THE GAME
I
The Red Un was very red; even his freckles were red rather thancopper-coloured. And he was more prodigal than most kings, for hehad two crowns on his head. Also his hair grew in varyingdirections, like a wheatfields after a storm. He wore a coat withouta tail, but with brass buttons to compensate, and a celluloid collarwith a front attached. It was the Red Un's habit to dress first andwash after, as saving labour; instead of his neck he washed hiscollar.
The Red Un was the Chief Engineer's boy and rather more impressivethan the Chief, who was apt to decry his own greatness. It was theRed Un's duty to look after the Chief, carry in his meals, make hisbed, run errands, and remind him to get his hair cut now and then.It was the Red Un's pleasure to assist unassumingly in thesurveillance of that part of the ship where the great god, Steam,ruled an underworld of trimmers and oilers and stokers and assistantengineers--and even, with reservations, the Chief. The Red Un kept asharp eye on the runs and read the Chief's log daily--so much coalin the bunkers; so much water in the wells; so many engine-roommiles in twenty-four hours--which, of course, are not sea milesexactly, there being currents and winds, and God knows what, towaste steam on.
The Red Un, like the assistants, was becoming a bear on the speedmarket. He had learned that, just when the engines get heated enoughto work like demons, and there is a chance to break a record and geta letter from the management, some current or other will show up--ora fog, which takes the very tripe out of the cylinders and sends thebridge yapping for caution.
The Red Un was thirteen; and he made the Chief's bed by pulling thecounterpane neatly and smoothly over the chaos underneath--and gotaway with it, the Chief being weary at night. Also, in odd momentshe made life miserable for the crew. Up to shortly before, he hadhad to use much energy and all his wits to keep life in his starvedlittle body; and even keeping an eye on the log and the Chief'shair, and slipping down into the engine room, where he had no mannerof business, hardly used up his activities. However, he did not lieand he looked the Chief square in the eye, as man to man.
The Chief had salvaged him out of the Hudson, when what he had takenfor a bobbing red tomato had suddenly revealed a blue face and twoset and desperate eyes. After that the big Scot had forgotten allabout him, except the next day when he put on his shoes, which hadshrunk in the drying. The liner finished coaling about that time,took on passengers, luggage, steamer baskets and a pilot, and,having stowed the first two, examined the cards on the third anddropped the last, was pointed, nose to the east wind, for the race.
The arrow on the twin dials pointed to Stand By! for the longvoyage--three thousand miles or so without a stop. The gong, andthen Half Ahead!--great elbows thrust up and down, up and down; thegrunt of power overcoming inertia, followed by the easy swing oflimitless strength. Full Ahead!--and so off again for the greatstruggle--man's wits and the engines and the mercy of God againstthe upreaching of the sea.
The Chief, who sometimes dreamed his greatness, but who ignored itwaking, snapped his watch shut.
"Eleven-eleven!" he said to the Senior Second. "Well, here's luck!"That is what he said aloud; to himself he always said a bit of aprayer, realising perhaps even more than the bridge how little man'swits count in the great equation. He generally said something to theeffect that "After all, it's up to Thee, O Lord!"
He shook hands with the Senior Second, which also was his habit; andhe smiled too, but rather grimly. They were playing a bit of agame, you see; and so far the Chief had won all the tricks--just anamusing little game and nothing whatever to do with a woman; theSecond was married, but the Chief had put all such things out of hishead years before, when he was a youngster and sailing to the Plate.Out of his head, quite certainly; but who dreams of greatness forhimself alone? So the Chief, having glanced about and run his handcaressingly over various fearful and pounding steel creatures, hadclimbed up the blistering metal staircase to his room at the top andwas proceeding to put down eleven-eleven and various other thingsthat the first cabin never even heard of, when he felt that he wasbeing stared at from behind.
Now and then, after shore leave, a drunken trimmer or stoker gets upto the Chief's room and has to be subdued by the power of executiveeye or the strength of executive arm. As most Chiefs are Scots, theeye is generally sufficient. So the Chief, mightily ferocious,turned about, eye set, as one may say, to annihilate a six-foottrimmer in filthy overalls and a hangover, and saw--a smallred-haired boy in a Turkish towel.
The boy quailed rather at the eye, but he had the courage of nothingto lose--not even a pair of breeches--and everything to gain.
"Please," said the apparition, "the pilot's gone, and you can't putme off!"
The Chief opened his mouth and shut it again. The mouth, and themodification of an eye set for a six-foot trimmer to an eye for afour-foot-ten urchin in a Turkish towel, produced a certainsoftening. The Red Un, who was like the Chief in that he earned hisway by pitting his wits against relentless Nature, smiled alittle--a surface smile, with fear just behind.
"The Captain's boy's my size; I could wear his clothes," hesuggested.
Now, back in that time when the Chief had kept a woman's picture inhis breast pocket instead of in a drawer of his desk, there had beensmall furtive hopes, the pride of the Scot to perpetuate his line,the desire of a man for a manchild. The Chief had buried all that inthe desk drawer with the picture; but he had gone overboard in hisbest uniform to rescue a wharf-rat, and he had felt a curious senseof comfort when he held the cold little figure in his arms and washauled on deck, sputtering dirty river water and broad Scotch, aswas his way when excited.
"And where ha' ye been skulking since yesterday?" he demanded.
"In the bed where I was put till last night. This morning early----"he hesitated.
"Don't lie! Where were ye?"
"In a passenger's room, under a bed. When the passengers came aboardI had to get out."
"How did ye get here?"
This met with silence. Quite suddenly the Chief recognised theconnivance of the crew, perhaps, or of a kindly stewardess.
"Who told you this was my cabin?" A smile this time, rather like theSenior Second's when the Chief and he had shaken hands.
"A nigger!" he said. "A coloured fella in a white suit."
There was not a darky on the boat. The Red Un, whose code was thetruth when possible, but any lie to save a friend--and that's thecode of a gentleman--sat, defiantly hopeful, arranging the towel tocover as much as possible of his small person.
"You're lying! Do you know what we do with liars on this ship? Wethrow them overboard!"
"Then I'm thinking," responded the Turkish towel, "that you'll beneeding another Chief Engineer before long!"
