The Mutiny of the Elsinore
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The pain of the fumes was bad enough, but the real hardship was the dizziness I suffered. I blundered into the steward’s pantry, and out of it, missed the cross-hall, stumbled through the next starboard opening in the long hall, and found myself bent double by violent collision with the dining-room table.
But I had my bearings. Feeling my way around the table and bumping most of the poisoned breath out of me against the rotund-bellied stove, I emerged in the cross-hall and made my way to starboard. Here, at the base of the chart-room stairway, I gained the hall that led aft. By this time my own situation seemed so serious that, careless of any collision, I went aft in long leaps.
Margaret’s door was open. I plunged into her room. The moment I drew the blanket-thickness from my eyes I knew blindness and a modicum of what Bert Rhine must have suffered. Oh, the intolerable bite of the sulphur in my lungs, nostrils, eyes, and brain! No light burned in the room. I could only strangle and stumble for’ard to Margaret’s bed, upon which I collapsed.
She was not there. I felt about, and I felt only the warm hollow her body had left in the under-sheet. Even in my agony and helplessness the intimacy of that warmth her body had left was very dear to me. Between the lack of oxygen in my lungs (due to the blankets), the pain of the sulphur, and the mortal dizziness in my brain, I felt that I might well cease there where the linen warmed my hand.
Perhaps I should have ceased, had I not heard a terrible coughing from along the hall. It was new life to me. I fell from bed to floor and managed to get upright until I gained the hall, where again I fell. Thereafter I crawled on hands and knees to the foot of the stairway. By means of the newel-post I drew myself upright and listened. Near me something moved and strangled. I fell upon it and found in my arms all the softness of Margaret.
How describe that battle up the stairway? It was a crucifixion of struggle, an age-long nightmare of agony. Time after time, as my consciousness blurred, the temptation was upon me to cease all effort and let myself blur down into the ultimate dark. I fought my way step by step. Margaret was now quite unconscious, and I lifted her body step by step, or dragged it several steps at a time, and fell with it, and back with it, and lost much that had been so hardly gained. And yet out of it all this I remember: that warm soft body of hers was the dearest thing in the world – vastly more dear than the pleasant land I remotely remembered, than all the books and all the humans I had ever known, than the deck above, with its sweet pure air softly blowing under the cool starry sky.
As I look back upon it I am aware of one thing: the thought of leaving her there and saving myself never crossed my mind. The one place for me was where she was.
Truly, this which I write seems absurd and purple; yet it was not absurd during those long minutes on the chart-room stairway. One must taste death for a few centuries of such agony ere he can receive sanction for purple passages.
And as I fought my screaming flesh, my reeling brain, and climbed that upward way, I prayed one prayer: that the chart-house doors out upon the poop might not be shut. Life and death lay right there in that one point of the issue. Was there any creature of my creatures aft with common sense and anticipation sufficient to make him think to open those doors? How I yearned for one man, for one proved henchman, such as Mr. Pike, to be on the poop! As it was, with the sole exception of Tom Spink and Buckwheat, my men were Asiatics.
I gained the top of the stairway, but was too far gone to rise to my feet. Nor could I rise upright on my knees. I crawled like any four-legged animal – nay, I wormed my way like a snake, prone to the deck. It was a matter of several feet to the doorway. I died a score of times in those several feet; but ever I endured the agony of resurrection and dragged Margaret with me. Sometimes the full strength I could exert did not move her, and I lay with her and coughed and strangled my way through to another resurrection.
And the door was open. The doors to starboard and to port were both open; and as the Elsinore rolled a draught through the chart-house hall my lungs filled with pure, cool air. As I drew myself across the high threshold and pulled Margaret after me, from very far away I heard the cries of men and the reports of rifle and revolver. And, ere I fainted into the blackness, on my side, staring, my pain gone so beyond endurance that it had achieved its own anæsthesia, I glimpsed, dream-like and distant, the sharply silhouetted poop-rail, dark forms that cut and thrust and smote, and, beyond, the mizzen-mast brightly lighted by our illuminators.
* * * * *Well, the mutineers failed to take the poop. My five Asiatics and two white men had held the citadel while Margaret and I lay unconscious side by side.
