CHAPTER XII
Another morning of overcast sky and leaden sea, and of the Elsinore,
under half her canvas, clanging her deck ports, spouting water from
her scuppers, and dashing eastward into the heart of the Atlantic.
And I have failed to sleep half-an-hour all told. At this rate, in a
very short time I shall have consumed all the cream of tartar on the
ship. I never have had hives like these before. I can't understand
it. So long as I keep my lamp burning and read I am untroubled. The
instant I put out the lamp and drowse off the irritation starts and
the lumps on my skin begin to form.
Miss West may be sea-sick, but she cannot be comatose, because at
frequent intervals she sends the steward to me with more cream of
tartar.
I have had a revelation to-day. I have discovered Captain West. He
is a Samurai.--You remember the Samurai that H. G. Wells describes in
his Modern Utopia--the superior breed of men who know things and are
masters of life and of their fellow-men in a super-benevolent, super-
wise way? Well, that is what Captain West is. Let me tell it to
you.
We had a shift of wind to-day. In the height of a south-west gale
the wind shifted, in the instant, eight points, which is equivalent
to a quarter of the circle. Imagine it! Imagine a gale howling from
out of the south-west. And then imagine the wind, in a heavier and
more violent gale, abruptly smiting you from the north-west. We had
been sailing through a circular storm, Captain West vouchsafed to me,
before the event, and the wind could be expected to box the compass.
Clad in sea-boots, oilskins and sou'wester, I had for some time been
hanging upon the rail at the break of the poop, staring down
fascinated at the poor devils of sailors, repeatedly up to their
necks in water, or submerged, or dashed like straws about the deck,
while they pulled and hauled, stupidly, blindly, and in evident fear,
under the orders of Mr. Pike.
Mr. Pike was with them, working them and working with them. He took
every chance they took, yet somehow he escaped being washed off his
feet, though several times I saw him entirely buried from view.
There was more than luck in the matter; for I saw him, twice, at the
head of a line of the men, himself next to the pin. And twice, in
this position, I saw the North Atlantic curl over the rail and fall
upon them. And each time he alone remained, holding the turn of the
rope on the pin, while the rest of them were rolled and sprawled
helplessly away.
Almost it seemed to me good fun, as at a circus, watching their
antics. But I did not apprehend the seriousness of the situation
until, the wind screaming higher than ever and the sea a-smoke and
white with wrath, two men did not get up from the deck. One was
carried away for'ard with a broken leg--it was Iare Jacobson, a dull-
witted Scandinavian; and the other, Kid Twist, was carried away,
unconscious, with a bleeding scalp.
In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did
not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to
escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the
high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing
the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain.
And all the time, slender, aristocratic, graceful in streaming
oilskins, in apparent unconcern, giving no orders, effortlessly
accommodating his body to the violent rolling of the Elsinore,
Captain West strolled up and down.
It was at this stage in the gale that he unbent sufficiently to tell
me that we were going through a circular storm and that the wind was
boxing the compass. I did notice that he kept his gaze pretty
steadily fixed on the overcast, cloud-driven sky. At last, when it
seemed the wind could not possibly blow more fiercely, he found in
the sky what he sought. It was then that I first heard his voice--a
sea-voice, clear as a bell, distinct as silver, and of an ineffable
sweetness and volume, as it might be the trump of Gabriel. That
voice!--effortless, dominating! The mighty threat of the storm, made
articulate by the resistance of the Elsinore, shouted in all the
stays, bellowed in the shrouds, thrummed the taut ropes against the
steel masts, and from the myriad tiny ropes far aloft evoked a
devil's chorus of shrill pipings and screechings. And yet, through
this bedlam of noise, came Captain West's voice, as of a spirit
visitant, distinct, unrelated, mellow as all music and mighty as an
archangel's call to judgment. And it carried understanding and
command to the man at the wheel, and to Mr. Pike, waist-deep in the
wash of sea below us. And the man at the wheel obeyed, and Mr. Pike
obeyed, barking and snarling orders to the poor wallowing devils who
wallowed on and obeyed him in turn. And as the voice was the face.
This face I had never seen before. It was the face of the spirit
visitant, chaste with wisdom, lighted by a splendour of power and
calm. Perhaps it was the calm that smote me most of all. It was as
the calm of one who had crossed chaos to bless poor sea-worn men with
the word that all was well. It was not the face of the fighter. To
my thrilled imagination it was the face of one who dwelt beyond all
strivings of the elements and broody dissensions of the blood.
The Samurai had arrived, in thunders and lightnings, riding the wings
of the storm, directing the gigantic, labouring Elsinore in all her
intricate massiveness, commanding the wisps of humans to his will,
which was the will of wisdom.
And then, that wonderful Gabriel voice of his, silent (while his
creatures laboured his will), unconcerned, detached and casual, more
slenderly tall and aristocratic than ever in his streaming oilskins,
Captain West touched my shoulder and pointed astern over our weather
quarter. I looked, and all that I could see was a vague smoke of sea
and air and a cloud-bank of sky that tore at the ocean's breast. And
at the same moment the gale from the south-west ceased. There was no
gale, no moving zephyrs, nothing but a vast quietude of air.
"What is it?" I gasped, out of equilibrium from the abrupt cessation
of wind.
"The shift," he said. "There she comes."
And it came, from the north-west, a blast of wind, a blow, an
atmospheric impact that bewildered and stunned and again made the
Elsinore harp protest. It forced me down on the rail. I was like a
windle-straw. As I faced this new abruptness of gale it drove the
air back into my lungs, so that I suffocated and turned my head aside
to breathe in the lee of the draught. The man at the wheel again
listened to the Gabriel voice; and Mr. Pike, on the deck below,
listened and repeated the will of the voice; and Captain West, in
slender and stately balance, leaned into the face of the wind and
slowly paced the deck.
It was magnificent. Now, and for the first time, I knew the sea, and
the men who overlord the sea. Captain West had vindicated himself,
exposited himself. At the height and crisis of storm he had taken
charge of the Elsinore, and Mr. Pike had become, what in truth was
all he was, the foreman of a gang of men, the slave-driver of slaves,
serving the one from beyond--the Samurai.
A minute or so longer Captain West strolled up and down, leaning
easily into the face of this new and abominable gale or resting his
back against it, and then he went below, pausing for a moment, his
hand on the knob of the chart-room door, to cast a last measuring
look at the storm-white sea and wrath-sombre sky he had mastered.
Ten minutes later, below, passing the open cabin door, I glanced in
and saw him. Sea-boots and storm-trappings were gone; his feet, in
carpet slippers, rested on a hassock; while he lay back in the big
leather chair smoking dreamily, his eyes wide open, absorbed, non-
seeing--or, if they saw, seeing things beyond the reeling cabin walls
and beyond my ken. I have developed an immense respect for Captain
West, though now I know him less than the little I thought I knew him
before.
