The Mutiny of the Elsinore Part 22

We are now south of Rio and working south. We are out of the lat.i.tude of the trades, and the wind is capricious. Rain squalls and wind squalls vex the _Elsinore_. One hour we may be rolling sickeningly in a dead calm, and the next hour we may be das.h.i.+ng fourteen knots through the water and taking off sail as fast as the men can clew up and lower away.

A night of calm, when sleep is well-nigh impossible in the sultry, muggy air, may be followed by a day of blazing sun and an oily swell from the south'ard, connoting great gales in that area of ocean we are sailing toward--or all day long the _Elsinore_, under an overcast sky, royals and sky sails furled, may plunge and buck under wind-pressure into a short and choppy head-sea.

And all this means work for the men. Taking Mr. Pike's judgment, they are very inadequate, though by this time they know the ropes. He growls and grumbles, and snorts and sneers whenever he watches them doing anything. To-day, at eleven in the morning, the wind was so violent, continuing in greater gusts after having come in a great gust, that Mr.

Pike ordered the mainsail taken off. The great crojack was already off.

But the watch could not clew up the mainsail, and, after much vain sing- songing and pull-hauling, the watch below was routed out to bear a hand.

"My G.o.d!" Mr. Pike groaned to me. "Two watches for a rag like that when half a decent watch could do it! Look at that preventer bosun of mine!"

Poor Nancy! He looked the saddest, sickest, bleakest creature I had ever seen. He was so wretched, so miserable, so helpless. And Sundry Buyers was just as impotent. The expression on his face was of pain and hopelessness, and as he pressed his abdomen he lumbered futilely about, ever seeking something he might do and ever failing to find it. He pottered. He would stand and stare at one rope for a minute or so at a time, following it aloft with his eyes through the maze of ropes and stabs and gears with all the intentness of a man working out an intricate problem. Then, holding his hand against his stomach, he would lumber on a few steps and select another rope for study.

"Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Pike lamented. "How can one drive with bosuns like that and a crew like that? Just the same, if I was captain of this s.h.i.+p I'd drive 'em. I'd show 'em what drive was, if I had to lose a few of them. And when they grow weak off the Horn what'll we do? It'll be both watches all the time, which will weaken them just that much the faster."

Evidently this winter pa.s.sage of the Horn is all that one has been led to expect from reading the narratives of the navigators. Iron men like the two mates are very respectful of "Cape Stiff," as they call that uttermost tip of the American continent. Speaking of the two mates, iron- made and iron-mouthed that they are, it is amusing that in really serious moments both of them curse with "Oh dear, oh dear."

In the spells of calm I take great delight in the little rifle. I have already fired away five thousand rounds, and have come to consider myself an expert. Whatever the knack of shooting may be, I've got it. When I get back I shall take up target practice. It is a neat, deft sport.

Not only is Possum afraid of the sails and of rats, but he is afraid of rifle-fire, and at the first discharge goes yelping and ki-yi-ing below.

The dislike Mr. Pike has developed for the poor little puppy is ludicrous. He even told me that if it were his dog he'd throw it overboard for a target. Just the same, he is an affectionate, heart-warming little rascal, and has already crept so deep into my heart that I am glad Miss West did not accept him.

And--oh!--he insists on sleeping with me on top the bedding; a proceeding which has scandalized the mate. "I suppose he'll be using your toothbrush next," Mr. Pike growled at me. But the puppy loves my companions.h.i.+p, and is never happier than when on the bed with me. Yet the bed is not entirely paradise, for Possum is badly frightened when ours is the lee side and the seas pound and smash against the gla.s.s ports. Then the little beggar, electric with fear to every hair tip, crouches and snarls menacingly and almost at the same time whimpers appeasingly at the storm-monster outside.

"Father _knows_ the sea," Miss West said to me this afternoon. "He understands it, and he loves it."

"Or it may be habit," I ventured.

She shook her head.

"He does know it. And he loves it. That is why he has come back to it.

