles up on to his bald head, and looked out -over the sea with eyes flattened by age and faded to the remote blue of -an early morning sky when mist is clearing. - -“I rackon’t ain’t no use worryin’ ’bout luck, sir,” he said, “so long’s -there’s a job o’ work wants doin’.” - -From Sydney she went over to Newcastle to load coal for Chile, then on -to ’Frisco with nitrates, ’Frisco to Caleta Buena again, over again to -Newcastle, and last of all to Sydney once more to load wool for home. - - -III - -Sixty miles west of St. Agnes Light the Unlucky “Altisidora” leaned to -the gentle quartering breeze, homeward bound on the last lap of her -three years’ voyage. - -Anderton stood on the poop, gazing out into the starry darkness that -held England folded to its heart. Above him sail piled on sail rose up -in the moonlight, like some tall, fantastic shrine wrought in ebony and -silver to an unknown and mysterious god. The water slipped past her -silently as a swimming seal, with a faint delicate hiss like the tearing -of silk as the clipper’s bow cleft it. His mind ran now forward, now -backward, as men’s minds do when they are nearing one of the milestones -of life. - -He remembered almost with a pang of regret the heady exultation which -had been his when he stood on this poop alone for the first time, -realizing that something had slipped away from him unnoticed which he -could never hope to recapture this side the grave. Three years is a long -while, especially to the young; but it was not in point of actual time, -but in experience, that so wide and deep a gulf yawned between himself -and the boy who three years since had left these shores he was now -approaching. She had taught him many things, that old ship--more, -perhaps, than he himself knew.... - -Rumbold wandered up on to the poop and began to tell smutty tales. The -restlessness which always consumed him when the ship was nearing land -was strong on him. Anderton felt a great pity for him. It would be the -old tale, he supposed, as soon as the ship was made fast: this man, who -had it in him to fight a losing game with death with a laugh on his -lips, would become to the casual observer, a lewd, drunken blackguard, -wallowing in the lowest gutters of Sailortown. What would become of him, -he wondered--picturing him dropping steadily lower and lower on the -ladder, driven to take a second mate’s berth, thence dropping to bos’n, -last to seaman--so on until some final pit of degradation should swallow -him up for ever? - -The man was in so queer a mood that Anderton hesitated about leaving the -deck to him. But he reflected that he would have little chance of rest -when she was fairly in the Channel, and decided to go down for a stretch -off the land, so as to have his wits about him when they were most -needed. - -He did not know how long he had been asleep when he woke with a start. -The ship’s bells were just striking. He counted the strokes--three -double, one single--seven bells. He might as well go on deck now. She -must have made a landfall by now. - -An inexplicable premonition had come over him, which he refused to admit -even to himself, that all was not well. He listened: the ship still held -on her course. There was no sound but the restless chirp of a block -somewhere aloft, the creak of a yard moving against the parrals, the -constant “hush-hush” of the waves as they hastened under the keel. He -slipped into his coat and passed out into the saloon. - -The lamp over the table was still burning smokily, mingling its light -with the cold grey light of morning, and giving to the scene that air of -desolation which perhaps nothing else can impart so completely. The -place reeked of drink. Under the lamp, sprawling half across the table, -was Rumbold. One whisky bottle lay on the floor, another on the table -beside his hand, from which the last dregs spattered lazily to the -floor. - -The swine--the drunken swine! Anderton seized him by the arm and shook -him furiously. - -Rumbold lifted his ravaged face from the table and stared at him -stupidly. - -“Thish bockle’sh--water o’ knowledge--good’n’ evil,” he said inanely. -“Mush make--inquirations--morramornin’!” - -His head dropped on his arms again. - -Anderton took the companion in a couple of bounds. - -It was like stepping out into wet cotton-wool. The stars were gone. The -sky was gone, but for one pale high blue patch right overhead. The ship -disappeared into the fog forward of the after hatch as completely as if -she had been cut in two. There wasn’t a soul to be seen but the man at -the wheel, a stolid young Finn who would go on steering the course that -had been given him until the skies fell. - -Anderton started to run forward, shouting as he went; and his voice, -tossed back at him out of the dimness, hit him in the face like a stone. - -The next moment, the ship had struck. - -She took the ground, so it seemed at the time, quite gently: with hardly -a jar, hardly a tremor, only with a little delicate contented shiver all -through her graceful being, like someone settling down well pleased to -rest. You might almost fancy that she said to herself: - -“There--I have done with it all at last--done with bearing the blame of -your sins and follies, your weakness, your incapacity, your drunkenness, -your indecision. I have been your scapegoat too long. Henceforward, bear -your own burdens!” - -And just then the mist rolled off like a curtain. She was right under -the land, in the midst of a great jagged confusion of rocks that reached -out to sea for nearly a quarter of a mile. The wonder was she had not -struck sooner. You could see the pink tufts of thrift clinging to the -cliff face, the streaks of green and yellow lichen on the rock, the thin -line of soil crested with grass at the top. Above, sheep were grazing, -and there came the faint querulous cry of young lambs. A scene to fill a -sailor’s heart with sentimental delight under any conditions but these! - -There was nothing to be done. The Unlucky “Altisidora” had paid her last -tribute to the Dark Gods. The ship lay jammed hard and fast on a sunken -reef, and was making water rapidly. - -They left the ship at sunset. The skipper took his seat in the boat -without a word or a backward glance; the mate--sobered for once--hung -his head like a beaten dog. The melancholy steward carried the faithful -Ginger in a basket. - -“Ain’t been such a bad ol’ gal, ’as she?” That was the gist of the -crew’s valedictions. They set off in single file up the narrow path that -led to the top of the cliff--an oddly incongruous little procession in -that rural setting. - -Anderton came last of all. One by one his shipmates topped the crest and -vanished. But still he lingered. He wanted just for a minute to be -alone with this old ship that had come so strangely into his life and -was now to go out of it as strangely. - -From where he stood he looked down upon her, lying almost at his feet. -He could see all her decks, the poop, the galley, the forecastle -head--everything that had grown so familiar to him through years of ship -incident and ship routine. How friendly it all looked, now that he was -leaving it! He wondered how he could ever have thought her the agent of -Dark Gods--this patient, lovely, and enduring thing that had done man’s -bidding so long--like him, the instrument of forces beyond her knowing -or his. How good it had all been--how good! The dangers, the hardships, -the toil, the rest, the rough and the smooth of it ... the voices of his -shipmates, the courage and humour of them, their homely faces.... - -She was part of his life, part of himself, for ever! He would remember -in years to come a hundred little things that now he did not even know -he remembered, yet which lay safely folded away in the treasure-house of -memory, till some chance word, some trick of sun or shade, some smell, -some sound, should bring them to light ... and he would say, “Aye, that -was in the old ‘Altisidora,’” ... and perhaps be silent a little, and be -a little happy and sad together, as men are when they think upon their -youth.... - -Was that what the old ship had been trying to tell him all the time--the -secret that had fled before him round the world, for ever near, yet for -ever just out of reach, like the many-coloured arch of spray that hung -gleaming before her bows? That the hard things of life were the things -best worth having in the end?... A big green wave that flooded over -you, that took the breath out of you, that went clean over your -head--life was like that. Run away from it and it would sweep you off -your feet, smash you up against things, drown you, very likely, at the -finish.... You had got to hang on to something, no matter what--a job of -work, an idea, anything so long as you could get a grip on it--hang on -like grim death, and the wave would go over you and leave you safe and -sound.... - -The sky was full of windy plumes of cloud. A long swell had begun to -thunder in from the west, grinding and pounding her with leisurely -irresistible strokes like blows from a giant hammer. The sea, the -breaker of ships, was already at his work of destruction. Soon there -would be a roaring as of a thousand chariots along all the headlands, -and the whole coast would be one thunder and confusion of blown foam. - -A call came to him from the cliff-top. It was time to be going--time for -him to leave her! Presently he too topped the crest, and, when he next -looked back, he could see the ship no longer. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Tales of the clipper ships</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Cicely Fox Smith</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 24, 2022 [eBook #67242]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Steve Mattern, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE CLIPPER SHIPS ***</div> -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="c"> -<a href="images/cover.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" height="500" alt="[The -image of the book's cover is unavailable.]" /></a> -</div> - -<p class="cb">TALES OF THE CLIPPER SHIPS</p> - -<div class="c"> -<a href="images/i001_Frontis.jpg"> -<img src="images/i001_Frontis.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<br /> -<small>THE “MAID OF ATHENS”<br /> - -“LIKE SOME LOVELY BUT WILFUL LADY FALLEN AMONG EVIL COMPANIONS” (<a href="#page_22">p. -22</a>)</small> -</div> - - -<h1>TALES OF THE<br /> -CLIPPER SHIPS</h1> - -<p class="cb"><small>BY</small><br /> -<span class="big">C. FOX SMITH</span><br /> -<br /><small> -WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY<br /></small> -PHIL W. SMITH<br /> -<br /> -<img src="images/colophon.png" -width="130" -alt="" /> -<br /> -<br /> -BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br /> -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br /> -1926<br /> -<br /><br /> -<small>PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</small></p> - - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> - - -<table cellpadding="3"> -<tr><td>  </td><td class="rt"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><a href="#THE_LAST_VOYAGE_OF_THE_MAID_OF_ATHENS">THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE “MAID OF ATHENS”</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_3">3</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><a href="#THE_END_OF_AN_ARGUMENT">THE END OF AN ARGUMENT</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_71">71</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><a href="#ORANGES">ORANGES</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_91">91</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><a href="#SEATTLE_SAM_SIGNS_ON">SEATTLE SAM SIGNS ON</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_107">107</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><a href="#PADDY_DOYLES_BOOTS">PADDY DOYLE’S BOOTS</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_123">123</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd"><a href="#THE_UNLUCKY_ALTISIDORA">THE UNLUCKY “ALTISIDORA”</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_133">133</a></td></tr> -</table> - - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The End of an Argument” and “Seattle Sam Signs On” have appeared -in the “Blue Peter,” to whose Editor the customary acknowledgments -are hereby made.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span></p> - - -<p class="cbig150"> -THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE “MAID<br /> -OF ATHENS”</p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span>  </p> - - -<h1>TALES OF<br /> THE CLIPPER SHIPS</h1> - - -<h2><a name="THE_LAST_VOYAGE_OF_THE_MAID_OF_ATHENS" -id="THE_LAST_VOYAGE_OF_THE_MAID_OF_ATHENS"></a>THE LAST VOYAGE OF -THE “MAID OF<br />ATHENS”</h2> - - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>LD Thomas Featherstone was dead: he was also buried.</p> - -<p>The knot of frowsy females—that strange and ghoulish sisterhood which -frequents such dismal spots as faithfully as dramatic critics the first -nights of theatres—who stood monotonously rocking perambulators on -their back wheels outside the cemetery gates, were unanimously of -opinion that it had been a skinny show. Indeed, Mrs. Wilkins, who was by -way of considering herself what reporters like to call the “doyenne” of -the gathering, said as much by way of consolation to her special crony -Mrs. Pettefer, coming up hot and breathless, five minutes too late for -the afternoon’s entertainment.</p> - -<p>“No flars” (thus Mrs. Wilkins), “not one! Not so much as a w’ite -chrysant’! You ’aven’t missed much, me dear, I tell you.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Pettefer, her hand to her heaving bosom, said there was some called -it waste, to be sure, but she did like to see flars ’erself.</p> - -<p>“You’d otter’ave seen ’em when they buried the lickle girl yesterday,” -pursued Mrs. Wilkins.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span></p> - -<p>“I <i>was</i> put out, missin’ that, but there, I ’ad to take ar Florence to -the ’orspittle for ’er aneroids,” sighed Mrs. Pettefer, glancing -malevolently at “ar Florence” as if she would gladly have buried her, -without flars, too, by way of paying her out. “I do love a lickle -child’s fruneral.”</p> - -<p>“Mask o’ flars, the corfin was,” went on Mrs. Wilkins. “The harum lilies -was lovely. And one big reaf like an ’arp. W’ite ribbinks on the ’orses, -an’ all....”</p> - -<p>The connoisseurs in grief dispersed. The driver of the hearse replaced -the black gloves of ceremony by the woollen ones of comfort, for the day -was raw and promised fog later: pulled out a short clay and lit it, -climbed to his box and, whipping up his horses (bays with black -points—“none of your damned prancing Belgians for me,” had been one of -Old Featherstone’s last injunctions), set off at a brisk trot, he to tea -and onions over the stables, they to the pleasant warmth of their stalls -and their waiting oats and hay. Four of old Thomas’s nearest relatives -piled into the first carriage, four more of his remoter kindred into the -second, and the lawyer—Hobbs, Senior, of Hobbs, Keating & Hobbs, of -Chancery Lane—who had lingered behind to settle accounts with the -officiating clergyman, came hurrying down the path between ranks of -tombstones, glimmering pale and ghostly in the greying November -afternoon, to make up a mixed bag in the third and last with Captain -David Broughton, master of the deceased’s ship “Maid of Athens,” and Mr. -Jenkinson, the managing clerk from the office in Billiter Square.</p> - -<p>The lawyer was a small, spare man, halting a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span> little from sciatica. -Given a pepper-and-salt coat with wide tails, and a straw in his mouth, -he would have filled the part of a racing tipster to perfection; but in -his sombre funeral array, with his knowing, birdlike way of holding his -head, and his sharp, darting, observant glance, he resembled nothing so -much as a lame starling; and he chattered like a starling, too, as the -carriage rattled away in the wake of the others through the darkening -streets towards the respectable northern suburb where old Featherstone -had lived and died.</p> - -<p>“Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen,” he said, settling himself in his -place as the coachman slammed the door on the party. “Well, well ... -everything’s passed off very nicely, don’t you think?”</p> - -<p>Both Captain Broughton and Mr. Jenkinson, after due consideration, -agreed that “it” had passed off very nicely indeed; though, to be sure, -it would be hard to say precisely what conceivable circumstance might -have occurred to make it do otherwise.</p> - -<p>Little Jenkinson sat with his back to the horses. He was the kind of -person who sits with his back to the horses all through life: the kind -of neat, punctual little man to be found in its thousands in the -business offices of the City. He carried, as it were, a perpetual pen -behind his ear. A clerk to his finger-tips—say that of him, and you -have said all; unless perhaps that in private life he was very likely a -bit of a domestic tyrant in some brick box of a semi-detached villa -Tooting or Balham way, who ran his finger along the sideboard every -morning to see if his wife had dusted it properly.</p> - -<p>Captain Broughton sat stiffly erect in the opposite corner of the -carriage, with its musty aroma of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6">{6}</a></span> essence-of-funerals—that -indescribable blend of new black clothes and moth-balls and damp -horsehair and smelling salts and faded flowers. His square hands, -cramped into unaccustomed black kid gloves which already showed a white -split across the knuckles, lay awkwardly, palms uppermost, on his knees. -“Damn the things,” he said to himself for the fiftieth time, -contemplating their empty finger-tips, sticking out flat as the ends of -half-filled pea-pods, “why don’t they make ’em so that a man can get his -hands into ’em?”</p> - -<p>A square-set man, a shade under medium height, with a neat beard, once -fair, now faded to a sandy grey, and eyes of the clear ice-blue which -suggested a Scandinavian ancestry, he carried his sixty-odd years well. -A typical shipmaster, one would say at a first glance: a steady man, a -safe man, from whom nothing unexpected need be looked for, one way or -the other. And then, perhaps, those ice-blue eyes would give you pause, -and the thought would cross your mind that there might be certain -circumstances in which the owner of those eyes might conceivably become -no longer a safe and steady quantity, but an unknown and even an -uncomfortable one.</p> - -<p>“Don’t mind admitting I’m glad it’s over,” rattled on the little lawyer; -“depressing affairs, these funerals, to my thinking. Horrible. Good for -business, though—our business and doctors’ business, what! More people -get their death through attendin’ other people’s funerals than one likes -to think of. It’s the standing, you know. That’s what does it. Standing -on damp ground. Nothing worse—nothing! And then no hats. That’s where -our friends the Jews have the pull of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span> us Gentiles—eh, Mr. Jenkinson? -If a Jew wants to show respect, he keeps his hat on. Curious, ain’t it? -Ever hear the story about the feller—Spurgeon, was it—or Dr. -Parker—Spurgeon, I think—one or t’other of ’em, anyway, don’t much -matter, really—and the two fellers that kept their hats on while he was -preachin’? ‘If I were to go to a synagogue,’ says Spurgeon—yes, I’m -pretty sure it was Spurgeon—‘if I went to a synagogue,’ says he, ‘I -should keep my hat on; and therefore I should be glad if those two young -Jews in the back of the church would take theirs off in <i>my</i> -synagogue’—ha ha ha—good, wasn’t it?...</p> - -<p>“And talking about getting cold at funerals, I’ll let you into a little -secret. I always wear an extra singlet, myself, for funerals. Yes; and a -body belt. Got ’em on now. Fact. My wife laughs at me. But I say, ‘Oh, -you may laugh, my dear, but you’d laugh the other side of your face if I -came home with lumbago and you had to sit up half the night ironing my -back.’ Ever try that for lumbago? A common flat iron—<i>you</i> know. Hot as -you can bear it. Best thing going—ab-so-lutely....”</p> - -<p>He paused while he rubbed a clear place in the windows which their -breath had misted and peered out like a child going to a party.</p> - -<p>“Nearly there, I think,” he went on. “Between ourselves, I think the old -gentleman’s going to cut up remarkably well. Six figures, I shouldn’t -wonder. Not a bit, I shouldn’t.... A shrewd man, Captain Broughton, -don’t you agree?”</p> - -<p>Captain Broughton in his dark corner made a vague noise which might be -taken to indicate that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span> he did agree. Not that it mattered, really, -whether he agreed or not. The little lawyer was one of those people who -was so fond of hearing his own voice that he never even noticed if -anyone was listening to him; which was all to the good when you were -feverishly busy with your own thoughts.</p> - -<p>“Ah, yes,” he resumed, “a very shrewd, capable man of business! Saw the -way things were going in the shipping world and got out in time. ‘The -sailing ship is done’ (those were his very words to me). ‘If I’d been -thirty years younger I’d have started a fleet of steam kettles with the -best of ’em. But not now—not at my time of life. You can’t teach an old -dog new tricks.’ Those were his very words....</p> - -<p>“Ah, ha, here we are at last! Between ourselves, a glass o’ the old -gentleman’s port won’t come amiss. Fine cellar he kept—fine cellar! ‘I -don’t go in for a lot of show, Hobbs,’ I remember him saying once, ‘but -I like what I have <i>good</i>....’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>Old Featherstone’s home was a dull, ugly, solid, inconvenient Victorian -house in a dull crescent of similar houses. It stands there still—it -has been more fortunate than Featherstone’s Wharf in Limehouse and the -little dark office in Billiter Square with “T. Featherstone” on its -dusty wire blinds and the half model of the “Parisina” facing you as you -went in. They are gone; but the house I saw only the other day—its -rhododendrons perhaps a shade dingier, a trifle more straggly, and -“bright young society” (for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span> place is a select boarding -establishment for City gents nowadays) gyrating to the blare of a -loudspeaker in what was aforetime old Thomas Featherstone’s dining-room. -And the legend “Pulo Way,” in tarnished gilt on black, still gleams in -the light of the street lamp opposite on the two square stone -gateposts—bringing a sudden momentary vision of dark seas and strange -stars, of ships becalmed under the lee of the land, of light puffs of -warm, spicy air stealing out from unseen shores as if they breathed -fragrance in their sleep; so that the vague shapes of “Lyndhurst” and -“Chatsworth” and “Bellavista” seem the humped outlines of islands -sheltering one knows not what of wonder and peril and romance....</p> - -<p>A maidservant had come in and lighted the gas in the dining-room, -lowered the drab venetian blinds in the bay window, and drawn the heavy -stamped plush curtains which hung stiffly under the gilt cornice. -Broughton sipped his glass of wine and ate a sandwich, surveying the -familiar room with that curious illogical sense of surprised resentment -which humanity always feels in the presence of the calm indifference of -inanimate things to its own transiency and mortality.</p> - -<p>He knew it well, that rather gloomy apartment with its solid Victorian -air of ugly, substantial comfort. He had been there before many times. -It had been one of Thomas Featherstone’s unvarying customs to invite his -skippers to a ceremonial dinner whenever their ships were in London -River. An awful sort of business, Broughton had always secretly thought -these functions; and, like the lawyer on the present occasion, had been -heartily<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span> glad when they were over. The bill of fare never varied—roast -beef, baked potatoes, some kind of a boiled pudding, almonds and -raisins, and a bottle of port to follow. “Special Captain’s port,” that -turbulent Irishman, Pat Shaughnessy, of the “Mazeppa,” irreverently -termed it: adding, with his great laugh, “You bet the old divvle don’t -fetch out his best vintage for hairy shellbacks like us!”</p> - -<p>Thirteen—no, it must be fourteen—of those dinners Broughton could -remember. They had been annual affairs so long as the “Maid of Athens” -could hold her own against the steamers in the Australian wool trade. -Latterly, since she had been driven to tramping the world for charters, -they had become movable feasts, and between the last two there had been -a gap of nearly three years.</p> - -<p>Broughton’s eyes travelled slowly from one detail to another—the -mahogany chairs ranged at precise intervals against the dull red of the -flock-papered walls; the round table whose gleaming brass toes peeped -modestly from beneath the voluminous tapestry table cover; the “lady’s -and gent’s easies” sitting primly on opposite sides of the vast yawning -cavern of the fire-place; the mantelpiece where the black marble clock -ticked leisurely between its flanking Marly horses and the pair of -pagoda vases, with their smirking ladies and fierce bewhiskered -warriors, that one of the old man’s captains had brought years ago from -Foochow; the mahogany sideboard whose plate-glass mirror gave back every -minutest detail of the room in reverse; the inlaid glass-fronted -bookcase with its smug rows of gilt-tooled, leather-bound books—the -Waverley Novels, Falconer’s “Shipwreck,” Byron’s poems.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span></p> - -<p>Thomas Featherstone seldom used any other room but this. He possessed a -drawing-room: a bleak chill shrine of the middle-class elegancies where -the twittering Victorian niece who kept house for him—a characterless -worthy woman with the red nose which bespeaks a defective digestion—was -wont to dispense tepid tea and flabby muffins on her periodical “At -Home” days. He had no study: he had his office for his work, he said, -and that was enough for him. He had been brought up to sit in the -dining-room at home in his father’s, the ship-chandler’s, house in -Stepney, and he had carried the custom with him into the days of his -prosperity.</p> - -<p>So there he had sat, evening after evening, with his gold spectacles -perched on his high nose, reading “Lloyd’s List” and the commercial -columns of “The Times,” the current issues of which were even now in the -brass newspaper rack by his empty chair: occasionally playing a hand of -picquet with the twittering niece. He was a man of an almost inhuman -punctuality of habit. People had been known to set their watches by Old -Featherstone. At nine o’clock every morning of the week round came the -brougham to drive him into the City. At twelve o’clock he sallied forth -from Billiter Square to the “London Tavern,” and the table that he -always occupied there. At half-past one, back to the office; or, if one -of his ships were due, to the West India Docks, where they generally -berthed. At five the brougham appeared in Billiter Square to transport -him to “Pulo Way” again.</p> - -<p>A strange, colourless, monotonous sort of life, one would think; and one -which had singularly little in common with the wider aspects of the -business in<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span> which his money had been made. Of the romantic side of -shipping, or indeed of its human side, he seemed to have no conception -at all. A consignment of balas rubies, of white elephants, of Manchester -goods, of pig iron, they were all one to him—so many items in a bill of -lading, no more, no less. Ships carried his house-flag to the four -corners of the earth: no one of them had ever carried him farther than -the outward-bound pilot. No matter what outlandish ports they visited, -it stirred his blood not a whit. Perhaps it was one of the secrets of -his success: for imagination, nine times out of ten, is a dangerous sort -of commodity, commercially considered; and if Old Featherstone had gone -a-gallivanting off to Tuticorin or Amoy or Punta Arenas or Penang or -Port au Prince or any other alluringly-named place with which his ships -trafficked, instead of sitting in Billiter Square and looking after his -business—why, no doubt his business would have been vastly the -sufferer! And, indeed, since he found such adventure as his soul needed -no farther afield than between the marbled covers of his own ledgers, -there would have been no sense in looking for it elsewhere.</p> - -<p>You saw the old man’s portrait yonder over the mantelpiece, behind the -marble clock and the Marly horses—keen eyes under bushy eyebrows, side -whiskers, Gladstone collar, slightly sardonic smile. Broughton indulged -in a passing speculation as to what they did with his glass eye when -they buried him. The picture was the work of an unknown artist. “If I’d -been fool enough to pay for a big name,” old Thomas had been wont to -say, “I’d have got a worse picture for three times the money<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span>”; and the -old man had not forgotten to drive a hard bargain, the recollection of -which had perhaps a little coloured the artist’s mood. The unknown had -caught his sitter in a characteristic attitude: sitting erect and rigid, -his hands clasped one above the other on the silver knob of his -favourite Malacca walking-stick. A shrewd old man, you would say, a -shrewd, hard, narrow old man, and not have been far wrong in your -estimate; though, as even his enemies were bound to admit, he was not -without his moments of vision, his odd surprising streaks of generosity.</p> - -<p>A man of but little education—he had run as a child daily to a little -school in Stepney, kept by the widow and daughters of a shipmaster, and -later had gone for a year or two to an Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen -somewhere off the East India Dock Road—he was wont to say, and to say -as if it were something to boast of, that he had never read but two -books in his life—Falconer’s “Shipwreck” and Byron’s poems, both of -which he knew from cover to cover. For the latter he had a profound and -astonishing admiration, so much so that all his ships were named after -Byronic heroes and heroines.</p> - -<p>The “junk store” some wag once called the Featherstone fleet: and the -gibe was not far wide of the mark. Anyone who has the patience and the -curiosity to search the pages of a fifty-or sixty-year-old “Lloyd’s -Register” will find in that melancholy record of human achievement and -human effort blown like dead leaves on the winds of time and change -sufficient reason for the nickname. Everywhere it is the same -tale—“Mazeppa” <i>ex</i> “Electric Telegraph,” “Bride of Abydos” <i>ex</i> -“Navarino,” “Zuleika” <i>ex</i> “Roderick Random,” “Thyrza” <i>ex</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span> “Rebel -Maid.” Old Featherstone had at one time more than fifty ships under his -house-flag, not one of which had been built to his order. “The man who -succeeds,” was one of his sayings, “is the man who knows best how to -profit by other men’s mistakes.”</p> - -<p>The doctrine was one which he put very effectively into practice. He had -an almost uncanny nose for bargains; but, what was more than that, he -was gifted in a most amazing degree with that peculiar and indefinable -quality best described as “ship sense”—an ability amounting well-nigh -to a genius for knowing a good ship from a bad one which is seldom found -but in seamen, and is rare even among them.