"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea Part 23

"You are? You are not. I'm captain. Get up on that shanty." The small house over the mizzen-hatch was indicated, and Captain Belchior climbed it. The tubes were still looking at him.

"Now, you, there, you man who hit me last night when I was sick, who are you, and what?"

"Mate, d---- you."

"Up with you, and don't cuss. You did a cowardly thing, pardner--an unmanly thing--low down and or'nary. You don't deserve to live any longer; but my darter, back East at school, thinks I've killed enough men for one lifetime, and mebbe she's right--mebbe she's right. Anyhow, she don't like it, and that lets you out--though I won't answer for 'Pache and Laramie when my back's turned. You kicked 'em both. But I'll just return the blow." The mate had but straightened up on top of the hatch-house when the terrible pistol spat out another red tongue, and his yell followed the report, as he clapped his hand to the ear through which the bullet had torn.

"Hands up, there!" thundered the shooter, and the mate obeyed, while a stream of blood ran down inside his s.h.i.+rt-collar.

"Any more bosses here?"

The second mate did not respond; but 'Pache's pistol sought him out, and under its influence, and his guttural, "I know you; get up," he followed his superiors.

"Any more?"

A manly-looking fellow stepped out of the group, and said: "You've got the captain and two mates. I'm bo's'n here, and yonder's my mate. We're next, but we're not bosses in the way o' bein' responsible for anything that has happened or might happen to you. We b'long forrard. There's no call to shoot at the crew, for there's not a man among 'em but what 'ud be glad to see you get ash.o.r.e, and get there himself."

"Silence, bo's'n," bawled the captain. But the voice of authority seemed pitifully ludicrous and incongruous, coupled with the captain's position and att.i.tude, and every face on the deck wore a grin. The leader noticed the silent merriment, and said:

"Laramie, I reckon these men'll stand. You can come up here. I'm gettin' 'long in years, and kind o' steadyin' down, but I s'pose you and 'Pache want some fun. Start yer whistle and turn loose."

Up the steps bounded Laramie, and, with a ringing whoop as a prelude, began whistling a clear, musical trill, while 'Pache, growling out, "Dance, dance, ye white-livered coyotes," sent a bullet through the outer edge of the chief mate's boot-heel.

"Dance," repeated Laramie between bars of the music. _Crack, crack_, went the pistols, while bullets rattled around the feet of the men on the hatch, and Laramie's whistle rose and fell on the soft morning air.

The sun, who has looked on many scandalous sights, looked on this, and hid his face under a cloud, refusing to witness. For never before had the ethics of s.h.i.+pboard life been so outrageously violated. A squat captain and two six-foot officers, nearly black in the face from rage and exertion, with hands clasped over their heads, hopped and skipped around a narrow stage to the accompaniment of pistol reports harmoniously disposed among the notes of a whistled tune, while bullets grazed their feet, and an unkempt, disfigured, and sore-headed crew looked on and chuckled. When the mate, weak from loss of blood, fell and rolled to the deck, the leader stopped the entertainment.

"Now, gentlemen," he said in his serious voice, "I'm called Pecos Tom, and I've had considerable experience in my time, but this is my fust with human creatur's so weak and thoughtless that they'll drug and steal three men without takin' their guns away from them. And so, on 'count o' this s.h.i.+ftless improvidence, I reckon this boat will have to turn round and go back."

They bound them, rolled and kicked the two mates to the rail, lifted the captain to his feet, and then the leader said significantly:

"Give the right and proper order to yer men to turn this boat round."

With his face working convulsively, Captain Belchior glanced at his captors, at his eager, waiting crew, at the wheel without a helmsman, at a darkening of the water on the starboard bow to the southward, up aloft, and back again at the three frowning muzzles so close to his head.

"One hand to the wheel! Square in main and cro'-jack yards!" he called.

He was conquered.

