The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  Captain Benson smiled dignifiedly in answer to the outburst of laughter evoked by this, and the men below lifted their haggard, hopeless faces an instant, and looked at the party with eyes that were furtive—cat-like. The grinding of the stones prevented their hearing the talk, but they knew that they were being laughed at.

  “Never knew a sailor yet,” wheezed a portly and asthmatic captain, “who wasn’t ready to sue the devil and try the court in hell when he’s at sea. Trouble is, they never get past the first saloon.”

  “They got a little law here,” resumed Captain Benson, quietly. “I put them all in the guardo. The consul advised it, and committed them for fear they might desert when we lay at the dock. When I took them out to run to the islands, they complained of being starved; and to tell the truth, they didn’t throw their next meal overboard as usual. Nevertheless, a good four weeks’ board-bill comes out of their wages. I don’t think they’ll have a big pay-day in New York: the natives cleaned out the forecastle in their absence, and they’ll have to draw heavily on my slop-chest.”

  “That’s where captains have the best of it,” said one of the mates, jocularly—and presumptuously, to judge by his captain’s frown; “we hammer ’em round and wear out their clothes, and it’s the captain that sells ’em new ones.”

  “Captain,” said the grizzled one, who had been scanning the crew intently, “I’d pay that crew off if I were you; you ought to ha’ let ’em run, or worked ’em out and saved their pay. Look at ’em—look at the devils in their eyes. I notice your mates seldom turn their backs on ’em. I’d get rid of ’em.”

  “What! Just when we have them under control and useful? Oh, no! They know their work now, and I’d only have to ship a crowd of beach-combers and half-breeds at nearly double pay. Besides, gentlemen, we’re just a little proud of this crew. They are lake sailors from Oswego, a little port on Lake Ontario. When I was young I sailed on the Lakes a season or two and became thoroughly acquainted with the aggressive self-respect of that breed. They would rather fight than eat. Their reputation in this regard prevents them getting berths in any but Oswego vessels, and even affects the policy of the nation. There’s a fort at Oswego, and whenever a company of soldiers anywhere in the country become unmanageable—when their officers can’t control them outside the guard-house—the War Department at Washington transfers them to Oswego for the tutelage they will get from the sailors. And they get it; they are well-behaved, well-licked soldiers when they leave. An Oswego sailor loves a row. He is possessed by the fighting spirit of a bulldog; he inherits it with his Irish sense of injury; he sucks it in with his mother’s milk, and drinks it in with his whisky; and when no enemies are near, he will fight his friends. Pay them off? Not much. I’ve taken sixteen of those devils round the Horn, and I’ll take them back. I’m proud of them. Just look at them,” he concluded vivaciously, as he waved his hand at his men; “docile and obedient, down on their knees with bibles and prayer-books.”

  “And the name o’ the Lord on their lips,” grunted the adviser; “but not in prayer, I’ll bet you.”

  “Hardly,” laughed Captain Benson. “Come below, gentlemen; the steward is ready.”

  From lack of facilities the mild-faced and smiling steward could not serve that dinner with the style which it deserved. He would have liked, he explained, as they seated themselves, to bring it on in separate courses; but one and all disclaimed such frivolity. The dinner was there, and that was enough. And it was a splendid dinner. In front of Captain Benson, at the head of the table, stood a large tureen of smoking terrapin-stew; next to that a stuffed and baked freshly caught fish; and waiting their turn in the center of the spread, a couple of brace of wild geese from the inland lakes, brown and glistening, oyster-dressed and savory. Farther along was a steaming plum-pudding, overhead on a swinging tray a dozen bottles of wine, by the captain’s elbow a decanter of yellow fluid, and before each man’s plate a couple of glasses of different size.

  “We’ll start off with an appetizer, gentlemen,” said the host, as he passed the decanter to his neighbor. “Here is some of the best Dutch courage ever distilled; try it.”

  The decanter went around, each filling his glass and holding it poised; then, when all were supplied, they drank to the grizzled old captain’s toast: “A speedy and pleasant passage home for the Almena, and further confusion to her misguided crew.” The captain responded gracefully, and began serving the stew, which the steward took from him plate by plate, and passed around.

