by Jack London
“Tell me,” Captain Davenport said, rubbing his smarting eyes, “what happened with that BOUNTY crowd after they reached Pitcairn? The account I read said they burnt the Bounty, and that they were not discovered until many years later. But what happened in the meantime? I’ve always been curious to know. They were men with their necks in the rope. There were some native men, too. And then there were women. That made it look like trouble right from the jump.”
“There was trouble,” McCoy answered. “They were bad men. They quarreled about the women right away. One of the mutineers, Williams, lost his wife. All the women were Tahitian women. His wife fell from the cliffs when hunting sea birds. Then he took the wife of one of the native men away from him. All the native men were made very angry by this, and they killed off nearly all the mutineers. Then the mutineers that escaped killed off all the native men. The women helped. And the natives killed each other. Everybody killed everybody. They were terrible men.
“Timiti was killed by two other natives while they were combing his hair in friendship. The white men had sent them to do it. Then the white men killed them. The wife of Tullaloo killed him in a cave because she wanted a white man for husband. They were very wicked. God had hidden His face from them. At the end of two years all the native men were murdered, and all the white men except four. They were Young, John Adams, McCoy, who was my great-grandfather, and Quintal. He was a very bad man, too. Once, just because his wife did not catch enough fish for him, he bit off her ear.”
“They were a bad lot!” Mr. Konig exclaimed.
“Yes, they were very bad,” McCoy agreed and went on serenely cooing of the blood and lust of his iniquitous ancestry. “My great-grandfather escaped murder in order to die by his own hand. He made a still and manufactured alcohol from the roots of the ti-plant. Quintal was his chum, and they got drunk together all the time. At last McCoy got delirium tremens, tied a rock to his neck, and jumped into the sea.
“Quintal’s wife, the one whose ear he bit off, also got killed by falling from the cliffs. Then Quintal went to Young and demanded his wife, and went to Adams and demanded his wife. Adams and Young were afraid of Quintal. They knew he would kill them. So they killed him, the two of them together, with a hatchet. Then Young died. And that was about all the trouble they had.”
“I should say so,” Captain Davenport snorted. “There was nobody left to kill.”
“You see, God had hidden His face,” McCoy said.
By morning no more than a faint air was blowing from the eastward, and, unable to make appreciable southing by it, Captain Davenport hauled up full-and-by on the port track. He was afraid of that terrible westerly current which had cheated him out of so many ports of refuge. All day the calm continued, and all night, while the sailors, on a short ration of dried banana, were grumbling. Also, they were growing weak and complaining of stomach pains caused by the straight banana diet. All day the current swept the PYRENEES to the westward, while there was no wind to bear her south. In the middle of the first dogwatch, cocoanut trees were sighted due south, their tufted heads rising above the water and marking the lowlying atoll beneath.
“That is Taenga Island ,” McCoy said. “We need a breeze tonight, or else we’ll miss Makemo.”
“What’s become of the southeast trade?” the captain demanded. “Why don’t it blow? What’s the matter?”
“It is the evaporation from the big lagoons—there are so many of them,” McCoy explained. “The evaporation upsets the whole system of trades. It even causes the wind to back up and blow gales from the southwest. This is the Dangerous Archipelago, Captain.”
Captain Davenport faced the old man, opened his mouth, and was about to curse, but paused and refrained. McCoy’s presence was a rebuke to the blasphemies that stirred in his brain and trembled in his larynx. McCoy’s influence had been growing during the many days they had been together. Captain Davenport was an autocrat of the sea, fearing no man, never bridling his tongue, and now he found himself unable to curse in the presence of this old man with the feminine brown eyes and the voice of a dove. When he realized this, Captain Davenport experienced a distinct shock. This old man was merely the seed of McCoy, of McCoy of the BOUNTY, the mutineer fleeing from the hemp that waited him in England , the McCoy who was a power for evil in the early days of blood and lust and violent death on Pitcairn Island .
Captain Davenport was not religious, yet in that moment he felt a mad impulse to cast himself at the other’s feet—and to say he knew not what. It was an emotion that so deeply stirred him, rather than a coherent thought, and he was aware in some vague way of his own unworthiness and smallness in the presence of this other man who possessed the simplicity of a child and the gentleness of a woman.
Of course he could not so humble himself before the eyes of his officers and men. And yet the anger that had prompted the blasphemy still raged in him. He suddenly smote the cabin with his clenched hand and cried:
“Look here, old man, I won’t be beaten. These Paumotus have cheated and tricked me and made a fool of me. I refuse to be beaten. I am going to drive this ship, and drive and drive and drive clear through the Paumotus to China but what I find a bed for her. If every man deserts, I’ll stay by her. I’ll show the Paumotus. They can’t fool me. She’s a good girl, and I’ll stick by her as long as there’s a plank to stand on. You hear me?”
