Together, one at each end of it, they swung it, lifted it noiselessly around.
“There!” smiled Abercrombie. “Now the mise en scène is perfect. All but that little smear of blood on the floor, I’ll clean that up, while you’re letting Gilkey in.”
He laid a hand on Brodbine’s shoulder.
“Just one word more,” said he. “We, who have been through the test tubes and have emerged, understand more fully than men who haven’t been there, the Socratic method whereby at times an individual wrong becomes a communal right. We’ve got to stand together, in a crisis. But when it’s over, you and I once more know nothing of each other. The laboratory door, reopened for an hour, must close again — eternally. You understand?”
Brodbine nodded, in silence. Their hands met, and clasped.
The electric bell once more called, insistently.
“Go let him in!” bade Abercrombie, with a smile.
IN MARINERS’ HOUSE
THEY’VE WENT and painted Mariners’ House an ugly drab and turned it into cheap rents upstairs; also let the ground floor, where the bar used to be, for junk-shops an’ stuffy little sea-truck stores.
Once I remember it was a good bright red, with chints curtains at the bar winders an’ snug rooms for sailormen — no crimpin’ — at the right price. You could feed there, too, front o’ the barroom fire, an’ get a proper meal for two bits. You couldn’t get soused there, though; for they’d chuck you out, neck an’ crop, into Commercial Street if you tried to start anythin’.
No loafers ever used to get their boot-toes turned up there, kickin’ drunken AB’s’ sea-chests open and looting ’em, same as I’ve seen elsewhere. No; it was all straight an’ clean an’ proper, long as Mrs. Hannaford lived. It’s took a mighty long downward slant since them days, Mariners’ House has, believe me!
Even the great big chimneys up through the slate roof, where the pigeons still strut an’ make love on sunny days, has began to shed bricks.
And the old flagpole that once flew the stripes, with weather pennants below, has rotted an’ fell down an’ been used, I make no doubt, for firewood.
Nothin’ to it now — nothin’ at all. But in the old days you could see things at Mariners’ House, an’ hear things, too — things not in the books, things any writer would have gave his eyeteeth to listen to an’ put down in the magazines.
I know, fellas, because many’s the day and evenin’ I used to hang out there. Them times the old hookers an’ windjammers fair crowded the harbor an’ poked their jib-booms over India Street.
The gurry tramps an’ slim liners hadn’t elbowed ’em to the ship-breakers yet. An’ the bar was ’most always full o’ blue-water men.
They’d meet up from Callao to Falkland an’ from Cape Town to Nagasaki — meet up, an’ touch hands and glasses, an’ then go out — lots of ’em to D Jones, who keeps berths always waitin’ at the bottom o’ the seven seas.
But there wasn’t no disorder — none at all. Mrs. Hannaford was master of ’em all, at that. She was loggin’ along toward thirty-eight built, AI, fore an’ aft; had a good wad salted in the Casco National, an’ owned the place.
“Butch” Hannaford left it to her, that time Swenson caved his dome in with a slice-bar. Oh, I ain’t sayin’ she wouldn’t look at a good, upstandin’ man once in a tack or two; and many’s the lad imagined vain things the whiles he was roundin’ Hatteras or maybe the Horn.
But she was right as a trivet, Sallie was, with clean sailin’-papers, an’ not a black mark on anybody’s books in this here whole round terra-cotta.
This brings me to what I was a goin’ to tell you, now they’re all over the bar, all hands concerned — not the house bar, y’understand.
I mean the other bar that What’s-His-Name Sir Alfred Longfellow wrote about once in a poem.
II.
WELL, IT’S ABOUT the time “Shifty” Tripp died upstairs there in one of Sallie’s best beds, I’m comin’ to.
Shifty was mate of the Benicia Boy, you remember — a Bath four-master — the time she lost Trefethen, her cap’n.
They called him Shifty ever since he was knee-high to a pup, mostly because he had peculiar ways to him an’ never did look you in the eye, leastways if he could help it.
He was a raw P. I, six or seven foot long, with a fist onta him like a cobblestone an’ hair like a livin’ flame. But no matter about that.
It’s his death I’m steerin’ for. The course is well buoyed, too. No danger my forgettin’ that!