Now, as it happened, the Chief had no boy that trip. The previousone had been adopted after the last trip by a childless couple whohad liked the shape of his nose and the way his eyelashes curled onhis cheek. The Chief looked at the Red Un; it was perfectly clearthat no one would ever adopt him for the shape of his nose, and heapparently lacked lashes entirely. He rose and took a bathrobe froma hook on the door.
"Here," he said; "cover your legs wi' that, and say a prayer if ye'know wan. The Captain's a verra hard man wi' stowaways."
The Captain, however, who was a gentleman and a navigator and had asense of humour also, was not hard with the Red Un. It beingimpracticable to take the boy to him, the great man made a specialvisit to the boy. The Red Un, in the Chief's bathrobe, sat on achair, with his feet about four inches from the floor, and returnedthe Captain's glare with wide blue eyes.
"Is there any reason, young man, why I shouldn't order you to thelockup for the balance of this voyage?" the Captain demanded, extragrim, and trying not to smile.
"Well," said the Red Un, wiggling his legs nervously, "you'd have tofeed me, wouldn't you? And I might as well work for my keep."
This being a fundamental truth on which most economics and allgovernments are founded, and the Captain having a boy of hi
s own athome, he gave a grudging consent, for the sake of discipline, to theRed Un's working for his keep as the Chief's boy, and left. Outsidethe door he paused.
"The little devil's starved," he said. "Put some meat on thoseribs, Chief, and--be a bit easy with him!"
This last was facetious, the Chief being known to have the heart ofa child.
So the Red Un went on the payroll of the line, and requisition wasmade on the storekeeper for the short-tailed coat and the longtrousers, and on the barber for a hair-cut. And in some curious waythe Red Un and the Chief hit it off. It might have been a matter ofred blood or of indomitable spirit.
Spirit enough and to spare had the Red Un. On the trip out he hadlicked the Captain's boy and the Purser's boy; on the incoming triphe had lashed the Doctor's boy to his triumphant mast, and onlythree days before he had settled a row in the stokehole by puttinghot ashes down the back of a drunken trimmer, and changing hisattitude from menace with a steel shovel to supplication and prayer.
He had no business in the stokehole, but by that time he knew everycorner of the ship--called the engines by name and the men byepithets; had named one of the pumps Marguerite, after the JuniorSecond's best girl; and had taken violent partisanship in theeternal rivalry of the liner between the engine room and the bridge.
"Aw, gwan!" he said to the Captain's boy. "Where'd you and your OldMan be but for us? In a blasted steel tank, floating about on thebloomin' sea! What's a ship without insides?"
The Captain's boy, who was fourteen, and kept his bath sponge in arubber bag, and shaved now and then with the Captain's razor,retorted in kind.
"You fellows below think you're the whole bally ship!" he saidloftily. "Insides is all right--we need 'em in our business. Butwhat'd your steel tank do, with the engines goin', if shewasn't bein' navigated? Steamin' in circles, like a tinklin'merry-go-round!"
It was some seconds after this that the Purser, a well-intentionedbut interfering gentleman with a beard, received the kick that puthim in dry dock for two days.
II
They were three days out of New York on the Red Un's second roundtrip when the Second, still playing the game and almost despairing,made a strategic move. The Red Un was laying out the Chief'sluncheon on his desk--a clean napkin for a cloth; a glass; silver; aplate; and the menu from the first-cabin dining saloon. The menu waspropped against a framed verse:
_But I ha' lived and I ha' worked! All thanks to Thee, Most High._
And as he placed the menu, the Red Un repeated the words fromMcAndrew's hymn. It had rather got him at first; it was a newphilosophy of life. To give thanks for life was understandable, evenif unnecessary. But thanks for work! There was another framed cardabove the desk, more within the Red Un's ken: "Cable crossing! Donot anchor here!"
The card worked well with the first class, resting in the Chief'scabin after the arduous labours of seeing the engines.
The Chief was below, flat on his back in a manhole looking for astaccato note that did not belong in his trained and orderly chorus.There was grease in his sandy hair, and the cranks were only a fewinches from his nose. By opening the door the Red Un was able tocommand the cylinder tops, far below, and the fiddley, which is theroof of hell or a steel grating over the cylinders to walkon--depending on whether one is used to it or not. The Chief wasnaturally not in sight.
This gave the Red Un two minutes' leeway--two minutes forexploration. A drawer in the desk, always heretofore locked, wasunfastened--that is, the bolt had been shot before the drawer wasentirely closed. The Red Un was jealous of that drawer. In twovoyages he had learned most of the Chief's history and, lacking oneof his own, had appropriated it to himself. Thus it was not unusualfor him to remark casually, as he stood behind the Chief's chair atdinner: "We'd better send this here postcard to Cousin Willie, atEdinburgh."
"Ou-ay!" the Chief would agree, and tear off the postcard of theship that topped each day's menu; but, so far, all hints as to thisone drawer had been futile; it remained the one barrier to theirperfect confidence, the fly in the ointment of the Red Un's content.
Now, at last---- Below, a drop of grease in the Chief's eye set himwiping and cursing; over his head hammered, banged and lunged hisgreat babies; in the stokehole a gaunt and grimy creature, ycleptthe Junior Second, stewed in his own sweat and yelled for steam.
The Red Un opened the drawed quickly and thrust in a hand. At firsthe thought it was empty, working as he did by touch, his eye on thedoor. Then he found a disappointing something--the lid of acigar-box! Under that was a photograph. Here was luck! Had the RedUn known it, he had found the only two secrets in his Chief's openlife. But the picture was disappointing--a snapshot of a youngwoman, rather slim, with the face obscured by a tennis racket,obviously thrust into the picture at the psychological moment. Poorspoil this--a cigar-box lid and a girl without a face! However,marred as it was, it clearly meant something to the Chief. For onits reverse side was another stanza from McAndrew's hymn:
_Ye know how hard an idol dies, An' what that meant to me-- E'en tak' it for a sacrifice Acceptable to Thee._
The Red Un thrust it back into the drawer, with the lid. If she wasdead what did it matter? He was a literal youth--so far, his ownwords had proved sufficient for his thoughts; it is after thirtythat a man finds his emotions bigger than his power of expressingthem, and turns to those that have the gift. The Chief was overthirty.