  But, either because thirteen men had sat down to that table, or because the Fates were unusually freakish that day, it was destined that, beyond the initial glass of whisky, not a man present should partake of Captain Benson’s dinner. On deck things had been happening, and just as the host had filled the last plate for himself, a wet, bedraggled, dirty little man, his tarry clothing splashed with the slime of the deck, his eyes flaming green, his face expanded to a smile of ferocity, appeared in the forward doorway, holding a cocked revolver which covered them all. Behind him in the passage were other men, equally unkempt, their eyes wide open with excitement and anticipation.

  “Don’t ye move,” yelped the little man, “not a man. Keep yer hands out o’ yer pockets. Put ’em over yer heads. That’s it. You too, cappen.”

  They obeyed him (there was death in the green eyes and smile), all but one. Captain Benson sprang to his feet, with a hand in his breast pocket.

  “You scoundrels!” he cried, as he drew forth a pistol. “Leave this—” The speech was stopped by a report, deafening in the closed-up space; and Captain Benson fell heavily, his pistol rattling on the floor.

  “Hang me up, will ye?” growled another voice through the smoke.

  In the after-door were more men, the red-haired Seldom Helward in the van, holding a smoking pistol. “Get the gun, one o’ you fellows over there,” he called.

  A man stepped in and picked up the pistol, which he cocked.

  “One by one,” said Seldom, his voice rising to the pitch and timbre of a trumpet-blast, “you men walk out the forward companionway with your hands over your heads. Plug them, Sinful, if two move together, and shoot to kill.”

  Taken by surprise, the guests, resolute men though they were, obeyed the command. As each rose to his feet, he was first relieved of a bright revolver, which served to increase the moral front of the enemy, then led out to the booby-hatch, on which lay a newly broached coil of hambro-line and pile of thole-pins from the boatswain’s locker. Here he was searched again for jack-knife or brass knuckles, bound with the hambro-line, gagged with a thole-pin, and marched forward, past the prostrate first mate, who lay quiet in the scuppers, and the erect but agonized second mate, gagged and bound to the fife-rail, to the port forecastle, where he was locked in with the Chinese cook, who, similarly treated, had preceded. The mild-faced steward, weeping now, as much from professional disappointment as from stronger emotion, was questioned sternly, and allowed his freedom on his promise not to “sing out” or make trouble. Captain Benson was examined, his injury diagnosed as brain-concussion, from the glancing bullet, more or less serious, and dragged out to the scuppers, where he was bound beside his unconscious first officer. Then, leaving them to live or die as their subconsciousness determined, the sixteen mutineers sacrilegiously reëntered the cabin and devoured the dinner. And the appetites they displayed—their healthy, hilarious enjoyment of the good things on the table—so affected the professional sense of the steward that he ceased his weeping, and even smiled as he waited on them.

  When you have cursed, beaten, and kicked a slave for five months it is always advisable to watch him for a few seconds after you administer correction, to give him time to realize his condition. And when you have carried a revolver in the right-hand trousers pocket for five months it is advisable occasionally to inspect the cloth of the pocket to make sure that it is not wearing thin from the chafe of the muzzle. Mr. Jackson had ignored the first rule of conduct, Mr. Becker the second. Mr. Jackson had
kicked Sinful Peck once too often; but not knowing that it was once too often, had immediately turned his back, and received thereat the sharp corner of a bible on his bump of inhabitiveness, which bump responded in its function; for Mr. Jackson showed no immediate desire to move from the place where he fell. Beyond binding, he received no further attention from the men. Mr. Becker, on his way to the lazarette in the stern for a bucket of sand to assist in the holystoning, had reached the head of the poop steps when this occurred; and turning at the sound of his superior’s fall, had bounded to the main-deck without touching the steps, reaching for his pistol as he landed, only to pinion his fingers in a large hole in the pocket. Wildly he struggled to reclaim his weapon, down his trouser leg, held firmly to his knee by the tight rubber boot; but he could not reach it. His anxious face betrayed his predicament to the wakening men, and when he looked into Mr. Jackson’s revolver, held by Sinful Peck, he submitted to being bound to the fife-rail and gagged with the end of the topgallant-sheet—a large rope, which just filled his mouth, and hurt. Then the firearm was recovered, and the descent upon the dinner-party quickly planned and carried out.