The whole affair was very simple. Modern maritime quarantine demands that ships shall not carry vermin that are themselves plague-carriers. In the donkey-engine section of the for’ard house is a complete fumigating apparatus. The mutineers had merely to lay and fasten the pipes aft across the coal, to chisel a hole through the double-deck of steel and wood under the cabin, and to connect up and begin to pump. Buckwheat had fallen asleep and been awakened by the strangling sulphur fumes. We in the high place had been smoked out by our rascals like so many rats.
It was Wada who had opened one of the doors. The old steward had opened the other. Together they had attempted the descent of the stairway and been driven back by the fumes. Then they had engaged in the struggle to repel the rush from for’ard.
Margaret and I are agreed that sulphur, excessively inhaled, leaves the lungs sore. Only now, after a lapse of a dozen hours, can we draw breath in anything that resembles comfort. But still my lungs were not so sore as to prevent my telling her what I had learned she meant to me. And yet she is only a woman – I tell her so; I tell her that there are at least seven hundred and fifty millions of two-legged, long-haired, gentle-voiced, soft-bodied, female humans like her on the planet, and that she is really swamped by the immensity of numbers of her sex and kind. But I tell her something more. I tell her that of all of them she is the only one. And, better yet, to myself and for myself, I believe it. I know it. The last least part of me and all of me proclaims it.
Love is wonderful. It is the everlasting and miraculous amazement. Oh, trust me, I know the old, hard scientific method of weighing and calculating and classifying love. It is a profound foolishness, a cosmic trick and quip, to the contemplative eye of the philosopher – yes, and of the futurist. But when one forsakes such intellectual flesh-pots and becomes mere human and male human, in short, a lover, then all he may do, and which is what he cannot help doing, is to yield to the compulsions of being and throw both his arms around love and hold it closer to him than is his own heart close to him. This is the summit of his life, and of man’s life. Higher than this no man may rise. The philosophers toil and struggle on mole-hill peaks far below. He who has not loved has not tasted the ultimate sweet of living. I know. I love Margaret, a woman. She is desirable.
CHAPTER L
In the past twenty-four hours many things have happened. To begin with, we nearly lost the steward in the second dog-watch last evening. Through the slits in the ventilator some man thrust a knife into the sacks of flour and cut them wide open from top to bottom. In the dark the flour poured to the deck unobserved.
Of course, the man behind could not see through the screen of empty sacks, but he took a blind pot-shot at point-blank range when the steward went by, slip-sloppily dragging the heels of his slippers. Fortunately it was a miss, but so close a miss was it that his cheek and neck were burned with powder grains.
At six bells in the first watch came another surprise. Tom Spink came to me where I stood guard at the for’ard end of the poop. His voice shook as he spoke.
“For the love of God, sir, they’ve come,” he said.
“Who?” I asked sharply.
“Them,” he chattered. “The ones that come aboard off the Horn, sir, the three drownded sailors. They’re there, aft, sir, the three of ’em, standin’ in a row by the wheel.”
“How did they get there?”
“Bein’ warlocks, they flew, sir. You didn’t see ’m go by you, did you, sir?”
“No,” I admitted. “They never went by me.”
Poor Tom Spink groaned.
“But there are lines aloft there on which they could cross over from mizzen to jigger,” I added. “Send Wada to me.”
When the latter relieved me I went aft. And there in a row were our three pale-haired storm-waifs with the topaz eyes. In the light of a bull’s-eye, held on them by Louis, their eyes never seemed more like the eyes of great cats. And, heavens, they purred! At least, the inarticulate noises they made sounded more like purring than anything else. That these sounds meant friendliness was very evident. Also, they held out their hands, palms upward, in unmistakable sign of peace. Each in turn doffed his cap and placed my hand for a moment on his head. Without doubt this meant their offer of fealty, their acceptance of me as master.
I nodded my head. There was nothing to be said to men who purred like cats, while sign-language in the light of the bull’s-eye was rather difficult. Tom Spink groaned protest when I told Louis to take them below and give them blankets.
I made the sleep-sign to them, and they nodded gratefully, hesitated, then pointed to their mouths and rubbed their stomachs.
“Drowned men do not eat,” I laughed to Tom Spink. “Go down and watch them. Feed them up, Louis, all they want. It’s a good sign of short rations for’ard.”
At the end of half an hour Tom Spink was back.
“Well, did they eat?” I challenged him.