</p> - -<p>Someone once asked him the secret of his gift, but I doubt if he got -much satisfaction out of the answer.</p> - -<p>“Ask me another,” snapped out the old man in his dry, staccato fashion. -“I’ve got a brother can waggle his ears like a jackass. How does <i>he</i> do -that? <i>I</i> don’t know. <i>He</i> don’t know. Same thing in my case, exactly.”</p> - -<p>And certainly where he got it is something of a mystery. But since there -had been Featherstones buried for generations where time and grime -combine to make a hallowed shade in the old parish church of Stepney, -there may well have been seafaring blood in the family, and likely -enough the founder of the little bow-windowed shop in Wapping Wall was -himself a retired ship’s carpenter.</p> - -<p>Whatever the explanation, there was undeniably the fact. He bought -steamers that didn’t pay and had never paid and that experts said never -would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span> pay: ripped the guts out of them, and in a couple of years they -had paid for themselves. He bought unlucky ships, difficult ships, ships -with a bad name of every sort and kind. Ships that broke their captains’ -hearts and their owners’ fortunes, ships that wouldn’t steer, that -wouldn’t wear, that wouldn’t stay. And never once did his bargain turn -out a bad one.</p> - - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>From Old Featherstone’s portrait, and that painted ironical smile which -still had the power to call up in him a feeling of vague discomfort, -Broughton’s eyes travelled on to the portraits of ships which—Old -Featherstone excepted—were the room’s sole artistic adornment.</p> - -<p>Over there in the corners—one each side of the portrait—were the old -“Childe Harold” and “Don Juan.” They were the first ships Old -Featherstone bought, in the distant days when he was still young -Featherstone, a smart young clerk in Daly’s office, whose astonishing -rise to fortune was yet on the knees of the gods.</p> - -<p>They were old frigate-built East Indiamen, both of them, the “General -Bunbury” and “Earl Clapham,” from some Bombay or Moulmein dockyard: teak -through and through, but as leaky as sieves with sheer age and years of -labouring in seaways. Young Featherstone bought them for a song: gutted -them, packed their roomy ’tween-decks with emigrants like herrings in a -barrel, and hurried them backwards and forwards as fast as he dared -between London and Australia while the gold rush<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span> of the ’sixties was at -its hottest. He was in too big a hurry even to give them new figureheads -to match their new names, with the result that a portly British general -and a highly respectable peer of Evangelistic tendencies had to endure -the indignity of an enforced masquerade, the one as the wandering -“Childe,” the other as the disreputable “Don” of many amours.</p> - -<p>Goodness knows how these two old ships’ venerable ribs managed to stick -together running down the Easting: nor indeed how it was that they -didn’t carry their freight of hopeful fortune seekers to the bottom -before they were well clear of the Channel. However, by hook or by -crook, stick together they did, long enough at any rate to lay the -foundation of Featherstone’s success. The “Childe Harold”—she who was -the “General Bunbury”—created a bit of a sensation in the last lap of -her third voyage by sinking, poor old soul, in the West India Dock -entrance at the head of a whole fleet of shipping crowding in on the -tide. The “Don Juan”—the backsliding “Earl Clapham”—came to grief, by -a stroke of luck, just off the Mauritius, and her old bones (it must -have taken a small forest of teak to build her) fetched double what -Featherstone had paid for her for building material. But they had served -their purpose. Thereafter, Featherstone never looked behind him.</p> - -<p>The old “Giaour”—<i>she</i> started life as a steamer, in the days when -steam was suffering from over-inflation, and a good many speculators -were scalding their fingers badly with it. The “Cottonopolis,” of the -defunct “Spreadeagle” Line—that was how she began. Her accommodation -was the talk of the town, said to be the most lavish ever seen—a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span> wash -basin to every six cabins—but she devoured such quantities of fuel, as -well as turning out such a brute in a seaway that her passenger list was -never more than half full, that the shareholders were glad to get rid of -her at a loss. There she was—an ugly great lump of a ship, with masts -that had a peculiar rake to them, something after the style of a Chinese -junk. Sail, too ... like a witch, she did!... Then the little -“Thyrza”—<i>she</i> was a pretty little butterfly of a thing; but she was as -near being a mistake as any purchase Featherstone ever made. He had -bought her, so it was believed, with the intention at the back of his -mind of winning the China tea race; but the tea trade petering out, he -put her into the wool fleet instead. Broughton had seen the dainty -little ship many a time: a regular picture she used to look, beating up -to the Heads just as old Captain Winter had painted her. Rare hand with -a paint-brush that old chap was, and no mistake! Give him one good look -at a ship, and he’d get her likeness to a gantline ... notice things -about her, too, sometimes, that even her own skipper hadn’t found -out....</p> - -<p>There was the “Manfred”—the unluckiest ship, surely, that ever left the -ways! The “Young Tamlin” was the name she used to go by, in the days -when she used to kill two or three men every trip. That was before Old -Featherstone got hold of her, of course: and her owners—she belonged to -a little one-ship company—got the jumps about it and sold her. Sold her -cheap, too ... but, bless you, that stopped her gallop all right! She -drowned no more men afterwards.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span></p><p>And—last of all—the “Maid of Athens.” ...</p> - -<p>Broughton’s own ship—the pride of his heart, the apple of his eye, the -guiding motive, the absorbing interest of his life for more than -twenty-five years.</p> - -<p>Broughton didn’t care much about that picture—never had done, though he -didn’t trouble to tell the old man so. No use asking for trouble: and he -was a contrary old devil if you crossed him! A Chinese ship-chandler’s -affair, it was, and moreover it showed the “Maid” with a spencer at the -main which she never carried: at least, not in Broughton’s time. A good -long time that meant, too ... ah well! They had grown old together, his -ship and he!</p> - -<p>He remembered the day he got command of her as clearly as if it were -yesterday. He was chief officer of the “Haidée” at the time—getting -along in years, too, and beginning to wonder if he would ever have the -luck to get a ship of his own. She was a nice little ship, the “Haidée,” -the last of Daly’s fleet, and Featherstone bought her after old Daly, -who had given him a stool in his office years before, shot himself in -that very office in Fenchurch Street when the news came of the wreck of -the “Allan-a-Dale,” his favourite ship, on the Calf of Man. Quite a nice -little ship, but nothing out of the common about her: nothing a man -could take to particularly, somehow. And yet at the time he had wanted -nothing better than to be her skipper.</p> - -<p>Old Captain Philpot had been queerish all that voyage; he used to nip -brandy on the quiet a lot, and take drugs when he could get them as -well. Soon after they left the Coromandel coast he went out of his mind -altogether, and Broughton found him one day, when he went down to -dinner, crawling<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span> round the cabin on all fours and complaining that he -was King Nebuchadnezzar and couldn’t find any grass to eat.</p> - -<p>Good Lord! that was a time, too ... made a man sweat to think of it, -even after all these years! Hurricane after hurricane right through the -Indian Ocean: on deck most of the time, and sitting on the Old Man’s -head when he got rumbustious during the watch below. However, the poor -old chap died as quiet as a child, when he smelt the Western Islands, -and Broughton as chief officer took the vessel into port.</p> - -<p>Old Featherstone came on board, as his custom was, as soon as she was -fairly berthed, and Broughton—tongue-tied and stammering as he always -was on important occasions of the kind—gave an account of his -stewardship. The old man listened with never a word, only just a grunt -or a brusque nod now and again; and when the tale was told made no -comment whatever beyond a curt “Humph! Well, you can’t have command of -this ship. She’s promised to Allinson. Can’t go back on him. Besides, -he’s senior to you.”</p> - -<p>Then, with one foot on the gangway, he turned back and barked out:</p> - -<p>“I’ve bought a new ship. ‘Philopena’ or some such outlandish name. She’s -at Griffin’s Wharf, Millwall. Better go and look at her. You can have -her if you fancy her.”</p> - -<p>Half-way down the gangway he turned again.</p> - -<p>“Come and dine with me at Blackheath on Thursday. Seven o’clock. And -don’t keep me waiting, mind! I’m a punctual man, or I shouldn’t be where -I am.”</p> - -<p>That invitation—invitation? it was more like a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span> Royal command—as -Broughton well knew, set the seal on his promotion.</p> - -<p>The ship was the “Maid of Athens.”</p> - - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>Broughton went in search of her as soon as he had finished up on board -the “Haidée” and turned her over to the care of the old lame shipkeeper.</p> - -<p>He didn’t feel particularly excited; his feeling, naturally enough, was -one of pleasurable anticipation of an improvement in his material -circumstances—no more than that, as he realized with that wistful sense -of flatness and disappointment which inevitably accompanies the -discovery that some long-desired consummation has lost through the lapse -of time its power to excite and to intoxicate the mind. “If this had -happened ten years ago,” he thought rather sadly, “Lord, how full of -myself I should have been!” forgetting that middle age, when it does -make acquaintance with passion, seldom does it by halves.</p> - -<p>He found the “Philopena” in a derelict, melancholy wet dock somewhere -among vacant lots and chemical works down in the Isle of Dogs, along -with a couple of dilapidated coasting colliers and a broken-down tug—a -smoky Thames-side sunset burning like a banked fire behind the -cynical-looking sheds of a shadowy and problematical Griffin—and he -fell in love with her on the instant.</p> - -<p>There is—or perhaps one should rather say was, since it is doubtful if -the Age of Steam has cognizance of such sentimental weaknesses—a -certain kind of thrill, not to be satisfactorily defined in words,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span> -which runs through a man’s whole being when first his eyes fall upon the -one ship which, out of all the thousands which sail the seas, seems -especially made to be the complement of his own being, as surely as a -woman is made for her mate. It is a feeling to which first love is -perhaps the thing most nearly comparable—it can make the most -commonplace of men into a poet; and even that lacks one of its -qualities—its pure and sexless virginity. Other ships there may be more -beautiful; but they leave him cold. They are not for him as she is for -him....</p> - -<p>That thrill it was—that awakening of two of the root instincts of -mankind, the instinct to cherish, and the instinct to possess—which ran -(surprising even himself) through that most matter-of-fact and -unimaginative of men, David Broughton, when he first set eyes on the -ship that for twenty-odd years to come was destined to provide the main -interest and object of his existence.</p> - -<p>There seemed to be nobody about the wharf, but Broughton untied a leaky -dinghy that he found moored under the piles and pulled out to her. The -nearer he got to her the better he liked her. Stern a bit on the heavy -side, he fancied—with too much weight aft she’d be inclined to run up -into the wind if you didn’t watch her. She’d want some handling, all -right, but it wouldn’t do to be afraid of her, either. Her lines were a -dream! He pulled all round her, viewing her from every angle; and as he -rowed under her keen bow he caught himself fancying that her little -dainty figurehead looked down upon him with a kind of wistful appeal—a -sort of “You won’t go away and leave me, will you?” look that won his -heart on the spot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span></p> - -<p>He made the boat fast to the crazy Jacob’s ladder and swung himself on -board. She was filthily dirty, appallingly neglected, with that -unspeakably forlorn and abandoned look which ships seem to get after a -long lay-up in port. The grime and litter everywhere made his heart -ache. The Dagoes had had her for the last year or two, and her little -cabin reeked of garlic and stale cigar smoke. The shipkeeper, a -drink-sodden old ruffian with a horrible red-running eye, who was -probably none too pleased at the prospect of losing his job now his -temporary home was sold, followed Broughton round grumbling and -croaking. Lor’ bless you, <i>she</i> wouldn’t sail, not she! No more’n a -mule’ll go if he don’t want to! There was plenty had had a try at her, -and they all told the same tale. Somethink wrong with the way she was -built, must be ... or else they’d laid her keel of a Friday or -summat....</p> - -<p>Broughton smiled to himself. Somehow, he thought, that ship was going to -sail for him! He couldn’t have explained the feeling for the life of -him, but there it was.</p> - -<p>And so, in point of fact, things turned out. Just as a horse which is an -unmanageable fiend in the hands of a crack jockey will let some snip of -a stable lad do what he will with him—just as a dog made savage by -ill-usage will attach himself for life (and perhaps—who knows?—beyond) -to someone who first masters him and then shows him kindness—so did -this little wild “Philopena” under her new name of “Maid of Athens” show -no sign of the tricks and vices, whatever they might be, which had -brought her, like some lovely but wilful lady fallen among evil -companions, to the obscene desolation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span> that forlorn Millwall wet -dock. Twenty-five years ago ... ah, well, they had been happy years, on -the whole! A reserved and rather lonely man, not over fond of company, -Broughton had drifted into a negatively disastrous sort of marriage in -his young days with a woman considerably older than himself. With the -best will in the world to do so, he had been unable to feel any but a -superficial grief at her death a few years later; and in the house where -his married stepdaughter now lived he always felt like a stranger on -sufferance during his brief periods ashore. But he had found an abiding -content in the daily routine of his life at sea. He gave himself up to -his ship without grudging. She was his one interest in life, his hobby, -his love. He laid out his spare cash on little items of personal -adornment for her as for a loved woman, and on the new gear of which Old -Featherstone stinted her as his natural tendency to stinginess increased -with age.</p> - -<p>It was a brother skipper, Tom Pellatt, of Maclean’s pretty little -clipper “Phoebe Maclean”—a silly, noisy chap Broughton privately -thought him—who had first put the idea into his head that the “Maid of -Athens” might one day become his own property in name as she already was -in spirit.</p> - -<p>Pellatt had been dining on board when both ships were in Sydney Harbour, -and just as he was going he said:</p> - -<p>“Tell you what, Broughton, you’ve been the making of this ship; and if -old Nethermillstone don’t leave her to you in his will he damn well -ought to, that’s all!”</p> - -<p>Broughton put the suggestion aside with a laugh. Pellatt, who was one of -those people who, as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> phrase goes, “talk as they warm,” and simply -said it out of a desire to say something complimentary and pleasing to -his host—Broughton’s absorption in his ship being something of a -standing joke among his fellow-captains when his back was -turned—probably forgot he had ever said it before he got back to his -own ship. But the words had sown their seed.</p> - -<p>At first Broughton only played with the idea at odd moments: he would do -this, he would do that, if the ship were his—treating it as a pleasant -kind of game of make-believe wherewith to beguile an idle minute; but -always with the mental proviso that, of course, no one but a silly -gabbling ass like Pellatt would ever have thought of such a thing.</p> - -<p>Then, gradually, he began to wonder if it really was such a ridiculous -notion, after all. Old Featherstone’s business would die with him, that -was very certain. Hadn’t he said as much himself, the last time -Broughton dined at Blackheath, about the time young Daly, whose father -Featherstone had worked for in his clerking days, came such a holy -mucker in the Bankruptcy Court?</p> - -<p>“I don’t intend to leave my house-flag to be trailed through the mire!” -he had said.</p> - -<p>And hadn’t he said, too, not once but many times:</p> - -<p>“I shall never sell the ‘Maid of Athens’!”</p> - -<p>Presently, from being a desirable but remote possibility, he began to -consider it in the light of a probability; and from that it was but a -short step to take to begin to look upon it as a right. Who, he asked -himself, had a stronger claim to the ship than he—if, indeed, half so -strong?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span></p> - -<p>He began by degrees to make his plans more definitely. It was no longer -“if the ship were mine,” but “when she is mine.” He hugged the thought -to him, fed upon it, lived with it night and day. He hoped he could -honestly say he had never wished Old Featherstone’s death; but when the -news of his death had come he had not been able to repress a thrill of -exultation as the thought rose to the surface of his mind, “Now, at -last, she will surely be mine!”</p> - -<p>It had been the old man himself who had finally turned what had until -then been no more than a vague hope into a virtual certainty.</p> - -<p>It was on the occasion of that last dinner at Blackheath, a matter of -six weeks ago, just before the attack of bronchitis that had finished -the old fellow off. There he had sat in his big easy-chair by the fire, -looking incredibly frail and shrunken, his eyes, for all that, as keen -as ever in their sunken caves as they wandered from Broughton’s face to -the counterfeit presentment of the “Maid of Athens” riding proudly on -her painted sea.</p> - -<p>“Well, Broughton,” he had snapped out, suddenly, for a moment almost -like his old self again, “you’ve thought a lot of the old ship, haven’t -you?”</p> - -<p>Broughton, taken by surprise, and feeling, no doubt, just a little -guilty about those secret aircastles of his, said, stammering, well, -yes, he supposed he had.</p> - -<p>And there the matter stopped. Not much, perhaps; but straws show which -way the wind blows. Broughton thought he was justified in reading a -certain significance into the incident.</p> - -<p>And again, on the way up to the funeral that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span> morning, he had looked in -at a little club he belonged to, and met half a dozen skippers of his -acquaintance: always the same tale—“Hello, Broughton! Off to plant old -Feathers, I suppose! Hope he’s come down handsome in his will.”</p> - -<p>“Bless you, I’m not expecting anything!” had been Broughton’s answer, as -much to the jealous Fates as to them.... Well, it would soon be settled -now one way or the other. He didn’t really, in his heart of hearts, -believe in the possibility of that other way at all; but he included it -in his mind as a matter of form—again with that vague -half-superstitious notion of propitiating some watchful and sardonic -Destiny.</p> - -<p>He was surprised to find himself so little excited now that the great -moment had arrived. He had had to keep a tight hand on himself on the -way up from the cemetery, lest he should betray his fever of nervous -impatience to his companions, and he had been relieved when the lawyer’s -constant flow of chatter obviated the necessity of his taking any share -in the conversation. Now, he was glad to find, he had got himself well -under control. He was even able to derive a certain quiet interest from -observing the suppressed eagerness on the decorous countenances of Old -Featherstone’s relations. A so-so lot, on the whole! Broughton thought -by the looks of ’em that old Thomas must have had the lion’s share of -the family wits.</p> - -<p>Funny that a man should spend all his life piling money up, and then -have no one to leave it to that he really cared for! “My brother’s -children’ll get my money when I’m gone,” Old Featherstone used to say; -“don’t think much of ’em, but there it is!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span> I hope they’ll enjoy -spending it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.” ...</p> - -<p>The little lawyer sipped the last of his port, drew his chair up to the -table, and rummaged in the depths of his shabby brown bag with the air -of grave importance of a conjurer about to produce rabbits from a hat.</p> - -<p>Ah, here was the rabbit—a blue, folded paper which he unfolded, -flattened with immense deliberation, and began to read in the dead -silence which had suddenly fallen on the room.</p> - -<p>By George, thought Broughton, the old fellow was warm and no mistake! -Houses here, houses there, shares in this railway, that bank, the other -mine. It didn’t interest him much personally, but it was as good as a -play to see the pale gooseberry eyes of that grocer-looking chap bulging -with excitement until they bade fair to drop out of his head.</p> - -<p>“The house ‘Pulo Way’ and the contents thereof (with the exception of -certain items specified elsewhere),” droned on the lawyer’s unmusical, -monotonous voice, “to Rosina Barratt for her life.” ... Rosina -Barratt—that was the dyspeptic niece. Broughton felt glad to know he’d -done the proper thing by her. She deserved it. A decent woman: and he -must have been a crotchety old devil to live with in his latter days!</p> - -<p>Good Lord, what an interminable rigmarole this legal business was! -Broughton moved restlessly in his seat. The ships—the ships! Was he -never coming to them?</p> - -<p>His own name, starting at him out of the midst of the formal -phraseology, made his heart miss a beat. Here it was at last: but -no—not yet—<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span>—</p> - -<p>“To Captain David Broughton my oil painting of the clipper ship ‘Maid of -Athens’ in gold frame, knowing his regard for the ship and that he will -value the painting on that account....”</p> - -<p>Broughton just managed to bite back a laugh in time. If the old chap had -known what he really thought about that picture!</p> - -<p>The lawyer droned on. Somebody got that black clock on the -mantelpiece—somebody else the old man’s Malacca cane—two hundred -pounds to little Jenkinson—a hundred to the lawyer. The little clerk -sat up and smirked like a Sunday School kid that hears its name read out -for a prize; but the lawyer, Broughton thought not without a touch of -amusement, didn’t look any too well pleased with his.</p> - -<p>The ships—the ships—what about the ships?...</p> - -<p>“I desire that my two ships, ‘Maid of Athens’ and ‘Thyrza,’ shall be -sold within twelve months after my decease, and the proceeds of the sale -divided amongst the legatees aforesaid in the same proportion as the -rest of my estate.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to Broughton that the lawyer’s respectfully modulated tones -went roaring and echoing round the room, with a note of derision in them -like the ironical laughter of fiends. A black mist swam before his eyes -for a minute or two, obscuring the prim Victorian dining-room and its -familiar contents—a mist through which the three lit gas-globes on the -brass chandelier shone large, round, and haloed like sun-dogs in the Far -North.</p> - -<p>The mist, clearing, left everything distinct again. The thundering voice -subsided again to its former dry monotone. The lawyer brought his -reading to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span> a close, folded his eyeglasses, and replaced his documents -in his bag. A discreet murmur of excited talk broke out among the -relatives.</p> - -<p>The dyspeptic niece, important in the consciousness of her legacy, came -twittering up to Broughton as he rose to go.</p> - -<p>“<i>So</i> kind of you to come, Captain Broughton! My uncle would have -appreciated your being here. And you’ll let me know where to send your -picture, won’t you? I’m so glad it’s going to you. One likes to think -things are going to those who will appreciate them.”</p> - -<p>The picture! Broughton nearly laughed in the woman’s face—nearly told -her to keep the damned picture. But he thought better of it—it wasn’t -the poor silly creature’s fault, after all!</p> - -<p>The lawyer hailed him as he stood on the steps, buttoning his overcoat, -while he waited for his hansom.</p> - -<p>“Can’t I give you a lift anywhere, Captain Broughton? Going to be a -foggy night, I fancy.”</p> - -<p>Broughton shook his head with a curt “No, thanks—walking!”</p> - -<p>The little lawyer, who was a shrewd observer of men and, like most -chatterboxes, a kindly soul, and who was, moreover, none too pleased -with his own legacy, shook his head and sighed as he watched the -square-set figure disappear into the fog and darkness.</p> - -<p>“That man’s had a bit of a knock,” he reflected. “Wonder if he’s got -anything to live on? Not much, I dare say. Wouldn’t have hurt that -stingy old devil to leave him a hundred or two.... Ah well....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span>”</p> - - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p>Broughton strode away through the foggy suburban streets. He was afraid -he’d been a bit offhand with that lawyer chap. Well, he couldn’t help -that! He felt he couldn’t stand his gabble—not at present.</p> - -<p>He wanted above everything else to be alone. He didn’t feel as if he -could face the well-meant curiosity and the equally well-meant sympathy -of those men who had wished him luck that morning. His wound had struck -too deep for such superficial salves to be other than an added -irritation. Normally inclined to err on the side of amiability, he felt -just now at odds with all the rest of humankind. He could fancy the -whispers that would follow him—“There goes poor Broughton—feeling -pretty sickish, you bet!”</p> - -<p>The first staggering sensation of blank and bewildered disappointment -had passed away, and in its place there surged up within him a cold tide -of black anger against Old Featherstone.</p> - -<p>So the old devil had been laughing at him in his sleeve that night—even -as he was laughing at him now, very likely, in whatever unholy place he -was gone to! He had guessed his thoughts, he supposed, in that damned -uncanny way he had. If the dead face now lying under the cold cemetery -mould had lain in Broughton’s pathway now he would have ground his heel -into the sardonic smile that still curled its stiff and silent lips.</p> - -<p>Him and his blasted picture!... A thing that wasn’t worth giving -wall-space to! A damned ship-chandler’s daub! Why, give him a few -splashes of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span> ship’s paint and a brush and he’d make a better fist at it -himself!</p> - -<p>He strode blindly on, through interminable crescents of smug villas, -their pavements greasy with fallen leaves, along dreary streets of -shabby “semis,” without noticing or caring where he was going: swinging -his neatly rolled umbrella regardless of the fine rain which had begun -to fall and was gathering in a million glistening drops on his black -coat. His mood cried aloud for the relief of physical effort, of -physical discomfort. Now and then he was brought up short by a blank -wall that drove him back upon his traces; now and then he cannoned -unnoticing into passing pedestrians, who turned, conscious of something -unusual in his manner, to watch him out of sight, then continued their -way wondering if he were drunk or mad.</p> - -<p>Presently the streets of dull “semis” gave place to streets of seedy -rows, with here and there a corner off-licence or a fried-fish shop -discharging its warm oily odours upon the chill air; and at last, -turning a corner, he found himself suddenly in a wide road whose greasy -pavements were lined with stalls and flares, yelling salesmen, and -groups of draggle-tailed women.</p> - -<p>He looked about him stupidly, uncertain of his bearings, though the -blare of a ship’s syren striking on his ear told him that he was not far -from the river. He was suddenly aware that he was wet and hungry and -very tired, and that his feet in his best boots hurt him abominably, for -he was no better a walker than most sailormen. He asked a passing -pedestrian where he was.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span></p> -<p>“Lower Road, Deptford.”... Why, he was less than a quarter of an -hour’s walk from the Surrey Commercial Docks, where the “Maid of Athens” -was even now lying, having just finished discharging the cargo of -linseed she had loaded at the River Plate. He couldn’t do better than -get on to the ship, he decided; he had been knocked out of time, and no -mistake, and there he would be able to sit down quietly and think things -over.</p> - -<p>The fog, which had been comparatively light on the higher ground, had -been steadily growing denser as he neared the river. There were haloes -round the flares that roared above the street stalls, and the lighted -shop windows were mere luminous blurs in the surrounding murk.</p> - -<p>“Want to mind where you’re steppin’ to-night, Cap’n,” the watchman -hailed him as he passed the dock gates; “it’s thick, an’ no -mistake—thick as ever I see it!”</p> - -<p>Thick wasn’t the word for it! Once away from the fights and noise of the -road, the darkness seemed like something you could feel—a solid mass of -clammy, clinging moisture, catching at the throat like a cold hand, -getting into the backs of your eyes and making them ache and smart. You -couldn’t see your hand before your face.</p> - -<p>Broughton groped his way along the narrow, slimy causeway which lay -between the stacks of piled-up lumber, exuding their sharp, damp, -resinous fragrance, and the intense darkness, broken occasionally by a -vague tremulous reflection where some ship’s lights contrived to pierce -it, which brooded over the unseen waters of the dock. Lights showed -forlornly here and there at the openings of the lanes which led away -between the piled deals—abysses of blackness<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span> as dark as the Magellanic -nebulæ. Ship’s portholes gleamed round and watchful as the eyes of huge -monsters of the slime. Bollards started up suddenly out of the fog like -menacing figures, and cranes straddled the path like black Apollyons in -some marine Pilgrim’s Progress. Once Broughton pulled himself up only -just in time to save himself from stepping over the edge of a yawning -pit of nothingness in which the water lipped unseen against the slimy -piles. The thought involuntarily crossed his mind that perhaps he might -have done worse; but he put it from him resolutely. His code, a simple -one, did not admit suicide as a permissible solution of the problems of -life.