It was as he shut the drawer that he realised he was not alone. Thealley door was open and in it stood the Senior Second. The Red Uneyed him unpleasantly.
"Sneaking!" said the Second.
"None of your blamed business!" replied the Red Un.
The Second, who was really an agreeable person, with a sense ofhumour, smiled. He rather liked the Red Un.
"Do you know, William," he observed--William was the Red Un'sname--"I'd be willing to offer two shillings for an itemisedaccount of what's in that drawer?"
"Fill it with shillings," boasted the Red Un, "and I'll not tellyou."
"Three?" said the Second cheerfully.
"No."
"Four?"
"Why don't you look yourself?"
"Just between gentlemen, that isn't done, young man. But if youvolunteered the information, and I saw fit to make you a present of,say, a pipe, with a box of tobacco----"
"What do you want to know for?"
"I guess you know."
The Red Un knew quite well. The Chief and the two Seconds were stillplaying their game, and the Chief was still winning; but even theRed Un did not know how the Chief won--and as for the two Secondsand the Third and the Fourth, they were quite stumped.
This was the game: In bad weather, when the ports are closed andfirst-class passengers are yapping for air, it is the province ofthe engine room to see that they get it. An auxiliary engine pumpscubic feet of atmosphere into every cabin through a series ofairtrunks.
So far so good. But auxiliaries take steam; and it is exceedinglygalling to a Junior or Senior, wagering more than he can afford onthe run in his watch, to have to turn valuable steam toauxiliaries--"So that a lot of blooming nuts may smoke in theirbunks!" as the Third put it.
The first move in the game is the Chief's, who goes to bed andpresumably to sleep. After that it's the engine-room move, whichgives the first class time to settle down and then shuts off theairpumps. Now there is no noise about shutting off the air in thetrunks. It flows or it does not flow. The game is to see whether theChief wakens when the air stops or does not. So far he had alwayswakened.
It was uncanny. It was worse than that--it was damnable! Did not theOld Man sleep at all?--not that he was old, but every Chief is theOld Man behind his back. Everything being serene, and theengine-room clock marking twelve-thirty, one of the Seconds wouldshut off the air very gradually; the auxiliary would slow down,wheeze, pant and die--and within two seconds the Chief's bell wouldring and an angry voice over the telephone demand what the severalkinds of perd
ition had happened to the air! Another trick in thegame to the Chief!
It had gone past joking now: had moved up from the uncanny to theimpossible, from the impossible to the enraging. Surreptitioussearch of the Chief's room had shown nothing but the one lockeddrawer. They had taken advantage of the Chief's being laid up inAntwerp with a boil on his neck to sound the cabin for hidden wires.They had asked the ship's doctor anxiously how long a man could dowithout sleep. The doctor had quoted Napoleon.
* * * * *
"If at any time," observed the Second pleasantly, "you would likethat cigarette case the barber is selling, you know how to get it."
"Thanks, old man," said the Red Un loftily, with his eye on thewall.
The Second took a step forward and thought better of it.
"Better think about it!"
"I was thinking of something else," said the Red Un, still staringat the wall. The Second followed his eye. The Red Un was gazingintently at the sign which said: "Cable crossing! Do not anchorhere!"
As the Second slammed out, the Chief crawled from his manhole andstruggled out of his greasy overalls. Except for his face, he wasquite tidy. He ran an eye down the port tunnel, where the shaftrevolved so swiftly that it seemed to be standing still, to where atthe after end came the racing of the screw as it lifted, beardedwith scud, out of the water.
"It looks like weather to-night," he observed, with a twinkle, tothe Fourth. "There'll aye be air wanted." But the Fourth was gazingat a steam gauge.
III
The Red Un's story, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts--histemptation, his fall and his redemption. All lives are so divided: astep back; a plunge; and then, in desperation and despair, a littleclimb up God's ladder.
Seven days the liner lay in New York--seven days of early autumnheat, of blistering decks, of drunken and deserting trimmers, ofcreaking gear and grime of coal-dust. The cabin which held the RedUn and the Purser's boy was breathless. On Sunday the four ship'sboys went to Coney Island and lay in the surf half the afternoon.The bliss of the water on their thin young legs and scrawny bodieswas Heaven. They did not swim; they lay inert, letting the wavesmove them about, and out of the depths of a deep content makingcaustic comments about the human form as revealed by the relentlesssea.
"That's a pippin!" they would say; or, "My aunt! looks at his legs!"They voiced their opinions audibly and were ready to back them upwith flight or fight.
It was there that the Red Un saw the little girl. She had come froma machine, and her mother stood near. She was not a Coney Islander.She was first-cabin certainly--silk stockings on her thin ankles,sheer white frock; no jewelry. She took a snapshot of the fourboys--to their discomfiture--and walked away while they were stillwrithing.
"That for mine!" said the Red Un in one of his rare enthusiasms.
They had supper--a sandwich and a glass of beer; they would havepreferred pop, but what deep-water man on shore drinks pop?--andmade their way back to the ship by moonlight. The Red Un was tersein his speech on the car: mostly he ate peanuts abstractedly. If heevolved any clear idea out of the chaos of his mind it was to wishshe had snapped him in his uniform with the brass buttons.
The heat continued; the men in the stokehole, keeping up only enoughsteam for the dynamos and donkey engines, took turns under theventilators or crawled up to the boatdeck at dusk, too exhausted todress and go ashore. The swimmers were overboard in the cool riverwith the first shadows of night; the Quartermaster, so old that hedyed his hair for fear he'd be superannuated, lowered his lean bodyhand over hand down a rope and sat by the hour on a stringpiece ofthe dock, with the water laving his hairy and tattooed old breast.
The Red Un was forbidden the river. To be honest, he was ratherrelieved--not twice does a man dare the river god, having once beencrowned with his slime and water-weed. When the boy grew very hothe slipped into a second-cabin shower, and stood for luxuriousminutes with streams running off his nose and the ends of hisfingers and splashing about his bony ankles.