But he was unconvinced. The very quantity they had eaten was a suspicious thing, and, further, he had heard of a kind of ghost that devoured dead bodies in graveyards. Therefore, he concluded, mere non-eating was no test for a ghost.
The third event of moment occurred this morning at seven o’clock. The mutineers called for a truce; and when Nosey Murphy, the Maltese Cockney, and the inevitable Charles Davis stood beneath me on the main deck, their faces showed lean and drawn. Famine had been my great ally. And in truth, with Margaret beside me in that high place of the break of the poop, as I looked down on the hungry wretches I felt very strong. Never had the inequality of numbers fore and aft been less than now. The three deserters, added to our own nine, made twelve of us, while the mutineers, after subtracting Ditman Olansen, Bob and the Faun, totalled only an even score. And of these Bert Rhine must certainly be in a bad way, while there were many weaklings, such as Sundry Buyers, Nancy, Larry, and Lars Jacobsen.
“Well, what do you want?” I demanded. “I haven’t much time to waste. Breakfast is ready and waiting.”
Charles Davis started to speak, but I shut him off.
“I’ll have nothing out of you, Davis. At least not now. Later on, when I’m in that court of law you’ve bothered me with for half the voyage, you’ll get your turn at talking. And when that time comes don’t forget that I shall have a few words to say.”
Again he began, but this time was stopped by Nosey Murphy.
“Aw, shut your trap, Davis,” the gangster snarled, “or I’ll shut it for you.” He glanced up to me. “We want to go back to work, that’s what we want.”
“Which is not the way to ask for it,” I answered.
“Sir,” he added hastily.
“That’s better,” I commented.
“Oh, my God, sir, don’t let ’m come aft.” Tom Spink muttered hurriedly in my ear. “That’d be the end of all of us. And even if they didn’t get you an’ the rest, they’d heave me over some dark night. They ain’t never goin’ to forgive me, sir, for joinin’ in with the afterguard.”
I ignored the interruption and addressed the gangster.
“There’s nothing like going to work when you want to as badly as you seem to. Suppose all hands get sail on her just to show good intention.”
“We’d like to eat first, sir,” he objected.
“I’d like to see you setting sail, first,” was my reply. “And you may as well get it from me straight that what I like goes, aboard this ship.” – I almost said “hooker.”
Nosey Murphy hesitated and looked to the Maltese Cockney for counsel. The latter debated, as if gauging the measure of his weakness while he stared aloft at the work involved. Finally he nodded.
“All right, sir,” the gangster spoke up. “We’ll do it.. but can’t something be cookin’ in the galley while we’re doin’ it?”
I shook my head.
“I didn’t have that in mind, and I don’t care to change my mind now. When every sail is stretched and every yard braced, and all that mess of gear cleared up, food for a good meal will be served out. You needn’t bother about the spanker nor the mizzen-braces. We’ll make your work lighter by that much.”
In truth, as they climbed aloft they showed how miserably weak they were. There were some too feeble to go aloft. Poor Sundry Buyers continually pressed his abdomen as he toiled around the deck-capstans; and never was Nancy’s face quite so forlorn as when he obeyed the Maltese Cockney’s command and went up to loose the mizzen-skysail.
In passing, I must note one delicious miracle that was worked before our eyes. They were hoisting the mizzen-upper-topsail-yard by means of one of the patent deck-capstans. Although they had reversed the gear so as to double the purchase, they were having a hard time of it. Lars Jacobsen was limping on his twice-broken leg, and with him were Sundry Buyers, Tony the Greek, Bombini, and Mulligan Jacobs. Nosey Murphy held the turn.
When they stopped from sheer exhaustion Murphy’s glance chanced to fall on Charles Davis, the one man who had not worked since the outset of the voyage and who was not working now.
“Bear a hand, Davis,” the gangster called.
Margaret gurgled low laughter in my ear as she caught the drift of the episode.
The sea-lawyer looked at the other in amazement ere he answered:
“I guess not.”
After nodding Sundry Buyers over to him to take the turn Murphy straightened his back and walked close to Davis, then said very quietly:
“I guess yes.”
That was all. For a space neither spoke. Davis seemed to be giving the matter judicial consideration. The men at the capstan panted, rested, and looked on – all save Bombini, who slunk across the deck until he stood at Murphy’s shoulder.
