"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea Part 4

Seldom climbed to the top of the after-house, looked to windward, then to leeward at the rolling steamer, and called out:

"I want more beef at the wheel. Bigpig, take it; and you, Turkey, stand by with him. Get away from there, Sinful. Give her the upper maintopsail, the rest of you. p.o.o.p-deck, you stand by the signal-halyards. Ask him if he's got a tow-line ready."

Protesting angrily at the slight put upon him, Sinful Peck relinquished the wheel, and joined the rest on the main-deck, where they had hurried. Two men went aloft to loose the topsail, and the rest cleared away gear, while p.o.o.p-deck examined the signal-book.

"K. S. G. says, 'Have a tow-line ready.' That ought to do, Seldom," he called.

"Run it up," ordered the newly installed captain, "and watch his answer." Up went the signal, and as the men on the main-deck were manning the topsail-halyards, p.o.o.p-deck made out the answer: "V. K. C."

"That means 'All right,' Seldom," he said, after inspecting the book.

"Good enough; but we'll get our line ready, too. Get down and help 'em mast-head the yard first, then take 'em forrard and coil the tow-line abaft the windla.s.s. Get all the heavin'-lines ready, too."

p.o.o.p-deck obeyed; and while the main-topsail-yard slowly arose to place under the efforts of the rest, Seldom himself ran up the answering pennant, and then the repet.i.tion of the steamer's last message: "All right." This was the final signal displayed between the two craft. Both signal-flags were lowered, and for a half-hour Seldom waited, until the others had lifted a nine-inch hawser from the forepeak and coiled it down. Then came his next orders in a continuous roar:

"Three hands aft to the spanker-sheet! Stand by to slack off and haul in! Man the braces for wearing s.h.i.+p, the rest o' you! Hard up the wheel! Check in port main and starboard cro'-jack braces! s.h.i.+ver the topsail! Slack off that spanker!"

Before he had finished the men had reached their posts. The orders were obeyed. The s.h.i.+p paid off, staggered a little in the trough under the right-angle pressure of the gale, swung still farther, and steadied down to a long, rolling motion, dead before the wind, heading for the steamer. Yards were squared in, the spanker hauled aft, staysail trimmed to port, and all hands waited while the s.h.i.+p charged down the two miles of intervening sea.

"Handles like a yacht," muttered Seldom, as, with brow wrinkled and keen eye flas.h.i.+ng above his hooked nose, he conned the steering from his place near the mizzenmast.

Three men separated themselves from the rest and came aft. They were those who had walked the forward deck. One was tall, broad-shouldered, and smooth-shaven, with a palpable limp; another, short, broad, and hairy, showed a lamentable absence of front teeth; and the third, a blue-eyed man, slight and graceful of movement, carried his arm in splints and sling. This last was in the van as they climbed the p.o.o.p steps.

"I wish to protest," he said. "I am captain of this s.h.i.+p under the law.

I protest against this insanity. No boat can live in this sea. No help can be given that steamer."

"And I bear witness to the protest," said the tall man. The short, hairy man might have spoken also, but had no time.

"Get off the p.o.o.p," yelled Seldom. "Go forrard, where you belong." He stood close to the bucket-rack around the skylight. Seizing bucket after bucket, he launched them at his visitors, with the result that the big man was tumbled down the p.o.o.p steps head first, while the other two followed, right side up, but hurriedly, and bearing some sore spots. Then the rest of the men set upon them, much as a pack of dogs would worry strange cats, and kicked and buffeted them forward.

There was no time for much amus.e.m.e.nt of this sort. Yards were braced to port, for the s.h.i.+p was careering down toward the steamer at a ten-knot rate; and soon black dots on her rail resolved into pa.s.sengers waving hats and handkerchiefs, and black dots on the boat deck resolved into sailors standing by the end of a hawser which led up from the bitts below on the fantail. And the s.h.i.+p came down, until it might have seemed that Seldom's intention was to ram her. But not so; when a scant two lengths separated the two craft, he called out: "Hard down! Light up the staysail-sheet and stand by the forebraces!"

Around the s.h.i.+p came on the crest of a sea; she sank into the hollow behind, s.h.i.+pped a few dozen tons of water from the next comber, and then lay fairly steady, with her bow meeting the seas, and the huge steamer not a half-length away on the lee quarter. The fore-topmast-staysail was flattened, and Seldom closely scrutinized the drift and heave of the s.h.i.+p.