Then, one night, some of the men took as many passengers' lifebeltsand went in. The immediate result was fun combined with safety; thesecondary result was placards over the ship and the dock, forbiddingthe use of the ship's lifebelts by the crew.
From that moment the Red Un was possessed for the river and alifebelt. So were the other three. The signs were responsible.Permitted, a ship's lifebelt was a subterfuge of the cowardly,white-livered skunks who were afraid of a little water; forbidden, aship's lifebelt took on the qualities of enemy's property--to bereconnoitred, assaulted, captured and turned to personal advantage.
That very night, then, four small bodies, each naked save for alifebelt, barrelshaped and extending from breast almost to knee,slipped over the side of the ship with awkward splashes andproceeded to disport themselves in the river. Scolding tugs sentwaves for them to ride; ferries crawled like gigantic bugs with ahundred staring eyes. They found the Quartermaster on a stringpieceimmersed to the neck and smoking his pipe, and surrounded him--foursmall, shouting imps, floating barrels with splashing hands andkicking feet.
"Gwan, ye little devils!" said the Quartermaster, clutching thestringpiece and looking about in the gloom for a weapon. The Red Un,quite safe and audacious in his cork jacket, turned over on his backand kicked.
"Gwan yerself, Methuselah!" he sang.
They stole the old man's pipe and passed it from mouth to mouth;they engaged him in innocent converse while one of them pinched hisbare old toe under water, crab-fashion. And at last they prepared toshin up the rope again and sleep the sleep of the young, theinnocent and the refreshed.
The Chief was leaning over the rail, just above, smoking!
He leaned against the rail and smoked for three hours! Eight eyes,watching him from below, failed to find anything in his face butcontemplation; eight hands puckered like a washerwoman's; eight feetturned from medium to clean, from clean to bleached--and still theChief smoked on. He watched the scolding tugs and the ferryboatsthat crawled over the top of the water; he stood in raptcontemplation of the electric signs in Jersey, while the ship'sbells marked the passage of time to eternity, while theQuartermaster slept in his bed, while the odours of the river stankin their nostrils and the pressure of the ship's lifebelts weighedlike lead on their clammy bodies.
At eight bells--which is midnight--the Chief emptied histwenty-fourth pipe over the rail and smiled into the gloom beneath.
"Ye'll better be coming up," he remarked pleasantly. "I'm forturning in mysel'."
He wandered away; none of the watch was near. The ship was dark,save for her riding lights. Hand over puckered hand they struggledup and wriggled out of the belts; stark naked they ducked throughpassageways and alleys, and stowed their damp and cringing formsbetween sheets.
The Red Un served the Chief's breakfast the next morning verycarefully. The Chief's cantaloupe was iced; his kipper covered witha hot plate; the morning paper propped against McAndrew's hymn. TheRed Un looked very clean and rather bleached.
The Chief was busy; he read the night reports, which did not amountto much, the well soundings, and a letter from a man offering toshow him how to increase the efficiency of his engines fifty percent, and another offering him a rake-off on a new lubricant.
Outwardly the Chief was calm--even cold. Inwardly he was ratheruncomfortable: he could feel two blue eyes fixed on his back andremembered the day he had pulled them out of the river, and howfixed and desperate they were then. But what was it McAndrew said?"Law, order, duty an' restraint, obedience, discipline!"
Besides, if the boys were going to run off with the belts somedamned first-class passenger was likely to get a cabin minus a beltand might write to the management. The line had had bad luck; it didnot want another black eye. He cleared his throat; the Red Undropped a fork.
"That sort of thing last night won't do, William."
"N-No, sir."
"Ye had seen the signs, of course?"
"Yes, sir." The Red Un ne
ver lied to the Chief; it was useless.
The Chief toyed with his kipper.
"Ye'll understand I'd ha' preferred dealin' with the matter mysel';but it's--gone up higher."
The Quartermaster, of course! The Chief rose and pretended to glanceover the well soundings.
"The four of ye will meet me in the Captain's room in fifteenminutes," he observed casually.
The Captain was feeding his cat when the Red Un got there. The fourboys lined up uncomfortably; all of them looked clean, subdued,apprehensive. If they were to be locked up in this sort of weather,and only three days to sailing time--even a fine would be better.The Captain stroked the cat and eyed them.
"Well," he said curtly, "what have you four young imps been up tonow?"
The four young imps stood panicky. They looked as innocent as choirboys. The cat, eating her kipper, wheezed.
"Please, sir," said the Captain's boy solicitously, "Peter hassomething in his throat."
"Perhaps it's a ship's lifebelt," said the Captain grimly, andcaught the Chief's eye.
The line palpitated; under cover of its confusion the Chief,standing in the doorway with folded arms, winked swiftly at theCaptain; the next moment he was more dour than ever.
"You are four upsetters of discipline," said the Captain, suddenlypounding the table. "You four young monkeys have got the crew by theears, and I'm sick of it! Which one of you put the fish in Mrs.Schmidt's bed?"
Mrs. Schmidt was a stewardess. The Red Un stepped forward.
"Who turned the deckhose into the Purser's cabin night before last?"
"Please," said the Doctor's boy pallidly, "I made a mistake in theroom. I thought----"
"Who," shouted the Captain, banging again, "cut the Quartermaster'srope two nights ago and left him sitting under the dock for fourhours?"
The Purser's boy this time, white to the lips! Fresh panic seizedthem; it could hardly be mere arrest if he knew all this; he mightorder them hanged from a yardarm or shot at sunrise. He looked likethe latter. The Red Un glanced at the Chief, who looked apprehensivealso, as if the thing was going too far. The Captain may have readtheir thoughts, for he said:
"You're limbs of Satan, all of you, and hanging's too good for you.What do you say, Chief? How can we make these young scamps lessonsin discipline to the crew?"
Everybody breathed again and looked at the Chief--who stood tall andsandy and rather young to be a Chief--in the doorway.
"Eh, mon," he said, and smiled, "I'm aye a bit severe. Don't ask meto punish the bairns."
The Captain sniffed.
"Severe!" he observed. "You Scots are hard in the head, but soft inthe disposition. Come, Chief--shall they walk the plank?"
"Good deescipline," assented the Chief, "but it would leave us a bitshorthanded."