With a hurrah which indicated the sincerity of these orders, the crew sprang to obey them, and with foreyards braced to starboard and head-sheets flat, the s.h.i.+p _Wilmington_ paid off, wore around, and bringing the young breeze on the port quarter, steadied down to a course for Sandy Hook, which the captain, with hands released, but still under the influence of those threatening pistols, worked out from the mate's dead-reckoning. Then he was pinioned again, but allowed to pace the deck and watch his s.h.i.+p, while the two officers were kept under the rail, sometimes stepped upon or kicked, and often admonished on the evil of their ways.

Early pa.s.sengers on the East River ferryboats were treated to a novel sight next morning, which they appreciated according to their nautical knowledge. A lofty s.h.i.+p, with sky-sails and royals hanging in the buntlines, and jibs tailing ahead like flags, was charging up the harbor before a humming southerly breeze, followed by an elbowing crowd of puffing, whistling, snub-nosed tugs. It was noticeable that whenever a fresh tug arrived alongside, little white clouds left her quarter-deck, and that tug suddenly sheered off to take a position in the parade astern. Abreast of Governor's Island, topgallant-halyards were let go, as were those of the jibs; but no cluing up or hauling down was done, nor were any men seen on her forecastle-deck getting ready lines or ground-tackle. She pa.s.sed the Battery and up the East River, craft of all kinds getting out of her way,--for it was obvious that something was wrong with her,--until, rounding slowly to a starboard wheel, with canvas rattling and running-gear in bights, she headed straight for a slip partly filled with ca.n.a.l-boats. Now her topsail-halyards were let go, and three heavy yards came down by the run, breaking across the caps; and amid a grinding, creaking, and cras.h.i.+ng of riven timbers, and a deafening din of applauding tug whistles, she plowed her way into the nest of ca.n.a.l-boats and came to a stop.

Then was a hejira. Down her black sides by ropes and chain-plates, to the wrecked and sinking ca.n.a.l-boats,--some with bags or chests, some without,--came eager men, who climbed to the dock, and answering no questions of the gathering crowd of dock-loungers, scattered into the side-streets. Then three other men appeared on the rail, who shook their fists, and swore, and shouted for the police, calling particularly for the apprehension of three dark-faced, long-haired fellows with big hats.

In the light of later developments it is known that the police responded, and with the a.s.sistance of boarding-house runners gathered in that day nearly all of this derelict crew,--even to the cautious boatswain,--who were promptly and severely punished for mutiny and desertion. But the later developments failed to show that the three dark-faced men were ever seen again.

PRIMORDIAL

Gasping, blue in the face, half drowned, the boy was flung spitefully--as though the sea scorned so poor a victory--high on the sandy beach, where succeeding shorter waves lapped at him and retired.

The encircling life-buoy was large enough to permit his crouching within it. Pillowing his head on one side of the smooth ring, he wailed hoa.r.s.ely for an interval, then slept--or swooned. The tide went down the beach, the typhoon whirled its raging center off to sea, and the tropic moon shone out, lighting up, between the beach and barrier reef, a heaving stretch of oily lagoon on which appeared and disappeared hundreds of shark-fins quickly darting, and, out on the barrier reef, perched high, yet still pounded by the ocean combers raised by the storm, a fragment of s.h.i.+p's stern with a stump of mizzenmast. The elevated position of the fragment, the quickly darting dorsal fins, and the absence of company for the child on the beach spoke, too plainly, of s.h.i.+pwreck, useless boats, and horrible death.

Sharks must sleep like other creatures, and they nestle in hollows at the bottom and in coral caves, or under overhanging ledges of the reefs which attract them. The first swimmer may pa.s.s safely by night, seldom the second. Like she-wolves, fiendish cats, and vicious horses, they have been known to show mercy to children. For one or both reasons, this child had drifted to the beach unharmed.