</p> - -<p>All work was long since over, and the docks were as silent and deserted -as the grave—nothing to be heard but the steady drip-drip of the rain, -once the distant tinkle of a banjo on board some vessel out in the dock, -and now and again the melancholy wail of a steamer groping her way up -river. The “Maid of Athens” lay right at the far end of one of the older -basins; she was all still and dark but for the oil lamp that burned -smokily at the head of the gangway, and a faint glow from the galley -which showed where the old shipkeeper sat alone with his pipe and his -memories.</p> - -<p>Old Mike came hobbling out at the sound of Broughton’s step on the -plank.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Strewth, Cap’n,” he exclaimed in astonishment, “you’ve chose a grand -night to come down an’ no fatal error! Will I make a bit o’ fire in the -cabin an’ brew ye a cup o’ tea? Sure you’re wet to the skin!”</p> - -<p>“Poor old chap!” Broughton thought, as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span> watched him busying himself -about his fire-lighting with the gnarled and shaking hands that had -hauled on so many a tackle-fall in their day. It would be a hard blow -for him when he knew that ship was to be sold. He had served in -Featherstone’s ships many years as A.B. and latterly as bos’n, until a -fall from aloft put an end to his seagoing days; and this little job of -shipkeeping was one of the very few planks between him and the -workhouse.</p> - -<p>The world was none too kind to old men who had outlived their -usefulness. What was it that old flintstone had said: “You can’t teach -an old dog new tricks”? Well, that was true enough, anyway!</p> - -<p>He called to mind an incident that had happened in Sydney his last -voyage there. An old man had come up to him begging for a job. He didn’t -care what—night watchman, anything; and he had opened his coat to show -that he had neither waistcoat nor shirt beneath it.</p> - -<p>“You don’t remember me, Broughton,” the old fellow had said; and, -looking closer, he had recognized in that incredibly seedy wreck one of -his own old skippers—before whose almost godlike aloofness and majesty -he had once trembled in mingled fear and awe. It was a pitiful tale he -had to tell. He had been thrown out of a berth at sixty-five, through -his ship being lost by no fault of his own, and couldn’t get in -anywhere. That proud, arrogant old man, full of small vanities!... -Broughton had had little enough cause in the past to think of him over -kindly; but the memory of the encounter had remained with him for weeks -at the time, and returned to trouble him now with an added -significance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span></p> - -<p>Old Mike’s bit o’ fire smouldered a little and went out, leaving nothing -but an acrid stink to mark its passing. The well-stewed tea in the -enamel cup at his elbow, with the two ragged slices of -margarine-plastered bread beside it in the slopped saucer, grew cold -unheeded. Outside, the rain dripped down like slow tears. And there he -sat, with his clenched hands before him on the table, staring into the -Past.</p> - -<p>There wasn’t a plank of her, not a rivet, not a rope-yarn that didn’t -mean something to him. True, Old Featherstone had given his money for -her: and if he knew that old man aright he hadn’t given a brass farthing -more than he could help. But he—what had he given to her? Money—well, -he had given that, too, since Old Featherstone had turned mean, though -his twenty pounds a month hadn’t run to a great deal. But that was -neither here nor there. Things money could never buy he was thinking of, -sitting there in the cold, fog-dimmed cabin.</p> - -<p>The years of his life had gone into her—affection, understanding, -ungrudging service, sleepless nights and anxious days. What wonder that -she seemed almost like a part of himself? What wonder that to a man of -his rigid, slow-moving type of mind a future in which she had no part -was a thing unthinkable?</p> - -<p>His memory passed on to all the mates and second mates who had faced him -at meals over that very cabin. A regular procession of -them—Marston—Reid—what was the name of that chap with the light -eyelashes?—Barnes, was it?—Digby—he was a decent chap, now—went into -steam years ago and was chief officer in one of the B. I. ships last -time Broughton heard of him. That was what <i>he</i> ought<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span> to have done. He -had known it at the back of his mind all along. But he couldn’t leave -her—he couldn’t leave her!</p> - -<p>Well, well, there was no use meeting trouble half-way! What was it old -Waterhouse, his first skipper in his brassbound days, used to say? “If -you’re jammed on a lee shore and can’t stay, why, then try wearing. If -that don’t work, try boxing her off. But whatever you do, do something! -Don’t sit down and howl!”</p> - -<p>They used to laugh at him and mimic him behind his back, cheeky young -devils; but it was damned good advice for all that. He was on a lee -shore now right enough; but there was bound to be a way out somewhere if -he kept his head.</p> - -<p>An intense drowsiness and weariness had begun to creep over him—just -such a leaden desire for sleep as he had experienced in that same cabin -many a time after days of incessant and anxious battling with gales and -seas. His unmade bed looked singularly unenticing, so, dragging a -blanket from the pile upon it, he kicked off his sodden boots and lay -down on the cabin settee.</p> - -<p>A rising wind had begun to moan and sigh in the rigging, driving the -rain in sheets against the skylight ... there was a way out, a way out -... if he could only think of it ... somewhere....</p> - - -<h3>VI</h3> - -<p>He awoke to a flood of bright sunshine streaming in through the -skylight. The wind had driven fog and rain before it, leaving a virginal -and new-washed world under a sky of pale, remote blue.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span></p> - -<p>Broughton heaved himself off the settee, catching a glimpse of -himself—haggard, rumpled, and unkempt—in the mirror over the -sideboard, as he did so.</p> - -<p>“By George!” he said to himself, viewing his reflection, “Marianne would -have looked down her nose at me if I’d turned up at Sibella Road like -this. She’d have thought I’d been having a thick night, and small blame -to her!”</p> - -<p>There was no doubt that he presented a sorry spectacle. His trousers -were still damp and splashed with mud-stains; his collar was creased and -black with fog. He was stiff and tired in body; but his mind, naturally -resilient, was infinitely refreshed by the long hours of sleep.</p> - -<p>His spirits rose every minute. He whistled to himself as he rummaged out -a blue suit from his cabin, washed, and shaved. He even indulged in a -smile as he recalled the little lawyer and his two singlets.</p> - -<p>After all, looked at in the light of day, things might have been a whole -lot worse. There was always a chance that one of the three or four -British firms who still owned sailing ships might buy the old girl. She -had a great name; and people were beginning to be a bit sentimental -about sailing ships now they were mostly gone. Or one of the big -steamship lines might take her on for training purposes. If either of -those things happened, it wasn’t likely they would want to put anyone -else in command. It was common knowledge, though he said it himself, -that no one could get what he could out of her. They would very likely -put her into the nitrate trade. Of course it would be a bit of a -come-down, still—any port in a storm! He remembered how sick he had -been about it the first time she loaded coal at<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span> Newcastle. He had felt -like going down on his knees and apologizing to her for the outrage! Or, -again, there was lumber—plenty of charters were to be had up the West -Coast. True, her size was against her; with her reputation and twice her -tonnage she wouldn’t have had to wait long for a purchaser. But she -would be a good investment, for all that. Why, damn it all, if he had -the money loose he’d buy her himself without thinking twice about it! -But twenty pounds a month doesn’t leave much margin for such luxuries as -buying ships.</p> - -<p>He paused half in and half out of his coat, struck by a sudden idea.</p> - -<p>His half-brother Edward! Why, he was the very man—just the very man! -Rolling in money that he made at that warehouse where he sold staylaces -or something up in the City! The blighter was as sharp as a -needle—always had been from the time when he used to drive bargains -over blood alleys with the other kids at school. He’d see the advantage -of a proposition like this fast enough! He could either lend the money -on reasonable interest on the security of the ship, or if he liked he -could buy her himself and let Broughton manage her for him.</p> - -<p>He hurried over the rest of his toilet, swallowed a cup of tea and a -rasher old Mike had got ready for him, and started off for the City, all -on fire with his new project.</p> - -<p>How did that piece of poetry go that Old Featherstone got the ship’s -name from? He had read it once, but he wasn’t much at poetry: he -couldn’t make much of it.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Maid of Athens, ere we part——”<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<p>That was it! He repeated the line once or twice under his breath, -finding in it a new and surprising significance. He ran his hand -caressingly along the smoothness of her teak rail, sleek and glossy and -warm in the sun as a living thing.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Maid of Athens, ere we part——”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>“There’s a deuce of a lot of water to go under the bridge before it -comes to that, old lady!” he said aloud.</p> - -<p>By the time he reached the dock gates the proposition had grown so rosy -that his only fear was lest someone else should discover its -attractiveness and get in ahead of him. By the time he got off the bus -in Saint Paul’s Churchyard it seemed to him that he was doing his -half-brother a really good turn in allowing him the first chance of so -advantageous a business opportunity.</p> - -<p>The spruce-looking master mariner who gave in his name at a little hole -marked “Inquiries” on the ground-floor of a warehouse just behind the -Church of Saint Sempronius Without was a very different person from the -haggard being who had glared back at him from the glass an hour ago.</p> - -<p>Edward Broughton’s place of business was a large, modern edifice each of -whose many ground-floor windows displayed a device representing a nude -youth running like hell over the surface of a miniature globe, holding -in his extended hand a suit of Elasto Underwear—“Fits where it Hits.” -This famous slogan it was which had made Elasto Underwear and Edward -Broughton’s fortune; for he was by way of doing very well indeed, was -Edward, and had even been spoken of as a possible Lord Mayor. David<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span> -remembered him in the old days, when he was at home from sea, as a pert -little snipe of a youngster with red cheeks and sticking-out eyes.</p> - -<p>A stylish youth, looking like a clothed edition of the young gentleman -on the placards, ushered him into a small, glass-sided compartment and -left him alone there with two little plaster images wearing miniature -suits of Elasto Underwear. One was after—a long way after—Michael -Angelo’s David, the other (also a long way) after the Venus of Milo.</p> - -<p>Broughton looked round him with all the sailorman’s lordly contempt of -the ways of traders. He looked out through the glass sides of his cage -on long vistas of desks where girls sat at typewriters and between which -there scurried young exquisites with sleek hair and champagne-coloured -socks—dozens of them, presumably engaged on the one all-important task -of distributing Elasto Underwear to the civilized and uncivilized world.</p> - -<p>So this was where brother Edward made all his money! Rum sort of -show—“Fits where it Hits,” indeed—what a darned silly idea! And how -much longer were they going to keep him waiting?</p> - -<p>His eyes wandered for the twentieth time to the clock. Half-past -eleven—he had been here half an hour. The two underclothed statuettes -were beginning to get on his nerves. He should smash ’em if he stopped -there much longer.</p> - -<p>Issuing forth fuming from his plate-glass seclusion, he stopped one of -the hurrying exquisites.</p> - -<p>“Does Mr. Broughton know I am here?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Y-yes, sir!” The youth could not have said what made him tack that -“sir” on. “You see, he’s very busy in a morning, if you haven’t an -appoint<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span>ment. And this week the auditors are here. Could you leave your -name and call again?”</p> - -<p>“I see. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Will you have the goodness to tell him -again, please? Say that Captain Broughton would like to see him—on -business—important business.”</p> - -<p>The lad hesitated for a moment between dread of his employer and a sense -of something masterful, something which demanded obedience, about this -brown-faced, quiet stranger. The stranger won, and with a “Very good, -sir,” the messenger disappeared among the desks.</p> - -<p>Presently he returned. Mr. Broughton would see his visitor now.</p> - -<p>David’s half-brother sat in a vast lighted room behind a vast -leather-covered table. He still had the round red cheeks and prominent -eyes of his youth, but he was almost bald and showed an incipient -corporation.</p> - -<p>A youth laden with two huge ledgers backed out of the presence as David -entered. Like the King, by Jove! Brother Edward was getting into no end -of a big pot.</p> - -<p>“Oh, good morning, David!” He waved his caller graciously to a seat. -“This is quite an unaccustomed honour. I’m afraid you’ve come at rather -a busy time—the auditors, and so forth. I hardly ever see anybody -except by appointment. But I can give you ten minutes. And now—what can -I do for you?”</p> - -<p>The words were pleasant enough in a way; but that “What can I do for -you?” signified as plainly as if he had said it, “What does this fellow -want with me, I wonder?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>There is no enmity so undying as that which dates from the nursery. -There is no dislike so unconquerable as that which exists between people -who are kin but not kind. Had David Broughton been more of a man of the -world he would have known as much; and that while it is true that blood -is thicker than water, it is also true that upon occasion it can be more -bitter than gall.</p> - -<p>The undercurrent of suspicion which was unmistakable beneath the smooth -surface of Edward Broughton’s words flicked David on the raw. Perhaps it -was that, perhaps the long chilling wait in the plate-glass ante-room -had something to do with it. For whatever reason, when he opened his -mouth to explain his errand, he found that all his eloquence had -deserted him.</p> - -<p>He was going to make a mess of it: he knew it as soon as he began to -speak. Where were all the telling facts, the effective data he had -marshalled so brilliantly as he rode up to the City on the bus? -Gone—all gone; he found himself stammering out his case haltingly, -baldly, unconvincingly. He could feel it in his bones.</p> - -<p>Edward Broughton pursed up his lips, as his half-brother’s last phrase -petered out in futility, and blew out his cheeks. He lay back in the -large chair and spread his neat little legs out under the large table, -placing together his finger-tips—the flattened finger-tips of the -money-grubber.</p> - -<p>“I—see! I—see! You want me to buy this—er—ship?”</p> - -<p>“Well, yes,” David admitted. “I suppose that’s about the length of it, -or—or—as I said just now—lend me the money on the security of the -ship<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span>——”</p> - -<p>Edward Broughton studied his nails for a few seconds in silence. He used -to bite ’em as a kid, David suddenly remembered, and have bitter aloes -put on to stop him.</p> - -<p>Then slowly, solemnly, he shook his head.</p> - -<p>“No, no! I’m afraid it’s nothing in my line, David.”</p> - -<p>“But, dash it all, man!”—Broughton’s temper was beginning to get the -better of him. He was annoyed with himself because he felt he had -bungled his chances: more because he felt that he had made a mistake in -coming to this fellow at all. Ancient family aversions reared their -forgotten heads. And the intolerant impatience of the autocrat rose in -resentment of opposition. “Dash it all, man, it’s a good investment! I -shouldn’t have thought about mentioning it to you if it hadn’t been.” He -couldn’t help that sly dig.</p> - -<p>“What precisely is your idea of a good investment?”</p> - -<p>“Well, I should say it would pay a good five per cent—at a low -estimate....”</p> - -<p>Edward raised his eyebrows with a superior little smile of indulgent -amusement.</p> - -<p>“Five per cent. Why, my dear man, I won’t look at anything that doesn’t -bring in twenty at least. No, I’m very sorry for you. If I could really -see my way to help you I would, for the sake of old times and so on. But -one must keep sentiment out of business. It doesn’t do. And, honestly, I -can see nothing in it. It isn’t even as if this ship were a fairly new -ship. One must move with the times, you know. The late Mr. Featherstone -was a very keen man of business, and as you<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> yourself said just now, -he’d been selling his ships for years. He knew his business, no doubt, -as well as I know mine. And my motto is, ‘Let the cobbler stick to his -last!’ His Elasto, eh? Ha ha—not bad that!... No, I’m awfully sorry! I -quite see your position. I’ve often thought you were making a big -mistake—you ought to have gone in with one of the steamer companies. -But I’ll do what I can for you. I’ll put in a word for you, with -pleasure. I know one or two directors——”</p> - -<p>“Sorry! Help you! Put in a word for you!” What did the little blighter -mean? A little snipe whose ear-hole he’d wrung many a time!</p> - -<p>Broughton rose, breathing heavily. He restrained with difficulty a -fraternal impulse to reach across the leather-covered table and pull the -little beggar’s nose.</p> - -<p>“Damn it all,” he rapped out, “who asked you for your pity or your -advice, I’d like to know? When I want ’em, I won’t forget to ask for -’em, and that’ll be never. I come to you, as I might go to any other -business man, with a business proposition. It doesn’t interest you; very -well, there’s no more to be said. But as for your advice—<i>and</i> your -money—you can keep ’em and be damned to you!”</p> - -<p>He passed out between the lines of sniggering, nudging, whispering -clerks, his head held high, though his heart was sick with anger and -humiliation. So that was what the little beast had thought he was after. -Keeping a berth warm for himself. He went hot all over at the thought. -He did not even know that he had—for his voice, which he had raised -considerably in the heat of the moment, had carried to the farthest -corners of the outer office—provided the employees of Elasto, Limited,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span> -with one of the most enjoyable moments of their somewhat dull business -career.</p> - - -<h3>VII</h3> - -<p>The “Maid of Athens” left Northfleet six weeks later with a cargo of -cement for British Columbia, where she was to load lumber for some port -as yet unspecified, in accordance with a charter made before Old -Featherstone’s death.</p> - -<p>The day had dawned grey and melancholy. A mist of fine, drizzling rain -blotted out the low, monotonous shores of the estuary, and the -crew—dull and dispirited, the last night’s drink not yet out of -them—hove the anchor short with hardly a pretence of a shanty. But a -fresh, sharp wind began to blow from the north-east as the light grew, -and presently the ship was romping down Channel with everything set.</p> - -<p>Broughton stood on the poop beside the Channel pilot, watching the -familiar coast of so many landfalls slip rapidly by. Like him, the -red-faced, stocky man at his side had watched the ship grow old. His -name figured many a time, in Broughton’s stiff, precise handwriting, in -those shabby, leather-backed volumes which recorded her unconsidered -Odyssey:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“6 a.m. Dull and rainy. Landed Mr. Gardiner, Channel pilot.”</p> - -<p>“Start point bearing N. 6 miles. Pilot Gardiner left.”</p> - -<p>“Off Dungeness, 3 a.m. Took Mr. Gardiner, pilot, off North -Foreland.”</p></div> - -<p>Bald, unadorned entries, dull statements of plain fact set down by plain -men with no knowledge of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span> phrase-turning; yet there is more eloquence in -them than in all the word-spinnings of literature to those who read -aright. What sagas unsung they stand for! What departures fraught with -hopes and dreams, with remorse and parting and farewell! What landfalls -that were the triumphant climax of long endurance, of patient toil, of -cold, hunger, heat, thirst, not to be told in words! What difficulties -met and surmounted, what battles fought and won!</p> - -<p>The ship glistened white and clean in the morning sun. The men were hard -at work washing down decks, ridding her of the last traces of the grime -accumulated during her long period in port. Ah, thought Broughton, it -was good to be at sea again! The doubts and anxieties of the last six -weeks seemed to slip away from him as the river mud slipped from the -ship’s keel into the clean Channel tide. The accustomed sights and -sounds, the familiar lift and quiver of his ship under him, were like a -kind of enchanted circle within which he stood secure against the dark -forces of destruction and change. He was a king again in his own little -kingdom. The very act of entering up the day’s work in the log book—the -taking of sights—all the small duties and ceremonies that make up a -shipmaster’s life—helped to create in him an illusion of security. He -was like a man awakened from a terrifying dream of judgment, reassuring -himself by the sight and touch of common things that the world still -goes on its accustomed way. A strange sense of peace and permanency -wrapped him round—the peace of an ancient and established order of -things seeming so set and rooted that nothing could ever end it. It -seemed incredible that all this<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span> microcosm should pass away—that the -uncounted watches should ever go by and the ship’s faithful bells tell -them no more. She appeared to borrow a certain quality of immortality -from the winds and the sea and the stars, the eternal things which had -been the commonplaces of her wandering years.</p> - -<p>Most of all, it was the fact of being once more occupied that brought -him solace. By what queer doctrine of theologians, by what sheer -translator’s error, did man’s inheritance of daily labour come to be -accounted as the penalty of his first folly and sin? Work—surely the -one merciful gift vouchsafed to Adam by an angry Deity when he went -weeping forth from Paradise! Work—with its kindly weariness of body, -compelling the weary brain to rest. Work, the everlasting anodyne, the -unfailing salve for man’s most unbearable sorrows—which shall last when -pleasure and lust and wealth are so many Dead Sea apples in the mouth, a -comfort and a refuge when all human loves and loyalties shall fade and -fail.</p> - -<p>Five days after the “Maid of Athens” took her departure from the Lizard -it began to breeze up from the north-west. At three bells in the first -watch the royals and topgallantsails had to come in, then the jibs; and -when dark fell she was running before wind and sea under fore and main -topsails and reefed foresail. But she liked rough weather, and under her -reduced canvas she was going along very safely and easily, so Broughton -decided to turn in for an hour’s rest in order to be ready for the -strenuous night he anticipated.</p> - -<p>“I am going to turn in for an hour or so,” he said, turning to the mate; -“call me in that time,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span> if I am not awake before. And sooner if anything -out of the way should happen. I think we shall have a dirty night by the -look of it.”</p> - -<p>The mate was a poor creature—weak, but with the self-assertiveness that -generally goes with weakness. Broughton felt he would not like to rely -upon him in an emergency.</p> - -<p>But he had had very little sleep since the ship sailed—nor, indeed, -during the weeks which had elapsed since Featherstone’s funeral. He -shrank instinctively from being alone. It was then that his anxieties -began to crowd upon him afresh, and that the threat of the future seemed -to touch him like the shadow of some boding wing. But now that sudden -overpowering heaviness of the eyelids which must inevitably, sooner or -later, follow upon a continued sleeplessness, descended upon him. He -felt that he could hardly keep awake—no, not though the very skies -should fall.</p> - -<p>He was sound asleep almost as soon as he had lain down—lost in a -labyrinth of ridiculous and confusing dreams in which all sorts of -unexpected people and events kept melting into one another in the most -illogical and inconsequent fashion, which yet seemed, according to that -peculiar fourth-dimensional standard of values which prevails in the -dream-world, perfectly proper and reasonable.</p> - -<p>Old Featherstone figured in these dreams: so also did the dining-room at -“Pulo Way.” Only somehow Old Featherstone kept turning into somebody -else; first it was Hobbs the lawyer, then old Mike Brophy the -shipkeeper, then an old mate of his called Peters, whom he hadn’t seen -or thought of even for years. And then the dining-room had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span> become the -cabin of the “Maid of Athens,” and Peters, who had changed into old -Captain Waterhouse, was sitting at the head of the table reading -Featherstone’s will. He was shouting at the top of his voice, and -Broughton was straining his ears to catch what he was saying and -couldn’t make out a word of it because of the roar of the wind. And then -the floor began to heave and slant, and the pictures on the walls—for -the cabin had turned back into a dining-room again—to tumble all about -his ears—and the next moment he was sitting up broad awake, his feet -and back braced to meet the next lurch of the vessel, the wind and sea -making a continuous thunder outside, and a pile of books cascading down -upon him from a shelf over his head.</p> - -<p>He knew well enough—his seaman’s instinct told him almost before he was -fully awake—precisely what had happened. It was just the very -possibility which had been in his mind when he turned in. The -mate—aided no doubt by a timorous and inefficient helmsman—had let the -ship’s head run up into the wind and she had promptly broached to. The -“Maid” always carried a good deal of weather helm, and wanted careful -watching with a following wind and sea. He remembered an incident which -had occurred years ago, while he was running down the Easting—a bad -helmsman had lost his head through watching the following seas instead -of his course, and let the ship run away with him. Broughton had been -close to him when it happened. He struck the man a blow that sent him -rolling in the scuppers, and himself seized the spokes and jammed the -helm up. The mate, in the meantime, had let the topsail halyards run -without waiting for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span> the order, and, freed from the weight of her -canvas, the ship paid off and the danger was over.</p> - -<p>The memory flashed through his mind and was gone during the few seconds -it took him to grope his way to the door and emerge into the roaring, -thundering darkness beyond.</p> - -<p>The ship lay sprawled in the trough of the sea, like a horse fallen at a -fence. Her lee rail was buried four feet deep, and her lower yards were -hidden almost to the slings in the seething, churned-up whiteness which -surrounded her. The night was black as pitch. A pale glimmer showed -faintly from the binnacle, and the sickly red and green of the -side-lights gleamed wan and fitful amid the watery desolation. But -otherwise the only fight was that which seemed to be given by the white -crests of the endless procession of galloping seas which came tearing -out of the night to pour themselves over the helpless vessel.</p> - -<p>The wheel appeared to be still intact; in the darkness Broughton thought -he could still make out the hunched figure of the helmsman beside it. -That was so much. If the spars held....</p> - -<p>As he emerged from the shelter of the chart-room the full force of the -wind struck him like a steady push from some huge, invisible hand. He -waited for a lull and made a dash for the wheel.</p> - -<p>The lull was for a few moments only—a few moments during which the ship -lay in the lee of a tremendous sea, which, towering up fifty feet above -her, held her for a brief space in its perilous and betraying shelter. -The next instant it broke clean over her—a great mass of green marbled -water that filled her decks, carried her boats away like match<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span>boxes -down a flooded gutter, and swept her decks from end to end with a -triumphant trampling as of a conquering army.</p> - -<p>“This finishes it!” Broughton thought.</p> - -<p>He was swept clean off his feet; rolled over and over; buried in foam; -engulfed in what seemed to him like the whole Atlantic ocean; carried, -as he believed, right down to Davy Jones’s locker, where the light of -day would never reach him again....</p> - -<p>The next thing he knew he was lying jammed against the lee rail of the -poop, his legs hanging outboard, his arm hooked round a cleat, -presumably by some subconscious instinct of self-preservation, for he -had no recollection of putting it there. The water was pouring past him -in a green cataract, and dragging at him like clutching fingers. He was -alive. The ship was alive. “Good old girl!” Broughton said to himself. -He began to struggle to his feet. Something moved beside him and clawed -at his ankles.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Lord!” said a voice out of the darkness—the mate’s voice. “Oh, -Lord—I thought I was a goner!”</p> - -<p>“Oh—you!” said Broughton. “Get off my feet, damn you!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Lord!” said the voice again.</p> - -<p>“Pull yourself together!” Broughton rapped out. “What were you doing? -Why didn’t you call me?”</p> - -<p>“There wasn’t time,” moaned the mate. “She was going along all right, -and the next minute—oh, Lord, I was nearly overboard!”</p> - -<p>“Think you’re at a bloody revival meeting?” snapped Broughton. He shook -him off, and, holding by the rail, fought his way up the slanting deck -to the wheel.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span></p> - -<p>The young second mate came butting head down through the murk.</p> - -<p>“Fore upper topsail’s gone out of the bolt-ropes, sir!”