CHAPTER IV
The contrast, as I entered the cabin, was startling. All contrasts
aboard the Elsinore promised to be startling. Instead of the cold,
hard deck my feet sank into soft carpet. In place of the mean and
narrow room, built of naked iron, where I had left the lunatic, I was
in a spacious and beautiful apartment. With the bawling of the men's
voices still in my ears, and with the pictures of their drink-puffed
and filthy faces still vivid under my eyelids, I found myself greeted
by a delicate-faced, prettily-gowned woman who sat beside a lacquered
oriental table on which rested an exquisite tea-service of Canton
china. All was repose and calm. The steward, noiseless-footed,
expressionless, was a shadow, scarcely noticed, that drifted into the
room on some service and drifted out again.
Not at once could I relax, and Miss West, serving my tea, laughed and
said:
"You look as if you had been seeing things. The steward tells me a
man has been overboard. I fancy the cold water must have sobered
him."
I resented her unconcern.
"The man is a lunatic," I said. "This ship is no place for him. He
should be sent ashore to some hospital."
"I am afraid, if we begin that, we'd have to send two-thirds of our
complement ashore--one lump?
"Yes, please," I answered. "But the man has terribly wounded
himself. He is liable to bleed to death."
She looked at me for a moment, her gray eyes serious and
scrutinizing, as she passed me my cup; then laughter welled up in her
eyes, and she shook her head reprovingly.
"Now please don't begin the voyage by being shocked, Mr. Pathurst.
Such things are very ordinary occurrences. You'll get used to them.
You must remember some queer creatures go down to the sea in ships.
The man is safe. Trust Mr. Pike to attend to his wounds. I've never
sailed with Mr. Pike, but I've heard enough about him. Mr. Pike is
quite a surgeon. Last voyage, they say, he performed a successful
amputation, and so elated was he that he turned his attention on the
carpenter, who happened to be suffering from some sort of
indigestion. Mr. Pike was so convinced of the correctness of his
diagnosis that he tried to bribe the carpenter into having his
appendix removed." She broke off to laugh heartily, then added:
"They say he offered the poor man just pounds and pounds of tobacco
to consent to the operation."
"But is it safe . . . for the . . . the working of the ship," I
urged, "to take such a lunatic along?"
She shrugged her shoulders, as if not intending to reply, then said:
"This incident is nothing. There are always several lunatics or
idiots in every ship's company. And they always come aboard filled
with whiskey and raving. I remember, once, when we sailed from
Seattle, a long time ago, one such madman. He showed no signs of
madness at all; just calmly seized two boarding-house runners and
sprang overboard with them. We sailed the same day, before the
bodies were recovered."
Again she shrugged her shoulders.
"What would you? The sea is hard, Mr. Pathurst. And for our sailors
we get the worst type of men. I sometimes wonder where they find
them. And we do our best with them, and somehow manage to make them
help us carry on our work in the world. But they are low . . . low."
As I listened, and studied her face, contrasting her woman's
sensitivity and her soft pretty dress with the brute faces and rags
of the men I had noticed, I could not help being convinced
intellectually of the rightness of her position. Nevertheless, I was
hurt sentimentally,--chiefly, I do believe, because of the very
hardness and unconcern with which she enunciated her view. It was
because she was a woman, and so different from the sea-creatures,
that I resented her having received such harsh education in the
school of the sea.
"I could not help remarking your father's--er, er sang froid during
the occurrence." I ventured.
"He never took his hands from his pockets!" she cried.
Her eyes sparkled as I nodded confirmation.
"I knew it! It's his way. I've seen it so often. I remember when I
was twelve years old--mother was alone--we were running into San
Francisco. It was in the Dixie, a ship almost as big as this. There
was a strong fair wind blowing, and father did not take a tug. We
sailed right through the Golden Gate and up the San Francisco water-
front. There was a swift flood tide, too; and the men, both watches,
were taking in sail as fast as they could.
"Now the fault was the steamboat captain's. He miscalculated our
speed and tried to cross our bow. Then came the collision, and the
Dixie's bow cut through that steamboat, cabin and hull. There were
hundreds of passengers, men, women, and children. Father never took
his hands from his pockets. He sent the mate for'ard to superintend
rescuing the passengers, who were already climbing on to our bowsprit
and forecastle-head, and in a voice no different from what he'd use
to ask some one to pass the butter he told the second mate to set all
sail. And he told him which sails to begin with."
"But why set more sails?" I interrupted.
"Because he could see the situation. Don't you see, the steamboat
was cut wide open. All that kept her from sinking instantly was the
bow of the Dixie jammed into her side. By setting more sail and
keeping before the wind, he continued to keep the bow of the Dixie
jammed.
"I was terribly frightened. People who had sprung or fallen
overboard were drowning on each side of us, right in my sight, as we
sailed along up the water-front. But when I looked at father, there
he was, just as I had always known him, hands in pockets, walking
slowly up and down, now giving an order to the wheel--you see, he had
to direct the Dixie's course through all the shipping--now watching
the passengers swarming over our bow and along our deck, now looking
ahead to see his way through the ships at anchor. Sometimes he did
glance at the poor, drowning ones, but he was not concerned with
them.
"Of course, there were numbers drowned, but by keeping his hands in
his pockets and his head cool he saved hundreds of lives. Not until
the last person was off the steamboat--he sent men aboard to make
sure--did he take off the press of sail. And the steamboat sank at
once."
She ceased, and looked at me with shining eyes for approbation.
"It was splendid," I acknowledged. "I admire the quiet man of power,
though I confess that such quietness under stress seems to me almost
unearthly and beyond human. I can't conceive of myself acting that
way, and I am confident that I was suffering more while that poor
devil was in the water than all the rest of the onlookers put
together."
"Father suffers!" she defended loyally. "Only he does not show it."
I bowed, for I felt she had missed my point.