"True," said the Captain gloomily.
"I was thinkin'," remarked the Chief diffidently--one hates to thinkbefore the Captain; that's always supposed to be his job.
"Yes?"
"That we could make a verra fine example of them and still retaintheir services. Ha' ye, by chance, seen a crow hangin' head down inthe field, a warnin' to other mischief-makers?"
"Ou-ay!" said the Captain, who had a Scotch mother. The line waveredagain; the Captain's boy, who pulled his fingers when he wasexcited, cracked three knuckles.
"It would be good deescipline," continued the Chief, "to stand thefour o' them in ship's belt at the gangway, say for an hour, morningand evening--clad, ye ken, as they were during the saidinfreengements."
"You're a great man, Chief!" said the Captain. "You hear that,lads'?"
"With--with no trousers'?" gasped the Doctor's boy.
"If you wore trousers last night. If not----"
* * * * *
The thing was done that morning. Four small boys, clad only inship's belts, above which rose four sheepish heads and freckledfaces, below which shifted and wriggled eight bare legs, stood inline at the gangway and suffered agonies of humiliation at the handsof crew and dockmen, grinning customs inspectors, coalpassers, and anewspaper photographer hunting a human-interest bit for a Sundaypaper. The cooks came up from below and peeped out at them; theship's cat took up a position in line and came out in the Sundayedition as "a fellow conspirator."
The Red Un, owing to an early training that had considered clothingdesirable rather than essential, was not vitally concerned. TheQuartermaster had charge of the line; he had drawn a mark with chalkalong the deck, and he kept their toes to it by marching up and downin front of them with a broomhandle over his shoulder.
"Toe up, you little varmints!" he would snap. "God knows I'd be gladto get a rap at you--keeping an old man down in the water half thenight! Toe up!"
Whereupon, aiming an unlucky blow at the Purser's boy, he hit theCaptain's cat. The line snickered.
It was just after that the Red Un, surmising a snap by thephotographer on the dock and thwarting it by putting his thumb tohis nose, received the shock of his small life. The little girl fromConey Island, followed by her mother, was on the pier--was showingevery evidence of coming up the gangway to where he stood. Wascoming! Panic seized the Red Un--panic winged with flight. Heturned--to face the Chief. Appeal sprang to the Red Un's lips.
"Please!" he gasped. "I'm sick, sick as h--, sick as a dog, Chief.I've got a pain in my chest--I----"
Curiously enough, the Chief did not answer or even hear. He, too,was looking at the girl on the gangway and at her mother. The nextmoment the Chief was in full flight, ignominious flight, his face,bleached with the heat of the engine room and the stokehole, set asno emergency of broken shaft or flying gear had ever seen it. Brokenshaft indeed! A man's life may be a broken shaft.
The woman and the girl came up the gangway, exidently to inspectstaterooms. The Quartermaster had rallied the Red Un back to theline and stood before him, brandishing his broomhandle. Black furywas in the boy's eye; hate had written herself on his soul. HisChief had ignored his appeal--had left him to his degradation--haddeserted him.
The girl saw the line, started, blushed, recognised the Red Un--andlaughed!
IV
The great voyage began--began with the band playing and much wavingof flags and display of handkerchiefs; began with the girl and hermother on board; began with the Chief eating his heart out over coaland oil vouchers and well soundings and other things; began with theRed Un in a new celluloid collar, lying awake at night to hate hismaster, adding up his injury each day to greater magnitude.
The voyage began. The gong rang from the bridge. Stand By! said thetwin dials. Half Ahead! Full Ahead! Full Ahead! Man's wits once moreagainst the upreaching of the sea! The Chief, who knew thatsomewhere above was his woman and her child, which was not his,stood under a ventilator and said the few devout words with which hecommenced each voyage:
"With Thy help!" And then, snapping his watch: "Three minutes pastten!"
The chief engineer of a liner is always a gentleman and frequently aChristian. He knows, you see, how much his engines can do and howlittle. It is not his engines alone that conquer the sea, nor hisengines plus his own mother wit. It is engines plus wit plus _x_,and the _x_ is God's mercy. Being responsible for two quantities outof the three of the equation, he prays--if he does--with an eye on agauge and an ear open for a cylinder knock.
There was gossip in the engineers' mess those next days: the Old Manwas going to pieces. A man could stand so many years of the strainand then where was he? In a land berth, growing fat and paunchy, andeating his heart out for the sea, or---- The sea got him one way oranother!
The Senior Second stood out for the Chief.
"Wrong with him? There's nothing wrong with him," he declared. "Ifhe was any more on the job than he is I'd resign. He's on the jobtwenty-four hours a day, nights included."
There was a laugh at this; the mess was on to the game. Most of themwere playing it.
So now we have the Red Un looking for revenge and in idle momentslurking about the dec
ks where the girl played. He washed his neckunder his collar those days.
And we have the Chief fretting over his engines, subduing drunkenstokers, quelling the frequent disturbances of Hell Alley, which ledto the firemen's quarters, eating little and smoking much, devisingout of his mental disquietude a hundred possible emergenciesand--keeping away from the passengers. The Junior Second took downthe two parties who came to see the engine room and gave themlemonade when they came up. The little girl's mother came with thesecond party and neither squealed nor asked questions--only at thedoor into the stokeholes she stood a moment with dilated eyes. Shewas a little woman, still slim, rather tragic. She laid a hand onthe Junior's arm.
"The--the engineers do not go in there, do they?"
"Yes, madam. We stand four-hour watches. That is the Senior SecondEngineer on that pile of cinders."
The Senior Second was entirely black, except for his teeth and thewhites of his eyes. There was a little trouble in a coalbunker;they had just discovered it. There would be no visitors after thisuntil the trouble was over.
The girl's mother said nothing more. The Junior Second led themaround, helping a pretty young woman about and explaining to her.
"This," he said, smiling at the girl, "is a pump the men havenicknamed Marguerite, because she takes most of one man's time andis always giving trouble."
The young woman tossed her head.
"Perhaps she would do better if she were left alone," she suggested.
