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’—an’ 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 longside 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!’
“‘She ever say so?’ he inquired, earnest.
“‘No. How ’bout you?’
“‘No more to me, neither; but if a look means anythin’—’ says he.
“‘I’ve had a look myself,’ says I, ‘that’s what you’re navigatin’ on. Mebbe one an’ a half. Now see here,’ says I, ‘I make you an offer. One or t’other of us has got to up-stick an’ away from this here course.
“‘When we make Portland,’ says I,’ there’s a quiet bit o’ beach over on Cushing’s where two seafarin’ men could meet an’ argy out a proposition, fair an’ proper like, with their bare fists. Winner takes all,’ says I. ‘How ’bout it?’
“Split my tops’l if he don’t laugh an’ gimme the grip on it!
“‘Done!’ says he, free an’ hearty. ‘That’s the way I like to hear a lad talk! I misjudged you, old man,’ says he. ‘Always thought you was—well—different—though you was layin’ fer to take some underhand advantage an’ the like o’ that.
“‘But now,’ says he, ‘I know you better. Back on deck with you now,’ he orders, ‘an’ let’s have no more words about it this trip. But when we’re docked there’ll be one whale of a time on that beach over to Cushing’s,’ says he. ‘Come—stir a stump!’
“I gives him a look and goes. An’ that’s the last him an’ me ever—ever speaks the name o’ Sallie Hannaford.
“A week later, 38 deg. 26 min. west, 45 deg. 17 min. north, he was—he was hit—”
V.
Shifty lays back on his pillows an’ gasps. I thinks it’s the end, but it ain’t. In a minute he begins again.
“Ame!”
“Well, what? There ain’t no murder in that, far’s I can see. If two deep-water men ain’t got the right to plan up a little shindy, to see who’s got a fair an’ free course fer a skirt, who has?
“If that’s all you got on your chest, Shifty, you can go easy. I ain’t no sky-pilot nor nothin’, but to the best o’ my jedgment, you’re cleared O. K, papers an’ al
l A1.”
“That ain’t all!” he chokes, holdin’ it off by main strength, while the life flickers an’ fades an’ comes agin in his eyes, same as you’ve seed a candle die.
“That ain’t all—that’s only the beginnin’! So far, all fair an’ open. The—the murder—”
“Murder, your grandmother! You didn’t bite Tref! You ain’t gave him no hydrophoby! Come, come, Shifty, lay down an’ come round on another tack. Here, I’ll git you a fresh noggin!”
He holds me back with a grip onta him like an anchor ten foot in the mud.
“No, no! I had enough, Ame! I’m goin’ under now, any time. Water’s nigh up to my scuppers, I ain’t goin’ to drift inta the bay an’ go ashore to ray Harbor-master in no stewed condition! You lemme be, now—lemme go middlin’ sober! I—I—”
“Yes?”
“Say, Ame, she—”
“What?”
“After it was all over, an’ I braced her, know what she done?”
“No. What?”
“Blast my hull, if she don’t let out jest one word—‘You?—an’ laugh plumb in my face—an’ then bust inta tears! Tears, so help me—an’ whip out o’ her parlor, where we was settin’ an’ slam the door!
“She—she was thinkin’ o’ Gash all the time! I never had no look-in at all, not from the start, no way you look at it! Oh—”
“Come, come, Shifty, this ain’t no time to think of marryin’ or givin’ in marriage. No time to recollect—”
“It is! Time to recollect the rest o’ that v’yage, when I lost my ’tarnal soul tryin’ to git a wench that wouldn’t ha’ had me, nohow! Time—”
“How you mean, Shifty? Anythin’ more to it?” I asks, uneasy, fer I’m a parson if I don’t begin to see some kind of a dim glimmer o’ somethin’ cold an’ terrible a-weighin’ on that tortured critter’s soul, somethin’ loomin’ up through the mist, same as a berg on the Banks.
“How you mean?”