Shifty, he run down pow’ful fast after Trefethen was took. While I was alive, nobody ever noticed no love lost betwixt ’em, for the old man was some bucko, and him an’ Shifty had a few set-tos now an’ again.
Fact is, once or twice after a mix, when Shifty spit, they was teeth bounced on the deck o’ the Benicia Boy. But all this an’ all that didn’t seem to matter none.
After Tref hove anchor for the last time Shifty failed right up.
He’d never been no great of a hand to wrastle with prayer till then. But afterward he used to spend his evenin’s in port over to the mission loft, an’ several times I heerd he asked for special intercession at th’ throne; an’ at times he’d exhort his own self.
They say he bellered somethin’ fierce, an’ could be heerd ’way down to Front Street, when the spirit operated right lively.
Second voyage after Trefethen’s takin’ off I see Shifty had got mighty pickid, an’ had a cough onta him. But he signed articles again that spring — 1887 — as mate on the Cyrus Cobb.
Oh, I fergot to say he quit the Benicia Boy right away after the death o’ Tref, an’ never went anigh her again or set foot on her decks when her an’ him happened to be in port together.
There was some talk about it at the time, but folks said it was because he felt so stove up he couldn’t endure for to see the old hooker.
So that passed all right, an’ nobody suspicioned the real reason, which I’m a comin’ to now mighty quick.
As I was sayin’, the spring of ’87 see Shifty in bad shape.
That summer, when he come in from the provinces with the Cyrus Cobb, the hand o’ death had him plumb by the collar of his oilers. He’d fell away so he didn’t no more’n half fill ’em, nohow, an’ he spit blood. But he still signed again.
He was goin’ to croak with his sea-boots on, looked like; but he didn’t, after all, but upstairs in Mariners’ House, in Sallie’s front north room, like I told you already.
That November, the 17th, when the Cyrus Cobb come in again on her last run, Shifty hired the room for a month an’ paid cash down, an’ took to his bed.
He died December 9, about 11.30 p.m., so Sallie was in just a little over a week’s rent. She tried fer to have him get a doctor, or somethin’, but he wouldn’t.
He took them last weeks mighty ca’m, considerin’; just laid there an’ drunk rum an’ molasses, read his Bible, an’ prayed, an’ then banged on the floor, an’ they fetched him another noggin.
Some of us boys used to call in an’ see him every day, an’ them as could prayed with him. I was one as couldn’t, which makes it all the stranger he sh’d send fer me that last night an’ tell me — what he did.
Didn’t seem as I was extry close to him no p’ticular way; an’ yet, after all, he sent fer me. I’m blowed, fellas, if I know why!
Now, I ain’t such a much on this here descriptive business. It’ll take some regular smart Alick with a pen or typewriter to set it all out good an’ proper.
You ask me about cro’jicks, dead-eyes, an’ Plim’s’l-marks, an’ I bate you four fingers on the choppin’-block I’m there with the goods quicker’n white lightnin’. Or anythin’ else belongin’ and appertainin’ to ships, sail or steam. But this storybook business leaves me on a lee shore with all anchors draggin’.
However, I’ll do my best with it. You take it plain, with no trimmin’s, an’ afterward bodge it up to suit yourselves. That’s fair, ain’t it?
>
Here’s what happened:
III.
SHIFTY SENT FER ME about a quarter to eleven. I was down in the bar playin’ Pede with Lefty Jacobs of the Orient Star an’ a couple o’ stokers from the old Geranium, the lighthouse tender, you know.
Sallie, she sticks her head in the door an’ beckons me, an’ I drops as good a hand as a man could wish to see in a month o’ Sundays an’ goes.
“You’re wanted up in No. 18,” says she. “Shifty Tripp’s askin’ fer you. Couldn’t you let somebody else set in on the game an’ humor him? I’ll have whatever drinks you was goin’ to order,” says she, “sent right up, an’ no extra charge, same as I usually get for what’s served away from the bar.”
She was kind of generous that way at times, Sallie was. I thanked her an’ said I’d give my order later, an’ went on up.
I found Shifty propped in bed, with his long-necker an’ his Bible handy.
Somethin’ in the shine of his eye, as the raw light from the lamp hit it, started me kind of. He looked all fevered up, Shifty did. Thinks I to myself, thinks I: “You’re close to harbor, old buck!”
So his first words don’t take me aback as much’s they might otherwise ha’ done if I hadn’t been expectin’ nothin’.