Under such circumstances the decision Charles Davis gave was eminently the right one, although even then he offered a compromise.
“I’ll hold the turn,” he volunteered.
“You’ll lump around one of them capstan-bars,” Murphy said.
The sea-lawyer made no mistake. He knew in all absoluteness that he was choosing between life and death, and he limped over to the capstan and found his place. And as the work started, and as he toiled around and around the narrow circle, Margaret and I shamelessly and loudly laughed our approval. And our own men stole for’ard along the poop to peer down at the spectacle of Charles Davis at work.
All of which must have pleased Nosey Murphy, for, as he continued to hold the turn and coil down, he kept a critical eye on Davis.
“More juice, Davis!” he commanded with abrupt sharpness.
And Davis, with a startle, visibly increased his efforts.
This was too much for our fellows, who, Asiatics and all, applauded with laughter and hand-clapping. And what could I do? It was a gala day, and our faithful ones deserved some little recompense of amusement. So I ignored the breach of discipline and of poop etiquette by strolling away aft with Margaret.
At the wheel was one of our storm-waifs. I set the course due east for Valparaiso, and sent the steward below to bring up sufficient food for one substantial meal for the mutineers.
“When do we get our next grub, sir?” Nosey Murphy asked, as the steward served the supplies down to him from the poop.
“At midday,” I answered. “And as long as you and your gang are good, you’ll get your grub three times each day. You can choose your own watches any way you please. But the ship’s work must be done, and done properly. If it isn’t, then the grub stops. That will do. Now go for’ard.”
“One thing more, sir,” he said quickly. “Bert Rhine is awful bad. He can’t see, sir. It looks like he’s going to lose his face. He can’t sleep. He groans all the time.”
* * * * *It was a busy day. I made a selection of things from the medicine-chest for the acid-burned gangster; and, finding that Murphy knew how to manipulate a hypodermic syringe, entrusted him with one.
Then, too, I practised with the sextant and think I fairly caught the sun at noon and correctly worked up the observation. But this is latitude, and is comparatively easy. Longitude is more difficult. But I am reading up on it.
All afternoon a gentle northerly fan of air snored the Elsinore through the water at a five-knot clip, and our course lay east for land, for the habitations of men, for the law and order that men institute whenever they organize into groups. Once in Valparaiso, with police flag flying, our mutineers will be taken care of by the shore authorities.
Another thing I did was to rearrange our watches aft so as to split up the three storm-visitors. Margaret took one in her watch, along with the two sail-makers, Tom Spink, and Louis. Louis is half white, and all trustworthy, so that, at all times, on deck or below, he is told off to the task of never letting the topaz-eyed one out of his sight.
In my watch are the steward, Buckwheat, Wada, and the other two topaz-eyed ones. And to one of them Wada is told off; and to the other is assigned the steward. We are not taking any chances. Always, night and day, on duty or off, these storm-strangers will have one of our proved men watching them.
* * * * *Yes; and I tried the stranger men out last evening. It was after a council with Margaret. She was sure, and I agreed with her, that the men for’ard are not blindly yielding to our bringing them in to be prisoners in Valparaiso. As we tried to forecast it, their plan is to desert the Elsinore in the boats as soon as we fetch up with the land. Also, considering some of the bitter lunatic spirits for’ard, there would be a large chance of their drilling the Elsinore’s steel sides and scuttling her ere they took to the boats. For scuttling a ship is surely as ancient a practice as mutiny on the high seas.
So it was, at one in the morning, that I tried out our strangers. Two of them I took for’ard with me in the raid on the small boats. One I left beside Margaret, who kept charge of the poop. On the other side of him stood the steward with his big hacking knife. By signs I had made it clear to him, and to his two comrades who were to accompany me for’ard, that at the first sign of treachery he would be killed. And not only did the old steward, with signs emphatic and unmistakable, pledge himself to perform the execution, but we were all convinced that he was eager for the task.
With Margaret I also left Buckwheat and Tom Spink. Wada, the two sail-makers, Louis, and the two topaz-eyed ones accompanied me. In addition to fighting weapons we were armed with axes. We crossed the main deck unobserved, gained the bridge by way of the ’midship-house, and by way of the bridge gained the top of the for’ard-house. Here were the first boats we began work on; but, first of all, I called in the lookout from the forecastle-head.
