CHAPTER III
Quite chilled through, I was immediately struck by the warm comfort
of the cabin. All the connecting doors were open, making what I
might call a large suite of rooms or a whale house. The main-deck
entrance, on the port side, was into a wide, well-carpeted hallway.
Into this hallway, from the port side, opened five rooms: first, on
entering, the mate's; next, the two state-rooms which had been
knocked into one for me; then the steward's room; and, adjoining his,
completing the row, a state-room which was used for the slop-chest.
Across the hall was a region with which I was not yet acquainted,
though I knew it contained the dining-room, the bath-rooms, the cabin
proper, which was in truth a spacious living-room, the captain's
quarters, and, undoubtedly, Miss West's quarters. I could hear her
humming some air as she bustled about with her unpacking. The
steward's pantry, separated by crosshalls and by the stairway leading
into the chart-room above on the poop, was placed strategically in
the centre of all its operations. Thus, on the starboard side of it
were the state-rooms of the captain and Miss West, for'ard of it were
the dining-room and main cabin; while on the port side of it was the
row of rooms I have described, two of which were mine.
I ventured down the hall toward the stern, and found it opened into
the stern of the Elsinore, forming a single large apartment at least
thirty-five feet from side to side and fifteen to eighteen feet in
depth, curved, of course, to the lines of the ship's stern. This
seemed a store-room. I noted wash-tubs, bolts of canvas, many
lockers, hams and bacon hanging, a step-ladder that led up through a
small hatch to the poop, and, in the floor, another hatch.
I spoke to the steward, an old Chinese, smooth-faced and brisk of
movement, whose name I never learned, but whose age on the articles
was fifty-six.
"What is down there?" I asked, pointing to the hatch in the floor.
"Him lazarette," he answered.
"And who eats there?" I indicated a table with two stationary sea-
chairs.
"Him second table. Second mate and carpenter him eat that table."
When I had finished giving instructions to Wada for the arranging of
my things I looked at my watch. It was early yet, only several
minutes after three so I went on deck again to witness the arrival of
the crew.
The actual coming on board from the tug I had missed, but for'ard of
the amidship house I encountered a few laggards who had not yet gone
into the forecastle. These were the worse for liquor, and a more
wretched, miserable, disgusting group of men I had never seen in any
slum. Their clothes were rags. Their faces were bloated, bloody,
and dirty. I won't say they were villainous. They were merely
filthy and vile. They were vile of appearance, of speech, and
action.
"Come! Come! Get your dunnage into the fo'c's'le!"
Mr. Pike uttered these words sharply from the bridge above. A light
and graceful bridge of steel rods and planking ran the full length of
the Elsinore, starting from the poop, crossing the amidship house and
the forecastle, and connecting with the forecastle-head at the very
bow of the ship.
At the mate's command the men reeled about and glowered up at him,
one or two starting clumsily to obey. The others ceased their
drunken yammerings and regarded the mate sullenly. One of them, with
a face mashed by some mad god in the making, and who was afterwards
to be known by me as Larry, burst into a guffaw, and spat insolently
on the deck. Then, with utmost deliberation, he turned to his
fellows and demanded loudly and huskily:
"Who in hell's the old stiff, anyways?"
I saw Mr. Pike's huge form tense convulsively and involuntarily, and
I noted the way his huge hands strained in their clutch on the
bridge-railing. Beyond that he controlled himself.
"Go on, you," he said. "I'll have nothing out of you. Get into the
fo'c's'le."
And then, to my surprise, he turned and walked aft along the bridge
to where the tug was casting off its lines. So this was all his high
and mighty talk of kill and drive, I thought. Not until afterwards
did I recollect, as I turned aft down the deck, that I saw Captain
West leaning on the rail at the break of the poop and gazing for'ard.
The tug's lines were being cast off, and I was interested in watching
the manoeuvre until she had backed clear of the ship, at which
moment, from for'ard, arose a queer babel of howling and yelping, as
numbers of drunken voices cried out that a man was overboard. The
second mate sprang down the poop-ladder and darted past me along the
deck. The mate, still on the slender, white-painted bridge, that
seemed no more than a spider thread, surprised me by the activity
with which he dashed along the bridge to the 'midship house, leaped
upon the canvas-covered long-boat, and swung outboard where he might
see. Before the men could clamber upon the rail the second mate was
among them, and it was he who flung a coil of line overboard.