“Come in,” he croaks very husky, hardly able to talk at all. “Heave a line an’ come alongside, Amos,” says he. “I’m dyin’ this very night. Turn me a drink, there — my hand shakes so I spill a’most every damn drop! That’s right — there! Amos,” says he, “I’m goin’ to glory before twelve on that there clock; that is, if I git this here sin off’n my chest —”
“What sin, Shifty? Which p’ticular one?”
I draws up a chair an’ sets down by the bed, so-fashion.
“My hatches is open a’ready,” says he, not payin’ no heed, “to let the immortal soul out o’ my sin-blackened hold. I want her to come forth a shinin’ with glory, Amos! I want to sign my articles with my cap’n aloft,” says he, “with no contraband in my dunnage! Lemme clear everythin’ out,” he says; “an’ arter that I’m ready!”
I makes out to grin an’ takes a nip myself.
“Ferget it, Shifty!” says I, tryin’ fer to cheer him, though in my marrer-bones I know it’s gospel he’s as good as pork. I’d seen a plenty go, an’ I knowed. “Ferget. it! You just got one o’ your —”
“Got nothin’!” he wheezes, coughin’ violent an’ swearin’ at the same time. He clutches the Book to his caved-in chest. “I got my walkin’-papers this time, sure, an’ you know it, Ame. Reckon I sense the condition o’ my own hull an’ cargo better’n what you do!” he gasps, resentful.
“I got to have a regular gam with you an’ git it over with, Amos. I’m openin’ up at all seams; the pumps can’t hold me nohow. I’m goin’ down, now, inside of half an hour by that damn chronometer!” An’ he nods at the tin clock on the shelf. “That’s all!”
Comes a little silence, with only the ticking of the clock, the sputter-sputter of the lamp, and the wooo-wooo-ooo of the wind up the stovepipe.
“Down,” says he, “same as the Benicia Boy jest missed doin’ time Gash Trefethen got his! An’ that,” he adds, “is what I wants to gam about ’fore I founders. Un’stand?”
“Why, what about it?” I inquires, wonderin’. “What in Tophet is there to tell?”
He signals for another two fingers o’ rum an’ then thinks a minute.
“Amos.”
“What?”
“I got murder on my soul!”
“Th’ hell you say! Who?”
“Trefethen!”
“Tref — You’re crazy, lad! Why, he —”
“Yes, I know. He died o’ the hydrophoby, all right enough: but I — killed him, jes’ the same!”
I leans forrard an’ grips him by the skin-an’-bone hand.
“You mean that, Shifty?”
“S’help me God! I gotta let it out, Ame! I dassent go aloft an’ drop my mud-hooks in the harbor — an’ mebbe meet up with Gash himself — so long’s —”
He gits a fit o’ coughin’ onta him an can’t go on.
“So long’s you ain’t told? Is that it?”
He nods.
“More rum!” he croaks “There — that’s better. Darn my eyes,” says he, “this here liquor’s the only caulkin’ that seems to hold me a bit. That’s right — now I’m good fer a few minutes again. Listen!”
IV.
I LISTENS, with my thoughts doin’ thirty knots on a bow-line. Shifty fights fer breath to go on with.
All the time I feel he’s crazed — got hal — hal — hallucinations like; is that the word? ’Cause, you see, Tref died natural enough. Everybody knowed all about it. It was open an’ above-board, his takin’ off was.
Don’t remember it? Bit in mid-ocean by his little pet fox-terrier, that’s all. They crowded sail to make Portland afore it was too late. Thought mebbe they’d fetch it in time so’s he could git the treatment to head it off.
An’ would ha’ made it, too, only fer the Benicia Boy springin’ a leak. All hands pumped, includin’ Gash himself. That’s the time Shifty busted a ligament in his arm workin’ so unearthly hard at the pumps.
They pulled her through, but it was too late! The leak done it. Tref, he died just as they was wallerin’ inta port.
They had to lash him hand an’ foot in his cabin, an’ they say his yells was heerd ’way over on peaks. He busted up all the furniture, too — table an’ everythin’.
“Shifty’s plumb crazed,” thinks I, rememberin’ it all. “The bilge has got inta his think-tanks an’ fouled ’em.”
But now he’s at it again.