</p> - -<p>Broughton smiled grimly to himself. Old Featherstone’s skinflint ways -had turned out good policy for once. If that fore upper topsail had -held, as it would have done if it had been the stout Number One canvas -his soul craved, instead of a flimsy patched affair only fit for the -Tropics, they might all have been with Davy Jones by now.</p> - -<p>“Take the best hands you can find to the braces,” Broughton ordered. “I -must try to get her away before it. Mister!”—this to the mate, who had -by this time picked himself out of the scuppers and came scrambling up -the deck—“take half a dozen hands down to see to the cargo, and do what -you can to secure it if it looks like shifting.”</p> - -<p>The helmsman, a big heavy Swede, was still clinging to the wheel like a -limpet; partly because it appeared to him good to have something to hold -on to, partly because his wits worked so slowly that it hadn’t yet -occurred to him to let go. Broughton grasped the spokes and the two men -threw every ounce of their strength into the task of putting the helm -over.</p> - -<p>Gusts of cheery obscenity came out of the darkness forward as the crew -fought to get the spars round. “Good men!” Broughton said between his -teeth. “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Maid of Athens, ere we part,’ eh? Not yet, old girl—not yet!”</p> - -<p>It seemed as if the helpless ship knew the feel of the familiar hand on -her helm, and strove with all her might to respond to it. She struggled; -she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span> almost rose. Then, wind and sea beating her down anew, she slid -down into the trough again.</p> - -<p>Again and again she tried to heave herself free from the weight of water -that dragged her down; again and again she slipped back again, like a -fallen horse trying vainly to get a footing on a slippery road. The two -men wrestled with the wheel in grim silence. It kicked and strove in -their grasp like a living thing. But at last, slowly, the ship quivered, -righted herself. She shook the seas impatiently from her flanks as the -reefed foresail filled. Inch by inch the yards came round to windward. -The fight was over.</p> - -<p>By daybreak the gale had all but blown itself out. The sea still ran -high, but the wind had fallen, and a watery sun was trying to break -through the hurrying clouds. The hands were already at work bending a -new foretopsail, and their short, staccato cries came on the wind like -the mewings of gulls.</p> - -<p>“Life in the old dog yet, Mr. Kennedy!” said Broughton to the second -mate. He struck his hands together, exulting. The struggle seemed to him -a good omen. If she could live through a night like that, surely she -could also survive those obscurer dangers which threatened her. His -shoulders ached like the shoulders of Atlas from the battle with the -kicking wheel. He had not known such physical effort since his -apprentice days. The fight had put new heart into him. By God, it had -been worth it, he told himself. It made a man feel that it was worth -while to be alive....</p> - -<p>A few days later the “Maid of Athens” picked up the north-east Trades, -and carried them with her almost down to the Line through a succession<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span> -of golden days and star-dusted nights. She loitered through the -doldrums—found her Trades again just south of the Line—wrestled with -the Westerlies off the Horn—and, speeding northward again through the -flying-fish weather, made the Strait of Juan de Fuca a hundred and nine -days out.</p> - - -<h3>VIII</h3> - -<p>The “Maid of Athens” discharged her cargo of cement at Vancouver, and -went over to the Puget Sound wharf at Victoria to load lumber for Chile.</p> - -<p>She was there for nearly a month before she left her berth on a fine -October afternoon, and anchored in the Royal Roads, where the pilot -would board her next morning to take her down to Flattery.</p> - -<p>Broughton went ashore in the evening for the last time, and walked up to -his agent’s offices in Wharf Street. He was burningly anxious to be at -sea again. The old restlessness was strong upon him that he had felt -before leaving London River, and a number of small vexatious delays had -whetted his impatience to the breaking point.</p> - -<p>“Letter for you, Cap’n,” the clerk hailed him. “I thought maybe you’d be -around, or I’d have sent it over to you.”</p> - -<p>Broughton turned the letter in his hands for a minute or two before -opening it. He recognized the prim, clerkly hand at once. It was from -Jenkinson. A cold wave of apprehension flooded over him. Some mysterious -kind of telepathy told him that it contained unwelcome tidings.</p> - -<p>He slit the envelope at last, unfolded the sheet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span> and read it through. -Then he read it again, and still again—uncomprehendingly, as if it were -something in a foreign and unknown language:</p> - -<p>“ ...Sorry to say the old ship has now been sold ... firm at Gibraltar -... understand she is to be converted into a coal hulk....”</p> - -<p>Broughton crumpled the sheet in his hand with a fierce gesture, staring -out with unseeing eyes into a world aglow with the glory of sunset. It -was the worst—the very worst—he had ever dreamed of! Why hadn’t he let -her go, he wondered, that night in the North Atlantic? Why had he -dragged her back from a decent death for a fate like this? He could have -stuck it if she had gone to the shipbreakers. It would have hurt like -hell, but he could have stuck it. But this; it made him think, somehow, -of those old pitiful horses you saw being shipped across to Belgium with -their bones sticking through their skins. People used to have their old -horses shot when they were past work. They were different now. It was -all money—money—money! They thought nothing of fidelity, of loyalty, -of long service. They cared no more for their ships than for so many -slop pails....</p> - -<p>Wasn’t it the old Vikings that used to take their old ships out to sea -and burn them? There was a fine end for a ship now—a fine, clean, -splendid death for a ship that had been a great ship in her day! He -remembered once, years ago, watching a ship burn to the water’s edge in -the Indian Ocean. He wasn’t much more than a nipper at the time, but he -had never forgotten it. The calm night, and the stars, and the ship -flaring up to heaven like a torch. He didn’t think he would have minded, -somehow,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span> seeing his old ship go like that. But this—oh, he had got to -find a way out of it somehow....</p> - -<p>“Bad news, Cap’n?” came the clerk’s inquiring voice.</p> - -<p>Broughton pulled himself together with an effort.</p> - -<p>“No, no, thanks!” Mechanically he made his adieux and passed out into -the street. He didn’t know where he was going. He never remembered how -he found his way to the Outer Wharf where his boat was waiting.</p> - -<p>But he must have got there somehow, for now he was sitting in the -stern-sheets and looking out across the water to the ship lying at -anchor, with eyes to which sorrow and the shadow of parting seemed to -have given a strange new apprehension of beauty. How lovely she looked, -he thought, with the little pink clouds seeming to be caught in her -rigging, and the gulls flying and calling all about her! It was queer -that he should notice things like that so much, now that he was going to -lose her. He had known the time when he would have taken it all for -granted. Now, he kept seeing all kinds of little things in a kind of -new, clear light, as if he saw them for the first time——</p> - -<p>  </p> - -<p>Let young Kennedy tell the rest of the tale—in his cabin in a Blue -Funnel liner, years afterwards; the unforgettable, indefinable smell of -China drifting up from the Chinese emigrants’ quarters, the gabble of -the stokers at their interminable fan-tan on the forecastle mingling -with the piping of the gulls along the wharf sheds.</p> - -<p>“I could see at once” (thus young Kennedy) “that something had gone -wrong with the Old Man.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span> He looked ten years older since I had seen him -a couple of hours before. He came up the ladder very slowly and heavily, -passed me by without speaking—I might have been a stanchion standing -there for all the notice he took of me—and went down into the cabin -almost as if he were walking in his sleep.</p> - -<p>“Something—I don’t exactly know what—intuition, perhaps, you’d call -it—made me trump up an excuse to follow him. I didn’t like the looks of -him, somehow.</p> - -<p>“I found him sitting in his chair by the table, staring straight before -him with that same fixed look as if he didn’t really see anything.</p> - -<p>“He didn’t so much as turn his head when I went in, and at first when I -spoke he didn’t seem to hear me. I spoke again, a little louder, and he -gave a sort of start, as if he had been suddenly roused out of a sleep.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Yes—no!’ he said in a dazed kind of way. ‘Yes—no’ (like that); and -then suddenly, in a very loud, harsh voice, quite different from his -ordinary way of speaking: ‘A hulk! A hulk! They are going to make a coal -hulk of her!’</p> - -<p>“The words seemed to be fairly ripped out of him. He didn’t seem to be -speaking to me. It was more as if he were trying to make himself believe -something that was too bad to realize.</p> - -<p>“I managed to say something—I forget just what: that it was rotten -luck, perhaps. I doubt if he heard me, anyhow, for he went on in the -same strange voice, like someone talking to himself.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>She’s good for twenty years yet!’ And then, in a sort of choking -voice, ‘Mine—mine, by God, mine!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span>’</p> - -<p>“Well, I just turned at that and bolted. I felt I couldn’t stand any -more. It seemed like eavesdropping on a man’s soul.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t see him again until the next morning, when the tug came -alongside as soon as it was light. He came on deck looking as if nothing -had happened. I never said anything, of course—no more did he; and from -that day to this I don’t really know—though I rather fancy he did—if -he remembered what had passed between us.</p> - -<p>“We had a fine passage down to Iquique, where we discharged our lumber -and loaded nitrates for the U.K. The Old Man had got very fussy about -the ship. He had every inch of her teak scraped and oiled while we were -running down the Trades, and everything made as smart as could be aloft; -and while we were lying at Iquique he had her figurehead, which was a -very pretty one, all done over—pure white, of course. I did the best -part of it myself, for I used to be reckoned rather a swell in the -slap-dab business in those days, though I say it myself!</p> - -<p>“Well, we finished our loading and left, and all the ships cheered us -down the tier; and I don’t wonder, for the old ship looked a picture.</p> - -<p>“The Old Man and I had got to be quite friends. I suppose we were as -near being pals as a skipper and a second mate ever could be. He was -working on a new rail for the poop ladder—all fancy ropework and so -on—and he used to bring it up on deck and yarn away to me about old -times hour by the length. I fancy he rather liked me, but up till then -he had always had a kind of stand-offish, you-keep-your-place-young-man -way with him; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span> for my part I’d always looked on him with that sort -of mixture of holy awe when he was there and disrespect behind his back -a fellow has for the skipper he’s served his time under. I suppose our -both thinking such a lot of the old barky gave us an interest in common. -You see, I’d served my time in her right from the start, so that -naturally she was the ship of all ships for me—still is, for the matter -of that.... Say what you will, she was a great old ship, and he was a -great old skipper!”</p> - -<p>(Kennedy paused. A quiver had crept somehow into his voice, and he had -to get it under control again.)</p> - -<p>“The Old Man” (he went on) “had always been what I should call a careful -skipper. Not nervous—nothing of that sort—but cautious; I never knew -him lose a sail but once, and never a spar. In fact, I used to feel a -bit annoyed with him sometimes because he didn’t go out of his way to -take risks. He was a fine seaman; but there’s no denying the fact he -<i>was</i> cautious. He made some fine passages in the ‘Maid of Athens,’ and -never a bad one. But he didn’t really drive her. I believe he was too -damned fond of her.</p> - -<p>“So that you may imagine it was a bit of a surprise when we began to get -into the high south latitudes and he started to crack on in a way that -made even me open my eyes a little.</p> - -<p>“I well remember the first day I noticed it. It was just on sunset—a -black and red sort of affair with lots of low-hanging clouds, and the -seas came rolling up with that ugly, sickly green on them when the light -caught them that always goes with bad weather.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span></p> - -<p>“It had been blowing pretty hard all day, and the glass dropping fast. -The ship was labouring heavily and shipping quantities of water; she was -loaded nearly to her marks with nitrates. There stood the skipper—I can -just see him now—with his feet planted wide, holding on to the weather -rigging and looking up aloft, as his way always was when it was blowing -up.</p> - -<p>“I expected him, of course, to order some of the canvas off her, for she -was carrying a fairish amount considering the weather. So I was fairly -taken aback, as you may imagine, when he turned round and said quite -quietly:</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I want the fore upper topsail reefed and set, Mr. Kennedy.’</p> - -<p>“I was so surprised that I just stood and gaped for a minute or so. He -looked at me in a sort of a challenging way, and said:</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Didn’t you hear the order? What are you waiting for?’</p> - -<p>“I pulled myself together, said ‘Fore upper topsail it is, sir!’ and off -I went. And I can tell you that for the next half hour or so I had -plenty to occupy me without worrying my head about what the Old Man was -thinking of.</p> - -<p>“Well, we got the sail reefed and set. By this time the ship was ripping -along at a good sixteen knots or more. You could see her wake spread out -a mile behind her like a winding sheet. It was quite dark by this time. -Her lee rail was right under, and making our way aft was like going -through a swimming-bath.</p> - -<p>“The Old Man was still standing just as I had left him, holding on with -both hands to the weather<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span> rigging, and bracing his feet against the -slant of the deck. I had hardly got my foot on the poop ladder when he -turned his head and called to me. I could see his lips move, but I could -hear nothing for the noise of the wind and sea.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Beg pardon, sir,’ I yelled into the din.</p> - -<p>“This time I managed to catch a word or two, but I could make nothing of -it. It sounded like topgallantsails, but in spite of what had just -happened I couldn’t believe my own ears.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Are you deaf, or what’s the matter with you?’ yells the Old Man then. -‘That’s twice I’ve had occasion to repeat an order. Don’t let it occur -again!’</p> - -<p>“Well, off I struggled again forrard! ‘What price Bully Forbes of the -“Marco Polo,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> says I to myself; and I tried to fancy the old B.O.T. -examiner’s face that passed me for second, if I’d answered his pet -question, ‘Running before a gale, what would you do?’ with ‘Cram on more -sail and chance it!’</p> - -<p>“It took us a good ten minutes to make our way through the broken water -on deck. We’d struggle forward a few yards, then—flop!—would come a -big green one over the rail and send us all jumping for our lives—on -again, and over would come another; still we got there at last, and -after a bit we managed to set the sail. Then came the big tussle, at the -braces up to our necks in water! More than once I thought we were all -gone; but at last everything was O.K., gear turned up and all, and we -hung on to windward as well as we could and put up a silent prayer—at -least I know I did—that the Old Man wouldn’t take it into his head to -fly any more kites just yet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’d always rather envied the fellows who were at sea twenty years or so -before my time—the chaps who had such wonderful yarns to tell about the -dare-devil skippers and the incredible cracking on in the China tea -ships and the big American clippers. Well, I don’t mind owning I was -getting all of it I wanted for once!</p> - -<p>“Mind you, it didn’t worry me any! On the whole, I liked it. I was a -youngster, with no best girl or anything of that sort to trouble about, -and I enjoyed it. There was something so wonderfully fine and exciting -in the feel of the thing, even when you knew at the back of your mind -that she might go to glory any minute and take the whole blessed -shooting-match along with her. But there wasn’t much time to worry about -details like that; and anyhow, after a certain point you just get beyond -thinking about them one way or the other. It’s all in the day’s work, -and there you are!</p> - -<p>“But our precious mate, I must tell you, didn’t like it a bit—not a -little bit! He was a fellow called Arnot, rather a poisonous little -bounder; I guess he’d none too much nerve to start with, and he’d played -the dickens with what he had while we were in Iquique, running after -what he called “skirts” and soaking <i>aguardiente</i>. The skipper’s -carrying on got on his nerves frightfully. He was scared stiff. He went -about dropping dark hints about barratry, and chucking the ship away, -and <i>he</i> wasn’t the man to hold his tongue if he ever got back to -England, and so on. He used to buttonhole me whenever we met and start -burbling away about the Old Man being out of his mind.</p> - -<p>“I ran bung into him one day as I came out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span> my room. It was blowing -like the dickens and the ship tearing along hell-for-leather. I won’t -say what sail she was carrying, because I don’t want to get the name of -being a liar. She was a wonderful old ship to steer (I hardly ever knew -her need a lee wheel) or she could never have kept going as she did -under all that canvas. If she’d once got off her course it would have -been God help her!</p> - -<p>“Mister Mate and I did one or two impromptu dance steps in each other’s -arms before we got straightened up again. I noticed two things about him -while we were thus engaged. One was that by the smell of him he’d been -imbibing a drop of Dutch courage from a private store I suspected he -kept in his room—the other that he was fairly shaking with fright.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I s-s-say, you know, th-this is awful! He’s—he’s m-m-mad,’ he -stuttered. You really couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little beast -in a way. I believe he was nearly crying!</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Mad nothing!’ I said. ‘Anyway, mad or sane, he knows a damn sight more -about seamanship than either of us.’ I’d a good mind to add that so far -as he was concerned that wasn’t saying much.</p> - -<p>“Arnot moaned, ‘He’ll drown us all, that’s what he’ll do!’ gave a -despairing little flop with his arms, and dived into his room, for all -the world like a startled penguin.</p> - -<p>“I jolly well wasn’t going to take sides against the skipper with a -little squirt like Arnot, but in my own mind I was far from happy about -him.</p> - -<p>“What <i>was</i> he driving at? God knows!... Sometimes I think one thing, -sometimes another. Was he trying to throw his ship away after all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span> those -years of command? I can’t say. I know I knocked a couple of Mister -Arnot’s teeth into the back of his head for saying so, after it was all -over; but that was more a matter of principle, and by way of relieving -my feelings, than anything else. It looked like it, I must own. And yet -I don’t think it was quite that. It was more, if you understand me, that -he just felt as if things had gone too far for him—so he threw his -cards on the table, and left it to—well, shall we say Providence to -shuffle them!</p> - -<p>“Well, Mister Mate was going to have worse to put up with yet!</p> - -<p>“The big blow lasted off and on for four days, and then it began to ease -off a bit. I went below for a sleep: I was fairly coopered out. I just -flopped down in my wet clothes and was off at once.</p> - -<p>“When I came on deck again for the middle watch we were right in the -thick of a dense white fog. There was a cold wind blowing steadily out -of nowhere, and the ship was still going along, as near as I could -judge, at about thirteen or fourteen knots. The first person I saw was -the old bos’n—a Dutchman, and a real good sailorman, though a bit on -the slow side, like most Dutchmen—standing under the break of the poop -with his nose thrown up to windward, sniffing like an old dog.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Ice!’ he said. ‘I schmell ice!’</p> - -<p>“I should think he did ‘schmell’ it! Phoo! but it was cold! The sails -were like boards—as stiff and as hard. I doubt if we could have furled -them if we had wanted to. The helmsman, when the wheel was relieved, -left the skin of his fingers on the spokes. It was a queer, uncanny -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span>experience ... the ship ripping along through that blanket of fog, as -tall and white as the ghost of a ship.... If there had been anyone else -to see her, they might have been excused for thinking they’d met the -‘Flying Dutchman’ a few thousand miles off his usual course.</p> - -<p>“And ice—there was ice everywhere! It must have been all round us, -though we never saw it, only, as the bos’n said, ‘schmelt’ it and heard -it. Sometimes there would be the sound of the seas breaking along it for -miles; sometimes there would be the weird noises—shrieks and -groans—that the bergs make when they are ‘calving’; now and then cracks -like musketry fire—and in the midst of it all the penguins would make -you jump out of your skin with calling out exactly like human voices.</p> - -<p>“There the Old Man stood on the poop, the whole time, more like a frozen -image than a man—his arms laid along the spanker boom, and his chin -resting on them—for hours, never speaking or moving.</p> - -<p>“I went up to him at last and begged him to lie down, promising to call -him if anything happened. He seemed to wake out of a dream just as he -had done that day in the cabin at Victoria. His breath had congealed and -frozen his beard to his sleeve, and he had to give a regular tug to get -it loose. And he had to tear his hand away from the iron of the spar and -leave the skin behind.</p> - -<p>“I got him a cup of coffee, and he drank it down, and then he lay down -on the settee in the chart-room. He called me back as I was leaving him, -as if he were going to say something. But he only said, ‘Never mind—it -is nothing,’ and lay down again.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span></p> - -<p>“I looked in on him when the mate relieved me at eight bells. He was -still fast asleep, and it came over me all of a sudden how old and tired -he looked. I didn’t see any sense in waking him, so I tiptoed off and -left him.</p> - -<p>“When I woke at seven bells I could tell at once by the movement of the -ship that she had much less way on her. I don’t mind owning I was more -than a little relieved. The Old Man’s cracking on had begun to get on my -nerves a bit since the fog had come on. It was so unusual there was -something uncanny about it. I don’t suppose I should have cared a cuss -if he’d been one of your dare-devil, Hell-or-Melbourne, -what-she-can’t-carry-she-must-drag sort of blighters. But, being the man -he was, that he should suddenly bust out like this—well, it staggered -me. It was like one’s favourite uncle going Fanti.</p> - -<p>“What had really happened, as it turned out, was that Mister Mate had -taken the bull by the horns, and shortened sail while the Old Man was -safely out of the way. It was dead against his orders, and when the -skipper came on deck, which he did just as I turned up, there was a rare -to-do.</p> - -<p>“I never saw a man in such a passion. He was white and shaking with -anger. He went for Arnot in a regular fury. Was he master of his own -ship, or was he not? and so on, and so on. And then Arnot, who had lost -his head altogether, started bawling back at him about barratry and -Board of Trade inquiries.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>You damned insubordinate hound!’ yells the Old Man. I could see the -big veins swell up on his forehead. I thought he would have struck the -mate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p> - -<p>“And then—something happened. There was a jar and a grinding crash -forward, and we were all thrown sprawling in a heap on the deck.</p> - -<p>“The ship had driven bows on into a berg nearly as big as a continent, -and then slowly slid off again. Nobody was hurt. The men came tumbling -out of the deckhouse where they berthed before you could look round. I -don’t suppose any of them was asleep, for every one was getting a bit -jumpy since we had been among the ice.</p> - -<p>“The first thing I saw when I picked myself up was Arnot crawling out of -the scuppers with such a comical look of surprise that I had to laugh. -Then I saw the Old Man—and the laugh died.</p> - -<p>“I shall never forget his face—miserable and yet lifted up both at -once, if you understand me, like old what’s-his-name—you -know—sacrificing his daughter. There he stood, on the break of the -poop, quite calm and collected, seeing to the swinging out of the boats, -and making sure that they had food and water. Then at the last he went -back to the chart-room to fetch the ship’s papers.</p> - -<p>“He sighed once, and looked round—a long look as if he were saying -good-bye to it all in his heart. He let his hand rest on her rail for a -minute, and I saw his lips move as if he were speaking to himself. Then -he sighed again, and went in.</p> - -<p>“The ship settled down very fast. We waited five minutes—ten minutes. I -began to feel uneasy and went along to see what was detaining him. I -glanced into the chart-room. He was sitting by the table: I could see -his grey head—the hair getting a bit thin on top—just as I’d seen it -scores of times. Nothing wrong that I could see....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Fifteen minutes—twenty—I shoved my head in to tell him the boat was -waiting....</p> - -<p>“But I never got him told.... He must have had some sort of a -stroke—evidently when he was going to make a last entry in the log, for -the book lay open before him. I wonder what he was going to write in it. -I wonder! Ah, well, no one will ever know that but his Maker.</p> - -<p>“He was still breathing when we got him into the boat, but it was plain -to see that no Board of Trade inquiry would ever trouble him.</p> - -<p>“We only just pulled away from the ship in time. She went down quite -steadily, on a perfectly even keel. I suppose her cargo—she was loaded -right down to her marks—helped to keep her upright. She just settled -quietly down, with a little shiver now and then like a person stepping -into cold water. Her sails kept her up a little until they were soaked -through. She looked—oh, frightfully like a drowning woman! The fog shut -down like a curtain just at the finish, and the last I saw of her was -like a white drowning hand thrown up out of the water. I was glad from -my heart the Old Man couldn’t see her. It was bad enough for me—a young -fellow with all the world before me. I tell you, the salt on my cheeks -wasn’t all sea water! What it would have been like for him——</p> - -<p>“He was dead by the time a steamer picked us up, twelve hours later, and -we buried him the same day, not many miles from the place where the old -‘Maid of Athens’ went down.</p> - -<p>“Somehow, I think he would have been pleased if he knew.... You see, he -thought a lot of the old ship....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span>”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span>  </p> - -<h2><a name="THE_END_OF_AN_ARGUMENT" id="THE_END_OF_AN_ARGUMENT"></a>THE END OF AN ARGUMENT</h2> - - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span> GOOD solid point of difference is, on the whole, almost as -satisfactory as an interest in common—which, in the case of Kavanagh, -the mate, and Ferguson, the chief engineer, of the tramp steamer -“Gairloch,” was fortunate, since of the latter commodity they possessed -none at all.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh was by way of being particular about his appearance, and shaved -before the six inches of mirror in his cramped little cabin as -religiously as any brassbound officer of a crack liner.</p> - -<p>Ferguson was hairy and unbrushed both by inclination and principle.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh was neat in his attire.</p> - -<p>Ferguson was at his happiest in a filthy boiler suit, and he had a trick -of using a handful of engineroom waste where other men use a pocket -handkerchief, which annoyed Kavanagh almost to the point of tears.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh’s whole soul revolted against the smelly, smutty little tub -which was for the time being his floating home. It was ungrateful of -him, certainly, for she had done him a good turn after a fashion. But he -couldn’t help it. He was a sail-trained man; and he had remained in -sail, out of a sheer sense of beauty which was no less real for being -entirely inarticulate, long after his own interests indicated that he -should leave it. Then the company with which he had grown up sold the -last of its fleet, and he had perforce to seek employ<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span>ment elsewhere. He -found it at last, though only after many long and weary weeks of hanging -about docks and shipping offices—found it as mate of the “Gairloch.”</p> - -<p>He sang the praises of sail without ceasing. And even so did Ferguson -wax lyrical on the theme of the engines of the “Gairloch.”</p> - -<p>She might not, he admitted, be beautiful externally; but, man, she’d -gran’ guts in her! He would then soar into ecstatic and highly technical -rhapsodies concerning those same internal essentials, the technicalities -being further complicated by a copious use of his native Doric, and -decorated freely with a certain adjective of a sanguinary nature of -which he was inordinately fond.</p> - -<p>The argument began something after this fashion:</p> - -<p>The “Gairloch” had not long cleared Victoria Harbour, and was belching -forth an Acheronian smudge from her shabby funnel, as she butted her -ugly hull into the south-westerly swell, when she met a big four-masted -barque coming in to Hastings Mill for a cargo of Pacific Coast lumber. -It was a glorious morning—one of those bright, calm, virginal mornings -that are an especial climatic product of that coast. Everything was -bathed in a flood of clear, pale sunlight. The opaque green waters of -the Strait gleamed and flashed in the sun, and, clear-cut as if they -were no more than a dozen miles away, the snowy summits of the Oregon -ranges stood out dazzling in their whiteness against the blue of the -early morning sky.