Shifty, he sort of rares up agin. He grips the Book with one hand. With t’other he vises my flipper till he numbs it.
“I’m goin’ now, Ame,” says he “Goin’, and not yet saved. Hark!” His words come thick, between wheezes. “Hark now, an’ don’t you stop me, or my damnation be upon you!
“When Gash was bit, an’ they crowded the Benicia Boy to make port in time fer doctorin’ that’d save him, the devil come to me.
“That same night he come, an’ I seen him standin’ right there in the fo’c’sle, Ame, an’ his eyes was red as a port-light in a fog.
“He tells me what to do, so’s I can have Sallie, plain an’ easy. He tells me how to git her, an’ the wad in bank, Mariners’ House an’ all—yes, this here same place where he’s a waitin’ now to grab me, if I don’t git through in time!
“Plain an’ clear he puts it to me, ‘Shifty,’ says he, ‘Gash is a better man with his dukes than what you be, every time, an’ you know it.
“‘If he gits to Portland in time, an’ they squirt that dope to him an’ head off this here hydrophoby an’ he gits well, he’ll wallop you to a bleedin’ pulp, over there on the beach at Cushing’s.
“‘Sallie, she’ll natchally be all sympathy an’ interest in him, after his narrer escape,’ says the old boy, ‘an’ that, with the damnation lickin’ he’ll give you, will land you in the lee scuppers an’ him on the quarterdeck.
“‘Mark my words,’ says he, grinnin’. ‘They say I can’t tell the truth nohow, but I can, an’ do; an’ you knows it, this time! You’re done for, Shifty,’ says he, ‘that is, if I don’t help you.
“‘Which I will,’ says he, ‘fair an’ free, an’ no conditions. You do what I say, an’ everything’s yours, Sallie an’ all Pool!’ says he. ‘Can’t you grab a good thing when it’s put right in your fin?’
“I argyfies with him a little in the fo’c’sle, there. I was settin’ at the table, with the lantern swingin’ in its gimbals overhead, an’ him no further from me than what you be, Ame, so-fashion.
“We has some talk, an’ I makes objections. ’Cause, you see, what Gash told me, that time, about misjudgin’ me an’ all—an’ sayin’ I was square—sort of stuck in my gills. But—well—well—”
“You give in?”
Shifty groaned.
“I done that same,” he hiccups. “An’ that night—”
“That night? Yes?”
“That night, that very same night, just after two bells o’ the middle watch, I—”
He coughs somethin’ fierce, an’ I sees blood onta his lips.
“Shifty! Shifty!” I calls. “Out with it now! You’re ’most to port, old man! Let’s have it, quick, now—you’re ’most saved.”
“Cargo o’ lumber,” he just barely manages to stammer. “I knowed she couldn’t sink, nohow—”
“What—what about it?”
“Carpenter’s chest—bit an’ brace—forehold, out o’ sight—six holes—”
He kind o’ stiffens out, makes a grab at somethin’ I can’t see, an’ tips over the long-necker. My hair just rises up, as it falls on the floor an’ rolls bump-bump-bump—the bottle, I mean.
The wind bangs a blind. A puff o’ smoke an’ ashes shoots out o’ the stove inta the room.
Shifty lets out a bubblin’ yell.
“I—I bored—bored—”
Then he falls back, twisted half round.
VI.
Come a rap-rap-rappin’ at the door.
I hauls the patchwork quilt over him, an’ goes to open. As I looks back I sees one bony hand hanging down side o’ the bed. In that grip the Book’s a danglin’.
“Hello! What the—”
“Any drinks up here? You cider?” It’s Mrs. Hannaford, smiling’.
“Drinks? No, darn you!” I roars. “Say, you send, git a doctor, coroner, or something quick’s the Lord’ll let you! Shifty, he—”
She lets out a kind of squeal, an’ skitters off down the hall.
As I turns back, thinks I to myself, thinks I:
“Lucky fer you, Sal Hannaford, you don’t know what I know! ’Cause if you did—if you did—!”