All his people before him were sea folk. His grandfather, Anthony West, made forty-six voyages between 1801 and 1847. And his father, Robert, sailed master to the north-west coast before the gold days and was captain of some of the fastest Cape Horn clippers after the gold discovery. Elijah West, father's great-grandfather, was a privateersman in the Revolution. He commanded the armed brig _New Defence_. And, even before that, Elijah's father, in turn, and Elijah's father's father, were masters and owners on long-voyage merchant adventures.

"Anthony West, in 1813 and 1814, commanded the _David Bruce_, with letters of marque. He was half-owner, with Gracie & Sons as the other half-owners. She was a two-hundred-ton schooner, built right up in Maine. She carried a long eighteen-pounder, two ten-pounders, and ten six-pounders, and she sailed like a witch. She ran the blockade off Newport and got away to the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. And, do you know, though she only cost twelve thousand dollars all told, she took over three hundred thousand dollars of British prizes. A brother of his was on the _Wasp_.

"So, you see, the sea is in our blood. She is our mother. As far back as we can trace all our line was born to the sea." She laughed and went on. "We've pirates and slavers in our family, and all sorts of disreputable sea-rovers. Old Ezra West, just how far back I don't remember, was executed for piracy and his body hung in chains at Plymouth.

"The sea is father's blood. And he knows, well, a s.h.i.+p, as you would know a dog or a horse. Every s.h.i.+p he sails has a distinct personality for him. I have watched him, in high moments, and _seen_ him think. But oh! the times I have seen him when he does not think--when he _feels_ and knows everything without thinking at all. Really, with all that appertains to the sea and s.h.i.+ps, he is an artist. There is no other word for it."

"You think a great deal of your father," I remarked.

"He is the most wonderful man I have ever known," she replied. "Remember, you are not seeing him at his best. He has never been the same since mother's death. If ever a man and woman were one, they were." She broke off, then concluded abruptly. "You don't know him. You don't know him at all."

CHAPTER XXVIII

"I think we are going to have a fine sunset," Captain West remarked last evening.

Miss West and I abandoned our rubber of cribbage and hastened on deck.

The sunset had not yet come, but all was preparing. As we gazed we could see the sky gathering the materials, grouping the gray clouds in long lines and towering ma.s.ses, spreading its palette with slow-growing, glowing tints and sudden blobs of colour.

"It's the Golden Gate!" Miss West cried, indicating the west. "See!

We're just inside the harbour. Look to the south there. If that isn't the sky-line of San Francisco! There's the Call Building, and there, far down, the Ferry Tower, and surely that is the Fairmount." Her eyes roved back through the opening between the cloud ma.s.ses, and she clapped her hands. "It's a sunset within a sunset! See! The Farallones!"--swimming in a miniature orange and red sunset all their own. "Isn't it the Golden Gate, and San Francisco, and the Farallones?" She appealed to Mr. Pike, who, leaning near, on the p.o.o.p-rail, was divided between gazing sourly at Nancy pottering on the main deck and sourly at Possum, who, on the bridge, crouched with terror each time the crojack flapped emptily above him.

The mate turned his head and favoured the sky picture with a solemn stare.

"Oh, I don't know," he growled. "It may look like the Farallones to you, but to me it looks like a battles.h.i.+p coming right in the Gate with a bone in its teeth at a twenty-knot clip."

Sure enough. The floating Farallones had metamorphosed into a giant wars.h.i.+p.

Then came the colour riot, the dominant tone of which was green. It was green, green, green--the blue-green of the springing year, and sere and yellow green and tawny-brown green of autumn. There were orange green, gold green, and a copper green. And all these greens were rich green beyond description; and yet the richness and the greenness pa.s.sed even as we gazed upon it, going out of the gray clouds and into the sea, which a.s.sumed the exquisite golden pink of polished copper, while the hollows of the smooth and silken ripples were touched by a most ethereal pea green.