</p> - -<p>The barque was a tall ship for those days, with royals at fore, main, -and mizen, and her piled-up sails shone white as the distant ranges in -the sun<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span>light that caressed their swelling surfaces. The hands were just -laying aloft to get the canvas off her, and as she surged by with a bone -in her mouth, her wet bows and white figurehead flashing as she lifted -on the swell, Kavanagh’s heart ached anew with an unquenchable longing -for sail. In his mind he followed the noble ship to her moorings, in -fancy heard the familiar nasal chant as sail after sail was furled:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“We’ll roll up the bunt with a fling—o—oh ...<br /></span> -<span class="i1">An’ pa—ay Paddy Doyle for his bo—o—ots....”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>“There’s a ship for you!” he exclaimed to the wide world.</p> - -<p>“Ah see nae beauty in yon,” came a dour voice at his elbow—the voice of -Ferguson. “Ah see nae beauty in thae bluidy windbags, nae mair than in -ma wife’s cla’es hingin’ oot on the cla’es-line o’ a Monday morning.”</p> - -<p>Kavanagh was annoyed. He had not meant his involuntary outburst of -feeling to be overheard—least of all to be overheard by Ferguson. -Sneaking about in carpet slippers....</p> - -<p>“I dare say this floating abomination is more to your taste,” he -snapped.</p> - -<p>“She’s guid guts in her,” said Ferguson.</p> - -<p>The argument was still going on as merrily as ever while the “Gairloch” -rolled heavily up from the Line through days which grew ever colder and -winds which grew ever more stormy.</p> - -<p>The little ship had struck the Western Ocean in one of the very worst of -his moods. She was making shocking weather of it. She rolled, she -pitched, she wallowed, she did every conceivable thing a deeply<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span> laden -and ill-designed ship could do in a seaway. Her iron decks were most of -the time under water, and the atmosphere of the stuffy little cabin, -with every scuttle shut and the lamp smoking villainously as it swung in -its gimbals, resembled that of the infernal regions.</p> - -<p>But still, whenever Ferguson and Kavanagh met, the argument continued -without abatement. They went on with it grimly, with their legs hooked -on those of the cabin table, and their backs braced against the backs of -their chairs, while, in spite of the fiddles that had graced the board -for weeks, every roll of the ship added yet further contributions of -cold potato and congealed meat to the dreary confusion of the cabin -floor.</p> - -<p>And so they might have gone on to the crack of doom had nothing happened -to interrupt them.</p> - -<p>In this case what happened was the sighting of the derelict.</p> - -<p>It was about the end of the morning watch, one dark, dreary morning, -when a late livid dawn was just creeping over the rim of the heaving -waste of waters. Kavanagh was cold, tired, and depressed, and his -reflections, as he stood on the bridge of the “Gairloch,” were in -harmony with the time and the weather. The future stretched before him -no more cheerfully than that expanse of grey Atlantic—dreary, -monotonous, and dismal to a degree. He didn’t expect he would ever get a -command. He ought to have gone into steam earlier. He might have got -into one of the big liner companies. Now——</p> - -<p>Precisely at this point in his meditations he sighted the deserted -ship—now visible on the crest<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span> of a roller, now lost to sight as she -slid drunkenly down into the trough of the sea.</p> - -<p>It was evident at a glance that she was not under control. She was -yawing helplessly hither and thither in the seas, her yards, with the -rags of their sails still fluttering in the wind, pointing as if in mute -appeal to the four quarters of the heavens.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Maria’—Genoa,” said Kavanagh, with his glasses to his eyes, “and -built on the Clyde by the looks of her.... I think she’s been -abandoned—I don’t make out anyone moving, or any signal.”</p> - -<p>He handed the glasses to Captain Harrison, who had just come on to the -bridge.</p> - -<p>“Aye—she’s derelict right enough,” said the captain after a prolonged -scrutiny. “Well, I’ll have to report her—can’t do anything more. It’s -out of the question taking a ship in tow in a sea like this.”</p> - -<p>He pulled at his sandy-grey beard in his worried way.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh, in his gloomier moments, used to picture himself becoming like -Captain Harrison. He was a harassed-looking little man, who was haunted -by a nightmare-like dread of losing his ship and his ticket. He had a -sickly wife and a brood of young children at home, and his indecision -had prevented him from climbing any higher on the ladder of success than -the rung which was represented by the command of the “Gairloch.”</p> - -<p>“Glass falling,” mumbled the captain into his sparse beard, “sea rising -... in for a night of it....”</p> - -<p>Kavanagh hardly heard him. His eyes glued to his glasses, he gazed with -a passionate intensity at the abandoned vessel.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span></p> - -<p>It was queer. He couldn’t explain it—couldn’t understand it! But there -was something about that ship that made him feel that, at all costs, he -<i>must</i> save her! He could no more turn tail and leave her to perish than -if there had been human lives at stake. He could no more do it than a -knight of old could calmly ride away and leave a distressed damsel -making signals from a turret top. And, indeed, as her masts dipped and -rose again in the sea, she did somehow seem to be making -signals—personal signals—to him and to no one else: to be saying, -“Come! You’re surely not going to leave me to it, are you?”</p> - -<p>“She’d be well worth salving,” he said, trying to keep some of the -eagerness out of his voice as he turned towards his captain. “Mean a lot -of money ... if you could spare the hands——”</p> - -<p>Captain Harrison shook his head. He looked almost terrified. But -Kavanagh had seen the momentary gleam in his eyes at the mention of the -money, and his hopes rose.</p> - -<p>“I don’t see how I’m going to spare the men,” said the captain, “and -besides what good would these chaps be for a job like that. I doubt if -there’s more than two or three of ’em have ever been in sail at all.”</p> - -<p>“She isn’t a big ship, sir,” urged Kavanagh. “If you could let me have -half a dozen hands I could manage her all right.”</p> - -<p>Captain Harrison pulled a minute longer at his ragged beard; then broke -out hurriedly, as if afraid that his own indecision might get the better -of him again: “Well, have it your own way—your own responsibility, -mind—and you’ll have to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span> ask for volunteers. I’m not going to order men -away on a job like that. Madness, you know, really. I oughtn’t to do -it—oughtn’t to do it——”</p> - -<p>There was, as it turned out, no need to order. Out of the twenty-six -hands comprising the deck department of the “Gairloch” a dozen -volunteered at once, and Kavanagh had a hard job to pick his salvage -crew.</p> - -<p>Truth to tell, there wasn’t much to pick among them! Only two had had a -brief experience in sail. As for the rest, what they lacked in knowledge -they made up in enthusiasm. The donkeyman unexpectedly manifested a -romantic yearning to “<span class="lftspc">’</span>ave a trip in one o’ them there,” but him Captain -Harrison, resolute for once, flatly declined to spare.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh was hard put to it to hide a rueful grin when he saw his crowd -ranged up before him. They were a scratch lot if ever there was one! He -foresaw that it would be up to him to combine as best he could the -duties of mate, second mate, bos’n, and general bottle-washer with those -of temporary skipper of “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Maria’—Genoa.”</p> - -<p>Scratch lot or not, however, the salvage crew were mightily pleased with -themselves as they pulled away for the barque, and they raised a highly -creditable cheer by way of farewell to their shipmates lined up along -the bulwarks of the “Gairloch.”</p> - -<p>One of the last things Kavanagh saw was Ferguson’s hairy countenance -thrust over the rail.</p> - -<p>“Every yin to his taste!” bawled the engineer. “Ah wouldna trust ma -precious life to thon bluidy auld windbag in the gale o’ wund that’s -gaun to blaw the nicht!”</p> - -<p>His last words were caught up and whirled away<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span> on one of the short, -fierce gusts which blew out of the west at ever shorter intervals, and -Kavanagh heard no more.</p> - -<p>A scene of chaos welcomed him as he climbed aboard the “Maria.” She had -a big deck-load of lumber, which had broken adrift, and lay piled up -against the temporary topgallant rail, together with an empty hencoop, a -stove-in barrel, and a number of other miscellaneous items. That in -itself was enough to account for the list of the vessel. Aloft she was -in better case than a casual glance suggested. Her spars were all -intact, in spite of the bad dusting she had evidently been through, but -every sail had been blown out of the bolt-ropes, with the exception of -the fore-lower topsail, and that was split from head to foot. The gale -had evidently struck her when she was carrying a fair amount of canvas, -and Kavanagh conjectured that the crew had turned panicky and made no -attempt to save the ship, but had jumped at the chance of being taken -off by some passing vessel.</p> - -<p>He signalled to the “Gairloch,” which was still standing by, that he was -able to carry on, and with a farewell hoot of her siren she rolled off -again on her homeward road. Soon her smoke was lost to view in the -gathering dusk. The derelict was on her own now, for good or ill.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh set his crew to work at once heaving the deck-load over the -side, and himself went below, accompanied by one of his few “sail” men, -a young seaman named Rawlings, to investigate matters below.</p> - -<p>The sense of desolation which always pervades any place inhabited by man -when man’s presence is<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span> removed was strong upon him as soon as he began -to descend the companion which led to the saloon. That he had looked -for, however, and silence he had also looked for: so that it was with an -unpleasant sensation of shock that he became suddenly aware of a strange -voice speaking in rapid and monotonous tones, and in some language, too, -which he could not at all make out.</p> - -<p>There was someone on board all the time, then! And yet—it was a -peculiar sort of voice—a voice with a strange, a hardly human ring in -it—unnatural, uncanny. Kavanagh stopped short half-way down the -companion. His scalp crept; indeed, he felt convinced that his cap must -be standing at least a quarter of an inch off his head. He restrained, -not without difficulty, a primitive impulse to bolt up on deck again—an -impulse which the consciousness of Rawlings’ round eyes and open mouth -just behind him helped him to check.</p> - -<p>The voice ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the silence which -followed it was worse than the sound.</p> - -<p>“Wot the ’ell is it?” came the hoarse voice of Rawlings.</p> - -<p>“Sounds like someone crazy,” pronounced Kavanagh; “sick, perhaps, and -they couldn’t get him away——”</p> - -<p>He pulled himself together with an effort, and they completed the -descent into the saloon.</p> - -<p>They stood together, Rawlings and he, in the little saloon, panelled -with bird’s-eye maple in the style once considered the last word in -elegant ship decoration, with its shabby padded settees, its mahogany -table marked with the rings of many glasses, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span> spotted and tarnished -mirrors, and its teak medicine chest in the corner.</p> - -<p>It was a sorrowful, haunted little place. A smell of stale cigar-smoke -hung about it. The air was chilly, yet stuffy. The uncanny silence of -the deserted ship was all around—a silence only intensified by the -monotonous booming and crashing of the seas, and the occasionally -spasmodic thrashing of a loose block on the deck overhead.</p> - -<p>The mysterious voice broke forth anew in a torrent of unintelligible -speech. The sound came this time almost as a relief to the tension. It -was so unmistakably real, now that it was at closer quarters, that half -its terrors fled.</p> - -<p>“Whatever it is,” exclaimed Kavanagh, “it’s in here!”</p> - -<p>Flinging open a door on his right hand, he stepped boldly in.</p> - -<p>The next moment he burst into a shout of laughter. It was a large and -imposing stateroom with a big teak bed—evidently the captain’s, a relic -of the days when the captain of a crack sailing ship was decidedly a -somebody, and when, moreover, he frequently took his wife to sea with -him. And in the middle of the bed was a brass cage containing the owner -of the voice—a fine sulphur-crested cockatoo, which was even now -pouring forth a flood of the choicest polyglot oaths Kavanagh had ever -heard.</p> - -<p>It was astonishing what a reaction that bird brought about. All the -haunted air of the ship seemed to have been effectually dispelled. -Kavanagh’s spirits began to rise unreasonably as he continued his tour -of his new command.</p> - -<p>The sail locker yielded up only the remains<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81">{81}</a></span> of a fine-weather suit, -mostly patches. Kavanagh whistled softly to himself as he fingered the -thin canvas, and thought about the swiftly falling glass and the fierce -gusts which blew ever more frequently out of the angry winter sunset.</p> - -<p>Still, there was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad job, so, -leaving one of his best men at the wheel, he set about the task of -getting off the rags of the fore-lower topsail and bending the new (or -rather the whole) sail in its place.</p> - -<p>And what a job that was! Never to the day of his death will Kavanagh -forget it. He had worked with scratch crews in his time, but never -before with a crowd like those well-meaning steamer deck-hands who had -never seen a sail in their lives at such close quarters.</p> - -<p>Swearing, struggling, hanging on with teeth and nails, they sweated and -toiled on their unaccustomed perch, until at last—it seemed like a -miracle—all was as snug aloft as was possible in the circumstances. The -chaos on deck was reduced to something approaching order, though the -ship still lay over to it rather more than Kavanagh liked. And now, the -watch being set and look-outs posted, he had time to do what he had been -longing to do—find out, if he could, what the old ship’s past had been.</p> - -<p>He felt convinced that she was the product of some crack Aberdeen or -Clydeside builder, for, in spite of her dirty and neglected condition, -there was about her the unmistakable air of decayed gentility. The brass -on capstan and wheel was so caked with rust and paint that the letters -of the builder’s name could not be discerned, and it was only by chance, -while making an inspection of the miscellaneous<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82">{82}</a></span> junk in the lazarette, -that he made the great discovery.</p> - -<p>This was, in the first place, nothing more important than an old ship’s -bell with a crescent-shaped fragment broken out. It had evidently been -thrown down there when it was replaced by a new one. It was thick with -dirt and verdigris; but, pressed for time as he was, an instinct of -curiosity made him linger while he scraped off some of the deposit with -his knife to see if anything lay beneath.</p> - -<p>His first find was a date—1869.</p> - -<p>“Hallo! This gets interesting!” he exclaimed. “Here’s a letter—‘D’—no, -‘P,’ ‘L’ something, an ‘M,’ another ‘M’——”</p> - -<p>His breath began to come fast with excitement. He scraped away harder -than ever.</p> - -<p>“It <i>can’t</i> be,” he gasped, sitting back on his heels, “but, by George, -it <i>is</i>!... The ‘Plinlimmon’!”</p> - -<p>Possibly few people outside that comparatively restricted circle which -is closely interested in sailing ships and their records could -understand the feeling of almost reverential awe with which the mate of -the “Gairloch” gazed at the dim lettering on that old broken bell. To -most laymen—indeed, to many seamen of the more modern school—it would -have stood for nothing but an old outworn ship—a good ship, no doubt, -in her day, a day long since over and done.</p> - -<p>But to Kavanagh and to his like the name “Plinlimmon” had a very -different significance.</p> - -<p>Some ships there are whose names remain as names to conjure with long -after they themselves are gone—names about which yarns will be spun and -songs sung while still any live who have felt their spell. Such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83">{83}</a></span> ship -was the “James Baines” of mighty memory; such also were the glorious -“Thermopylæ,” the lovely “Mermerus”; such the evergreen “Cutty Sark” and -her forerunner “The Tweed.” And—though perhaps in a lesser degree—such -was also the “Plinlimmon.”</p> - -<p>And to Kavanagh she was even more.</p> - -<p>She was like something belonging peculiarly to his own youth. She was -inextricably interwoven with the memories of his boyhood, of his first -voyage—those memories which for him now held the wistful golden glamour -of youth departed.</p> - -<p>For, though he had never before this moment beheld her with his bodily -eyes, he had been brought up, as it were, in the “Plinlimmon” tradition. -There had been an old fellow in his first ship—they called him Old -Paul. He had served in the “Plinlimmon” in the days when she was -commanded by the famous “Bully” Rogers: had, indeed, enjoyed the signal -honour of being kicked off the poop by that nautical demigod. He was a -hoary old ruffian, was Old Paul, but a seaman of the old stamp; and he -had that curious, almost poetic, delight in the beauty of a ship which -belonged to so many unlettered old seadogs in the days of sail.</p> - -<p>Kavanagh had sat and listened to that old man’s yarns for many and many -an hour. The name “Plinlimmon” recalled to him a hundred memories he had -thought forgotten. He almost seemed to hear the ghostly echo of the -gruff old voice: “Ah, them was ships, them was, sonny.... When Bully -Rogers set a sail, w’y, ’e <i>set</i> it.... Number One canvas, ’is royals -was, an’ they ’ad to stop there till it blew outer the bolt-ropes....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84">{84}</a></span> -‘Hell or Melbourne’ ... that was the game in them days in the ol’ -‘Plinlimmon.’...”</p> - -<p>Why, he had all but forgotten Old Paul.... Where was the old chap now, -he wondered.... Dead, no doubt, long ago.... He must have been seventy -and more then, though he never owned to more than fifty-two....</p> - -<p>But in the meantime there were other things to think of. The ship to -bring into port ... the glass falling ... the wind and sea rising.... He -turned away from the old bell and its memories and went back on deck.</p> - -<p>The light was all but gone, and before the strength of the westerly wind -the old ship was foaming gallantly along under her scanty sail, leaving -a seething white wake faintly luminous in the dusk—the wind all the -while in her rigging humming the song of the storm.</p> - -<p>Just for a moment Kavanagh’s heart sank at the thought of that fine -weather lower topsail. Oh, for a bolt or two of Bully Rogers’ Number One -canvas, he thought; but it was only for a moment.</p> - -<p>A curious exaltation gripped him.... “By God, she <i>shall</i> do it!” he -said to the sea and the darkness.</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>Looking back in after years upon the events of the next few days, -Kavanagh could never feel quite certain how long they really occupied.</p> - -<p>Time—there <i>was</i> no time! There was just a never-ending succession of -low, hurrying, ragged-edged clouds chasing over a confusion of -white-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85">{85}</a></span>crested waves that came charging perpetually out of the dim -vapour that shrouded the meeting of sea and sky. There must have been -days—there must have been nights. But he hardly noticed either their -coming or their going. He was intent, his whole being was intent, on one -thing, and one thing only—saving that old ship from her old rival the -sea.</p> - -<p>How they worked, those amazing, those indomitable steamboat-men! It was -as if the spirits of all the “Plinlimmon’s” old sailors had come back to -join in the struggle. They fought with strange monsters in the shape of -sails and ropes, they groped in tangles and labyrinths of unaccustomed -rigging; and their great hearts kept them going. While there was breath -in their bodies to work they pumped, and when they could do no more they -dropped in their tracks and slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion.</p> - -<p>Once the whole crew was washed overboard clinging to the lee forebrace, -only to be sucked back again with the next roll of the ship. Once -Kavanagh heard a man pouring out a flood of the vilest oaths in a tone -of mild expostulation, as he nursed a hand streaming with blood which -had been jammed between a block and the pin-rail. And once he remembered -seeing that lower topsail, bent with such pains and peril, simply fade -out of the bolt-ropes and be seen no more. It didn’t split or tear. It -just vanished....</p> - -<p>But there always seemed to him to be a sort of dream-like atmosphere -about the whole thing. He was never quite sure what did happen and what -didn’t happen. It was impossible on the face of it, for instance, that -Old Paul should have been there<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86">{86}</a></span> hauling with the rest—yet at the time -Kavanagh was quite sure that he saw him. It was also impossible that -there should have been a dozen men on the yard when there were only half -a dozen in the whole blessed ship—yet Kavanagh was equally sure at the -time that he saw and counted them. He even remembered some of their -faces—a huge fellow with a bare, tattooed chest, in particular, that he -hadn’t seen about the ship before.... Not that he ever mentioned it to -anyone else. He might have been asleep and dreamed it, for all he knew. -Still, it served a useful purpose at the time. It put heart into him. -And he needed it before the end!...</p> - -<p>At last—at long last—came a grey dawn that broke through ragged clouds -upon a sea heaving as with spent passion, upon a handful of weary, -indomitable men, upon an old ship that still lived!</p> - -<p>Kavanagh was suddenly aware that he was tired—dog-tired; that his -wrists were red-raw with the chafing of his oilskins; that the weight of -uncounted days and nights without sleep was weighing down his eyelids -like lead.</p> - -<p>But he had won—he had won! And he had commanded the “Plinlimmon”! -Whatever the years to come might bring or take away, they could never -rob him of that glory. They could bring him no greater prize.</p> - -<p>There was a yell from the look-out, and a faint answering shout came -back out of the grey dawn.</p> - -<p>“The ba-arque, aho-oy!”</p> - -<p>A boat scraped against the ship’s side. One by one, a succession of -familiar faces topped the “Plinlimmon’s” rail. The “Gairloch’s” -donkeyman, the “Gairloch’s” cook, the “Gairloch’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87">{87}</a></span>” boy clutching and -being desperately clutched by the “Gairloch’s” cat!</p> - -<p>Last of all, Ferguson climbed heavily over the rail and sat down on a -spare spar, wiping his face with a lump of waste.</p> - -<p>“A steamer—a Dago—rin the auld girl doon,” he said, “an’ the swine -sheered off an’ left us to droon, for all he knew.”</p> - -<p>He paused a moment, then went on, his voice rising suddenly to a lament:</p> - -<p>“She wasna muckle to look at ... but, man, she’d gran’ guts in her!”</p> - -<p>Kavanagh let him have the last word. In the circumstances, he felt he -could afford it.</p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88">{88}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89">{89}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90">{90}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91">{91}</a></span>  </p> - -<h2><a name="ORANGES" id="ORANGES"></a>ORANGES</h2> - - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE clipper ship “Parisina” lay becalmed off the Western Islands. The -gallant Nor’-East Trade which had hummed steadily through her royals for -ten blue and golden days and star-sown nights had tailed away -ignominiously into a succession of fitful, faint, and baffling airs -which kept the wearied crew constantly hauling the yards at the bidding -of every shift of the variable breeze, and withal scarcely served to -give the clipper leeway; and had died off last of all into a flat calm.</p> - -<p>She lay there as still as if she were at anchor. Her sails drooped -against the masts with no more movement than banners slowly dropping to -silent dust in the nave of some great cathedral. Their shadows on the -white deck were clearly defined as shapes cut out of black paper. There -was no sound aloft, not so much as the churring of a rope stirring in -its sheave: only a faint creak by whiles, as the ship lifted -imperceptibly on the long, low swing of the ocean.</p> - -<p>A light haze hung over the outlines of the islands and over the horizon -beyond, so that it was impossible to define where sea ended and sky -began. A couple of fruit schooners about half a mile distant hovered -above their own motionless reflections, like butterflies poised above -flowers. So complete was the calm that even they could not catch a -breath sufficient to keep them moving. They looked almost as if they -were suspended in some new element,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92">{92}</a></span> neither water nor air, yet -partaking of the character of both.</p> - -<p>Old “Sails” sat on the forehatch, spectacles on nose, stitching busily -away at the bolt-rope of a royal which had come out second best from an -argument with the stormy westerlies. A tall, thin, old man, he looked as -he sat there with his shanks folded under him like one of those -long-legged crabs the Cornish folk call “Gramfer Jenkins.” He had a -short, white beard stained with chewing tobacco, and as he worked his -jaws moved rhythmically in time with the movements of his active needle.</p> - -<p>A boat had pulled out from the nearest island with baskets of fruit, and -its owner, a swarthy negroid Portuguese with a bright handkerchief bound -pirate-wise about his frizzy hair, was driving bargains with the men of -the watch below amid much rough banter and chaff. The men laughed, -called, shouted to one another, threw the fruit from hand to hand, eager -as children.</p> - -<p>From the main deck came the steady slish-scrape of holystones; the mate -had taken advantage of the opportunity the calm offered of bringing the -“Parisina’s” already bone-white planking nearer to that unattainable -perfection of immaculate cleanliness which only exists in the dreams of -New England housewives and particular-minded mates of sailing vessels. -Mr. Billing, the mate, was an insignificant little man with sandy hair -and a peculiar habit of sniffing to himself like a beetle-hunting -hedgehog. He sniffed now as he hovered with a perpetual fussy -watchfulness among the humped figures of his watch, squatting over their -task like worshipping bronzes. Mr. Billing was of the housewifely type<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93">{93}</a></span> -of mate. A man secretly of little courage and no initiative, he disliked -the “Parisina’s” paces intensely. He was nervous of ships as some -lifelong horsemen are nervous of horses. Calms, on the other hand, with -the consequent time they afforded for ritual scouring and painting of -wood and metal, he delighted in much as a house-proud woman of the -suburbs delights in spring cleaning.</p> - -<p>The men growled among themselves, sailor fashion, as they worked. “Gimme -ol’ Stiff afore this ’ere bloody scrubbin’,” said one. “Same ’ere,” said -another. “Why can’t it blow up ag’in, I says? A year an’ a ’arf’s -bloomin’ pay I’ve got comin’ to me at Green’s ’Ome, an’ if it wasn’t for -this ’ere blessed calm I’d be six ’undred mile nearer spendin’ of it by -now.” “Sailorizin’s all right,” grumbled a third. “It’s this ’ere darned -’ouse-maidin’ as gets my goat.”</p> - -<p>Up in the “Parisina’s” tiny chart-room Captain Fareweather—he was known -through all the ports of the Southern Hemisphere, for good and -sufficient reasons, as “Old Foul-weather”—carefully wetted his finger, -and with a furrowed brow turned a leaf and prepared to make a fresh -entry in the “Parisina’s” log-book.</p> - -<p>Old Foul-weather was not fond of his pen, a fact to which the crabbed -and painful handwriting which filled the preceding pages bore eloquent -testimony. Spelling was an anguish to him; and indeed it is doubtful -whether the hours of endurance and anxiety which the entries in the book -represented were one half as irksome to him as the labour of recording -them. But there were on this occasion other reasons for his look of -depression.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94">{94}</a></span></p> - -<p>Captain Fareweather detested calms as much as his mate liked them. It -might be said of him that he had one absorbing passion in his life. He -lived that the “Parisina” might make good passages; especially, perhaps, -that she might beat her rival, the “Alcazar.” If she did, life was worth -living, if she didn’t, it was not. Certainly it was not for those -unfortunate beings who happened to be his shipmates for the time being.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Tain’t good reading,” said Old Foul-weather to himself, as he -carefully blotted the new entry—it consisted of one word, “Same”—and -replaced ink and pen.</p> - -<p>He traced the lines of the uncongenial record with a stumpy forefinger.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Winds puffey and varible. Ship scarcely moveing.’</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Very light airs.’</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Dead calm.’</p> - -<p>“Wonder where old Jones and his blooming ‘Alcazar’ are,” he reflected. -He sighed and closed the book.</p> - -<p>No faintest air entered the stuffy little room. The voices of the men as -they growled and grumbled over their work came clearly to him through -the open port. From below there drifted up a pleasant tinkle and chink -of crockery and cutlery as the steward laid the cabin dinner.</p> - -<p>Through the open companion he could see the helmsman lolling beside the -wheel, his outstretched arm resting along its rim, his fingers loosely -gripping the spokes. He had for once the easiest job in the ship. It was -not always so, for, though the “Parisina,” rightly handled, steered like -a lamb, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95">{95}</a></span> needed humouring as much as a horse with a fine mouth. He -was a handsome fellow, swarthy and black-eyed; under the thick growth of -hair on his broad chest showed faintly some tattooed device in red and -blue, a relic of his younger and less hirsute years.