Anywhere but on a bed of hot sand near the equator the sleep in wet clothing of a three-year-old boy might have been fatal; but salt water carries its own remedy for the evils of its moisture, and he wakened at daylight with strength to rise and cry out his protest of loneliness and misery. His childish mind could record facts, but not their reason or coherency. He was in a new, an unknown world. His mother had filled his old; where was she now? Why had she tied him into that thing and thrown him from her into the darkness and wet? Strange things had happened, which he dimly remembered. He had been roused from his sleep, dressed, and taken out of doors in the dark, where there were frightful cras.h.i.+ng noises, shoutings of men, and crying of women and other children. He had cried himself, from sympathy and terror, until his mother had thrown him away. Had he been bad? Was she angry? And after that--what was the rest? He was hungry and thirsty now. Why did she not come? He would go and find her.

With the life-buoy hanging about his waist--though of cork, a heavy weight for him--he toddled along the beach to where it ended at a ma.s.sive ridge of rock that came out of the wooded country inland and extended into the lagoon as an impa.s.sable point. He called the chief word in his vocabulary again and again, sobbing between calls. She was not there, or she would have come; so he went back, glancing fearfully at the dark woods of palm and undergrowth. She might be in there, but he was afraid to look. His little feet carried him a full half-mile in the other direction before the line of trees and bushes reached so close to the beach as to stop him. Here he sat down, screaming pa.s.sionately and convulsively for his mother.

Crying is an expense of energy which must be replenished by food. When he could cry no longer he tugged at the straps and strings of the life-buoy. But they were wet and hard, his little fingers were weak, and he knew nothing of knots and their untying, so it was well on toward midday before he succeeded in scrambling out of the meshes, by which time he was famished, feverish with thirst, and all but sunstruck. He wandered unsteadily along the beach, falling occasionally, moaning piteously through his parched, open lips; and when he reached the obstructing ridge of rock, turned blindly into the bushes at its base, and followed it until he came to a pool of water formed by a descending spray from above. From this, on his hands and knees, he drank deeply, burying his lips as would an animal.

Instinct alone had guided him here, away from the salt pools on the beach, and impelled him to drink fearlessly. It was instinct--a familiar phase in a child--that induced him to put pebbles, twigs, and small articles in his mouth until he found what was pleasant to his taste and eatable--nuts and berries; and it was instinct, the most ancient and deeply implanted,--the lingering index of an arboreal ancestry,--that now taught him the safety and comfort of these woody shades, and, as night came on, prompted him--as it prompts a drowning man to reach high, and leads a creeping babe to a chair--to attempt climbing a tree. Failing in this from lack of strength, he mounted the rocky wall a few feet, and here, on a narrow ledge, after indulging in a final fit of crying, he slept through the night, not comfortably on so hard a bed, but soundly.

During the day, while he had crawled about at the foot of the rocks, wild hogs, marsupial animals, and wood-rats had examined him suspiciously through the undergrowth and decamped. As he slept, howling night-dogs came up, sniffed at him from a safe distance, and scattered from his vicinity. He would have yielded in a battle with a pugnacious kitten, but these creatures recognized a prehistoric foe, and would not abide with him.

A week pa.s.sed before he had ceased to cry and call for his mother; but from this on her image grew fainter, and in a month the infant intelligence had discarded it. He ate nuts and berries as he found them, drank from the pool, climbed the rocks and strolled in the wood, played on the beach with sh.e.l.ls and fragments of splintered wreckage, wore out his clothes, and in another month was naked; for when b.u.t.tons and vital parts gave way and a garment fell, he let it lie. But he needed no clothes, even at night; for it was southern summer, and the northeast monsoon, adding its humid warmth to the radiating heat from the sun-baked rocks, kept the temperature nearly constant.

He learned to avoid the sun at midday, and, free from contagion and motherly coddling, escaped many of the complaints which torture and kill children; yet he suffered frightfully from colic until his stomach was accustomed to the change of diet, by which time he was emaciated to skin and bone. Then a reaction set in, and as time pa.s.sed he gained healthy flesh and muscle on the nitrogenous food.

Six months from the time of his arrival, another storm swept the beach.