The girl's mother said nothing, but, before she left, she took onelong look about the engine room. In some such bedlam of noise andheat _he_ spent his life. She was wrong, of course, to pity him; oneneed not measure labour by its conditions or by its cost, but by thejoy of achievement. The woman saw the engines--sinister, menacing,frightful; the man saw power that answered to his hand--conquest,victory. The beat that was uproar to her ears was as the throbbingof his own heart.
It was after they had gone that the Chief emerged from the forwardstokehole where the trouble was. He had not seen her; she would nothave known him, probably, had they met face to face. He was quiteblack and the light of battle gleamed in his eyes.
They fixed the trouble somehow. It was fire in a coalbunker, one ofthe minor exigencies. Fire requiring air they smothered it one wayand another. It did not spread, but it did not quite die. And eachday's run was better than the day before.
The weather was good. The steerage, hanging over the bow, saw farbelow the undercurling spray, white under dark blue--the bluegrowing paler, paler still, until the white drops burst to the topand danced free in the sun. A Greek, going home to Crete to marry awife, made all day long tiny boats of coloured paper, weighted withcorks, and sailed them down into the sea.
"They shall carry back to America my farewells!" he said, smiling."This to Pappas, the bootblack, who is my friend. This to a girlback in America, with eyes--behold that darkest blue, my children;so are her eyes! And this black one to my sister, who has lost achild."
The first class watched the spray also--as it rose to the lip of aglass.
Now at last it seemed they would break a record. Then rain set in,without enough wind to make a sea, but requiring the starboard portsto be closed. The Senior Second, going on duty at midnight thatnight, found his Junior railing at fate and the airpumps going.
"Shut 'em off!" said the Senior Second furiously.
"Shut 'em off yourself. I've tried it twice."
The Senior Second gave a lever a vicious tug and the pump stopped.Before it had quite lapsed into inertia the Chief's bell rang.
"Can you beat it?" demanded the Junior sulkily. "The old fox!"
The Senior cursed. Then he turned abruptly and climbed the steelladder he had just descended. The Junior, who was anticipating ashower and bed, stared after him.
The Senior thought quickly--that was why he was a Senior. He foundthe Red Un's cabin and hammered at the door. Then, finding it wasnot locked, he walked in. The Red Un lay perched aloft; the shirt ofhis small pajamas had worked up about his neck and his thin torsolay bare. In one hand he clutched the dead end of a cigarette. TheSenior wakened him by running a forefinger down his ribs, much as aboy runs a stick along a paling fence.
"Wha' ish it?" demanded the Red Un in sleepy soprano. And then "Wha'd'ye want?" in bass. His voice was changing; he sounded like twopeople in animated discussion most of the time.
"You boys want to earn a sovereign?"
The Purser's boy, who had refused to rouse to this point, sat up inbed.
"Whaffor?" he asked.
"Get the Chief here some way. You"--to the Purser's boy--"go andtell him the Red Un's ill and asking for him. You"--to the RedUn--"double up; cry; do something. Start him off for thedoctor--anything, so you keep him ten minutes or so!"
The Red Un was still drowsy, and between sleeping and waking we arewhat we are.
"I won't do it!"
The Senior Second held out a gold sovereign on his palm.
"Don't be a bally little ass!" he said.
The Red Un, waking full, now remembered that he hated the Chief; forfear he did not hate him enough, he recalled the lifebelt, and hislegs, and the girl laughing.
"All right!" he said. "Gwan, Pimples! What'll I have?Appendiceetis?"
"Have a toothache," snapped the Senior Second. "Tear off a fewyells--anything to keep him!"
It worked rather well; plots have a way of being successful indirect proportion to their iniquity. Beneficent plots, like lovingrelatives dressed as Santa Claus, frequently go wrong; while it hasbeen shown that the leakiest sort of scheme to wreck a bank will gothrough with the band playing.
The Chief came and found the Red Un in agony, holding his jaw. Owingto the fact that he lay far back in an upper bunk, it took time todrag him into the light. It took more time to get his mouth open;once open, the Red Un pointed to a snag that should have given himtrouble if it didn't, and set up a fresh outcry.
Not until long after could the Red Un recall without shame his sharein that night's work--recall the Chief, stubby hair erect, kind blueeyes searching anxiously for the offending tooth. Recall it? Wouldhe ever forget the arm the Chief put about him, and him: "Ou-ay!laddie; it's a weeked snag!"
The Chief, to whom God had denied a son of his flesh, had taken RedUn to his heart, you see--fatherless wharf-rat and childlessengineer; the man acting on the dour Scot principle of chasteningwhomsoever he loveth, and the boy cherishing a hate that was reallyonly hurt love.
And as the Chief, who had dragged the Red Un out of eternity and wasnot minded to see him die of a toothache, took him back to his cabinthe pain grew better, ceased, turned to fright. The ten minutes orso were over and what would they find? The Chief opened the door; hehad in mind a drop of whisky out of the flask he never touched on atrip--whisky might help the tooth.
On the threshold he seemed to scent something amiss. He glanced atthe ceiling over his bunk, where the airtrunk lay, and then--helooked at the boy. He stooped down and put a hand on the boy's head,turning it to the light.
"Tell me now, lad," he said quietly, "did ye or did ye no ha' thetoothache?"
"It's better now," sullenly.
"Did ye or did ye no?"
"No."
The Chief turned the boy about and pushed him through the doorwayinto outer darkness. He said nothing. Down to his very depths he washurt. To have lost the game was something; but it was more thanthat. Had he been a man of words he might have said that once againa creature he loved had turned on him to his injury. Being a Scotand a man of few words he merely said he was damned, and crawledback into bed.
The game? Well, that was simple enough. Directly over his pillow, inthe white-painted airtrunk, was a brass plate, fastened with fourscrews. In case of anything wrong with the ventilator the platecould be taken off for purposes of investigation.
The Chief's scheme had been simplicity itself--so easy that theSeconds, searching for concealed wires and hidden alarm bells, hadnever thought of it. On nights when the air mu
st be pumped, andofficious Seconds were only waiting the Chief's first sleep to shutoff steam and turn it back to the main engines, the Chief unlockedthe bolted drawer in his desk. First he took out the woman's pictureand gazed at it; quite frequently he read the words on theback--written out of a sore heart, be sure. And then he took outthe cigar-box lid.