"How's your wheel, Bigpig?" he asked.

"Hard down."

"Put it up a little; keep her in the trough."

He noted the effect on the s.h.i.+p of this change; then, as though satisfied, roared out: "Let your forebraces hang, forrard there! Stand by heavin'-lines fore and aft! Stand by to go ahead with that steamer when we have your line!" The last injunction, delivered through his hands, went down the wind like a thunder-clap, and the officers on the steamer's bridge, vainly trying to make themselves heard against the gale in the same manner, started perceptibly at the impact of sound, and one went to the engine-room speaking-tube.

Breast to breast the two vessels lifted and fell. At times it seemed that the s.h.i.+p was to be dropped bodily on the deck of the steamer; at others, her crew looked up a streaked slope of a hundred feet to where the other craft was poised at the crest. Then the steamer would drop, and the next sea would heave the s.h.i.+p toward her. But it was noticeable that every bound brought her nearer to the steamer, and also farther ahead, for her sails were doing their work.

"Kick ahead on board the steamer!" thundered Seldom from his eminence.

"Go ahead! Start the wagon, or say your prayers, you blasted idiots!"

The engines were already turning; but it takes time to overcome three thousand tons of inertia, and before the steamer had forged ahead six feet the s.h.i.+p had lifted above her, and descended her black side with a grinding crash of wood against iron. Fore and main channels on the s.h.i.+p were carried away, leaving all lee rigging slack and useless; lower braces caught in the steamer's davit-cleats and snapped, but the sails, held by the weather braces, remained full, and the yards did not swing.

The two craft separated with a roll and came together again with more sc.r.a.ping and snapping of rigging. Pa.s.sengers left the rail, dived indoors, and took refuge on the opposite side, where falling blocks and small spars might not reach them. Another leap toward the steamer resulted in the s.h.i.+p's maintopgallantmast falling in a zigzag whirl, as the snapping gear aloft impeded it; and dropping athwart the steamer's funnel, it neatly sent the royal-yard with sail attached down the iron cylinder, where it soon blazed and helped the artificial draft in the stoke-hold. Next came the foretopgallantmast, which smashed a couple of boats. Then, as the round black stern of the steamer sc.r.a.ped the lee bow of the s.h.i.+p, jib-guys parted, and the jib-boom itself went, snapping at the bowsprit-cap, with the last bite the s.h.i.+p made at the steamer she was helping. But all through this riot of destruction--while pa.s.sengers screamed and prayed, while officers on the steamer shouted and swore, and Seldom Helward, bellowing insanely, danced up and down on the s.h.i.+p's house, and the hail of wood and iron from aloft threatened their heads--men were pa.s.sing the tow-line.

It was a seven-inch steel hawser with a Manila tail, which they had taken to the foretopsail-sheet bitts before the jib-boom had gone.

Panting from their exertions, they watched it lift from the water as the steamer ahead paid out with a taut strain; then, though the crippled spars were in danger of falling and really needed their first attention, they ignored the fact and hurried aft, as one man, to attend to Seldom.

Encouraged by the objurgations of Bigpig and his a.s.sistant, who were steering now after the steamer, they called their late commander down from the house and deposed him in a concert of profane ridicule and abuse, to which he replied in kind. He was struck in the face by the small fist of Sinful Peck, and immediately knocked the little man down.

Then he was knocked down himself by a larger fist, and, fighting bravely and viciously, became the object of fist-blows and kicks, until, in one of his whirling staggers along the deck, he pa.s.sed close to the short, broad, hairy man, who yielded to the excitement of the moment and added a blow to Seldom's punishment. It was an unfortunate mistake; for he took Seldom's place, and the rain of fists and boots descended on him until he fell unconscious. Mr. Helward himself delivered the last quieting blow, and then stood over him with a lurid grin on his bleeding face.

"Got to put down mutiny though the heavens fall," he said painfully.

"Right you are, Seldom," answered one. "Here, Jackson, Benson--drag him forrard; and, Seldom," he added, reprovingly, "don't you ever try it again. Want to be captain, hey? You can't; you don't know enough. You couldn't command my wheelbarrow. Here's three days' work to clear up the muss you've made."