Pelted by the warm rain, terror-stricken, he cowered under the rocks through the night, and at daylight peered out on the surf-washed sands, heaving lagoon, and white line of breakers on the barrier reef. The short-lived typhoon had pa.s.sed, but the wind still blew slantingly on the beach with force enough to raise a turmoil of cras.h.i.+ng sea and undertow in the small bay formed by the extension of the wall. The fragment of s.h.i.+p's stern on the reef had disappeared; but a half-mile to the right--directly in the eye of the wind--was another wreck, and somewhat nearer, on the heaving swell of the lagoon, a black spot, which moved and approached. It came down before the wind and resolved into a closely packed group of human beings, some of whom tugged frantically at the oars of the water-logged boat which held them, others of whom as frantically bailed with caps and hands. Escorting the boat was a fleet of dorsal fins, and erect in the stern-sheets was a white-faced woman, holding a child in one arm while she endeavored to remove a circular life-buoy from around her waist. At first heading straight for the part of the beach where the open-eyed boy was watching, the boat now changed its course and by desperate exertion of the rowers reached a position from which it could drift to leeward of the point and its deadly maelstrom. With rowers bailing and the white-faced woman seated, fastening the child in the life-buoy, the boat, gunwale-deep, and the gruesome guard of sharks drifted out of sight behind the point. The boy had not understood; but he had seen his kind, and from a.s.sociation of ideas appreciated again his loneliness--crying and wailing for a week; but not for his mother: he had forgotten her.

With the change of the monsoon came a lowering of the temperature.

Naked and shelterless, he barely survived the first winter, tropical though it was. But the second found him inured to the surroundings--hardy and strong. When able to, he climbed trees and found birds' eggs, which he accidentally broke and naturally ate. It was a pleasant relief from a purely vegetable diet, and he became a proficient egg-thief; then the birds built their nests beyond his reach. Once he was savagely pecked by an angry brush-turkey and forced to defend himself. It aroused a combativeness and destructiveness that had lain dormant in his nature.

Children the world over epitomize in their habits and thoughts the infancy of the human race. Their morals and modesty, as well as their games, are those of paleolithic man, and they are as remorselessly cruel. From the day of his fracas with the turkey he was a hunter--of grubs, insects, and young birds; but only to kill, maim, or torture; he did not eat them, because hunger was satisfied, and he possessed a child's dislike of radical change.

Deprived of friction with other minds, he was slower than his social prototype in the reproduction of the epochs. At a stage when most boys are pa.s.sing through the age of stone, with its marbles, caves, and slings, he was yet in the earlier arboreal period--a climber--and would swing from branch to branch with almost the agility of an ape.

On fine, sunny days, influenced by the weather, he would laugh and shout hilariously; a gloomy sky made him morose. When hurt, or angered by disappointment in the hunt, he would cry out inarticulately; but having no use for language, did not talk, hence did not think, as the term is understood. His mind received the impressions of his senses, and could fear, hate, and remember, but knew nothing of love, for nothing lovable appealed to it. He could hardly reason, as yet; his shadow puzzled, angered, and annoyed him until he noticed its concomitance with the sun, when he reversed cause and effect, considered it a beneficent, mysterious Something that had life, and endeavored by gesture and grimace to placate and please it. It was his beginning of religion.

His dreams were often horrible. Strange shapes, immense snakes and reptiles, and nondescript monsters made up of prehistoric legs, teeth, and heads, afflicted his sleep. He had never seen them; they were an inheritance, but as real to him as the sea and sky, the wind and rain.

Every six months, at the breaking up of the monsoon, would come squalls and typhoons--full of menace, for his kindly, protecting shadow then deserted him. One day, when about ten years old, during a wild burst of storm, he fled down the beach in an agony of terror; for, considering all that moved as alive, he thought that the cras.h.i.+ng sea and swaying, falling trees were attacking him, and, half buried in the sand near the bushes, found the forgotten life-buoy, stained and weather-worn. It was quiescent, and new to him,--like nothing he had seen,--and he clung to it. At that moment the sun appeared, and in a short time the storm had pa.s.sed. He carried the life-buoy back with him--spurning and threatening his delinquent shadow--and looked for a place to put it, deciding at last on a small cave in the rocky wall near to the pool. In a corner of this he installed the ring of cork and canvas, and remained by it, patting and caressing it. When it rained again, he appreciated, for the first time, the comfort of shelter, and became a cave-dweller, with a new G.o.d--a fetish, to which he transferred his allegiance and obeisance because more powerful than his shadow.