“Listen!” he gasps. “Listen, an’ I’ll tell you the livin’ truth about that there time!”
His eyes is all glassy now an’ beginnin’ to roll up, an’ he’s pantin’ like a cod just afore the gills quivers fer the last time, but he hangs to his job.
His fingers is just a bendin’ the covers o’ the Book, he clutches it so tight I spills another three-spot o’ rum inta him an’ he revives a mite.
“Listen!”
“Aye, aye, mate?”
“I done it! Me! I murdered him, s’help me Gawd!”
He’s speakin’ fast now, catchin’ his breath between words, like he’s scared he won’t get through in time.
“It was this way!”
“How?”
“Sallie! Sallie was at the bottom of it, Ame!”
“Th’ devil you say! Why —”
“Shut up an’ listen! Stow your jaw-tackle, can’t you, an’ gimme a show? Gash was cap’n. I was mate. Helsingfors to Portland, cargo — lumber —”
“Blast the cargo! What happened?”
“Sixteen days out the dog run mad. All up an’ down decks, through the waist, even inta the galley an’ aft deckhouse — snappin’ snarlin’ — froth a flyin’ —”
“Cut that part out. I’ve seen ’em myself. How ’bout Gash?”
“Some of us ducked below; some aloft. Tref, he swung for the terrier with a capstan-bar, by th’ mizzen there — an’ missed; the cur got him in th’ left hand —
“Next wallop he caved it. Swung it by the leg an’ hove it outboard. Sucked the wound, Ame, an’ burned it out with the galley poker; she wuz white hot. God! I can smell that sizzle yet, fryin’ like — An’ then we crowded sail —”
The coughin’ choked him. I see he’s goin’ by the head already, settlin’ fast, an’ puts the raw stuff to him hard.
He gulps it all, an’ rests a minute, propped up there in bed, with the lamp a shinin’ in his eyes.
“I better git a doctor,” says I. “You —”
“You anchor right there, Ame, an’ lemme save my soul, you loblolly idjit! Don’t you shift moorings now — hold hard —”
“Go on!”
“We’d had words, him an’ me had, afore then about Sal — more’n once. Never knowed, did you, Tref wanted to splice her? True, s’help me! An’ — a
n’ so did I!”
“You? Why —”
“’Vast your jaw! More’n two v’yages I’d been turnin’ it in my mind. Fine big gal, money in bank, owned an A1 stand o’ buildin’s — no man of her own, an’ needed one my size. Why not?”
“She ever look at you?”
“Mebbe so, an’ mebbe not. But I calculated with a fair show —”
“What you mean? Was Gash on that course, too?”
Shifty nods, an’ for the first time I see his eyes grow wet. He looks at me stiddy, too, which is strange fer him.
“Say, Ame!”
“Huh?”
“Any more in that square-face?”
I give him all there was.
“Got more?” says I.
“No. This — this’ll see me to port. I’m — ’most — saved now. Come here! Stand by, Ame, so —”
“Let go all hawsers, Shifty! Let her come!”
“Third or fourth day out o’ the Skager Rack I has words with Gash in his cabin.
“‘Cap’n,’ says I, respectful, fer I knowed my place — ‘cap’n,’ says I, ‘would you gam a bit with me, not as cap’ to mate, but as man to man? Would you, just a bit?’ says I.”
“Well, would he?”
“Tref was a square man, I’ll ’low, even if he did rough things a bit now an’ then. I didn’t hold no gredge ’count o’ them teeth o’ mine he batted out.
“No; the trouble was all along o’ Sallie. Well, he squints at me sharp-like a minute an’ then he says, says he: ‘Fire away!’
“‘See here, Gash,’ says I, ‘how you stand with Sal Hannaford, back there to Mariners’ House? I seen a few thing’s made me think mebbe —”
“‘Mebbe I was wantin’ to lay long-side an’ take that craft in tow?’ he asks, laughin’. ‘All right. Fair an’ square question. Square answer. You’re dead right, Shifty, old man,’ says he. ‘I do — an’ what’s more, I will! Next time in Portland!’ says he an’ laughs agin.
“‘You won’t!’ says I. ‘’Cause I’m a bigger man than you, an’ by that same token she’s mine!’
THE SUPREME GETAWAY AND OTHER TALES FROM THE PULPS Page 12