But in this they spoke more, and less, than the truth. The steamer, going slowly, and steering with a bridle from the tow-line to each quarter, kept the s.h.i.+p's canvas full until her crew had steadied the yards and furled it. They would then have rigged preventer-stays and shrouds on their shaky spars, had there been time; but there was not.

An uncanny appearance of the sea to leeward indicated too close proximity to the shoals, while a blackening of the sky to windward told of probable increase of wind and sea. And the steamer waited no longer.

With a preliminary blast of her whistle, she hung the weight of the s.h.i.+p on the starboard bridle, gave power to her engines, and rounded to, very slowly, head to sea, while the men on the s.h.i.+p, who had been carrying the end of the coiled hawser up the foretopmast rigging, dropped it and came down hurriedly.

Released from the wind-pressure on her strong side, which had somewhat steadied her, the s.h.i.+p now rolled more than she had done in the trough, and with every starboard roll were ominous creakings and grindings aloft. At last came a heavier lurch, and both crippled topmasts fell, taking with them the mizzentopgallantmast. Luckily, no one was hurt, and they disgustedly cut the wreck adrift, stayed the fore- and mainmasts with the hawser, and resigning themselves to a large subtraction from their salvage, went to a late breakfast--a savory meal of smoking fried ham and potatoes, hot cakes and coffee served to sixteen in the cabin, and an unsavory meal of "hardtack-hash," with an infusion of burnt bread-crust, pease, beans, and leather, handed, but not served, to three in the forecastle.

Three days later, with Sandy Hook lighthouse showing through the haze ahead, and nothing left of the gale but a rolling ground-swell, the steamer slowed down so that a pilot-boat's dinghy could put a man aboard each craft. And the one who climbed the s.h.i.+p's side was the pilot that had taken her to sea, outward bound, and sympathized with her crew. They surrounded him on the p.o.o.p and asked for news, while the three men forward looked aft hungrily, as though they would have joined the meeting, but dared not. Instead of giving news, the pilot asked questions, which they answered.

"I knew you'd taken charge, boys," he said at length. "The whole world knows it, and every man-of-war on the Pacific stations has been looking for you. But they're only looking out there. What brings you round here, dismasted, towing into New York?"

"That's where the s.h.i.+p's bound--New York. We took her out; we bring her home. We don't want her--don't belong to us. We're law-abidin' men."

"Law-abiding men?" asked the amazed pilot.

"You bet. We're goin' to prosecute those dogs of ours forrard there to the last limit o' the law. We'll show 'em they can't starve and hammer and shoot free-born Americans just 'cause they've got guns in their pockets."

The pilot looked forward, nodded to one of the three, who beckoned to him, and asked:

"Who'd you elect captain?"

"n.o.body," they roared. "We had enough o' captains. This s.h.i.+p's an unlimited democracy--everybody just as good as the next man; that is, all but the dogs. They sleep on the bunk-boards, do as they're told, and eat salt mule and dunderfunk--same as we did goin' out."

"Did they navigate for you? Did no one have charge of things?"

"p.o.o.p-deck picked up navigation, and we let him off steerin' and standin' lookout. Then Seldom, here, he wanted to be captain just once, and we let him--well, look at our spars."

"p.o.o.p-deck? Which is p.o.o.p-deck? Do you mean to say," asked the pilot when the navigator had been indicated to him, "that you brought this s.h.i.+p home on picked-up navigation?"

"Didn't know anything about it when we left Callao," answered the sailor, modestly. "The steward knew enough to wind the chronometer until I learned how. We made an offing and steered due south, while I studied the books and charts. It didn't take me long to learn how to take the sun. Then we blundered round the Horn somehow, and before long I could take chronometer sights for the longitude. Of course I know we went out in four months and used up five to get back; but a man can't learn the whole thing in one pa.s.sage. We lost some time, too, chasing other s.h.i.+ps and buying stores; the cabin grub gave out."

"You bought, I suppose, with Captain Benson's money."

"S'pose it was his. We found it in his desk. But we've kept account of every cent expended, and bought no grub too good for a white man to eat."

"What dismasted you?"

They explained the meeting with the steamer and Seldom's misdoing; then requested information about the salvage laws.

"Boys," said the pilot, "I'm sorry for you. I saw the start of this voyage, and you appear to be decent men. You'll get no salvage; you'll get no wages. You are mutineers and pirates, with no standing in court.