Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  It was with a singular sensation that Herrick prepared for the first time to address a crew. He thanked his stars indeed, that they were natives. But even natives, he reflected, might be critics too quick for such a novice as himself; they might perceive some lapse from that precise and cut-and-dry English which prevails on board a ship; it was even possible they understood no other; and he racked his brain, and overhauled his reminiscences of sea romance for some appropriate words.

  ‘Here, men! tumble aft!’ he said. ‘Lively now! All hands aft!’

  They crowded in the alleyway like sheep.

  ‘Here they are, sir,’ said Herrick.

  For some time the captain continued to face the stern; then turned with ferocious suddenness on the crew, and seemed to enjoy their shrinking.

  ‘Now,’ he said, twisting his cigar in his mouth and toying with the spokes of the wheel, ‘I’m Captain Brown. I command this ship. This is Mr Hay, first officer. The other white man is cabin steward, but he’ll stand watch and do his trick. My orders shall be obeyed smartly. You savvy, “smartly”? There shall be no growling about the kaikai, which will be above allowance. You’ll put a handle to the mate’s name, and tack on “sir” to every order I give you. If you’re smart and quick, I’ll make this ship comfortable for all hands.’ He took the cigar out of his mouth. ‘If you’re not,’ he added, in a roaring voice, ‘I’ll make it a floating hell. Now, Mr Hay, we’ll pick watches, if you please.’

  ‘All right,’ said Herrick.

  ‘You will please use “sir” when you address me, Mr Hay,’ said the captain. ‘I’ll take the lady. Step to starboard, Sally.’ And then he whispered in Herrick’s ear: ‘take the old man.’

  ‘I’ll take you, there,’ said Herrick.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said the captain. ‘What’s that you say? Oh, that’s no English; I’ll have none of your highway gibberish on my ship. We’ll call you old Uncle Ned, because you’ve got no wool on the top of your head, just the place where the wool ought to grow. Step to port, Uncle. Don’t you hear Mr Hay has picked you? Then I’ll take the white man. White Man, step to starboard. Now which of you two is the cook? You? Then Mr Hay takes your friend in the blue dungaree. Step to port, Dungaree. There, we know who we all are: Dungaree, Uncle Ned, Sally Day, White Man, and Cook. All F.F.V.’s I guess. And now, Mr Hay, we’ll up anchor, if you please.’

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, tell me some of the words,’ whispered Herrick.

  An hour later, the Farallone was under all plain sail, the rudder hard a-port, and the cheerfully clanking windlass had brought the anchor home.

  ‘All clear, sir,’ cried Herrick from the bow.

  The captain met her with the wheel, as she bounded like a stag from her repose, trembling and bending to the puffs. The guard boat gave a parting hail, the wake whitened and ran out; the Farallone was under weigh.

  Her berth had been close to the pass. Even as she forged ahead Davis slewed her for the channel between the pier ends of the reef, the breakers sounding and whitening to either hand. Straight through the narrow band of blue, she shot to seaward: and the captain’s heart exulted as he felt her tremble underfoot, and (looking back over the taffrail) beheld the roofs of Papeete changing position on the shore and the island mountains rearing higher in the wake.

  But they were not yet done with the shore and the horror of the yellow flag. About midway of the pass, there was a cry and a scurry, a man was seen to leap upon the rail, and, throwing his arms over his head, to stoop and plunge into the sea.

  ‘Steady as she goes,’ the captain cried, relinquishing the wheel to Huish.

  The next moment he was forward in the midst of the Kanakas, belaying pin in hand.

  ‘Anybody else for shore?’ he cried, and the savage trumpeting of his voice, no less than the ready weapon in his hand, struck fear in all. Stupidly they stared after their escaped companion, whose black head was visible upon the water, steering for the land. And the schooner meanwhile slipt like a racer through the pass, and met the long sea of the open ocean with a souse of spray.

  ‘Fool that I was, not to have a pistol ready!’ exclaimed Davis. ‘Well, we go to sea short-handed, we can’t help that. You have a lame watch of it, Mr Hay.’

  ‘I don’t see how we are to get along,’ said Herrick.

  ‘Got to,’ said the captain. ‘No more Tahiti for me.’

  Both turned instinctively and looked astern. The fair island was unfolding mountain top on mountain top; Eimeo, on the port board, lifted her splintered pinnacles; and still the schooner raced to the open sea.