AFRICA
Originally published in The Cavalier, November 1908.
I.
“See there? That’s Africa!”
Dr. Paul Willard gestured far across the night to where, in the vast dark, a spurt of flame glowed like a blood-ruby, died, then trembled forth again.
“Africa?” the girl questioned vaguely. A nameless awe crept round her heart, in presence of that unseen emptiness looming away to the inverted bowl of sky—a fathomless sky, spattered with great refulgent stars, among which, overhead, the funnels of the Sutherland traced smoky patterns. “Africa?”
“A little corner of it, anyway,” the doctor answered, smiling at her tone. “Cape Roxo light. By two bells of the middle watch we’ll be off the coast of Guinea, running through Bissagos Islands—a bad place at best. I never liked it, and I’ve surgeoned on ‘old Suth’ for more than seven years. Don’t like it now, its reefs and cannibal wreckers and all, even with Captain Lockhart on the bridge.”
The girl made no answer, but she leaned her arms across the rail, swaying as the ship rolled, and gazed out into the unknown. Steadily the Strathglass liner clove the fugitive seas, creaming them astern in surges that hissed away into the black.
He risked a side glance at her.
Never had she seemed quite so beautiful to him as under the lantern light which gleamed upon her heavy yellow braids of hair, her frost-white gown. At sight of her delicate, somewhat pale face, his smile waned. No living man—least of all Willard, in the passion which had obsessed him ever since Ethel Armstrong and her crippled uncle had set foot upon the Sutherland’s deck—could have felt amusement in presence of that gentle, earnest seriousness.
“Somehow, do you know,” she mused at length, “I feel a bit afraid? It’s all so empty! And just to know that Africa is over there.” A gesture rounded out the thought. “I sha’n’t quite like it til
l we’re at the quay in Cape Town.”
“When you’ll immediately forget the trip, the boat, and—everyone on board?” he led along; but she ignored the opening. Her mood was far from banter. The doctor, too, repented of his speech, the clumsiness of which jarred upon the majesty and wonder of that tropic night. “Oh, well, you’ll see things differently tomorrow,” he retrieved himself. “Quite differently, when the big red sun rolls up over the coast and splashes gold across the sea.”
“Perhaps,” she half assented. “But tomorrow is so far away. I think I’ll go below. This air stifles me.”
He nodded.
“Yes; I understand. I used to feel it so myself, before I got quite used to it.” His powers of speech had never seemed more pitifully crude.
He helped her down the steep companionway. Then, after a perfunctory good night from her, came up again to the quarterdeck.
“Great guns, what gloom!” he muttered. “Why, India ink is pale beside it. I don’t half like the way these offshore swells are running, either—with Bissagos still ahead of us. Can’t say I’m used to this particular bit of Africa even now. No wonder that she—Ethel—feels so shuddery.”
A moment he pondered in silence.
“That’s an upper-class privilege, anxiety is. A mere proletarian like me has no right to it. No, nor yet to look at an upper-class woman. For such, we aren’t real men—just official objects.”
He leaned upon the railing where her arms had lain, and for a long time stared off across the dark where, on Cape Roxo, winked that dim, retreating eye of flame.
II.
The doctor found no sleep till long past midnight. Even with his cabin window slid far back, the tepid land breeze choked him, and his thoughts were weft of hot rebellion, longings, and misery. He tossed wide-eyed in his berth, heard the ship’s bell dole out the eternal hours, then the halves, torturing himself with images of Cape Town and the approaching separation, which (only too well he knew) must be forever. Midnight was long gone, when he lost himself in troublous dreams of distant inaccessible things, never to be reached by him.
Toward early morning something flung him back to consciousness—a grinding, raking craunch that shivered the whole fabric of the ship, and roused him to the knowledge he was struggling on his cabin floor, which slanted dizzily. He clambered up, mazed and wit-struck for a moment, groped for the electric-button, and snapped on the light.
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