He was Mulligan Jacobs; and he picked his way back across the wreck of the bridge where the fore-topgallant-yard still lay, and came up to me unafraid, as implacable and bitter as ever.
“Jacobs,” I whispered, “you are to stay here beside me until we finish the job of smashing the boats. Do you get that?”
“As though it could fright me,” he growled all too loudly. “Go ahead for all I care. I know your game. And I know the game of the hell’s maggots under our feet this minute. ’Tis they that’d desert in the boats. ’Tis you that’ll smash the boats an’ jail ’m kit an’ crew.”
“S-s-s-h,” I vainly interpolated.
“What of it?” he went on as loudly as ever. “They’re sleepin’ with full bellies. The only night watch we keep is the lookout. Even Rhine’s asleep. A few jolts of the needle has put a clapper to his eternal moanin’. Go on with your work. Smash the boats. ’Tis nothin’ I care. ’Tis well I know my own crooked back is worth more to me than the necks of the scum of the world below there.”
“If you felt that way, why didn’t you join us?” I queried.
“Because I like you no better than them an’ not half so well. They are what you an’ your fathers have made ’em. An’ who in hell are you an’ your fathers? Robbers of the toil of men. I like them little. I like you and your fathers not at all. Only I like myself and me crooked back that’s a livin’ proof there ain’t no God and makes Browning a liar.”
“Join us now,” I urged, meeting him in his mood. “It will be easier for your back.”
“To hell with you,” was his answer. “Go ahead an’ smash the boats. You can hang some of them. But you can’t touch me with the law. ’Tis me that’s a crippled creature of circumstance, too weak to raise a hand against any man – a feather blown about by the windy contention of men strong in their back an’ brainless in their heads.”
“As you please,” I said.
“As I can’t help pleasin’,” he retorted, “bein’ what I am an’ so made for the little flash between the darknesses which men call life. Now why couldn’t I a-ben a butterfly, or a fat pig in a full trough, or a mere mortal man with a straight back an’ women to love me? Go on an’ smash the boats. Play hell to the top of your bent. Like me, you’ll end in the darkness. And your darkness’ll be – as dark as mine.”
“A full belly puts the spunk back into you,” I sneered.
“’Tis on an empty belly that the juice of my dislike turns to acid. Go on an’ smash the boats.”
“Whose idea was the sulphur?” I asked.
“I’m not tellin’ you the man, but I envied him until it showed failure. An’ whose idea was it – to douse the sulphuric into Rhine’s face? He’ll lose that same face, from the way it’s shedding.”
“Nor will I tell you,” I said. “Though I will tell you that I am glad the idea was not mine.”
“Oh, well,” he muttered cryptically, “different customs on different ships, as the cook said when he went for’ard to cast off the spanker sheet.”
Not until the job was done and I was back on the poop did I have time to work out the drift of that last figure in its terms of the sea. Mulligan Jacobs might have been an artist, a philosophic poet, had he not been born crooked with a crooked back.
And we smashed the boats. With axes and sledges it was an easier task than I had imagined. On top of both houses we left the boats masses of splintered wreckage, the topaz-eyed ones working most energetically; and we regained the poop without a shot being fired. The forecastle turned out, of course, at our noise, but made no attempt to interfere with us.
And right here I register another complaint against the sea-novelists. A score of men for’ard, desperate all, with desperate deeds behind them, and jail and the gallows facing them not many days away, should have only begun to fight. And yet this score of men did nothing while we destroyed their last chance for escape.
“But where did they get the grub?” the steward asked me afterwards.
This question he has asked me every day since the first day Mr. Pike began cudgelling his brains over it. I wonder, had I asked Mulligan Jacobs the question, if he would have told me? At any rate, in court at Valparaiso that question will be answered. In the meantime I suppose I shall submit to having the steward ask me it daily.
“It is murder and mutiny on the high seas,” I told them this morning, when they came aft in a body to complain about the destruction of the boats and to demand my intentions.
And as I looked down upon the poor wretches from the break of the poop, standing there in the high place, the vision of my kind down all its mad, violent, and masterful past was strong upon me. Already, since our departure from Baltimore, three other men, masters, had occupied this high place and gone their way – the Samurai, Mr. Pike, and Mr. Mellaire. I stood here, fourth, no seaman, merely a master by the blood of my ancestors; and the work of the Elsinore in the world went on.