When he had unscrewed the brass plate over his head he replaced itwith the lid of the cigar-box. So long as the pumps in the engineroom kept the air moving, the lid stayed up by suction.
When the air stopped the lid fell down on his head; he roused enoughto press a signal button and, as the air started viciously, toreplace the lid. Then, off to the sleep of the just and the craftyagain. And so on _ad infinitum_.
Of course the game was not over because it was discovered and thelid gone. There would be other lids. But the snap, the joy, was goneout of it. It would never again be the same, and the worst of allwas the manner of the betrayal.
He slept but little the remainder of the night; and, because unresttravels best from soul to soul at night, when the crowding emotionsof the day give it place, the woman slept little also. She wasthinking of the entrance to the stokehole, where one crouched underthe bellies of furnaces, and where the engineer on duty stood on apile of hot cinders. Toward morning her room grew very close: theair from the ventilator seemed to have ceased.
Far down in the ship, in a breathless little cabin far aft, the RedUn kicked the Purser's boy and cried himself to sleep.
V
The old ship made a record the next night that lifted the day's runto four hundred and twenty. She was not a greyhound, you see.Generally speaking, she was a nine-day boat. She averaged well underfour hundred miles. The fast boats went by her and slid over theedge of the sea, throwing her bits of news by wireless over ashoulder, so to speak.
The little girl's mother was not a good sailor. She sat almost allday in a steamer chair, reading or looking out over the rail. Eachday she tore off the postal from the top of her menu and sent it tothe girl's father. She missed him more than she had expected. He hadbecome a habit; he was solid, dependable, loyal. He had never heardof the Chief.
"Dear Daddy," she would write: "Having a splendid voyage so far, butwish you were here. The baby is having such a good time--so popular;and won two prizes to-day at the sports! With love, Lily."
They were all rather like that. She would drop them in the mailbox,with a tug of tenderness for the man who worked at home. Then shewould go back to her chair and watch the sea, and recall the heat ofthe engine room below, and wonder, wonder----
It had turned warm again; the edges of the horizon were grey and atnight a low mist lay over the water. Rooms were stifling, humid. TheRed Un discarded pajamas and slept in his skin. The engine-roomwatch came up white round the lips and sprawled over the boat deckwithout speech. Things were going wrong in the Red Un's small world.The Chief hardly spoke to him--was grave and quiet, and ate almostnothing. The Red Un hated himself unspeakably and gave his share ofthe sovereign to the Purser's boy.
The Chief was suffering from lack of exercise in the air as well asother things. The girl's mother was not sleeping--what with heat andthe memories the sea had revived. On the fifth night out, while theship slept, these two met on the deck in the darkness--two shadowsout of the past. The deck was dark, but a ray from a window touchedhis face and she knew him. He had not needed light to know her;every line of her was written on his heart, and for him there was noone at home to hold in tenderness.
"I think I knew you were here all the time," she said, and held outboth hands.
The Chief took one and dropped it. She belonged to the person athome. He had no thought of forgetting that!
"I saw your name on the passenger list, but I have been very busy."He never lapsed into Scotch with her; she had not liked it. "Isyour husband with you?"
"He could not come just now. I have my daughter."
Her voice fell rather flat. The Chief could not think of anything tosay. Her child, and not his! He was a one-woman man, you see--andthis was the woman.
"I have seen her," he said presently. "She's like you, Lily."
That was a wrong move--the Lily; for it gave her courage to put herhand on his arm.
"It is so long since we have met," she said wistfully. "Yesterday,after I saw the--the place where you lived and--and work----" Shechoked; she was emotional, rather weak. Having made the situationshe should have let it alone; but, after all, it is not what thewoman is, but what the man thinks she is.
The Chief stroked her fingers on his sleeve.
"It's not bad, Lily," he said. "It's a man's job. I like it."
"I believe you had forgotten me entirely!"
The Chief winced. "Isn't that the best thing you could wish me?" hesaid.
"Are you happy?"
"'I ha' lived and I ha' worked!'" he quoted sturdily.
Very shortly after that he left her; he made an excuse of beingneeded below and swung off, his head high.
VI
They struck the derelict when the mist was thickest, about two thatmorning. The Red Un was thrown out of his berth and landed, starknaked, on the floor. The Purser's boy was on the floor, too, in atangle of bedding. There was a sickening silence for a moment,followed by the sound of opening doors and feet in the passage.There was very little speech. People ran for the decks. The Purser'sboy ran with them.
The Red Un never thought of the deck. One of the axioms of theengine room is that of every man to his post in danger. The Red Un'spost was with his Chief. His bare feet scorched on the steel laddersand the hot floor plates; he had on only his trousers, held up witha belt.
The trouble was in the forward stokehole. Water was pouring in fromthe starboard side--was welling up through the floor plates. Thewound was ghastly, fatal! The smouldering in the bunker had weakenedresistance there and her necrosed ribs had given away. The Red Un,scurrying through the tunnel, was met by a maddened rush of trimmersand stokers. He went down under them and came up bruised, bleeding,battling for place.
"You skunks!" he blubbered. "You crazy cowards! Come back and help!"
A big stoker stopped and caught the boy's arm.
"You come on!" he gasped. "The whole thing'll go in a minute. She'llgo down by the head!"
He tried to catch the boy up in his arms, but the Red Un struck himon the nose.
"Let me go, you big stiff!" he cried, and kicked himself free.
Not all the men had gone. They were working like fiends. It was upto the bulkhead now. If it held--if it only held long enough to getthe passengers off!
Not an engineer thought of leaving his place, though they knew,better even than the deck officers, how mortally the ship was hurt.They called to their aid every resource of a business that isnothing but emergencies. Engines plus wit, plus the grace ofGod--and the engines were useless. Wits, then, plus Providence. Thepumps made no impression on the roaring flood; they lifted floorplates to strengthen the bulkheads and worked until it was death towork longer. Then, fighting for every foot, the little bandretreated to the after stokehole. Lights were out forward. The Chiefwas the last to escape. He carried an oil lantern, and squeezedthrough the bulkhead door with a wall of water behind him.