“And I’ll stay with you, Captain,” McCoy said.
During the night, light, baffling airs blew out of the south, and the frantic captain, with his cargo of fire, watched and measured his westward drift and went off by himself at times to curse softly so that McCoy should not hear.
Daylight showed more palms growing out of the water to the south.
“That’s the leeward point of Makemo,” McCoy said. “Katiu is only a few miles to the west. We may make that.”
But the current, sucking between the two islands, swept them to the northwest, and at one in the afternoon they saw the palms of Katiu rise above the sea and sink back into the sea again.
A few minutes later, just as the captain had discovered that a new current from the northeast had gripped the Pyrenees , the masthead lookouts raised cocoanut palms in the northwest.
“It is Raraka,” said McCoy. “We won’t make it without wind. The current is drawing us down to the southwest. But we must watch out. A few miles farther on a current flows north and turns in a circle to the northwest. This will sweep us away from Fakarava, and Fakarava is the place for the Pyrenees to find her bed.”
“They can sweep all they da—all they well please,” Captain Davenport remarked with heat. “We’ll find a bed for her somewhere just the same.”
But the situation on the Pyrenees was reaching a culmination. The deck was so hot that it seemed an increase of a few degrees would cause it to burst into flames. In many places even the heavy-soled shoes of the men were no protection, and they were compelled to step lively to avoid scorching their feet. The smoke had increased and grown more acrid. Every man on board was suffering from inflamed eyes, and they coughed and strangled like a crew of tuberculosis patients. In the afternoon the boats were swung out and equipped. The last several packages of dried bananas were stored in them, as well as the instruments of the officers. Captain Davenport even put the chronometer into the longboat, fearing the blowing up of the deck at any moment.
All night this apprehension weighed heavily on all, and in the first morning light, with hollow eyes and ghastly faces, they stared at one another as if in surprise that the Pyrenees still held together and that they still were alive.
Walking rapidly at times, and even occasionally breaking into an undignified hop-skip-and-run, Captain Davenport inspected his ship’s deck.
“It is a matter of hours now, if not of minutes,” he announced on his return to the poop.
The cry of land came down from the masthead. From the deck the land was invisible, and McCoy went aloft, while the captain took advantage of the opportunity to curse some of
the bitterness out of his heart. But the cursing was suddenly stopped by a dark line on the water which he sighted to the northeast. It was not a squall, but a regular breeze—the disrupted trade wind, eight points out of its direction but resuming business once more.
“Hold her up, Captain,” McCoy said as soon as he reached the poop. “That’s the easterly point of Fakarava, and we’ll go in through the passage full-tilt, the wind abeam, and every sail drawing.”
At the end of an hour, the cocoanut trees and the lowlying land were visible from the deck. The feeling that the end of the PYRENEES ‘ resistance was imminent weighed heavily on everybody. Captain Davenport had the three boats lowered and dropped short astern, a man in each to keep them apart. The Pyrenees closely skirted the shore, the surf-whitened atoll a bare two cable lengths away.
And a minute later the land parted, exposing a narrow passage and the lagoon beyond, a great mirror, thirty miles in length and a third as broad.
“Now, Captain.”
For the last time the yards of the Pyrenees swung around as she obeyed the wheel and headed into the passage. The turns had scarcely been made, and nothing had been coiled down, when the men and mates swept back to the poop in panic terror. Nothing had happened, yet they averred that something was going to happen. They could not tell why. They merely knew that it was about to happen. McCoy started forward to take up his position on the bow in order to con the vessel in; but the captain gripped his arm and whirled him around.
“Do it from here,” he said. “That deck’s not safe. What’s the matter?” he demanded the next instant. “We’re standing still.”
McCoy smiled.
“You are bucking a seven-knot current, Captain,” he said. “That is the way the full ebb runs out of this passage.”
At the end of another hour the Pyrenees had scarcely gained her length, but the wind freshened and she began to forge ahead.
“Better get into the boats, some of you,” Captain Davenport commanded.
His voice was still ringing, and the men were just beginning to move in obedience, when the amidship deck of the Pyrenees, in a mass of flame and smoke, was flung upward into the sails and rigging, part of it remaining there and the rest falling into the sea. The wind being abeam, was what had saved the men crowded aft. They made a blind rush to gain the boats, but McCoy’s voice, carrying its convincing message of vast calm and endless time, stopped them.