</p> - -<p>A barefooted apprentice padded up the poop ladder and struck one bell: a -mellow note that hung trembling on the still air, till it quivered away -into silence high up among the sleeping royals. The boy wore a patched -shirt and ragged dungaree trousers, and his arms and legs were burned -black as mahogany by the tropic sun. He was a tall lad, with the lanky -grace of adolescence; a faint down was just showing on his upper lip, -and the sun gleaming upon the growth of fair hair on his arms and chest -made him look as if powdered with gold dust.</p> - -<p>Captain Fareweather sighed, put the log-book by, and descended to the -cabin. McAllister, the second mate, a big-boned Aberdonian, perennially -hungry, was already there, with one eye on the hash the steward had just -set before the Old Man’s chair. He composed his features into an -appropriate cast of pious decorum as the captain took his seat and -placed his hand before his eyes for his customary grace. This rite was -silent and lengthy; but Captain Fareweather’s officers knew better than -to betray impatience or inattention while it lasted. Legend said that a -second mate, greatly daring, had once begun to nibble his bread before -the captain had finished, and at once there had come a voice from the -behind the hand, like the voice of Mitche Manitou the Mighty, “Ye -irreverential devil, can’t ye see I’m sayin’ grace?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96">{96}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>It was an uncomfortable meal. The skipper was moody, and McAllister was -horribly nervous in consequence. The few small pebbles of conversation -he cast into the silence fell with an appalling splash which instantly -covered him with scarlet confusion to the tips of his large red ears, -and it was with profound thankfulness that he welcomed the appearance of -the mate with a basket of oranges.</p> - -<p>“I thought you’d like a few,” explained Mr. Billing, “for dinner. -They’re good. A bumboat feller brought ’em alongside.”</p> - -<p>“Bluid oranges,” exclaimed McAllister. He dug his strong square teeth -into the glistening rind, and the red juice squirted over his bony -knuckles. “They’ve ay the best flavour.”</p> - -<p>They seemed to light up the cabin like golden lamps, warm, glowing, -still with the sunlight glory about them. Their fragrance filled the -place, aromatic, pungent, cloying.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care for ’em,” said the Captain suddenly. “The smell of -’em—too strong.”</p> - -<p>He pushed back his chair as he spoke.</p> - -<p>“Stuffy,” he muttered; “glad when we can get way on her again.”</p> - -<p>He stumped off up the companion ladder: a square, stocky figure of a -man, short-necked, broad of shoulder. The two mates looked at each other -significantly.</p> - -<p>“What bug’s bit the auld deevil now?” said McAllister in a -conspiratorial whisper.</p> - -<p>“God knows!” returned Mr. Billing. “He’s always this way when he can’t -be at his cracking on. Old madman!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97">{97}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>“He’s a fine seaman, though,” replied McAllister. “I’ll say that for -him.”</p> - -<p>“Fine seaman!” breathed Mr. Billing bitterly. “You wait till he shakes -the sticks out of her one fine night. That’s all.”</p> - -<p>Old Foul-weather stood leaning on the poop railing, looking out across -the still expanse of the waters with eyes which did not see the -haze-dimmed islands or the motionless schooners poised above their -reflected selves. Strange—something had stirred in its sleep a little -while since at the sight of those very schooners—something had turned -in its sleep and sighed at the sight of the young apprentice in his -sunburned youth. And just now, with the scent of the oranges, it had -stirred, turned again, sighed again, awakened—the memory of Conchita!</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>Conchita—why, he hadn’t thought of her for years. He wouldn’t like to -say how many years. He had had plenty of other things to occupy his -mind. Work, for one thing. And ships. Plenty of other women had come -into his life and gone out of it, too, since then. Queer, how things -came back to you; so that they seemed all of a sudden to have happened -no longer ago than yesterday....</p> - -<p>He was in just such a schooner as one of those yonder at the time. The -“John and Jane” her name was—a pretty little thing, sailed like a -witch, too. Lost, he had heard, a year or two ago on a voyage over to -Newfoundland with a cargo of salt. It had been his first voyage South. -He had been in nothing but billyboys and Geordie brigs until<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98">{98}</a></span> then. He -had run his last ship in London. The skipper was a hard-mouthed old -ruffian, the mate a trifle worse. Between them the boy Jim had a tough -time of it. Then one day the captain caught him in the act of purloining -the leg of a duck destined for his own dinner; and, pursuing him with a -short length of rope with the amiable intention of flaying hell out of -him, fell head foremost on the top of his own ballast and lay for dead. -He wasn’t dead: far from it. But young Jim thought he was. So he pulled -himself ashore in the dinghy and set off along Wapping High Street with -only the vaguest idea where he was going.</p> - -<p>He stuck to the water-side as a hunted fox sticks to cover. The Tower he -passed quickly by: it looked too much like a lock-up, he thought. -Presently he came to a church, and a big clock sticking out over the -roadway; and close by a wharf where schooners were loading, and among -them the “John and Jane.”</p> - -<p>He liked the looks of her. She was clean and fresh and sweet-smelling. -And the mate, who was superintending the lowering of some cases into the -hold, had a red, jolly face that took his fancy.</p> - -<p>The boy Jim peered down into the hold. It was full almost to the -hatch-coamings. She must be going to sail soon.</p> - -<p>The red-faced mate had given his last order, and was coming down the -gangway with the virtuous and anticipatory look of one at ease with his -own conscience after a spell of arduous toil, and about to reward -himself for the same with liquid refreshment.</p> - -<p>Young Fareweather stepped forward, his heart thumping.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99">{99}</a></span></p> - -<p>“Was you wanting a hand, mister?”</p> - -<p>The red-faced man looked at him consideringly.</p> - -<p>“A hand? A s’rimp, you mean!” He guffawed slapping his hands on his fat -thighs, a man well pleased with his own joke.</p> - -<p>“Ah con do a mon’s work, though,” the youngster insisted.</p> - -<p>“Ye can, can ye? Can ye steer.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, Ah con that.”</p> - -<p>“Can ye reef an’ furl, splice a rope-yarn, peel potatoes and cook the -cabin dinner of a Sunday?”</p> - -<p>“Ah con that.”</p> - -<p>The mate roared.</p> - -<p>“Sort of a admirayble bright ’un, I can see,” he said. “Well, I tell you -what. Here’s the skipper comin’ down the wharf. We’ll see what he says.”</p> - -<p>The captain, a fierce-looking little man with bushy eyebrows, indulged -in a smile at the recital of Jim’s reputed accomplishments.</p> - -<p>“Take him if ye like,” he said, “and, listen, you, boy” (bending the -bushy brows on Jim), “if you’re tellin’ lies, it’s the rope’s-end you’ll -taste, my lad.”</p> - -<p>He spent the night curled up on a box in the corner of the galley, -listening with one ear to the yarns of the old one-eyed shipkeeper, the -other cocked for the ominous tread of the dreaded policeman. But dawn -came, and brought no policeman, and by noon the “John and Jane” was -dropping downstream with the tide.</p> - -<p>It seemed to the boy Jim like a foretaste of Heaven. The captain was a -kindly man for all his appearance of ferocity, the mate easier still. No -one got kicked; nobody went without his grub—incidentally he was -relieved to find that nothing further was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100">{100}</a></span> said about cooking the cabin -dinner; wonder of wonders, nobody was so much as sworn at seriously. -True, the amiable mate was the most foul-mouthed man he had ever come -across before or since. But then, hard words break no bones, especially -on board ship, and the mate’s repertoire was generally looked on as -something in the nature of a polite accomplishment: something like -conjuring tricks or making pictures out of ink blots.</p> - -<p>It was all a wonder to him, just as Oporto, whither the “John and Jane” -was bound, was a wonder to him after the cold stormy North Sea, the -bleak streets of Newcastle and Wapping which so far had been his only -idea of seaports. The schooner, as has already been said, was an easy -ship, and in port the hands had plenty of time to themselves. He liked -the sun, the light, the warmth, the colour. He liked the laughing, lazy, -careless children of the South. He liked the many-coloured houses that -climbed the steep streets of the old town—and the bathing in the great -river—and the little stuffy wineshops with their mixed smell of sour -wine and sawdust and stale cigar-smoke and onions—and the bells that -chimed day long, night long, from hidden convents in green gardens -behind high walls. And the oranges——</p> - -<p>The day he first saw Conchita, he had gone off for a walk by himself, -and, the day being hot, had lain down by the roadside to rest. And as he -lay there half asleep, lulled by the shrill song of the cicalas in the -grass all round him, plop! something bounced on to his chest, rolled a -little way, and lay still.</p> - -<p>He reached out his hand and picked it up. An orange! Its skin was still -warm with the sun, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101">{101}</a></span> it had that indefinable bloom on it that belongs -to all fruit newly gathered. And then he looked round to see where it -had come from, and saw—Conchita!</p> - -<p>Conchita with her dark, vivacious little face, her eyes black as sloes, -her red lips open in a wide laugh that showed a row of perfect -teeth—Conchita with her full white sleeves under her stiff embroidery -jacket, her wide gay-coloured petticoats, her dainty white-stockinged -ankles and little slippered feet; why, she was almost like a talking -doll, Jim thought, that he had seen in a big toyshop in Newcastle, and -wished he had the money to buy for his sister! He felt as awkward, as -clumsy with her as a boy with a doll. Goodness knows how they understood -one another, those two young things! There is a sort of freemasonry, -somehow or other, among young things that laughs at such difficulties as -language. She knew a little broken English, which she was immensely -proud of. She had picked it up at school from an English playmate. But -Jim knew nothing but his own East Coast brand of his native speech. -However, understand one another they did, somehow or other. He learnt -her name, of course, and how she laughed at his attempts to say it as -she said it! He learned, also, that she was sixteen, and that she was to -be married some day to old João the muleteer, but that she did not like -him because of “ees faze—o-ah, long, lak’ dees!” And she stretched out -her arms to their full extent to indicate it. But she “lak’ Ing-lees -sailor, o-ah ver-ree, ver-ree much”—and she “giv’ you—o-ah, ever so -many orange—lak’ dees!” And she made a wide circle with her arms to -show their number.</p> - -<p>The boy went back to his ship in a kind of dream.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102">{102}</a></span> Her warm Southern -nature was riper far than his. He was swept clean off his feet by the -fervour of her unashamed yet innocent lovemaking—by the feel of her -warm body, of her warm lips, of her rounded cheeks soft and glowing, as -sun-warmed oranges. Of course he went again—and many times again—and -then there came the last night before the “John and Jane” was to sail.</p> - -<p>It had been arranged that for once he was not to go alone. Perhaps -Conchita, strange little blend of impulse and sophistication, had judged -it best that their leave-taking should not be an <i>affaire à deux</i>. Jim -was to bring some of his shipmates along: and Conchita would bring also -some of the other girls. And it would “be fon—o-ah, yees, soch fon!”</p> - -<p>He remembered the queer feeling of shrinking that came over him as they -set out on that fatal expedition. What had happened he never really -knew. Perhaps one of his shipmates had blabbed about it in the little -wineshop on the quay; perhaps one of the other girls. What mattered was -that somehow the jealous João, with the “faze long, lak’ dees,” had -heard of it!</p> - -<p>They went stumbling and whispering up the lane that led out of the town. -He could remember the warm scent of that autumn night and the way the -wind went sighing through the broad, dark leaves of the orange groves -and the gnarled cork trees that bordered the stony mule-track by which -they climbed. They passed a little inn by the wayside, where a man was -playing a guitar and singing an interminable ballad full of wailing, -sobbing notes, in the melancholy minor key common to folk-melodies the -world over.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103">{103}</a></span></p> - -<p>The moon was shining through the trees when they came to the rendezvous. -They had brought sacks with them, and the girls shook the fragrant -globes down while they gathered them into heaps.</p> - -<p>And then, suddenly, all was changed. It was like a nightmare. There were -lights, and people shouting. The girls screamed. Conchita cried out, -“Run, run!” She clung round his neck, fondling his face, weeping. There -was a fierce face, a lifted hand, something that sang as it fled. And -Conchita was all of a sudden limp in his arms, her face, with a look of -hurt surprise in its wide eyes and fallen mouth, drooping backward like -a flower broken on its stalk. She seemed to be sinking, sinking away -from him, like a drowned thing sinking into deep water....</p> - -<p>He did not know who dragged that limp thing from his numb arms. He did -not know who hustled him away, shouting in his ear, “Run, ye damned -fool, run! Them bloody Dagoes’ll knife the lot of us.” He remembered -being hurried down the lane, and past the lighted inn where the man was -still at his interminable wailing songs. And then—no more, until he -came to himself under the smelly oil lamp in the familiar forecastle.</p> - -<p>The “John and Jane” sailed at dawn....</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>Captain Fareweather sighed, shifted his elbows on the rail, stiffened -himself suddenly, and stood erect. The look of the sea had changed. Its -surface was blurred as if a hand had been drawn gently across it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104">{104}</a></span></p> - -<p>One after the other the two schooners began to steal slowly, very slowly -across his line of vision. He cast an eye aloft. There was a slight -tremor in the hitherto motionless clew of the main royal.</p> - -<p>He sniffed the coming wind as a dog sniffs the scent of its accustomed -quarry; then he walked briskly across to the break of the poop and, -leaning his hands on the rail, called to the mate.</p> - -<p>“Mister!”</p> - -<p>“Sir?”</p> - -<p>“Stand by to square away your main yard! I think we’ll get a breeze -afore two bells.”</p> - -<p>He walked the poop fore and aft, rubbing his hands and whistling a -little tune.</p> - -<p>There was a scamper of bare feet on the planking. Men sang out as they -hauled on the braces, “Yo-heu-yoi-hee!” Blocks sang shrill as fifes, -reef points beat a tattoo on the tautened canvas. The sails filled with -loud clappings. Out of the north-east came the wind—shattering the calm -mirror of the sea into a million splinters—filling the royals like the -cheeks of the trumpeting angels of the Judgment—burying under its -mounded confusion the very memory of the vanished calm, even as the -years lay mounded over the dead face of Conchita, whom the gods loved -too well....</p> - -<p>“We’ll beat that bloody ‘Alcazar’ yet, mister,” said Captain -Fareweather.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105">{105}</a></span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106">{106}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107">{107}</a></span>  </p> - -<h2><a name="SEATTLE_SAM_SIGNS_ON" id="SEATTLE_SAM_SIGNS_ON"></a>SEATTLE SAM SIGNS ON</h2> - - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“I</span>T’S what I’m always tellin’ you, Mike,” said Captain Bascomb severely, -“you’re too rough with ’em.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Michael Doyle, mate of the skysail yarder “Bride of Abydos,” was -usually nearly as handy with his tongue as he was with his fists, which -was saying a good deal. But on this occasion he was, for once in his -life, fairly stumped. He opened and shut his mouth several times like a -landed fish, but, like a fish, remained speechless.</p> - -<p>“Too rough with ’em, that’s what you are,” pursued the skipper. “You -should use a bit o’ tact. You shouldn’t keep kickin’ ’em. I’m a humane -man myself, and I tell you I take it very hard—very hard indeed I -do—to have my ship avoided as if we’d got plague on board just because -I’ve got a rip-roarin’ great gazebo of a mate from the County Cork that -doesn’t know when to keep his feet to himself. When I was a nipper they -learned me to count ten before I kicked. That’s what you want to do. -Twenty for the matter o’ that.”</p> - -<p>Captain Bascomb was a hard case, though anyone overhearing the foregoing -remarks might have thought otherwise. He was also a tough nut. Men who -spoke from personal experience said, and said with deep emotion, that he -was both these things, as well as other things less fitted for polite -mention: so presumably it was true.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108">{108}</a></span></p> - -<p>Now, while there are undeniably times and seasons when it is a valuable -asset for a shipmaster to have the character of a tough nut and a hard -case, there are equally conceivable circumstances when such a reputation -may be a decidedly inconvenient possession. And it was precisely such a -set of circumstances which had arisen on the day in late autumn when the -conversation just recorded took place.</p> - -<p>The “Bride of Abydos” lay alongside the lumber mill wharf at Victoria. -Her cargo of lumber was all on board. And she would have been ready to -sail for home on the next morning’s tide but for one trifling and -inconvenient particular—namely, that she was without a crew.</p> - -<p>This regrettable discrepancy was due to two principal reasons. In the -first place, the rumour of a discovery of gold, or copper, or aluminium, -or something of a metallic nature up in the Rocky Mountains had had the -inevitable effect of inducing the ship’s company of the “Bride of -Abydos” to abandon as one man their nautical calling, and depart for the -interior of British Columbia with an unbounded enthusiasm which would -only be surpassed by the enthusiasm with which they would doubtless -return to it in less than three months’ time.</p> - -<p>But it would be useless to deny that Captain Bascomb’s fame as a tough -nut—a fame to which the ungrudging tributes of his late crew had given -a considerable local fillip—was the outstanding cause for the coyness -manifested by eligible substitutes about coming forward to fill the -vacant berths in the “Bride of Abydos’s” forecastle.</p> - -<p>Hence it was that gloom sat upon Captain Bas<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109">{109}</a></span>comb’s brow, and a -reflected gloom upon that of Mr. Michael Doyle—a gloom which was -graphically expressed by the steward when he imparted to the black -doctor in confidence the news that the Old Man was lookin’ about as -pleasant as a calf’s daddy.</p> - -<p>Mr. Doyle delicately brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat, and cleared -his throat cautiously by way of preparing the ground for another -conversational opening.</p> - -<p>“What do you keep making that row for?” demanded the skipper. “You put -me in mind of a cock chicken that’s just learnin’ to crow! If you do it -again I’ll mix you some cough stuff—and I’ll see you swallow it too.”</p> - -<p>“I was only goin’ to say——” began Mr. Doyle in aggrieved tones.</p> - -<p>“Goin’ to say, were you? Well, if you’ve got anything to say that’ll -show me how to make a crew that can work the ‘Bride of Abydos’ out of a -nigger grub sp’iler and a hen-faced boob of an eavesdropping Cockney -steward”—here he paused to relieve his feelings by adroitly launching a -cuspidor at the inquiring countenance of Cockney George as it protruded -from the pantry door—“you can say it,” continued the skipper; “if not, -you needn’t! I’m in no mood for polite conversation, and that’s a fact.”</p> - -<p>Silence and profound gloom descended once again upon the cabin and its -occupants, while the fluttered and indignant George, still palpitating -at the recollection of his narrow escape from the captain’s unexpected -projectile, slippered gingerly off to enjoy a growl with the black cook, -who was sitting in his galley crooning the songs of Zion in a discreet -undertone to the carefully muted strains of his concertina.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110">{110}</a></span></p> - -<p>And just at that moment the gangway creaked loudly beneath a heavy -tread, and a stranger stepped on board.</p> - -<p>He was a large man with a large, flabby face, in which a large cigar was -carelessly stuck as if to indicate the approximate position of the -mouth: a loose-lipped mouth which looked, if possible, even more -unpleasant when it smiled than when it scowled.</p> - -<p>“Say, looks like someone’s feelin’ kinder peeved,” observed the -new-comer, pushing the skipper’s late missile with his toe. “Cap’n -aboard, stooard?”</p> - -<p>“Ho, yus, he’s on board right enough,” responded George. “Frowed this -’ere at me ’ead just now, ’e did. Whatcher want?” he inquired -suspiciously. “<span class="lftspc">’</span>Cos if it’s tracks or anyfink o’ that, I ain’t goin’ to -let you in, not on your sweet life I ain’t! Ever see a blinkin’ gorilla -wiv the toofache? ’Cos that’s ’im—see! Just abart as safe to go near as -wot ’e is—see! You take my tip and ’op it! Beat it for the tall -timbers! Go while the goin’s good!”</p> - -<p>“That’s right all right,” responded the stranger cordially. “I guess -I’ll just walk right in and introdooce myself.”</p> - -<p>He stepped briskly along the alleyway and tapped on the cabin door.</p> - -<p>A growl like that of a wounded jaguar was the only response, but, taking -this as a permission to enter, the visitor projected his head, not -without caution, round the edge of the door.</p> - -<p>“G’ mornin’, Cap’n—g’ mornin’, mister,” he said heartily. “Pardon me -breezin’ along this way, but I’ve a hunch you and me might be able to -do<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111">{111}</a></span> business. I understand you’re in a bit of a difficulty regardin’ a -crew.”</p> - -<p>Captain Bascomb regarded him for a few seconds without speaking. A -remarkable variety of emotions might have been seen chasing one another -across his countenance as he did so—surprise, incredulity, and joy -chief among them.</p> - -<p>“I am,” he said slowly. “I am, and that’s a fact, Mr.—— I didn’t quite -get your name.”</p> - -<p>“Grover—Samuel Grover—Seattle Sam to most folks around these parts,” -replied the stranger, making bold to enter and take a seat. “Fine ship -you’ve got here, Cap’n!”</p> - -<p>“Ship’s all right,” responded the skipper curtly.</p> - -<p>He didn’t seem able to take his eyes off Mr. Grover’s face. It wasn’t a -beautiful face, either; to be quite candid, it verged upon the -repulsive. But Captain Bascomb gazed at it as if it had been the face of -his first love. Seattle Sam flattered himself he was making a good -impression.</p> - -<p>“See here, Cap’n,” he went on, “I’ve a vurry nice bunch of b’ys up at my -li’l’ place on Cormorant Street. Prime sailormen every one of ’em. And -I’d just love to ship ’em along with you. But”—he leaned forward and -tapped his fat finger on the table—“here’s the snag! Speakin’ as man to -man, Cap’n, you ain’t asackly parpular.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m not, ain’t I?” said Captain Bascomb, bristling. “Well, if -that’s all you’ve come to say, the sooner you beat it out of here the -better! As I was saying to my mate here only just now, I’m in no mood -for polite conversation—not to say personal remarks of an offensive -nature——”</p> - -<p>“Not so fast, Cap’n, not so fast,” said Seattle Sam<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112">{112}</a></span> hastily, taking the -precaution to hook towards him the companion to the captain’s earlier -missile, ostensibly that he might put it to the purpose for which it was -designed, but really in the interests of disarmament. “What I was just -leadin’ up to was this. I guess I can fix things for you good. But I -guess I can’t do it without a sort of a li’l’ frameup.”</p> - -<p>At this point Mr. Doyle reluctantly withdrew, in obedience to a simple -wireless message from his superior, and strain his ears as he might from -his post at the head of the companion he could hear no more than a -mumble of voices drifting up from below.</p> - -<p>The conference was a lengthy one, so much so that Mr. Doyle had long -grown tired of waiting when the tinkle of glasses indicated that it was -drawing to a close.</p> - -<p>“Well, here’s towards ye, Cap’n,” came the slightly raised voice of -Seattle Sam, “an’ to our li’l’ trip together!”</p> - -<p>The captain’s guest had hardly got out of the alleyway before Mr. Doyle -came clattering down the companion with his eyes bulging.</p> - -<p>“Is that big stiff goin’ to sign on wid us?” he inquired in a -reverential whisper, his native Munster more honeyed than ever, as -always in moments of deep emotion.</p> - -<p>“He is, Mike,” returned the skipper, in accents broken by feeling.</p> - -<p>“Can I have him in my watch?” asked Mr. Doyle.</p> - -<p>“Mike, you can.”</p> - -<p>“And can I—can I kick him whenever I like?” pursued the mate in the -supplicating tones of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113">{113}</a></span> reciter giving an impersonation of a little -child asking Santa Claus for a toy drum.</p> - -<p>But at this point Captain Bascomb’s feelings overcame him altogether, -and, leaping from his seat, he seized his astonished second in command -firmly yet gracefully round the middle, and proceeded to give a highly -spirited rendering of the Tango Argentina as performed in that country.</p> - -<p>George, who was observing matters from his usual point of vantage, flew -to describe the portent to his crony in the galley.</p> - -<p>“Dat’s a bery dangerous man,” said the doctor, “a bery biolent, -uncontrollabous kin’ of a man, sonny! Ah jus’ done drop mah ol’ pipe in -de cabin soup one mawnin’, an’ Ah tell you Ah wuz skeered for mah life. -An’ Ah tell you what, bo’—Ah’se skeered o’ dat man when he’s lookin’ -ugly, but Ah’se ten times, twenty times, hundred times skeereder when -he’s lookin’ pleased.... An’ when he gits dancin’——” And he rolled his -woolly head till it nearly fell off his shoulders.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Mr. Samuel Grover was stepping out briskly in the direction of -his boarding-house for seamen in the pleasant thoroughfare known as -Cormorant Street. The name was a singularly appropriate one, for Mr. -Grover and his like had long gorged there upon sailormen. He hummed -pleasantly to himself as he walked, and the rapidity with which he -twirled his cigar round his large loose mouth indicated to those who -knew the man that he was feeling on unusually good terms with himself -and the world.</p> - -<p>“Now, b’ys,” he cried, rubbing his fat hands together as he surveyed the -dozen or so of depressed-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114">{114}</a></span>looking sailormen who were playing draw poker -for Chinese stinkers in the bar of his modest establishment, “now, b’ys, -I’ve gotten a real fine ship for the lot o’ ye.”</p> - -<p>The old habitués of his place looked at one another with dawning -suspicion. They had encountered this air of extravagant geniality -before.</p> - -<p>“W-w-wot’s name-of-er?” inquired Billy Stutters, so called by reason of -a slight impediment in his speech. It never took him less than a minute -to get up steam, but as soon as he was under way the words came with a -rush, like water from a stopped-up drain whence the obstruction has been -suddenly removed.</p> - -<p>“The ‘Bride of Abbeydoes,’<span class="lftspc">”</span> said Mr. Grover, “and a damn fine ship too.”</p> - -<p>You could have heard a pin drop for a minute or two while his audience -digested this news. Ginger Jack, who was an old man-of-war’s man, and as -hard a case as any of the King’s bad bargains who ever drifted under the -Red Duster, was heard to observe that he warn’t goin’ to sign in no -blinkin’ “Abbeydoes,” nor “Abbeydon’t” neither for the matter o’ that. -Billy Stutters, after a mighty effort, was understood to second the -amendment.</p> - -<p>“Ho, you ain’t, ain’t you?” said Mr. Grover with scathing irony. “An’ -wot makes your Royal ‘Ighnesses that bloomin’ partic’lar, may I ask?”</p> - -<p>“B-b-b-becos-I’ve-bin-in-’er-afore,” said Billy, sulkily, “an’ the -sk-k-kipper-kicked-me!”</p> - -<p>“Did he so?” commented Mr. Grover facetiously. “I thought maybe you was -goin’ to say he kissed you.... Now, look ’ere, b’ys,” he continued, -assuming all the powers of persuasion he could<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115">{115}</a></span> muster; “I guess you’ve -gotten cold feet about the ‘Bride of Abbeydoes.’ You take it from me, -she ain’t so black as what she’s painted. Not by a jugful. I don’t mind -admittin’, man to man, Captain Bascomb’s a hard case. And Mister Doyle, -well, I reckon he’s another. But they’re all right with a crowd of -smart, handy boys like yourselves. You ain’t a bunch o’ greasers or -sodbusters from way back that don’t know a deadeye from a fourfold -purchase. You’re the sort o’ crowd as a skipper won’t find no fault -with, as he’ll be proud to see about his ship. And just to show I’m in -earnest, I’m goin’ to sign on in the ‘Bride of Abbeydoes’ myself. Fair -an’ square. I’m about doo to run across and see the home-folks in -London, England. I’ve a fancy to take a turn at sailorizin’ again. An’ I -like a fast ship. Now then, b’ys, is it a go? That’s the style. The -drinks are on the house!”</p> - -<p>“Nice sort o’ state of affairs,” observed Mr. Grover a little later to -his factotum in the privacy of the den he called his office. “A lot of -ungrateful swabs I’ve been keepin’—keepin’, mind you—for best part of -two weeks, and they ups with their ‘Won’t sign ’ere’ ’n’ ‘Ain’t goin’ to -sail there’ as if they was bloomin’ lords. Well, well! I’ll learn ’em. -Don’t I hope Mr. Bucko Doyle’ll put it across ’em good and hard, that’s -all!</p> - -<p>“Why, in the old days in ’Frisco,” he continued dreamily, “you could -ship a corp and no questions asked. And as for sailormen—well, you -didn’t consult ’em. And quite right too. A lot they know about what’s -good for ’em—a bunch of idle, extravagant swine! Warn’t it all for -their good to get ’em shipped off to sea sharp afore they’d got<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116">{116}</a></span> time to -get into trouble and go fillin’ up the jail, I ask you? And then you get -a lot of meddlin’ psalm-singin’ idjits as don’t know the first thing -about the class o’ men people like me ’ave got to deal with. Psha!”