What impressed me particularly was the mental and muscular
superiority of these two officers. Despite their age--the mate
sixty-nine and the second mate at least fifty--their minds and their
bodies had acted with the swiftness and accuracy of steel springs.
They were potent. They were iron. They were perceivers, willers,
and doers. They were as of another species compared with the sailors
under them. While the latter, witnesses of the happening and
directly on the spot, had been crying out in befuddled helplessness,
and with slow wits and slower bodies been climbing upon the rail, the
second mate had descended the steep ladder from the poop, covered two
hundred feet of deck, sprung upon the rail, grasped the instant need
of the situation, and cast the coil of line into the water.
And of the same nature and quality had been the actions of Mr. Pike.
He and Mr. Mellaire were masters over the wretched creatures of
sailors by virtue of this remarkable difference of efficiency and
will. Truly, they were more widely differentiated from the men under
them than were the men under them differentiated from Hottentots--ay,
and from monkeys.
I, too, by this time, was standing on the big hawser-bitts in a
position to see a man in the water who seemed deliberately swimming
away from the ship. He was a dark-skinned Mediterranean of some
sort, and his face, in a clear glimpse I caught of it, was distorted
by frenzy. His black eyes were maniacal. The line was so accurately
flung by the second mate that it fell across the man's shoulders, and
for several strokes his arms tangled in it ere he could swim clear.
This accomplished, he proceeded to scream some wild harangue and
once, as he uptossed his arms for emphasis, I saw in his hand the
blade of a long knife.
Bells were jangling on the tug as it started to the rescue. I stole
a look up at Captain West. He had walked to the port side of the
poop, where, hands in pockets, he was glancing, now for'ard at the
struggling man, now aft at the tug. He gave no orders, betrayed no
excitement, and appeared, I may well say, the most casual of
spectators.
The creature in the water seemed now engaged in taking off his
clothes. I saw one bare arm, and then the other, appear. In his
struggles he sometimes sank beneath the surface, but always he
emerged, flourishing the knife and screaming his addled harangue. He
even tried to escape the tug by diving and swimming underneath.
I strolled for'ard, and arrived in time to see him hoisted in over
the rail of the Elsinore. He was stark naked, covered with blood,
and raving. He had cut and slashed himself in a score of places.
From one wound in the wrist the blood spurted with each beat of the
pulse. He was a loathsome, non-human thing. I have seen a scared
orang in a zoo, and for all the world this bestial-faced, mowing,
gibbering thing reminded me of the orang. The sailors surrounded
him, laying hands on him, withstraining him, the while they guffawed
and cheered. Right and left the two mates shoved them away, and
dragged the lunatic down the deck and into a room in the 'midship
house. I could not help marking the strength of Mr. Pike and Mr.
Mellaire. I had heard of the superhuman strength of madmen, but this
particular madman was as a wisp of straw in their hands. Once into
the bunk, Mr. Pike held down the struggling fool easily with one hand
while he dispatched the second mate for marlin with which to tie the
fellow's arms.
"Bughouse," Mr. Pike grinned at me. "I've seen some bughouse crews
in my time, but this one's the limit."
"What are you going to do?" I asked. "The man will bleed to death."
"And good riddance," he answered promptly. "We'll have our hands
full of him until we can lose him somehow. When he gets easy I'll
sew him up, that's all, if I have to ease him with a clout of the
jaw."
I glanced at the mate's huge paw and appreciated its anaesthetic
qualities. Out on deck again, I saw Captain West on the poop, hands
still in pockets, quite uninterested, gazing at a blue break in the
sky to the north-east. More than the mates and the maniac, more than
the drunken callousness of the men, did this quiet figure, hands in
pockets, impress upon me that I was in a different world from any I
had known.
Wada broke in upon my thoughts by telling me he had been sent to say
that Miss West was serving tea in the cabin.