From correlation of instincts, he now entered the age of stone. He no longer played with sh.e.l.ls and sticks, but with pebbles, which he gathered, h.o.a.rded in piles, and threw at marks,--to be gathered again,--seldom entering the woods but for food and the relaxation of the hunt. But with his change of habits came a lessening of his cruelty to defenseless creatures,--not that he felt pity: he merely found no more amus.e.m.e.nt in killing and tormenting,--and in time he transferred his antagonism to the sharks in the lagoon, their dorsal fins making famous targets for his pebbles. He needed no experience with these pirates to teach him to fear and hate them, and when he bathed--which habit he acquired as a relief from the heat, and indulged daily--he chose a pool near the rocks that filled at high tide, and in it learned to swim, paddling like a dog.

And so the boy, blue-eyed and fair at the beginning, grew to early manhood, as handsome an animal as the world contains, tall, straight, and clean-featured, with steady eyes wide apart, and skin--the color of old copper from sun and wind--covered with a fine, soft down, which at the age of sixteen had not yet thickened on his face to beard and mustache, though his wavy brown hair reached to his shoulders.

At this period a turning-point appeared in his life which gave an impetus to his almost stagnant mental development--his food-supply diminished and his pebble-supply gave out completely, forcing him to wander. Pebble-throwing was his only amus.e.m.e.nt; pebble-gathering his only labor; eating was neither. He browsed and nibbled at all hours of the day, never knowing the sensation of a full stomach, and, until lately, of an empty one. To this, perhaps, may be ascribed his wonderful immunity from sickness. In collecting pebbles his method was to carry as many as his hands would hold to a pile on the beach and go back for more; and in the six years of his stone-throwing he had found and thrown at the sharks every stone as small as his fist, within a sector formed by the beach and the rocky wall to an equal distance inland. The fruits, nuts, edible roots, and gra.s.ses growing in this area had hitherto supported him, but would no longer, owing to a drought of the previous year, which, luckily, had not affected his water-supply.

One morning, trembling with excitement, eye and ear on the alert,--as a high-spirited horse enters a strange pasture,--he ventured past the junction of bush and tide-mark, and down the unknown beach beyond. He filled his hands with the first pebbles he found, but noticing the plentiful supply on the ground ahead of him, dropped them and went on; there were other things to interest him. A broad stretch of undulating, scantily wooded country reached inland from the convex beach of sand and sh.e.l.ls to where it met the receding line of forest and bush behind him; and far away to his right, darting back and forth among stray bushes and sand-hummocks, were small creatures--strange, unlike those he knew, but in regard to which he felt curiosity rather than fear.

He traveled around the circle of beach, and noticed that the moving creatures fled at his approach. They were wild hogs, hunted of men since hunting began. He entered the forest about midday, and emerging, found himself on a pebbly beach similar to his own, and facing a continuation of the rocky wall, which, like the other end, dipped into the lagoon and prevented further progress. He was thirsty, and found a pool near the rocks; hungry, and he ate of nuts and berries which he recognized. Puzzled by the reversal of perspective and the similarity of conditions, he proceeded along the wall, dimly expecting to find his cave. But none appeared, and, mystified,--somewhat frightened,--he plunged into the wood, keeping close to the wall and looking sharply about him. Like an exiled cat or a carrier-pigeon, he was making a straight line for home, but did not know it.

His progress was slow, for boulders, stumps, and rising ground impeded him. Darkness descended when he was but half-way home and nearly on a level with the top of the wall. Forced to stop, he threw himself down, exhausted, yet nervous and wakeful, as any other animal in a strange place. But the familiar moon came out, s.h.i.+ning through the foliage, and this soothed him into a light slumber.