  Have you ever seen a kennel of hunting-dogs released on a fine day after long confinement—how they bark and yelp, chasing one another, biting playfully, rolling and tumbling over and over in sheer joy and healthy appreciation of freedom? Without the vocal expression of emotion, the conduct of these men after that wine dinner was very similar to that of such emancipated dogs. They waltzed, boxed, wrestled, threw each other about the deck, turned handsprings and cartwheels—those not too weak—buffeted, kicked, and clubbed the suffering Mr. Becker, reviled and cursed the unconscious captain and chief officer, and when tired of this, as children and dogs of play, they turned to their captives for amusement. The second mate was taken from the fife-rail, with hands still bound, and led to the forecastle; the gags of all and the bonds of the cook were removed, and the forecastle dinner was brought from the galley. This they were invited to eat. There was a piece of salt beef, boiled a little longer than usual on account of the delay; it was black, brown, green, and iridescent in spots; it was slippery with ptomaïnes, filthy to the sight, stinking, and nauseating. There were potatoes, two years old, shriveled before boiling—hard and soggy, black, blue, and bitter after the process. And there was the usual “weevily hardtack” in the bread-barge.

  Protest was useless. The unhappy captives surrounded that dinner on the forecastle floor (for there was neither table to sit at, nor chests, stools, or boxes to sit on, in the apartment), and, with hands behind their backs and disgust in their faces, masticated and swallowed the morsels which the Chinese cook put to their mouths, while their feelings were further outraged by the hilarity of the men at their backs, and their appetites occasionally jogged into activity by the impact on their heads of a tarry fist or pistol-butt. At last a portly captain began vomiting, and this being contagious, the meal ended; for even the stomachs of the sailors, overcharged as they were with the rich food and wine of the cabin table, were affected by the spectacle.

  There were cool heads in that crowd of mutineers—men who thought of consequences: Poop-deck Cahill, square-faced and resolute, but thoughtful of eye and refined of speech; Seldom Helward, who had shot the captain—a man whose fiery hair, arching eyebrows, Roman nose, and explosive language indicated the daredevil, but whose intelligent though humorous eye and corrugated forehead gave certain signs of repressive study and thought; and Bigpig Monahan, already described. These three men went into session under the break of the poop, and came to the conclusion that the consul who had jailed them for nothing would hang them for this; then, calling the rest to the conference as a committee of the whole, they outlined and put to vote a proposition to make sail and go to sea, leaving the fate of their captives for later consideration—which was adopted unanimously and with much profanity, the central thought of the latter being an intention to “make ’em finish the holystonin’ for the fun they had laughin’ at us.” Then Bigpig Monahan sneaked below and induced the steward to toss through the store-room dead-light every bottle of wine and liquor which the ship contained. “For Seldom and Poop-deck,” he said to him, “are the only men in the gang fit to pick up navigation and git this ship into port again; but if they git their fill of it, it’s all day with you, steward.”

  Six second mates on six American ships watched curiously, doubtingly, and at last anxiously, as sails were dropped and yards mastheaded on board the Almena, and as she paid off from the mooring-buoy before the land-breeze and showed them her stern, sent six dinghies, which gave up the pursuit in a few minutes and mustered around the buoy, where a wastefully slipped shot of anchor-chain gave additional evidence that all was not right. But by the time the matter was reported to the authorities ashore, the Almena, having caught the newly arrived southerly wind off the Peruvian coast, was hull down on the western horizon.

  * * * *

  Four days later, one of the Almena’s boats, containing twelve men with sore heads, disfigured faces, and clothing ruined by oily wood-pulp—ruined particularly about the knees of their trousers—came wearily into the roadstead from the open sea, past the shipping, and up to the landing at the custom-house docks. From here the twelve proceeded to the American consul and entered bitter complaint of inhuman treatment received at the hands of sixteen mutinous sailors on board the Almena—treatment so cruel that they had welcomed being turned adrift in an open boat; whereat, the consul, deploring the absence of man-of-war or steamer to send in pursuit, took their individual affidavits; and these he sent to San Francisco, from which point the account of the crime, described as piracy, spread to every newspaper in Christendom.