</p> - -<p>And Mr. Grover set about filling a sea-chest with an assortment of old -newspapers and empty bottles which would have struck his future -shipmates, had they been there to see, as a curious outfit for a Cape -Horn passage.</p> - -<p>The next day bright and early he attended with his crowd at the shipping -office, where, having duly heard the ship’s articles mumbled over, the -party appended their signatures and marks thereto and became duly -members of the crew of the “Bride of Abydos.” The morning was fine and -sunny, and every one was in high good-humour. Captain Bascomb’s face was -wreathed in smiles, and the wink to which Seattle Sam treated him when -no one was looking elicited an even huger one in reply.</p> - -<p>All the same, a joke is a joke, and Mr. Grover considered that it was -carrying the joke a bit too far when the third mate, a big apprentice -just out of his time, ordered him to tail on to the topsail halyards or -he’d wonder what hit him. However, he complied with the order with as -good a grace as he could muster, and even went the length of joining -with some heartiness in the time-honoured strains of “Reuben Ranzo.” -“After all,” he reflected, “may as well do the thing properly while -you’re about it.”</p> - -<p>Still, he wasn’t sorry when the time drew near for the little comedy to -come to an end. Dropping, with a sigh of relief, the rope on which he -had been hauling he walked quickly off towards the poop,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117">{117}</a></span> rubbing his -fat palms tenderly as he went. They had so long been strangers to -anything resembling a job of work that they were already beginning to -blister.</p> - -<p>“Well, Skipper,” he cried gaily, “time to square our li’l’ account and -say so long, I guess!”</p> - -<p>The captain gave him rather a peculiar glance, and led the way in -silence down into the cabin.</p> - -<p>Seattle Sam hesitated a moment. Time was getting short. But a drink was -a drink, after all, and it would have meant going back on the tradition -of a lifetime to refuse one.</p> - -<p>He had hardly entered the saloon before he became vaguely conscious of a -certain lack of cordiality in the atmosphere. The pilot’s dirty glass -was still on the table, but there was no other sign of liquid -refreshment. He could not keep a note of uneasiness out of his voice.</p> - -<p>“Well, Skipper,” he repeated, “so long, and a pleasant voyage!”</p> - -<p>The captain’s eyes met his in a cold stare of absolute repudiation. -Seattle Sam’s extended hand dropped slowly to his side, and the -self-satisfied smirk faded from his face. The captain had taken up a -position between him and the companion. Instinctively he turned towards -the alleyway which led to the main deck. It was blocked by the -substantial form of Mr. Michael Doyle.</p> - -<p>Too late the ghastly truth began to dawn.</p> - -<p>“Talking about squarin’ accounts,” said the skipper slowly, “I’ve got a -little account to square. It’s been waiting a long time too. Matter o’ -fifteen years or so. Take a good look at me! Ever seen me before? Just -cast your mind back a bit to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118">{118}</a></span> time when you were ’Frisco Brown’s -runner, and shipped a big husky apprentice out o’ the Golden Gate in a -Yankee blood boat that the ‘Bride of Abydos’ is a day-nursery to!... -I’ve got the scars of that trip about me yet, soul and body, Mister -Seattle Sam, and you’re goin’ to pay for ’em, and compound interest -too!”</p> - -<p>As he spoke, three long wails from the tug’s hooter rent the air, -answered by round after round of cheering from the ship.</p> - -<p>The skipper stood back, while Seattle Sam dashed up on to the poop with -a low howl of rage and terror.</p> - -<p>The tug’s hawser trailed dripping through the water, and she was turning -her nose for home with a mighty churning of her paddles. The crimp -rushed to the rail, waving his arms frantically above his head, and a -yell of derision greeted him from the crew lined along her bulwarks. -They were all in it, then! He was alone, alone, with a man he had -shanghaied, a crew he had tried to swindle, and a sea-chest full of -waste paper wherewith to face the bitter days and nights off the Horn.</p> - -<p>“Bos’n!” yelled the skipper. “Call all hands aft!”</p> - -<p>“Lay aft all hands!” roared the bos’n, and soon a throng of interested -faces looked up at the captain as he stood with his hands planted on the -poop rail.</p> - -<p>His words were few but to the point.</p> - -<p>“Boys, you’ve heard I’m a hard man to sail under. Maybe I am. That’s for -you to find out. I won’t have back chat. I won’t stand for any sojering -or shinaniking. If you’re decent sailormen, and know your work, and do -it, we’ll get on all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119">{119}</a></span> right. If you’re not, me and my mates are here to -knock ruddy hell out of you.</p> - -<p>“One word more. This man here”—he indicated the trembling form of -Seattle Sam—“came on board my ship yesterday to sell you. I’ll give you -his words. ‘I’ll fool ’em I’m goin’ to sign on myself, and they’ll come -like lambs. Twenty dollars apiece and the men are yours. And I don’t -care if you give ’em ruddy hell!’ Now I say to you, ‘This man’s yours! -Take him, and I wish you joy of your shipmate!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>And, grasping Seattle Sam by the collar of his coat and the scruff of -his pants, he propelled him to the top of the poop ladder and gave him a -skilful hoist which dropped him full in the midst of the expectant group -below.</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>The tug’s smoke was a grey feather on the skyline; Flattery a grey cloud -on the port bow.</p> - -<p>The song of the wind in his royals was sweet music in Captain Bascomb’s -ears. So was the rush and gurgle of the waves under the clipper’s keel. -So were all the little noises that a ship makes in a seaway.</p> - -<p>But, oh, sweeter far than them all was a confused turmoil which ever and -anon came vaguely to his hearing—a sound made up of thuds, of cries, of -curses—which indicated beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mr. Samuel -Grover, some time of ’Frisco, and late of Cormorant Street, Victoria, -was undergoing the decidedly painful process of being ground exceeding -small!</p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120">{120}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121">{121}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122">{122}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123">{123}</a></span>  </p> - -<h2><a name="PADDY_DOYLES_BOOTS" id="PADDY_DOYLES_BOOTS"></a>PADDY DOYLE’S BOOTS<br /><br /> -<small>A FORECASTLE YARN</small></h2> - - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">Y</span>OU know that junk store on the Sandoval waterfront? A Chink keeps -it—Charley Something or other, don’t remember the rest of his name. If -you don’t know the place I mean, you know plenty more just like it. The -sort of place where you can buy pretty well anything under the sun, -everything second-hand, that is; any mortal thing in the seagoing line -that you can think of, and then some. That’s Charley’s!</p> - -<p>Well, once Larry Keogh (every one used to call him Mike, because his -name wasn’t Michael), and Sandy MacGillivray from Glasgow, and a -Dutchman called Hank were in want of one or two things for a Cape Horn -passage. Their ship was the old “Isle of Skye.” Did you ever meet with -any of them “Isle” barques? They were very fine ships. There was the -“Isle of Skye,” “Isle of Arran,” “Isle of Man,” and a whole lot more I -just forget—all “Isles.” You wouldn’t find any of them now. Some were -lost, some broken up, some went under the Russian or Chilian flag, and -the firm that owned them (MacInnis, the name was) went out of business -at the finish. And as for the old “Isle of Skye” herself, she piled up -on Astoria a little more than a year ago—foreign-owned then, of course.</p> - -<p>Round these three chaps I was speaking about went to Charley’s joint. -Larry and Hank got what<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124">{124}</a></span> they wanted soon enough. At least, they got -what they had money for, which wasn’t very much, Charley not being in -the humour to treat Larry as handsome over some lumps of coral Larry -wanted to trade for clothes.</p> - -<p>This Sandy MacGillivray I mentioned, however, was a bit of a capitalist, -and he was also of an economical disposition; and what with wanting to -lay out his money the best way and not being able to bear the feel of -parting with the cash when he’d found what he wanted to buy, he had his -pals with the one thing and the other teetering about first on one foot -and then on the other, and sick to death of him and his -shilly-shallying.</p> - -<p>At long last he got through; and then nothing would fit but Charley must -give him something in for his bargain.</p> - -<p>“No good, no good!” says the Chink, looking ugly the way only a Chink -can. “You pay me, you go ’long!... P’laps I give you somet’ing you no -like.”</p> - -<p>He grinned and showed his dirty yellow teeth.</p> - -<p>“Ut’s not possible,” said Larry. “Sandy’s the one that’ll take it, if -it’s neither too hot nor too heavy.”</p> - -<p>“All light,” says the Chink, sulky-like. “I give you velly good pair o’ -boots.”</p> - -<p>Hank’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and so did Larry’s, when they -saw what Sandy had got through just having the gall to ask.</p> - -<p>A beautiful pair of sea-boots they were, and brand-new, or very near it, -by the look of them. Sandy thought the old fellow was joshing him; but -it was all right. He was nearly beside himself with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125">{125}</a></span> delight. He stopped -outside a saloon once on the way to the ship, and stood turning over his -money in his pocket so long that the boys began to think he was going to -celebrate his good fortune in a fitting manner.</p> - -<p>But all he said at the finish was, “It’s a peety to change a five spot. -Once change your money an’ it fair melts awa’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>Larry sighed. If he’d known about those boots he might have had a bid -for them. And now Sandy had got them for nothing. Larry made him a -sporting offer of his coral in exchange for them, but it was no go.</p> - -<p>“To hell wid ye for a skin-louse!” says Larry, who was getting a bit -nasty by this time. He had a great thirst on him, and no money to -gratify it, and that was the way it took him. “Ye’d take the pennies off -your own father’s eyes, so you would, and he lying dead.”</p> - -<p>Sandy showed the boots to the rest of the crowd, and of course every one -had something to say. But there could be no doubt he had got a wonderful -fine bargain.</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t wonder but they have a hole in them,” said Larry. The notion -seemed to brighten him up a whole lot. “The water will run in and out of -them boots the way you’ll wish you never saw them. I know no more -uncomfortable thing than a pair of boots and they letting in water on -you.”</p> - -<p>Sandy was a bit upset by this idea of Larry’s, so he filled the boots -with water to see if there was anything in it. Leak—not they!</p> - -<p>“It would be a good thing,” said Larry with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126">{126}</a></span> sigh, he was that -disappointed, “if the old drogher herself was as seaworthy as them -boots. As good as new they are, and devil a leak is there in ayther one -of them. But maybe,” he went on, cheering up again a bit, “maybe some -person has been wearing them that died of the plague. It is not a very -pleasant thing, now, to die of the plague. I would not care to be -wearing a pair of boots and I not knowing who had them before me.”</p> - -<p>“Hee-hee,” sniggers Sandy in a mean little way he had. “Hee, hee—ye’ll -no hae the chance o’ wearin’ these.”</p> - -<p>And then it was that old Balto the Finn—he was an old sailorman, this -Balto, and he could remember the real ancient days, the Baltimore -clippers and the East Indiamen—spoke for the first time.</p> - -<p>“From the dead to the dead!” says Balto. “From a dead corpse were they -taken, and to a dead corpse will they go.”</p> - -<p>They are great witches, are Finns, as every one knows. And it seemed -likely enough that the first part of the saying, at least, was true, for -old Charley hadn’t the best of names for the way he got hold of his -stuff.</p> - -<p>Sandy was one of those chaps who go about in fear and trembling of being -robbed; so, after he saw how all the crowd admired the boots, he took to -wearing them all the time ashore and afloat. He went ashore in them the -night before the “Isle of Skye” was to sail.</p> - -<p>He came aboard in them, too, that same night....</p> - -<p>The tide drifted him against the hawser, and the anchor watch saw him -and hauled him in. Dead as nails, was poor Sandy, and no one knew just -how<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127">{127}</a></span> it came about. It was thought he’d slipped on the wet wharf—it was -a very bad wharf, with a lot of holes and rough places in it. And of -course a man can’t swim in heavy boots....</p> - -<p>There was a man in the “Isle of Skye” at that time, a Dago. His name was -Tony, short for Antonio. He bought Sandy’s boots very cheap, no one else -seeming to care for them.</p> - -<p>That was a cruel cold passage, and the “Isle of Skye” being loaded right -down to her marks, she was a very wet ship indeed. So that the time came -when more than one in the starboard watch wished they were in that -Dago’s boots after all, and the fanciful feeling about poor Sandy began -to wear off.</p> - -<p>The Old Man was a holy terror for cracking on: he had served his time in -one of the fast clippers in the Australian wool trade, and he never -could get it out of his head that he had to race everything else in the -nitrate fleet. He would sooner see a sail carry away any day than reef -it, and this passage he was worse than ever.</p> - -<p>However, it came on to blow so bad, just off the pitch of the Horn, that -the mate went down and dug the hoary old scoundrel out of his sweet -slumbers, he having dared anybody to take a stitch off her before -turning in. He cursed and he swore; but the end of it was that the watch -laid aloft to reef the fore upper-topsail, and it was then that this -Dago Tony, who was swanking it in the boots as usual, put his foot on a -rotten ratline, and down he came, boots and all.</p> - -<p>There was a lot of talk, and no wonder, about the things which had -happened since Sandy MacGillivray got those boots from the Chink; and -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128">{128}</a></span> Old Man getting wind of it, he told Sails to stitch up Tony boots -and all, so as to stop the talk for good.</p> - -<p>“Mind ye,” said the Old Man, “Ah dinna hold wi’ Papish suppersteetions, -but there’s no denyin’ the sea’s a queer place.”</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>Nobody ever expected to see or hear any more of Sandy Mac’s boots. But -there was a man in the starboard watch that nobody liked—a sort of -soft-spoken, soft-handed chap we called Ikey Mo; because he was so fond -of stowing away stuff in his chest every one thought he had a bit of the -Jew in him.</p> - -<p>The day we sighted the Fastnet this fellow showed up in a pair of -sea-boots.</p> - -<p>“Where had ye them boots, Ikey, and we rowling off the pitch of the -Horn?” asked Larry when he saw them. “It’s a queer thing ye never wore -them sooner.”</p> - -<p>“If I’d wore ’em sooner,” says Ikey, “like as not you’d have borrowed -the lend of ’em, an’ maybe got drowned in ’em,” he says, “and then where -should I have been?”</p> - -<p>“I would not,” says Larry. “I would not borrow the lend of the fill of a -tooth from a dirty Sheeny like yourself. ’Tis my belief you took them -boots off the poor dead corpse they belonged to; and by the same token, -if they walk off with you to the same place he’s gone to, it’s no more -than you deserve.”</p> - -<p>The tale soon got round that Ikey had stolen the boots off the dead -Dago, and it made a lot of feeling<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129">{129}</a></span> against him. But he only laughed and -sneered when folks looked askance at him, and at last he left off making -any secret of the thing he’d done.</p> - -<p>“Call yourselves men!” says he. “And scared of a little dead rat of an -Eyetalian that was no great shakes of a man when he was livin’!”</p> - -<p>“Let the fool have his way!” says old Balto the Finn. “From a dead -corpse were they taken, to a dead corpse will they go.”</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>Very, very foggy it was in the Mersey when we run the mudhook out. I -don’t think I ever saw it worse.</p> - -<p>Ikey didn’t care. He was singing at the top of his voice as the shore -boat pushed off:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -“We’ll furl up the bunt with a fling, oh ...<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To pay Paddy Doyle for his boo-oots....”</span><br /> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>“Who said ‘boots’?” he shouted, standing up in the boat with his hands -to his mouth. “Where’s the dead corpse now?”</p> - -<p>The fog swallowed up the boat whole, but we could hear his voice coming -through it a long while, all thick and muffled:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -“We’ll all drink brandy and gin, oh ...<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pay Paddy Doyle for his boots....”</span><br /> -</div></div> -</div> - - -<p>The tug that cut the boat in two picked up five men of the six that were -in her. And the one that was missing was a good swimmer, too.</p> - -<p>But then ... a man can’t swim ... in heavy boots....</p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130">{130}</a></span>  </p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131">{131}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132">{132}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133">{133}</a></span>  </p> - -<h2><a name="THE_UNLUCKY_ALTISIDORA" id="THE_UNLUCKY_ALTISIDORA"></a>THE UNLUCKY “ALTISIDORA”</h2> - - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN first the legend of the Unlucky “Altisidora” began to take its -place in the great unwritten book of the folk-lore of the sea, old -shellbacks (nodding weather-beaten heads over mugs and glasses in a -thousand sailortown taverns from Paradise Street to Argyle Cut) were -wont to put forward a variety of theories accounting for her character, -according to the particular taste, creed, or nationality of the -theorizer for the time being.</p> - -<p>Her keel was laid on a Friday.... Someone going to work on her had met a -red-haired wumman, or a wumman as skenned (this if the speaker were a -Northumbrian) and hadn’t turned back.... Someone had chalked “To Hell -with the Pope” (this if he were a Roman Catholic) or, conversely, “To -Hell with King William” (in the case of a Belfast Orangeman) on one of -her deck beams.... There was a stiff ’un hid away somewheres inside her, -same as caused all the trouble with the “Great Eastern.”... And so on, -and so forth, usually finishing up with the finely illogical assertion -that you couldn’t expect nothink better, not with a jaw-crackin’ name -like that!</p> - -<p>Anyhow, unlucky she was, you couldn’t get away from it! Didn’t she -drownd her first skipper, when he was going on board one night in -’Frisco Bay? Didn’t her second break his neck in Vallipo, along<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134">{134}</a></span> of -tumbling down an open hatch in the dark? Come to that, didn’t she kill a -coupler chaps a week when she was buildin’ over in Wilson’s Yard, -Rotherhithe? Didn’t she smash up a lumper or two every blessed trip she -made? Hadn’t she got a way of slipping fellers overboard that sneaky and -sly-like no one knowed they was gone until it come coffee time and they -wasn’t there?... Say the skipper was drunk—well, ain’t skippers gone on -board canned up afore now and <i>not</i> been drownded?... Say it was -somebody’s business to see that there hatch was covered or else a light -left alongside of it—well, ain’t hatches been left open in other ships -without folks walkin’ into ’em into the dark?... Say it was only two -fellers as was killed workin’ on her—well, ain’t there been plenty o’ -ships built what <i>nobody</i> got killed workin’ on? Answer me that!...</p> - -<p>So the Unlucky “Altisidora” she became from London River to the -Sandheads—a legend to endure in many an ancient memory long after her -bones were rust.</p> - -<p class="dtts">. . . . .</p> - -<p>It was in the South-West India Dock that Anderton first set eyes on -her—the sun going down behind Limehouse Church tower in a great flaming -splendour, and lighting up the warehouses, and the dock, and the huddle -of shipping, with an almost unearthly glory.</p> - -<p>Anderton was in great spirits. He had waited a long and weary while for -a ship; haunting the docks and the shipping offices by day, and -spending<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135">{135}</a></span> his evenings—for he had no friends in London and no money to -spare for the usual shore diversions—in the dark little officers’ -messroom at the Sailors’ Home in Well Street and the uninspiring society -of a morose mate from Sunderland, who passed the time toasting lumps of -cheese over the fire in order—so he confided to Anderton in a rare -burst of eloquence—to get his money’s worth out of the damn place. So -that when there dropped suddenly, as it were out of the summer heavens, -the chance of going as second mate in the “Altisidora” he fairly trod on -air.</p> - -<p>It happened in this wise. He had spent a desolating morning tramping -round the docks, offering his valuable services to shipmasters who were -sometimes indifferent, sometimes actively offensive, but without -exception entirely unappreciative. He was beginning to feel as if the -new second mate’s ticket of which he had been so inordinately proud were -a possession slightly less to his credit than a convict’s -ticket-of-leave. Two yards of bony Nova Scotian, topped by a sardonic -grin, had asked him if he had remembered to bring his titty-bottle -along; and a brawny female, with her hands on her hips, bursting forth -upon him from a captain’s cabin, inquired if he took the ship for an -adjectived day nursery.</p> - -<p>He had just beaten a hasty retreat after this last devastating encounter -with what dignity he could muster, and was all but resolved to give up -the fruitless quest and ship before the mast, when he heard a voice -behind him shouting “Mister! Hi, mister!”</p> - -<p>At first Anderton took no notice. For one thing, he was far too much -taken up with his own concerns<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136">{136}</a></span> to be much interested in the outside -world; for another, he was not long enough out of his apprenticeship to -recognize at once the appellation of “Mister” as one likely to apply to -himself. And in any case there seemed no reason at all why the hail -should be intended for him. It was not, therefore, until it had been -repeated several times, each time a shade more insistently, until, -moreover, he realized that there was no one else in sight or earshot for -whom it could conceivably be intended, that the fact forced itself upon -his consciousness that he was the “Mister” concerned, and he stopped to -let the caller come up with him. He did so puffing and blowing. He was a -round, insignificant little man, whom Anderton remembered now having -seen talking to the mate of one of the ships he had visited earlier in -the day.</p> - -<p>“I say,” he gasped, as soon as he was within speaking distance, “aren’t -you—I mean to say, don’t you want a second mate’s berth?”</p> - -<p>Did he want a second mate’s berth, indeed? Did he want the moon out of -the sky—or the first prize in the Calcutta Sweep—or the Cullinan -diamond—or any other seemingly unattainable thing? He retained -sufficient presence of mind, however, not to say so, and (he hoped) not -to look it either, admitting, with a creditable attempt not to sound too -keen on it, that he did in fact happen to be on the look out for such an -opening.</p> - -<p>“Ah, that’s good,” said the stranger, “because, as a matter of fact, -I—it’s most unfortunate, but my second mate’s met with an accident, and -the ship sails to-morrow. Could you join to-night?”</p> - -<p>Manage it? Anderton repressed an impulse to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137">{137}</a></span> execute a double shuffle on -the edge of the dock, to fling his arms round the little man’s neck and -embrace him, to cast his cap upon the stones and leap upon it. Instead, -he said, with the air of one conferring a favour, that he rather thought -he might.</p> - -<p>“All right, then ... ship ‘Altisidora’ ... South-West India Dock ... ask -for Mr. Rumbold ... tell him you’ve seen me ... Captain Carter.”</p> - -<p>Anderton stood staring after his new captain for several minutes after -his stubby figure had disappeared among the sheds. The thing was -incredible. It was impossible. It must be a dream. Here, only two -minutes before, he had been walking along seriously meditating the -desirability of taking a plunge into the murky waters of the London -Docks, and in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the whole aspect of -life had been changed by a total stranger offering him—more, positively -thrusting upon him—the very thing he had trudged the docks in search of -until his boot-soles were nearly through.</p> - -<p>If he had had time to reflect upon this bewildering gift thrown at him -by wayward fortune it might have occurred to him that—like so many of -that freakish dame’s bounties—there was a catch in it somewhere. He -might have thought, for example, that it was, to say the least, a -surprising fact that—at a time when he knew from bitter personal -experience that the supply of highly qualified and otherwise eminently -desirable second mates evidently greatly exceeded the demand—a -distracted skipper should be rushing round the docks looking for one. -But no such idea as yet damped the first fine flush of his triumph. Why, -indeed, should it? The ship’s name conveyed no sinister meaning to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138">{138}</a></span> his -mind. He had never heard of her reputation; if he had, he wouldn’t have -cared a button.</p> - -<p>He was, as it happened, destined to get the first hint of it within a -very few minutes. Just outside the dock gates he ran into Dick Charnock, -who had been senior apprentice in the old “Araminta” when Anderton was a -first voyager. Charnock was now mate—chief officer he called -himself—of a stinking little tub of a steam tramp plying to the -Mediterranean ports; and Anderton, remembering the airs he had been wont -to give himself in bygone days, took a special pleasure in announcing -his good fortune.</p> - -<p>Charnock blew his cheeks out and said:</p> - -<p>“O-oh—<i>her</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Well?” said Anderton a trifle huffily. “What about her?”</p> - -<p>No one likes to have cold water poured upon an exultant mood. “Beast!” -he thought. “Jealous—that’s what’s the matter with him!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, nothing—nothing!” Charnock replied hastily. “I was just thinking -about something else, that’s all!”</p> - -<p>This was so obviously a lie that it only made matters worse, and they -parted a trifle coolly; Anderton refusing an invitation to enjoy the -pleasures of London that evening, as displayed at Wilson’s Music Hall, -at which he would fairly have jumped less than an hour ago.</p> - -<p>The morose mate was still sitting in the messroom, surrounded by his -customary aura of “frizzly dick,” when he got back to Well Street and -burst in upon him with his news.</p> - -<p>He withdrew the fork from the fire, carefully<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139">{139}</a></span> inspected its burden and -after an interval of profound thought remarked:</p> - -<p>“O-oh—<i>her</i>!”</p> - -<p>His “O-oh—<i>her</i>” was, if anything, more pregnant with meaning than -Charnock’s.</p> - -<p>“Well?” snapped Anderton. He was by now getting thoroughly exasperated. -“Well? What about ‘Oh—her ‘? What’s wrong with her anyway?”</p> - -<p>The mate thoughtfully blew the ashes off his latest culinary triumph and -thrust it into his mouth.</p> - -<p>“She’s no’ got a gude name!” he said, indistinctly, but none the less -darkly.</p> - -<p>“Not a good name—what’s that mean, pray?” demanded Anderton angrily.</p> - -<p>“Just that,” said the mate laconically, and went on toasting cheese.</p> - -<p>Anderton flung out of the room in a rage. By this time his first -enthusiasm over his unexpected good fortune had received a decided -check, and it was with distinctly mixed feelings that he made his way -Poplar-wards to make personal acquaintance with his new ship.</p> - -<p>What was the meaning behind all these dark hints? Was this mysterious -“Altisidora” a tough ship—a hell-ship? Her skipper didn’t look like it, -though, of course, one had heard of captains who had the Jekyll-and-Hyde -touch about them—butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths ashore, but they -turned into raging devils as soon as they were out of soundings. Anyhow, -he was ready enough for such contingencies. He had been reckoned the -best boxer in the ship as an apprentice, and he would rather welcome -than otherwise an opportunity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140">{140}</a></span> displaying his prowess with his -fists.... Was she perhaps a hungry ship? He reflected with a grin that -he had received ample training in the art of tightening his belt in the -old “Araminta.” ... Slow—well, a slow ship had her compensations in the -way of a thumping pay-roll. He remembered the long faces the crew of his -old ship had pulled when the dead horse was not out before she was on -the Line.... Ah, well, he supposed he should know soon enough. One thing -was certain, if she were the most unseaworthy tub in the world, he had -no intention of turning back. His situation had been desperate enough to -call for a desperate remedy.</p> - -<p>There was some kind of a small disturbance—a street row of some -sort—in progress just outside the dock gate, and, despite his -impatience to see his new ship, Anderton stopped to see what was -happening.</p> - -<p>A queer little scarecrow of a man was standing in the roadway, shaking -his clenched fists in denunciation towards the soaring spars of a lofty -clipper, whose poles, rising above the roofs of the warehouses, seemed -to stab the sunset sky.</p> - -<p>“Oh, ye beauty! Oh, ye murdhering bitch!” he shouted. “Lovely ye look, -don’t ye? Who’d think to see ye that ye had it in ye to kill the bes’ -shipmate ever a man had?”</p> - -<p>A passing policeman, thumbs in belt, casting a kindly Olympian eye on -the little man, tapped him on the shoulder.</p> - -<p>“All right—all right now—move on! Never mind about that now, Johnny! -Can’t do with you making your bother ’ere!”</p> - -<p>The little man whirled round on him furiously.</p> - -<p>“Johnny! Johnny is it? Isn’t it Johnny <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141">{141}</a></span>I’m talkin’ about, the bes’ -shipmate ever a man had—smashed like a rotten apple, and no cause at -all for him to fall—oh, ye villain—oh, ye——”</p> - -<p>Olympus grew slightly impatient.</p> - -<p>“Come now, move on! Can’t do with you creatin’ no bother! Move on, I -tell you, if you don’t want me to appre’end you!”