  ‘Think!’ cried the captain with a gesture, ‘yesterday morning I danced for my breakfast like a poodle dog.’

  CHAPTER 5. THE CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE

  The ship’s head was laid to clear Eimeo to the north, and the captain sat down in the cabin, with a chart, a ruler, and an epitome.

  ‘East a half no’the,’ said he, raising his face from his labours. ‘Mr Hay, you’ll have to watch your dead reckoning; I want every yard she makes on every hair’s-breadth of a course. I’m going to knock a hole right straight through the Paumotus, and that’s always a near touch. Now, if this South East Trade ever blew out of the S.E., which it don’t, we might hope to lie within half a point of our course. Say we lie within a point of it. That’ll just about weather Fakarava. Yes, sir, that’s what we’ve got to do, if we tack for it. Brings us through this slush of little islands in the cleanest place: see?’ And he showed where his ruler intersected the wide-lying labyrinth of the Dangerous Archipelago. ‘I wish it was night, and I could put her about right now; we’re losing time and easting. Well, we’ll do our best. And if we don’t fetch Peru, we’ll bring up to Ecuador. All one, I guess. Depreciated dollars down, and no questions asked. A remarkable fine institootion, the South American don.’

  Tahiti was already some way astern, the Diadem rising from among broken mountains — Eimeo was already close aboard, and stood black and strange against the golden splendour of the west — when the captain took his departure from the two islands, and the patent log was set.

  Some twenty minutes later, Sally Day, who was continually leaving the wheel to peer in at the cabin clock, announced in a shrill cry ‘Fo’bell,’ and the cook was to be seen carrying the soup into the cabin.

  ‘I guess I’ll sit down and have a pick with you,’ said Davis to Herrick. ‘By the time I’ve done, it’ll be dark, and we’ll clap the hooker on the wind for South America.’

  In the cabin at one corner of the table, immediately below the lamp, and on the lee side of a bottle of champagne, sat Huish. ‘What’s this? Where did that come from?’ asked the captain.

  ‘It’s fizz, and it came from the after-’old, if you want to know,’ said Huish, and drained his mug.

  ‘This’ll never do,’ exclaimed Davis, the merchant seaman’s horror of breaking into cargo showing incongruously forth on board that stolen ship. ‘There was never any good came of games like that.’

  ‘You byby!’ said Huish. ‘A fellow would think (to ‘ear him) we were on the square! And look ‘ere, you’ve put this job up ‘ansomely for me, ‘aven’t you? I’m to go on deck and steer while you two sit and guzzle, and I’m to go by nickname, and got to call you “sir” and “mister.” Well, you look here, my bloke: I’ll have fizz ad lib., or it won’t wash. I tell you that. And you know mighty well, you ain’t got any man-of-war to signal now.’

  Davis was staggered. ‘I’d give fifty dollars this had never happened,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Well, it ‘as ‘appened, you see,’ returned Huish. ‘Try some; it’s devilish good.’

  The Rubicon was crossed without another struggle. The captain filled a mug and drank.

  ‘I wish it was beer,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But there’s no denying it’s the genuine stuff and cheap at the money. Now, Huish, you clear out and take your wheel.’

  The little wretch had gained a point, and he was gay. ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ said he, and left the others to their me
al.

  ‘Pea soup!’ exclaimed the captain. ‘Blamed if I thought I should taste pea soup again!’

  Herrick sat inert and silent. It was impossible after these months of hopeless want to smell the rough, high-spiced sea victuals without lust, and his mouth watered with desire of the champagne. It was no less impossible to have assisted at the scene between Huish and the captain, and not to perceive, with sudden bluntness, the gulf where he had fallen. He was a thief among thieves. He said it to himself. He could not touch the soup. If he had moved at all, it must have been to leave the table, throw himself overboard, and drown — an honest man.

  ‘Here,’ said the captain, ‘you look sick, old man; have a drop of this.’

  The champagne creamed and bubbled in the mug; its bright colour, its lively effervescence, seized his eye. ‘It is too late to hesitate,’ he thought; his hand took the mug instinctively; he drank, with unquenchable pleasure and desire of more; drained the vessel dry, and set it down with sparkling eyes.