  PART III

  A Northeast gale off Hatteras: immense gray combers, five to the mile, charging shoreward, occasionally breaking, again lifting their heads too high in the effort, truncated as by a knife, and the liquid apex shattered to spray; an expanse of leaden sky showing between the rain-squalls, across which heavy background rushed the darker scud and storm-clouds; a passenger-steamer rolling helplessly in the trough, and a square-rigged vessel, hove to on the port tack, two miles to windward of the steamer, and drifting south toward the storm-center. This is the picture that the sea-birds saw at daybreak on a September morning, and could the sea-birds have spoken they might have told that the square-rigged craft carried a navigator who had learned that a whirling fury of storm-center was less to be feared than the deadly Diamond Shoals—the outlying guard of Cape Hatteras toward which that steamer was drifting, broadside on.

  Clad in yellow oilskins and sou’wester, he stood by the after-companionway, intently examining through a pair of glasses the wallowing steamer to leeward, barely distinguishable in the half-light and driving spindrift. On the main-deck a half-dozen men paced up and down, sheltered by the weather rail; forward, two others walked the deck by the side of the forward house, but never allowed their march to extend past the after-corner; and at the wheel stood a little man who sheltered a cheerful face under the lee of a big coat-collar, and occasionally peeped out at the navigator.

  “Poop-deck,” he shouted above the noise of the wind, “take the wheel till I fire up.”

  “Thought I was exempt from steering,” growled the other, good-humoredly, as he placed the glasses inside the companionway.

  “You’re getting too fat and sassy; steer a little.”

  Poop-deck relieved the little man, who descended the cabin stairs, and returned in a few moments, smoking a short pipe. He took the wheel, and Poop-deck again examined the steamer with the glasses.

  “There goes his ensign, union down,” he exclaimed; “he’s in trouble. We’ll show ours.”

  From a flag-locker inside the companionway he drew out the Stars and Stripes, which he ran up to the monkey-gaff. Then he looked again.

  “Down goes his ensign; up goes the code pennant. He wants to signal. Come up here, boys,” called Poop-deck; “give me a hand.”

  As the six men climbed the ste
ps, he pulled out the corresponding code signal from the locker, and ran it up on the other part of the halyards as the ensign fluttered down. “Go down, one of you,” he said, “and get the signal-book and shipping-list. He’ll show his number next. Get ours ready—R. L. F. T.”

  While a man sprang below for the books named, the others hooked together the signal-flags forming the ship’s number, and Poop-deck resumed the glasses.

  “Q. T. F. N.,” he exclaimed. “Look it up.”

  The books had arrived, and while one lowered and hoisted again the code signal, which was also the answering pennant, the others pored over the shipping-list.

  “Steamer Aldebaran of New York,” they said.

  The pennant came down, and the ship’s number went up to the gaff.

  “H. V.,” called Poop-deck, as he scanned two flags now flying from the steamer’s truck. “What does that say?”

  “Damaged rudder—cannot steer,” they answered.

  “Pull down the number and show the answering pennant again,” said Poop-deck; “and let me see that signal-book.” He turned the leaves, studied a page for a moment, then said: “Run up H. V. R. That says, ‘What do you want?’ and that’s the nearest thing to it.”

  These flags took the place of the answering pennant at the gaff-end, and again Poop-deck watched through the glasses, noting first the showing of the steamer’s answering pennant, then the letters K. R. N.

  “What does K. R. N. say?” he asked.

  They turned the leaves, and answered: “I can tow you.”

  “Tow us? We’re all right; we don’t want a tow. He’s crazy. How can he tow us when he can’t steer?” exclaimed three or four together.

  “He wants to tow us so that he can steer, you blasted fools,” said Poop-deck. “He can keep head to sea and go where he likes with a big drag on his stern.”