The Red Un cried out, but too late. The Chief, blinded by hislantern, had stumbled into the pit where a floor plate had beenlifted. When he found his leg was broken he cried to them to go onand leave him, but they got him out somehow and carried him withthem as they fought and retreated--fought and retreated. He wasstill the Chief; he lay on the floor propped up against somethingand directed the fight. The something he leaned against was thestrained body of the Red Un, who held him up and sniffled shamefacedtears. She was down by the head already and rolling like a dyingthing. When the water came into the after stokehole they carried theChief into the engine room--the lights were going there.
There had been no panic on deck. There were boats enough and thelights gave every one confidence. It was impossible to see thelights goin
g and believe the ship doomed. Those who knew felt thelist of the decks and hurried with the lowering of the boats; theones who saw only the lights wished to go back to their cabins forclothing and money.
The woman sat in the Quartermaster's boat, with her daughter in herarms, and stared at the ship. The Quartermaster said the engineerswere still below and took off his cap. In her feeble way the womantried to pray, and found only childish, futile things to say; but inher mind there was a great wonder--that they, who had once been lifeeach to the other, should part thus, and that now, as ever, the goodpart was hers! The girl looked up into her mother's face.
"The redhaired little boy, mother--do you think he is safe?"
"First off, likely," mumbled the Quartermaster grimly.
All the passengers were off. Under the mist the sea rose and fellquietly; the boats and rafts had drawn off to a safe distance. TheGreek, who had humour as well as imagination, kept up the spirits ofthose about him while he held a child in his arms.
"Shall we," he inquired gravely, "think you--shall we pay extra tothe company for this excursion?"
* * * * *
The battle below had been fought and lost. It was of minutes now.The Chief had given the order: "Every one for himself!" Some of themen had gone, climbing to outer safety. The two Seconds had refusedto leave the Chief. All lights were off by that time. The afterstokehole was flooded and water rolled sickeningly in theengine-pits. Each second it seemed the ship must take its fearfuldive into the quiet sea that so insistently reached up for her.With infinite labour the Seconds got the Chief up to the fiddley,twenty feet or less out of a hundred, and straight ladders insteadof a steel staircase. Ten men could not have lifted him withoutgear, and there was not time!
Then, because the rest was hopeless, they left him there, proppedagainst the wall, with the lantern beside him. He shook hands withthem; the Junior was crying; the Senior went last, and after he hadgone up a little way he turned and came back.
"I can't do it, Chief!" he said. "I'll stick it out with you." Butthe Chief drove him up, with the name of his wife and child. Far upthe shaft he turned and looked down. The lantern glowed faintlybelow.
The Chief sat alone on his grating. He was faint with pain. Theblistering cylinders were growing cold; the steel floor beneath wasawash. More ominous still, as the ship's head sank, came crackingsand groanings from the engines below. They would fall through at thelast, ripping out the bulkheads and carrying her down bow first.
Pain had made the Chief rather dull. "'I ha' lived and I ha'worked!'" he said several times--and waited for the end. Into hisstupor came the thought of the woman--and another thought of theRed Un. Both of them had sold him out, so to speak; but the womanhad grown up with his heart and the boy was his by right ofsalvage--only he thought of the woman as he dreamed of her, not ashe had seen her on the deck. He grew rather confused, after a time,and said: "I ha' loved and I ha' worked!"
Just between life and death there comes a time when the fight seemsa draw, or as if each side, exhausted, had called a truce. There isno more struggle, but it is not yet death. The ship lay so. Theupreaching sea had not conquered. The result was inevitable, but notyet. And in the pause the Red Un came back, came crawling down theladder, his indomitable spirit driving his craven little body.
He had got as far as the boat and safety. The gripping devils offear that had followed him up from the engine room still hung to histhroat; but once on deck, with the silent men who were workingagainst time and eternity, he found he could not do it. He was theChief's boy--and the Chief was below and hurt!
The truce still held. As the ship rolled, water washed about thefoot of the ladder and lapped against the cylinders. The Chief trieddesperately to drive him up to the deck and failed.
"It's no place for you alone," said the Red Un. His voice hadlost its occasional soprano note; the Red Un was a grown man."I'm staying!" And after a hesitating moment he put his small,frightened paw on the Chief's arm.
It was that, perhaps, that roused the Chief--not love of life, butlove of the boy. To be drowned like a rat in a hole--that was not sobad when one had lived and worked. A man may not die better thanwhere he has laboured; but this child, who would die with him ratherthan live alone! The Chief got up on his usable knee.
"I'm thinking, laddie," he said, "we'll go fighting anyhow."
The boy went first, with the lantern. And, painful rung by painfulrung, the Chief did the impossible, suffering hells as he moved. Foreach foot he gained the Red Un gained a foot--no more. What he wouldnot have endured for himself, the Chief suffered for the boy.Halfway up, he clung, exhausted.
The boy leaned down and held out his hand.
"I'll pull," he said. "Just hang on to me."
Only once again did he speak during that endless climb in thesilence of the dying ship, and what he said came in gasps. He waspulling indeed.
"About--that airtrunk," he managed to say--"I'm--sorry, sir!"
* * * * *
The dawn came up out of the sea, like resurrection. In theQuartermaster's boat the woman slept heavily, with tears on hercheeks. The Quartermaster looked infinitely old and very tired withliving.
It was the girl, after all, who spied them--two figures--one inertand almost lifeless; one very like a bobbing tomato, but revealing ablue face and two desperate eyes above a ship's lifebelt.
The Chief came to an hour or so later and found the woman near, paleand tragic, and not so young as he had kept her in his heart. Hiseyes rested on hers a moment; the bitterness was gone, and the ache.He had died and lived again, and what was past was past.
"I thought," said the woman tremulously--"all night I thought thatyou----"
The Chief, coming to full consciousness, gave a little cry. Hiseyes, travelling past hers, had happened on a small and languidyoungster curled up at his feet, asleep. The woman drew back--asfrom an intrusion.
As she watched, the Red Un yawned, stretched and sat up. His eyesmet the Chief's, and between them passed such a look ofunderstanding as made for the two one world, one victory!
Love Stories Page 7