  ‘There is something in life after all!’ he cried. ‘I had forgot what it was like. Yes, even this is worth while. Wine, food, dry clothes — why, they’re worth dying, worth hanging, for! Captain, tell me one thing: why aren’t all the poor folk foot-pads?’

  ‘Give it up,’ said the captain.

  ‘They must be damned good,’ cried Herrick. ‘There’s something here beyond me. Think of that calaboose! Suppose we were sent suddenly back.’ He shuddered as though stung by a convulsion, and buried his face in his clutching hands.

  ‘Here, what’s wrong with you?’ cried the captain. There was no reply; only Herrick’s shoulders heaved, so that the table was shaken. ‘Take some more of this. Here, drink this. I order you to. Don’t start crying when you’re out of the wood.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ said Herrick, raising his face and showing his dry eyes. ‘It’s worse than crying. It’s the horror of that grave that we’ve escaped from.’

  ‘Come now, you tackle your soup; that’ll fix you,’ said Davis kindly. ‘I told you you were all broken up. You couldn’t have stood out another week.’

  ‘That’s the dreadful part of it!’ cried Herrick. ‘Another week and I’d have murdered someone for a dollar! God! and I know that? And I’m still living? It’s some beastly dream.’

  ‘Quietly, quietly! Quietly does it, my son. Take your pea soup. Food, that’s what you want,’ said Davis.

  The soup strengthened and quieted Herrick’s nerves; another glass of wine, and a piece of pickled pork and fried banana completed what the soup began; and he was able once more to look the captain in the face.

  ‘I didn’t know I was so much run down,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ said Davis, ‘you were as steady as a rock all day: now you’ve had a little lunch, you’ll be as steady as a rock again.’

  ‘Yes,’was the reply, ‘I’m steady enough now, but I’m a queer kind of a first officer.’

  ‘Shucks!’ cried the captain. ‘You’ve only got to mind the ship’s course, and keep your slate to half a point. A babby could do that, let alone a college graduate like you. There ain’t nothing TO sailoring, when you come to look it in the face. And now we’ll go and put her about. Bring the slate; we’ll have to start our dead reckoning right away.’

  The distance run since the departure was read off the log by the binnacle light and entered on the slate.

  ‘Ready about,’ said the captain. ‘Give me the wheel, White Man, and you stand by the mainsheet. Boom tackle, Mr Hay, please, and then you can jump forward and attend head sails.’

  ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ responded Herrick.

  ‘All clear forward?’ asked Davis.

  ‘All clear, sir.’

  ‘Hard a-lee!’ cried the captain. ‘Haul in your slack as she comes,’ he called to Huish. ‘Haul in your slack, put your back into it; keep your feet out of the coils.’ A sudden blow sent Huish flat along the deck, and the captain was in his place. ‘Pick yourself up and keep the wheel hard over!’ he roared. ‘You wooden fool, you wanted to get killed, I guess. Draw the jib,’ he cried a moment later; and then to Huish, ‘Give me the wheel again, and see if you can coil that sheet.’

  But Huish stood and looked at Davis with an evil countenance. ‘Do you know you struck me?’ said he.

  ‘Do you know I saved your life?’ returned the other, not deigning to look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the compass and the sails. ‘Where would you have been, if that boom had swung out and you bundled in the clack? No, SIR, we’ll have no more of you at the mainsheet. Seaport towns are full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one leg, my son, what’s left of them, and the rest are dead. (Set your boom tackle, Mr Hay.) Struck you, did I? Lucky for you I did.’

  ‘Well,’ said Huish slowly, ‘I daresay there may be somethink in that. ‘Ope there is.’ He turned his back elaborately on the captain, and entered the house, where the speedy explosion of a champagne cork showed he was attending to his comfort.

  Herrick came aft to the captain. ‘How is she doing now?’ he asked.

  ‘East and by no’the a half no’the,’ said Davis. ‘It’s about as good as I expected.’

  ‘What’ll the hands think of it?’ said Herrick.

  ‘Oh, they don’t think. They ain’t paid to,’ says the captain.

  ‘There was something wrong, was there not? between you and—’ Herrick paused.

  ‘That’s a nasty little beast, that’s a biter,’ replied the captain, shaking his head. ‘But so long as you and me hang in, it don’t matter.’

