IV
CAPTAIN LUKE MAKES ME AN OFFER
During the next fortnight or so my life on board the brig was aspleasant as it well could be. On the first day out we got a slant ofwind that held by us until it had carried us fairly into the northeasttrades--and then away we went on our course, with everything set anddrawing steady, and nothing much to do but man the wheel and eat threesquare meals a day.
And so everybody was in a good humor, from the captain down. Even themate rumbled what he meant to be a civil word to me now and then; andBowers and I--being nearly of an age, and each of us with his foot onthe first round of the ladder--struck up a friendship that kept ustalking away together by the hour at a time: and very frankly, exceptthat he was shy of saying anything about the brig and her doings, andwhenever I tried to draw him on that course got flurried a little andheld off. But in all other matters he was open; and especiallydelighted in running on about ships and seafaring--for the man was aborn sailor and loved his profession with all his heart.
It was in one of these talks with Bowers that I got my first knowledgeof the Sargasso Sea--about which I shortly was to know a great dealmore than he did: that old sea-wonder which puzzled and scaredColumbus when he coasted it on his way to discover America; and whichcontinued to puzzle all mariners until modern nautical sciencerevealed its cause--yet still left it a good deal of a mystery--almostin our own times.
The subject came up one day while we were crossing the Gulf Stream,and the sea all around us was pretty well covered with patches ofyellow weed--having much the look of mustard-plasters--amidst which abit of a barnacled spar bobbed along slowly near us, and not far off anew pine plank. The yellow stuff, Bowers said, was gulf-weed, broughtup from the Gulf of Mexico where the Stream had its beginning; andthat, thick though it was around us, this was nothing to the thicknessof it in the part of the ocean where the Stream (so he put it, notknowing any better) had its end. And to that same place, he added, theStream carried all that was caught in its current--like the spar andthe plank floating near us--so that the sea was covered with a thicktangle of the weed in which was held fast fragments of wreckage, andstuff washed overboard, and logs adrift from far-off southern shores,until in its central part the mass was so dense that no ship couldsail through it, nor could a steamer traverse it because of thefouling of her screw. And this sort of floating island--which lay in ageneral way between the Bermudas and the Canaries--covered an area ofocean, he said, half as big as the area of the United States; and toclear it ships had to make a wide detour--for even in its thin outwardedges a vessel's way was a good deal retarded and a steamer's wheelwould foul sometimes, and there was danger always of collision withderelicts drifting in from the open sea to become a part of thecentral mass. Our own course, he further said, would be changedbecause of it; but we would be for a while upon what might be calledits coast, and so I would have a chance to see for myself something ofits look as we sailed along.
As I know now, Bowers over-estimated the size of this strange islandof sea-waifs and sea-weed by nearly one-half; and he was partly wrongas to the making of it: for the Sargasso Sea is not where any currentends, but lies in that currentless region of the ocean that is foundto the east of the main Gulf Stream and to the south of the branchwhich sweeps across the North Atlantic to the Azores; and its floatingstuff is matter cast off from the Gulf Stream's edge into thebordering still water--as a river eddies into its pools twigs and deadleaves and such-like small flotsam--and there is compacted bycapillary attraction and by the slow strong pressure of the winds.
On the whole, though, Bowers was not very much off in hisdescription--which somehow took a queer deep hold upon me, andespecially set me to wondering what strange old waifs and strays ofthe ocean might not be found in the thick of that tangle if only therewere some way of pushing into it and reaching the hidden depths thatno man ever yet had seen. But when I put this view of the matter tohim I did not get much sympathy. He was a practical young man, withouta stitch of romance in his whole make-up, and he only laughed at mysuggestion and said that anybody who tried to push into that mess justfor the sake of seeing some barnacle-covered logs, or perhaps arotting hulk or two, would be a good deal of a fool. And so I did notpress my fancy on him, and our talks went on about morecommonplace things.
It was with Captain Luke that I had most to do, and before long I gotto have a very friendly feeling for him because of the trouble that hetook to make me comfortable and to help me pass the time. The firstday out, seeing that I was interested when he took the sun, he turnedthe sextant over to me and showed me how to take an observation; andthen how to work it out and fix the brig's position on the chart--andwas a good deal surprised by my quickness in understanding hisexplanations (for I suppose that to him, with his rule-of-thumbknowledge of mathematics, the matter seemed complex), and still moresurprised when he found, presently, that I really understood theunderlying principle of this simple bit of seamanship far better thanhe did himself. He said that I knew more than most of the captainsafloat and that I ought to be a sailor; which he meant, no doubt, tobe the greatest compliment that he could pay me. After that I took thesights and worked them with him daily; and as I several timescorrected his calculations--for even simple addition and subtractionwere more than he could manage with certainty--he became so impressedby my knowledge as to treat me with an odd show of respect.
But in practical matters--knowledge of men and things, and of the manyplaces about the world which he had seen, and of the management of aship in all weathers--he was one of the best-informed men that ever Icame across: being naturally of a hard-headed make, with greatacuteness of observation, and with quick and sound reasoning powers. Ifound his talk always worth listening to; and I liked nothing betterthan to sit beside him, or to walk the deck with him, while we smokedour pipes together and he told me in his shrewd way about one queerthing and another which he had come upon in various parts of theworld--for he had followed the sea from the time that he was a boy,and there did not seem to be a bit of coast country nor any part ofall the oceans which he did not know well.