</p> - -<p>The little man shuffled off, still muttering to himself, and pausing now -and again in his zigzag progress along the road to flourish his fists at -those contemptuous spars stabbing the sunset. The policeman, catching -Anderton’s eye, tapped his forehead significantly.</p> - -<p>“Case o’ Dhoolallie tap, as we used to say in Injer,” he observed. -“Round ’ere nearly every day, ’e is, carryin’ on same as you saw. -Chronic!”</p> - -<p>Anderton asked him where the “Altisidora” was berthed. A look—was it of -surprise?—flitted across his stolid countenance. Anderton could have -sworn he was going to say “O-oh—her!” But he didn’t. He only said, -“Right straight a’ead—can’t miss ’er——”</p> - -<p>There were quite a number of ships in the dock, of which in those days a -fair proportion were still sailing ships—ships from the Baltic with -windmills sticking up amidships, Dagoes with brightly painted -figureheads and Irish pennants everywhere, Frenchmen with their look of -Gallic smartness and their standing rigging picked out in black and -white; she was none of these anyway.</p> - -<p>Anderton’s eye dwelt longingly on the tall clipper whose spars he had -already seen soaring above the sheds. There, now, was the very ship of -his dreams! He thought life could hold no higher bliss for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142">{142}</a></span> sailorman -than to stand upon her poop—to control her, to guide her, to see the -whole of her lovely height and grace moving in obedience to his -commands. He sighed a little at the thought, as he continued to scan the -vista of moored shipping with eyes that hoped and yet feared to find -what they sought.</p> - -<p>“Right straight ahead.” She couldn’t be far off now—why, his ship must -be lying at the very next berth to the beautiful clipper.</p> - -<p>But there wasn’t a next berth: the tall beauty was lying in the very -corner of the dock. Already the straggle of letters among the gilt -scrollwork on her bow had begun to suggest a wild hope he daren’t let -himself entertain. But now it wasn’t a hope—it was a certainty! This -<i>was</i> his ship—this dream, this queen, this perfect thing among ships! -Why, her name was like a song—why hadn’t it struck him before?—and she -was like a song ... the loveliest thing, Anderton thought, he had ever -seen ... rising up there so proud and stately above them all ... her -bare slender skysail poles soaring up, up until the little rosy dapple -in the evening sky seemed almost like a flight of tropical birds resting -on her spars. She dwarfed everything else in the dock. Anderton had -thought his last ship, the ship in which he had served his time, lofty -enough; yet now she seemed almost stumpy by comparison.</p> - -<p>He climbed the gangway and stepped on board. The steward, a hoarse -Cockney with a drooping moustache under a pendulous red nose, and an -expression of ludicrous melancholy which would have been worth a fortune -to a music-hall artist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143">{143}</a></span> came out of his little kennel of a pantry to -show him his room, and lingered a while, exuding onions and -conversation.</p> - -<p>“Nice room, sir, ain’t it? Orl been done right froo.... ’Ard lines on -the ovver young feller, weren’t it? Coo! Cargo slings giv’ way when he -was right underneaf—a coupler ’underweight bung on top of ’im! Coo! -Didn’t it jus’ make a mess of ’im? Not ’arf....”</p> - -<p>So that was what had happened to his mysterious predecessor! Well, it -was an ill wind that blew nobody good, Anderton reflected. Poor beggar -... still he couldn’t help it ... and after all——</p> - -<p>And it <i>was</i> a nice room—no denying that! Heaps of room for his things, -he thought, remembering the little cramped half-deck of the “Araminta” -which he had shared with five other apprentices three short months ago. -The ship belonged to a period which had not yet learned the art of -cutting down its accommodation to the very last possible inch. Her -saloon was a grand affair, with a carved sideboard and panelling of -bird’s-eye maple, and a skylight with stained glass in it, and all the -rest of her fittings were to match. It looked as if he were going to be -in clover!</p> - -<p>A series of tremendous crashes, accompanied by the falling of a heavy -body, broke in upon the steward’s remarks, and he started and looked -round, his toothpick poised in mid-mouth.</p> - -<p>“Coo!” he exclaimed. “<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ere comes our Mister Rumbold—and ain’t he -pickled, too?... Not ’arf!”</p> - -<p>He vanished discreetly into his pantry as the originator of the -disturbance came ricochetting along<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144">{144}</a></span> the alleyway, finally bringing up -against the door-jamb of Anderton’s room, where he came to a precarious -stand.</p> - -<p>He was a man on the shady side of middle age, with a nose which had once -been aquiline and a sandy-white moustache yellowed with tobacco. The -impression he gave—of a dissipated cockatoo—was heightened by the -rumpled crest of stiff hair which protruded from beneath the shore-going -straw hat which he wore halo-fashion, like a saint on the spree, pushed -well back from his forehead.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Lo!” he observed with owl-like gravity. “You—comin’ shee long’f us?”</p> - -<p>Anderton said he believed he was.</p> - -<p>The mate reflected a minute and then said succinctly:</p> - -<p>“Gorrelpyou!”</p> - -<p>Not being able on the spur of the moment to think of a really -satisfactory answer to this rather surprising remark, Anderton took -refuge in silence, and went on stowing his gear.</p> - -<p>“I said ‘Gorrelpyou!’<span class="lftspc">”</span> repeated Mr. Rumbold presently, with a decided -touch of pugnacity in his tone.</p> - -<p>Anderton supposed it was up to him to say something, so he said:</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know. But why?”</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Cos—thiship—thishipsh—unlucky—‘Alshdora’!” replied the mate. -“Thashwy. Unlucky—‘Alshdora’! ’N if any man shaysh I’m drunk—then I -shay—my lorshangemmen, I shmit if I can shay -unlucky—unlucky—‘Alshdora’—I’m perfec’ly shober.... I’m perfec’ly -shober—‘n I’m goin’ bed!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145">{145}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>At this point he let go of the door-jamb to which he had been holding, -and proceeded with astonishing velocity on a diagonal course along the -alleyway, concluding by sprawling all his length on the floor of the -saloon.</p> - -<p>“Wash marry thiship,” he enunciated gravely, sitting up and rubbing his -head. “Furnishershall over blushop. Tablesh—chairsh—sho on. Mush make -inquirations into thish—morramomin’!”</p> - -<p>Here he again collapsed on to the floor, from which he had been slowly -raising himself as he spoke; then, apparently deciding to abandon the -attempt to resume the perpendicular, he set off at a surprising pace on -all fours, and Anderton’s last glimpse of him was the soles of his boots -as he vanished into his cabin.</p> - -<p>He finished stowing his possessions, and then went ashore to make one or -two small purchases. The sun was not quite gone, and the greater part of -the dock was still flooded with rosy light. But the Unlucky “Altisidora” -lay now all in shadow, except for the gilt vane at her main truck which -flashed back the last rays of sunset. She looked aloof, alone, cut off -from her fellows by some mysterious and unmerited doom—a ship under a -dark star.</p> - - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>It wasn’t long before she began to live up to her reputation. She -started in quite a small way by fouling her anchor off Gravesend, and -giving every one a peck of trouble clearing it. Incidentally, it was Mr. -Mate’s morning-after head that was responsible for the mess. But that -didn’t matter: it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146">{146}</a></span> went down to the ship’s account all the same. Her -next exploit was to cut a hay barge in two in the estuary. It was foggy -at the time, the barge’s skipper was drunk, and the “crew”—a boy of -sixteen or so—lost his head when the ship loomed suddenly up right on -top of him, and put his helm up instead of down. But what of that? She -was the Unlucky “Altisidora,” or very likely the barge wouldn’t have -been there at all. Down went another black mark against her name.</p> - -<p>The captain, in the meantime, had apparently gone into retreat like an -Anglican parson. He had dived below as soon as he came on board, and -there he remained, to all intents and purposes as remote and -inaccessible as the Grand Lama of Tibet, until the ship was well to -westward of the Lizard. This, Anderton learned, was his invariable -custom when nearing or leaving land. Mr. Rumbold, the mate, defined his -malady briefly and scornfully as “soundings-itis.” “No nerve—that’s -what’s the matter with him: as much use as the ship’s figurehead and a -damn sight less ornamental!”</p> - -<p>Not that it seemed to make much difference whether he was there or not. -He was a singularly colourless little man, whose very features were so -curiously indeterminate that his face made no more impression on the -mind than if it had been a sheet of blank paper. It seemed to be a -positive agony to him to give an order. Even in ordinary conversation he -was never quite sure which word to put first. He never finished a -sentence or even a phrase straight ahead, but dropped it and made a -fresh start, only to change his mind a second time and run back to pick -up what he had discarded. And this same<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147">{147}</a></span> painful uncertainty was evident -in all he did. His fingers were constantly busy—fiddling with his -beard, smoothing his tie, twiddling the buttons of his coat. Even his -eyes were irresolute—wandering hither and thither as if they couldn’t -decide to look at the same thing two minutes together. He had the look -of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and so, in point of fact, -he was. He had jockeyed himself somehow into the command of the -“Altisidora,” through family influence or something of the kind, and had -lived ever since in momentary dread of his unfitness for his position -being discovered.</p> - -<p>Anderton, for his part, owed to the skipper’s invisibility one of the -most unforgettable moments of his whole life. The pilot had just gone -ashore. The mate was below. To all intent Anderton had the ship to -himself.</p> - -<p>A glorious moment—a magnificent moment! He was nineteen—not six months -out of his time—and he was in sole charge of a ship—and such a ship. -The veriest cockboat might well have gained a borrowed splendour in the -circumstances; but here was no need for the rose-coloured spectacles of -idealizing youth. Tier on tier, her canvas rose rounding and dimpling -against the blue of the sky. She curtseyed, bowed, dipped, and rose on -the long lift of the seas. Her hull quivered like a thing alive. Oh, she -was beautiful! beautiful! Whatever life might yet hold for him of -happiness or success, it could bring again no moment quite so splendid -as this.</p> - -<p>Mr. Rumbold, after a few days of the most appalling moroseness while the -drink was working out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148">{148}</a></span> his system, developed, rather to Anderton’s -surprise, into a quite entertaining companion, possessed of the relics -of a good education, a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of unprintable -stories, and a pretty if slightly bitter wit. He was perfectly conscious -of the failing that had made a mess of his career. Anderton guessed from -a hint he let drop one day that he had once had a command and had lost -it, probably through over-indulgence in the good old English pastime -known as “lifting the elbow.” “A sailor’s life would be all right if it -was all like this,” he broke out one day—it was one of those glorious -exhilarating days in the Trades when the whole world seems full of -rejoicing—“it’s the damned seaports that play hell with a fellow, -Anderton, you take my word for it! Drink, my boy, that’s what does -it—drink and little dirty sluts of women—that’s what we risk our lives -every day earning money for! It’s all a big joke—a big bloody joke, my -son—and the only thing to do is to laugh at it!” And off he went again -on one of his Rabelaisian stories.</p> - -<p>The ship fought her way to the southward against a succession of -baffling airs and head winds where the Trades should have been, and a -few degrees north of the Line ran into a belt of flat calm which bade -fair to keep her there until the crack of doom. It wasn’t a case of the -usual unreliable, irritating Doldrum weather. It was a dead flat calm in -which day after day came and went while the sails drooped lifeless -against the masts, and men’s nerves got more and more on edge, and -Anderton began to have visions of the months and the years passing by, -and the weed growing long and green on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149">{149}</a></span> “Altisidora’s” hull like the -whiskers of some marine deity, and himself returning, one day, old and -white-haired and toothless, to a world which had forgotten his -existence. To crown all, the melancholy steward at this time suffered a -sad bereavement. His cat was missing—a ginger-and-white specimen, -gaunt, dingy, and singularly unlovely after the manner of most ship’s -cats, but a great favourite with her proud owner, as well as with all -the fo’c’sle. The steward wandered about like a disconsolate ghost, -making sibilant noises of a persuasive nature in all sorts of unexpected -places, which the mate appeared to find peculiarly irritating. The -steward had only to murmur “P’sss—p’sss—p’sss!” under his breath, and -out would come Mr. Rumbold’s head from his cabin with an accompanying -roar of “Damn you—shishing that infernal cat again! If I hear any more -of it I’ll wring your neck!”</p> - -<p>But good and bad times and all times pass over—and there came at last a -day when the “Altisidora’s” idle sails once more filled to a heartening -breeze, and the seas slipped bubbling under her keel, and she sped -rejoicing on her way as if no dark star brooded over her.</p> - -<p>The steward poked his head out of his pantry that morning as Anderton -passed, with a smile that was like a convulsion of nature.</p> - -<p>“Ol’ Ginger’s turned up again, sir!... What do you think of ’er?”</p> - -<p>He indicated a small box in the corner in which a gently palpitating -mass of kittenhood explained how Ginger had been spending her time. The -prodigal in the meantime was parading proudly round the steward’s legs, -thrumming to the end of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150">{150}</a></span> her thin tail with the cat’s ever-recurring -surprise and delight over the miracle of maternity.</p> - -<p>“Artful, ain’t she?” said the steward. “Right down in the lazareet, she -was! Must ’ave poked ’erself down there w’en I was gettin’ up some -stores las’ week. That’s ’cos I drahned ’er last lot—see? Wot, drahn -these ’ere! No blinkin’ fear! W’y, they’re <i>black</i> ’uns—ketch me -drahnin’ a black cat!”</p> - -<p>Whether the advent of the black kittens had anything to do with it or -not, it certainly seemed for a time as if the luck had turned. Day after -day the ship reeled the knots off behind her at a steady fifteen. Every -one’s spirits rose. “Wot price the hunlucky ‘Altisidora’ now?” said Bill -Green to the man next him on the yard. They were tarring down, their -tar-pots slung round their necks as they worked. “There you go, you -ruddy fool, askin’ for trouble!” replied Mike, the ancient shellback, -wise in the lore of the sea. “Didn’t I tell ye now?” Bill’s tar-pot had -given an unexpected tilt and spread its contents impartially over Bill’s -person and the deck below. “If you was in the Downeaster ‘Elias K. -Slocum’ wot I sailed in once, you’d git a dose o’ belayin’ pin soup for -supper over that, my son, as’d learn you to play tricks with luck.”</p> - -<p>The luck didn’t last long. Possibly a hatful of blind black kittens had -not the efficacy as mascots of a full-grown black Tom. Ginger’s progeny -undeniably looked very small, helpless, squirming morsels to contend -successfully against the Dark Gods.</p> - -<p>The ship was by now getting into the high latitudes, and sail had to be -gradually shortened until she was running down the Easting under lower<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151">{151}</a></span> -topsails and foresail. Anderton had been keeping the middle watch, and -had gone below, tired out, after a night of “All hands on deck.” It -seemed to him that his eyes were no sooner closed than once again the -familiar summons beat upon the doors of his consciousness, and he -stumbled on deck, still only half roused from sleep, to find a scene of -the wildest confusion.</p> - -<p>A sudden shift of wind had caught the ship aback. Both the foremast and -mainmast were hanging over the side in a raffle of rigging, only the -mizen, with the rags of the lower topsail still clinging to the yard, -being left standing. The helmsman had been swept overboard, to be seen -no more, and the ship lay wallowing helplessly in the trough of the sea, -under the grey light of the dreary dawn—a sight to daunt the stoutest -heart.</p> - -<p>It was then that the mate, Mr. Rumbold, revealed a new and hitherto -unsuspected side of his character. Anderton had first known him as a -drunken and shameless sot; next, he had found in him an entertaining -companion and a man of the world whose wide experience of life in its -more sordid aspects compelled the unwilling admiration of youth. But now -he recognized in him a fine and resourceful seaman and a determined and -indomitable leader of men in the face of instant danger. The suddenness -and completeness of the disaster which might well have induced the -numbness of despair, only seemed to arouse in him a spirit in proportion -to the needs of the moment. During the long hours while the ship fought -for her life—during the whole of the next day, when the pumps were kept -going incessantly to free her from the volume of water<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152">{152}</a></span> that had flooded -her hold—when all hands laboured to rig jury-masts and bend sufficient -sail to keep her going before the wind—he it was who continually urged, -encouraged, cajoled, and drove another ounce of effort out of men who -thought they had no more fight left in their bodies. He it was who -worked hardest of all, and who, when things seemed at their worst and -blackest, brought a grin to haggard, worn-out faces with a shanty stave -of an irresistible humour and—be it added—a devastating -unprintableness.</p> - -<p>The ship managed to hobble into Cape Town under her jury rig, where Mr. -Rumbold promptly vanished into his customary haunts, to reappear just -before the ship sailed after her refit, the same sprawling and -disreputable wreck he had been when Anderton first saw him. He never -again showed that side of himself that had come to the surface on the -night of disaster; but Anderton never quite forgot it, and because of -the memory of it he spent many a patient hour in port tracking the mate -to his favourite unsavoury resorts, and dragging him, maudlin, riotous, -or quarrelsome, back again to the ship.</p> - -<p>The “Altisidora” arrived in Sydney a hundred and forty days out. Her -fame had gone before her, and she attracted quite an amount of attention -in the capacity of a nautical curiosity. Moreover, the legend grew -apace, as is the way of legends the world over, and has been since the -beginning of time. Citizens taking the air on the water-front pointed -her out to one another. “That’s the hoodoo ship. Good looker, too, ain’t -she? Drowns half her crew every voyage. Wonder is anyone’ll sign in -her!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153">{153}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>And so it went on. She wandered from port to port, leaving bits of -herself, like an absent-minded dowager, all over the seven seas. She -lost spars—she lost sails—she lost hencoops, harness casks, Lord knows -what! She scraped bits off wharves; she lost her sheer in open -roadsteads and barged into other ships. She ran short of food and had to -supplicate passing ships for help. When she couldn’t think of anything -else to do she even tried to run down her own tug. And yet in spite of -it all—perhaps, for sailormen are queer beings, because of it all—her -men liked her. They cursed her, they chid her, kindly, without rancour, -as one might chide a charming but erring woman; but they stuck by her -all the same. The old sailmaker, a West Country man who had lost all his -teeth on hard tack, had been with her for years. “You don’t mind sailing -in an unlucky ship, then, Sails,” said Anderton to him one day, when he -was helping him to cut a new upper topsail to replace one of the ship’s -casual losses.</p> - -<p>The old man pushed his spectacles up on to his bald head, and looked out -over the sea with eyes flattened by age and faded to the remote blue of -an early morning sky when mist is clearing.</p> - -<p>“I rackon’t ain’t no use worryin’ ’bout luck, sir,” he said, “so long’s -there’s a job o’ work wants doin’.”</p> - -<p>From Sydney she went over to Newcastle to load coal for Chile, then on -to ’Frisco with nitrates, ’Frisco to Caleta Buena again, over again to -Newcastle, and last of all to Sydney once more to load wool for home.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154">{154}</a></span></p> - - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>Sixty miles west of St. Agnes Light the Unlucky “Altisidora” leaned to -the gentle quartering breeze, homeward bound on the last lap of her -three years’ voyage.</p> - -<p>Anderton stood on the poop, gazing out into the starry darkness that -held England folded to its heart. Above him sail piled on sail rose up -in the moonlight, like some tall, fantastic shrine wrought in ebony and -silver to an unknown and mysterious god. The water slipped past her -silently as a swimming seal, with a faint delicate hiss like the tearing -of silk as the clipper’s bow cleft it. His mind ran now forward, now -backward, as men’s minds do when they are nearing one of the milestones -of life.</p> - -<p>He remembered almost with a pang of regret the heady exultation which -had been his when he stood on this poop alone for the first time, -realizing that something had slipped away from him unnoticed which he -could never hope to recapture this side the grave. Three years is a long -while, especially to the young; but it was not in point of actual time, -but in experience, that so wide and deep a gulf yawned between himself -and the boy who three years since had left these shores he was now -approaching. She had taught him many things, that old ship—more, -perhaps, than he himself knew....</p> - -<p>Rumbold wandered up on to the poop and began to tell smutty tales. The -restlessness which always consumed him when the ship was nearing land -was strong on him. Anderton felt a great pity for him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155">{155}</a></span> It would be the -old tale, he supposed, as soon as the ship was made fast: this man, who -had it in him to fight a losing game with death with a laugh on his -lips, would become to the casual observer, a lewd, drunken blackguard, -wallowing in the lowest gutters of Sailortown. What would become of him, -he wondered—picturing him dropping steadily lower and lower on the -ladder, driven to take a second mate’s berth, thence dropping to bos’n, -last to seaman—so on until some final pit of degradation should swallow -him up for ever?</p> - -<p>The man was in so queer a mood that Anderton hesitated about leaving the -deck to him. But he reflected that he would have little chance of rest -when she was fairly in the Channel, and decided to go down for a stretch -off the land, so as to have his wits about him when they were most -needed.</p> - -<p>He did not know how long he had been asleep when he woke with a start. -The ship’s bells were just striking. He counted the strokes—three -double, one single—seven bells. He might as well go on deck now. She -must have made a landfall by now.</p> - -<p>An inexplicable premonition had come over him, which he refused to admit -even to himself, that all was not well. He listened: the ship still held -on her course. There was no sound but the restless chirp of a block -somewhere aloft, the creak of a yard moving against the parrals, the -constant “hush-hush” of the waves as they hastened under the keel. He -slipped into his coat and passed out into the saloon.</p> - -<p>The lamp over the table was still burning smokily, mingling its light -with the cold grey light of morning, and giving to the scene that air of -desolation which<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156">{156}</a></span> perhaps nothing else can impart so completely. The -place reeked of drink. Under the lamp, sprawling half across the table, -was Rumbold. One whisky bottle lay on the floor, another on the table -beside his hand, from which the last dregs spattered lazily to the -floor.</p> - -<p>The swine—the drunken swine! Anderton seized him by the arm and shook -him furiously.</p> - -<p>Rumbold lifted his ravaged face from the table and stared at him -stupidly.</p> - -<p>“Thish bockle’sh—water o’ knowledge—good’n’ evil,” he said inanely. -“Mush make—inquirations—morramornin’!”</p> - -<p>His head dropped on his arms again.</p> - -<p>Anderton took the companion in a couple of bounds.</p> - -<p>It was like stepping out into wet cotton-wool. The stars were gone. The -sky was gone, but for one pale high blue patch right overhead. The ship -disappeared into the fog forward of the after hatch as completely as if -she had been cut in two. There wasn’t a soul to be seen but the man at -the wheel, a stolid young Finn who would go on steering the course that -had been given him until the skies fell.</p> - -<p>Anderton started to run forward, shouting as he went; and his voice, -tossed back at him out of the dimness, hit him in the face like a stone.</p> - -<p>The next moment, the ship had struck.</p> - -<p>She took the ground, so it seemed at the time, quite gently: with hardly -a jar, hardly a tremor, only with a little delicate contented shiver all -through her graceful being, like someone settling down well pleased to -rest. You might almost fancy that she said to herself:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157">{157}</a></span></p> - -<p>“There—I have done with it all at last—done with bearing the blame of -your sins and follies, your weakness, your incapacity, your drunkenness, -your indecision. I have been your scapegoat too long. Henceforward, bear -your own burdens!”</p> - -<p>And just then the mist rolled off like a curtain. She was right under -the land, in the midst of a great jagged confusion of rocks that reached -out to sea for nearly a quarter of a mile. The wonder was she had not -struck sooner. You could see the pink tufts of thrift clinging to the -cliff face, the streaks of green and yellow lichen on the rock, the thin -line of soil crested with grass at the top. Above, sheep were grazing, -and there came the faint querulous cry of young lambs. A scene to fill a -sailor’s heart with sentimental delight under any conditions but these!</p> - -<p>There was nothing to be done. The Unlucky “Altisidora” had paid her last -tribute to the Dark Gods. The ship lay jammed hard and fast on a sunken -reef, and was making water rapidly.</p> - -<p>They left the ship at sunset. The skipper took his seat in the boat -without a word or a backward glance; the mate—sobered for once—hung -his head like a beaten dog. The melancholy steward carried the faithful -Ginger in a basket.</p> - -<p>“Ain’t been such a bad ol’ gal, ’as she?” That was the gist of the -crew’s valedictions. They set off in single file up the narrow path that -led to the top of the cliff—an oddly incongruous little procession in -that rural setting.</p> - -<p>Anderton came last of all. One by one his shipmates topped the crest and -vanished. But still he lingered. He wanted just for a minute to be -alone<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158">{158}</a></span> with this old ship that had come so strangely into his life and -was now to go out of it as strangely.</p> - -<p>From where he stood he looked down upon her, lying almost at his feet. -He could see all her decks, the poop, the galley, the forecastle -head—everything that had grown so familiar to him through years of ship -incident and ship routine. How friendly it all looked, now that he was -leaving it! He wondered how he could ever have thought her the agent of -Dark Gods—this patient, lovely, and enduring thing that had done man’s -bidding so long—like him, the instrument of forces beyond her knowing -or his. How good it had all been—how good! The dangers, the hardships, -the toil, the rest, the rough and the smooth of it ... the voices of his -shipmates, the courage and humour of them, their homely faces....</p> - -<p>She was part of his life, part of himself, for ever! He would remember -in years to come a hundred little things that now he did not even know -he remembered, yet which lay safely folded away in the treasure-house of -memory, till some chance word, some trick of sun or shade, some smell, -some sound, should bring them to light ... and he would say, “Aye, that -was in the old ‘Altisidora,’<span class="lftspc">”</span> ... and perhaps be silent a little, and be -a little happy and sad together, as men are when they think upon their -youth....</p> - -<p>Was that what the old ship had been trying to tell him all the time—the -secret that had fled before him round the world, for ever near, yet for -ever just out of reach, like the many-coloured arch of spray that hung -gleaming before her bows? That the hard things of life were the things -best worth having in<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159">{159}</a></span> the end?... A big green wave that flooded over -you, that took the breath out of you, that went clean over your -head—life was like that. Run away from it and it would sweep you off -your feet, smash you up against things, drown you, very likely, at the -finish.... You had got to hang on to something, no matter what—a job of -work, an idea, anything so long as you could get a grip on it—hang on -like grim death, and the wave would go over you and leave you safe and -sound....</p> - -<p>The sky was full of windy plumes of cloud. A long swell had begun to -thunder in from the west, grinding and pounding her with leisurely -irresistible strokes like blows from a giant hammer. The sea, the -breaker of ships, was already at his work of destruction. Soon there -would be a roaring as of a thousand chariots along all the headlands, -and the whole coast would be one thunder and confusion of blown foam.</p> - -<p>A call came to him from the cliff-top. It was time to be going—time for -him to leave her! Presently he too topped the crest, and, when he next -looked back, he could see the ship no longer. The Unlucky “Altisidora” -had passed from his sight for ever.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160">{160}</a></span></p> - -<p class="fint"> -PRINTED BY<br /> -JARROLD AND SONS LTD<br /> -NORWICH<br /> -</p> - -<hr class="full" /> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE CLIPPER SHIPS ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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