  Herrick lay down in the weather alleyway; the night was cloudless, the movement of the ship cradled him, he was oppressed besides by the first generous meal after so long a time of famine; and he was recalled from deep sleep by the voice of Davis singing out: ‘Eight bells!’

  He rose stupidly, and staggered aft, where the captain gave him the wheel.

  ‘By the wind,’ said the captain. ‘It comes a little puffy; when you get a heavy puff, steal all you can to windward, but keep her a good full.’

  He stepped towards the house, paused and hailed the forecastle.

  ‘Got such a thing as a concertina forward?’ said he. ‘Bully for you, Uncle Ned. Fetch it aft, will you?’

  The schooner steered very easy; and Herrick, watching the moon-whitened sails, was overpowered by drowsiness. A sharp report from the cabin startled him; a third bottle had been opened; and Herrick remembered the Sea Ranger and Fourteen Island Group. Presently the notes of the accordion sounded, and then the captain’s voice:

  ‘O honey, with our pockets full of money,

  We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay,

  And I will dance with Kate, and Tom will dance with Sall,

  When we’re all back from South Amerikee.’

  So it went to its quaint air; and the watch below lingered and listened by the forward door, and Uncle Ned was to be seen in the moonlight nodding time; and Herrick smiled at the wheel, his anxieties a while forgotten. Song followed song; another cork exploded; there were voices raised, as though the pair in the cabin were in disagreement; and presently it seemed the breach was healed; for it was now the voice of Huish that struck up, to the captain’s accompaniment —

  ‘Up in a balloon, boys,

  Up in a balloon,

  All among the little stars

  And round about the moon.’

  A wave of nausea overcame Herrick at the wheel. He wondered why the air, the words (which were yet written with a certain knack), and the voice and accent of the singer, should all jar his spirit like a file on a man’s teeth. He sickened at the thought of his two comrades drinking away their reason upon stolen wine, quarrelling and hiccupping and waking up, while the doors of the prison yawned for them in the near future. ‘Shall I have sold my honour for nothing?’ he thought; and a heat of rage and resolution glowed in his bosom — rage against his comrades — resolution to carry through this business if it might be carried; pluck profit out of shame, since the
shame at least was now inevitable; and come home, home from South America — how did the song go?— ‘with his pockets full of money’:

  ‘O honey, with our pockets full of money,

  We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay:’

  so the words ran in his head; and the honey took on visible form, the quay rose before him and he knew it for the lamplit Embankment, and he saw the lights of Battersea bridge bestride the sullen river. All through the remainder of his trick, he stood entranced, reviewing the past. He had been always true to his love, but not always sedulous to recall her. In the growing calamity of his life, she had swum more distant, like the moon in mist. The letter of farewell, the dishonourable hope that had surprised and corrupted him in his distress, the changed scene, the sea, the night and the music — all stirred him to the roots of manhood. ‘I WILL win her,’ he thought, and ground his teeth. ‘Fair or foul, what matters if I win her?’

  ‘Fo’ bell, matey. I think um fo’ bell’ — he was suddenly recalled by these words in the voice of Uncle Ned.

  ‘Look in at the clock, Uncle,’ said he. He would not look himself, from horror of the tipplers.

  ‘Him past, matey,’ repeated the Hawaiian.

  ‘So much the better for you, Uncle,’ he replied; and he gave up the wheel, repeating the directions as he had received them.

  He took two steps forward and remembered his dead reckoning. ‘How has she been heading?’ he thought; and he flushed from head to foot. He had not observed or had forgotten; here was the old incompetence; the slate must be filled up by guess. ‘Never again!’ he vowed to himself in silent fury, ‘never again. It shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry.’ And for the remainder of his watch, he stood close by Uncle Ned, and read the face of the compass as perhaps he had never read a letter from his sweetheart.

  All the time, and spurring him to the more attention, song, loud talk, fleering laughter and the occasional popping of a cork, reached his ears from the interior of the house; and when the port watch was relieved at midnight, Huish and the captain appeared upon the quarter-deck with flushed faces and uneven steps, the former laden with bottles, the latter with two tin mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed him in thick voices, he made no answer, they cursed him for a churl, he paid no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker in the cabin — not to sleep he thought — rather to think and to despair. Yet he had scarce turned twice on his uneasy bed, before a drunken voice hailed him in the ear, and he must go on deck again to stand the morning watch.