“Take it easy,” he was saying. “Everything is all right. Pass that boy down somebody, please.”
The man at the wheel had forsaken it in a funk, and Captain Davenport had leaped and caught the spokes in time to prevent the ship from yawing in the current and going ashore.
“Better take charge of the boats,” he said to Mr. Konig. “Tow one of them short, right under the quarter…. When I go over, it’ll be on the jump.”
Mr. Konig hesitated, then went over the rail and lowered himself into the boat.
“Keep her off half a point, Captain.”
Captain Davenport gave a start. He had thought he had the ship to himself.
“Ay, ay; half a point it is,” he answered.
Amidships the Pyrenees was an open flaming furnace, out of which poured an immense volume of smoke which rose high above the masts and completely hid the forward part of the ship. McCoy, in the shelter of the mizzen-shrouds, continued his difficult task of conning the ship through the intricate channel. The fire was working aft along the deck from the seat of explosion, while the soaring tower of canvas on the mainmast went up and vanished in a sheet of flame. Forward, though they could not see them, they knew that the head-sails were still drawing.
“If only she don’t burn all her canvas off before she makes inside,” the captain groaned.
“She’ll make it,” McCoy assured him with supreme confidence. “There is plenty of time. She is bound to make it. And once inside, we’ll put her before it; that will keep the smoke away from us and hold back the fire from working aft.”
A tongue of flame sprang up the mizzen, reached hungrily for the lowest tier of canvas, missed it, and vanished. From aloft a burning shred of rope stuff fell square on the back of Captain Davenport’s neck. He acted with the celerity of one stung by a bee as he reached up and brushed the offending fire from his skin.
“How is she heading, Captain?”
“Nor’west by west.”
“Keep her west-nor-west.”
Captain Davenport put the wheel up and steadied her.
“West by north, Captain.”
“West by north she is.”
“And now west.”
Slowly, point by point, as she entered the lagoon, the PYRENEES described the circle that put her before the wind; and point by point, with all the calm certitude of a thousand years of time to spare, McCoy chanted the changing course.
“Another point, Captain.”
“A point it is.”
Captain Davenport whirled several spokes over, suddenly reversing and coming back one to check her.
“Steady.”
“Steady she is—right on it.”
Despite the fact that the wind was now astern, the heat was so intense that Captain Davenport was compelled to steal sidelong glances into the binnacle, letting go the wheel now with one hand, now with the other, to rub or shield his blistering cheeks.
McCoy’s beard was crinkling and shriveling and the smell of it, strong in the other’s nostrils, compelled him to look toward McCoy with sudden solicitude. Captain Davenport was letting go the spokes alternately with his hands in order to rub their blistering backs against his trousers. Every sail on the mizzenmast vanished in a rush of flame, compelling the two men to crouch and shield their faces.
“Now,” said McCoy, stealing a glance ahead at the low shore, “four points up, Captain, and let her drive.”
Shreds and patches of burning rope and canvas were falling about them and upon them. The tarry smoke from a smouldering piece of rope at the captain’s feet set him off into a violent coughing fit, during which he still clung to the spokes.
The Pyrenees struck, her bow lifted and she ground ahead gently to a stop. A shower of burning fragments, dislodged by the shock, fell about them. The ship moved ahead again and struck a second time. She crushed the fragile coral under her keel, drove on, and struck a third time.
“Hard over,” said McCoy. “Hard over?” he questioned gently, a minute later.
“She won’t answer,” was the reply.
“All right. She is swinging around.” McCoy peered over the side. “Soft, white sand. Couldn’t ask better. A beautiful bed.”
As the Pyrenees swung around her stern away from the wind, a fearful blast of smoke and flame poured aft. Captain Davenport deserted the wheel in blistering agony. He reached the painter of the boat that lay under the quarter, then looked for McCoy, who was standing aside to let him go down.
“You first,” the captain cried, gripping him by the shoulder and almost throwing him over the rail. But the flame and smoke were too terrible, and he followed hard after McCoy, both men wriggling on the rope and sliding down into the boat together. A sailor in the bow, without waiting for orders, slashed the painter through with his sheath knife. The oars, poised in readiness, bit into the water, and the boat shot away.
“A beautiful bed, Captain,” McCoy murmured, looking back.
“Ay, a beautiful bed, and all thanks to you,” was the answer.
The three boats pulled away for the white beach of pounded coral, beyond which, on the edge of a cocoanut grove, could be seen a half dozen grass houses and a score or more of excited natives, gazing wide-eyed at the conflagration that had come to land.
The boats grounded and they stepped out on the white beach.
“And now,” said McCoy, “I must see about getting back to Pitcairn.”
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