The gray clouds became a long, low swathe of ruby red, or garnet red--such as one sees in a gla.s.s of heavy burgundy when held to the light. There was such depth to this red! And, below it, separated from the main colour-ma.s.s by a line of gray-white fog, or line of sea, was another and smaller streak of ruddy-coloured wine.

I strolled across the p.o.o.p to the port side.

"Oh! Come back! Look! Look!" Miss West cried to me.

"What's the use?" I answered. "I've something just as good over here."

She joined me, and as she did so I noted, a sour grin on Mr. Pike's face.

The eastern heavens were equally spectacular. That quarter of the sky was sheer and delicate sh.e.l.l of blue, the upper portions of which faded, changed, through every harmony, into a pale, yet warm, rose, all trembling, palpitating, with misty blue tinting into pink. The reflection of this coloured sky-sh.e.l.l upon the water made of the sea a glimmering watered silk, all changeable, blue, Nile-green, and salmon- pink. It was silky, silken, a wonderful silk that veneered and flossed the softly moving, wavy water.

And the pale moon looked like a wet pearl gleaming through the tinted mist of the sky-sh.e.l.l.

In the southern quadrant of the sky we discovered an entirely different sunset--what would be accounted a very excellent orange-and-red sunset anywhere, with grey clouds hanging low and lighted and tinted on all their under edges.

"Huh!" Mr. Pike muttered gruffly, while we were exclaiming over our fresh discovery. "Look at the sunset I got here to the north. It ain't doing so badly now, I leave it to you."

And it wasn't. The northern quadrant was a great fen of colour and cloud, that spread ribs of feathery pink, fleece-frilled, from the horizon to the zenith. It was all amazing. Four sunsets at the one time in the sky! Each quadrant glowed, and burned, and pulsed with a sunset distinctly its own.

And as the colours dulled in the slow twilight, the moon, still misty, wept tears of brilliant, heavy silver into the dim lilac sea. And then came the hush of darkness and the night, and we came to ourselves, out of reverie, sated with beauty, leaning toward each other as we leaned upon the rail side by side.

I never grow tired of watching Captain West. In a way he bears a sort of resemblance to several of Was.h.i.+ngton's portraits. He is six feet of aristocratic thinness, and has a very definite, leisurely and stately grace of movement. His thinness is almost ascetic. In appearance and manner he is the perfect old-type New England gentleman.

He has the same gray eyes as his daughter, although his are genial rather than warm; and his eyes have the same trick of smiling. His skin is pinker than hers, and his brows and lashes are fairer. But he seems removed beyond pa.s.sion, or even simple enthusiasm. Miss West is firm, like her father; but there is warmth in her firmness. He is clean, he is sweet and courteous; but he is coolly sweet, coolly courteous. With all his certain graciousness, in cabin or on deck, so far as his social equals are concerned, his graciousness is cool, elevated, thin.

He is the perfect master of the art of doing nothing. He never reads, except the Bible; yet he is never bored. Often, I note him in a deck- chair, studying his perfect finger-nails, and, I'll swear, not seeing them at all. Miss West says he loves the sea. And I ask myself a thousand times, "But how?" He shows no interest in any phase of the sea.

Although he called our attention to the glorious sunset I have just described, he did not remain on deck to enjoy it. He sat below, in the big leather chair, not reading, not dozing, but merely gazing straight before him at nothing.

The days pa.s.s, and the seasons pa.s.s. We left Baltimore at the tail-end of winter, went into spring and on through summer, and now we are in fall weather and urging our way south to the winter of Cape Horn. And as we double the Cape and proceed north, we shall go through spring and summer--a long summer--pursuing the sun north through its declination and arriving at Seattle in summer. And all these seasons have occurred, and will have occurred, in the s.p.a.ce of five months.

Our white ducks are gone, and, in south lat.i.tude thirty-five, we are wearing the garments of a temperate clime. I notice that Wada has given me heavier underclothes and heavier pyjamas, and that Possum, of nights, is no longer content with the top of the bed but must crawl underneath the bed-clothes.