Unlike Bowers, he was very free in talking about the trade that hecarried on in the brig upon the African coast, and quite astonished meby his showing of the profits that he made; and he generally ended hisdiscourses on this head by laughingly contrasting the amount of moneythat even Bowers got every year--the mates being allowed an interestin the brig's earnings--with the salary that the palm-oil people wereto pay to me. Indeed, he managed to make me quite discontented with myprospects, although I had thought them very good indeed when I firsttold him about them; and when he would say jokingly, as he very oftendid, that I had better drop the palm-oil people and take a berth onthe brig instead, I would be half sorry that he was only in fun.
In a serious way, too, he told me that the Coast trade had got veryunfairly a bad name that it did not deserve. At one time, he said, agreat many hard characters had got into it, and their doings had givenit a black reputation that still stuck to it. But in recent years, heexplained, it had fallen into the hands of a better class of traders,and its tone had been greatly improved. As a rule, he declared, theWest Coast traders were as decent men as would be found anywhere--notsaints, perhaps, he said smilingly, but men who played a reasonablysquare game and who got big money mainly because they took big risks.When I asked him what sort of risks, he answered: "Oh, pretty much allsorts--sometimes your pocket and sometimes your neck," and added thatto a man of spirit these risks made half the fun. And then he saidthat for a man who did not care for that sort of thing it was betterto be contented with a safe place and low wages--and asked me how longI expected to stay at Loango, and if I had a better job ahead, when mywork there was done.
At first he would shift the subject when I tried to make him talkabout the slave traffic. But one day--it was toward the end of oursecond week out, and I was beginning to think from his constantturning to it that perhaps he really might mean to offer me a berth onthe brig, and that his offer migh
t be pretty well worth accepting--heall of a sudden spoke out freely and of his own accord. It was true,he said, that sometimes a few blacks were taken aboard by traders,when no other stuff offered for barter, and were carried up to Mogadorand there sold for very high prices indeed--for there was a prejudiceagainst the business, and the naval vessels on the Coast tried sopersistently to stop it that the risk of capture was great and theprofit from a successful venture correspondingly large. But theprejudice, he continued, was really not well-founded. Slavery, ofcourse, was a very bad thing; but there were degrees of badness in it,and since it could not be broken up there was much to be said in favorof any course that would make it less cruel. The blacks who were theslaves of other blacks, or of Portuguese,--and it was only these thatthe traders bought--were exposed to such barbarous treatment that itwas a charity to rescue them from it on almost any terms. Certainly itwas for their good, as they had to be in bondage somewhere, to deliverthem from such masters by carrying them away to Northern Africa: wherethe slavery was of so mild and paternal a sort that cruelty almost wasunknown. And then he went on to tell me about the kindly relationswhich he himself had seen existing between slaves and their masters inthose parts, both among Arabs and Moors.
This presentment of the case put so new a face on it that at first Icould not get my bearings; which I am the less ashamed to own up tobecause, as I look at the matter now, I perceive how much troubleCaptain Luke took to win me for his own purposes--he being amiddle-aged man packed full of shrewd worldly wisdom, and I only afresh young fool.
My hesitation about making up an answer to him--for, while I was surethat in the main point he was all wrong, I was caught for the momentin his sophisms--made him fancy, I suppose, that he had convinced me;and so was safe to go ahead in the way that he had intended, no doubt,all along. At any rate, without stopping until my slow wits had achance to get pulled together, he put on a great show of friendlyfrankness and said that he now knew me well enough to trust me, and sowould tell me openly that he himself engaged in the Mogador trade whenoccasion offered; and that there was more money in it a dozen timesover than in all the other trade that he carried on in the_Golden Hind_.
I confess that this avowal completely staggered me, and with a rushbrought back all the fears by which I had been so rattled on the firstday of our voyage. In a hazy way I perceived that the captain had beenplaying a part with me, and that the others had been playing partstoo--for I could not hope that among men of that stripe suchfriendliness should be natural--and what with my surprise, and thefresh fright I was thrown into, I was struck fairly dumb.
But Captain Luke--likely enough deceived by his own hopes, as evenshrewd men will be sometimes--either did not notice the fluster I wasin, or thought to set matters all right with me in his own way; forwhen he found that I remained silent he took up the talk himselfagain, and went on to show in detail the profits of a single venturewith a live cargo--and his figures were certainly big enough to firethe fancy of any man who was keen for money-getting and who waswilling to get his money by rotten ways. And then, when he hadfinished with this part of the matter, he came out plumply with theoffer to give me a mate's rating on board the brig if I would cast inmy fortunes with his. Of the theory of seamanship, he said, I alreadyknew more than he did himself; and so much more than either of hismates that he would feel entirely at ease--as he could not withthem--in trusting the navigation of the brig in my hands. As to thepractical part of the work, that was a matter that with my quickness Iwould pick up in no time; and my bigness and strength, he added, wouldcome in mighty handily when there was trouble among the crew, assometimes happened, and in keeping the blacks in order, and in thelittle fights that now and then were necessary with folks on shore.And then he came to the real kernel of the matter: which was thatBowers did not like his work and was not fit for it, and wasthreatening to leave the brig at the first port she made, and so a manwho could be trusted was badly needed to take his place.
When he had finished with it all I was dumber than ever; for I was ina rage at him for making me such an offer, and at the same time sawpretty clearly that if I refused it as plumply as he made it weshould come to such open enmity that I--being in his powercompletely--would be in danger of my skin. And so I was glad when hegave me a breathing spell, and the chance to think things overquietly, by telling me that he would not hurry me for answer and thatI could take a day or two--or a week or two if I wanted it--in whichto make up my mind.
In the Sargasso Sea Page 4
