CHAPTER XVIII
Was there ever such a voyage! This morning, when I came on deck, I
found nobody at the wheel. It was a startling sight--the great
Elsinore, by the wind, under an Alpine range of canvas, every sail
set from skysails to try-sails and spanker, slipping across the
surface of a mild trade-wind sea, and no hand at the wheel to guide
her.
No one was on the poop. It was Mr. Pike's watch, and I strolled
for'ard along the bridge to find him. He was on Number One hatch
giving some instructions to the sail-makers. I awaited my chance,
until he glanced up and greeted me.
"Good morning," I answered. "And what man is at the wheel now?"
"That crazy Greek, Tony," he replied.
"A month's wages to a pound of tobacco he isn't," I offered.
Mr. Pike looked at me with quick sharpness.
"Who is at the wheel?"
"Nobody," I replied.
And then he exploded into action. The age-lag left his massive
frame, and he bounded aft along the deck at a speed no man on board
could have exceeded; and I doubt if very many could have equalled it.
He went up the poop-ladder three steps at a time and disappeared in
the direction of the wheel behind the chart-house.
Next came a promptitude of bellowed orders, and all the watch was
slacking away after braces to starboard and pulling on after braces
to port. I had already learned the manoeuvre. Mr. Pike was wearing
ship.
As I returned aft along the bridge Mr. Mellaire and the carpenter
emerged from the cabin door. They had been interrupted at breakfast,
for they were wiping their mouths. Mr. Pike came to the break of the
poop, called down instructions to the second mate, who proceeded
for'ard, and ordered the carpenter to take the wheel.
As the Elsinore swung around on her heel Mr. Pike put her on the back
track so as to cover the water she had just crossed over. He lowered
the glasses through which he was scanning the sea and pointed down
the hatchway that opened into the big after-room beneath. The ladder
was gone.
"Must have taken the lazarette ladder with him," said Mr. Pike.
Captain West strolled out of the chart-room. He said good morning in
his customary way, courteously to me and formally to the mate, and
strolled on along the poop to the wheel, where he paused to glance
into the binnacle. Turning, he went on leisurely to the break of the
poop. Again he came back to us. Fully two minutes must have elapsed
ere he spoke.
"What is the matter, Mr. Pike? Man overboard?"
"Yes, sir," was the answer.
"And took the lazarette ladder along with him?" Captain West queried.
"Yes, sir. It's the Greek that jumped over at Baltimore."
Evidently the affair was not serious enough for Captain West to be
the Samurai. He lighted a cigar and resumed his stroll. And yet he
had missed nothing, not even the absence of the ladder.
Mr. Pike sent look-outs aloft to every skysail-yard, and the Elsinore
slipped along through the smooth sea. Miss West came up and stood
beside me, searching the ocean with her eyes while I told her the
little I knew. She evidenced no excitement, and reassured me by
telling me how difficult it was to lose a man of Tony's suicidal
type.
"Their madness always seems to come upon them in fine weather or
under safe circumstances," she smiled, "when a boat can be lowered or
a tug is alongside. And sometimes they take life--preservers with
them, as in this case."
At the end of an hour Mr. Pike wore the Elsinore around, and again
retraced the course she must have been sailing when the Greek went
over. Captain West still strolled and smoked, and Miss West made a
brief trip below to give Wada forgotten instructions about Possum.
Andy Pay was called to the wheel, and the carpenter went below to
finish his breakfast.
It all seemed rather callous to me. Nobody was much concerned for
the man who was overboard somewhere on that lonely ocean. And yet I
had to admit that everything possible was being done to find him. I
talked a little with Mr. Pike, and he seemed more vexed than anything
else. He disliked to have the ship's work interrupted in such
fashion.
Mr. Mellaire's attitude was different.
"We are short-handed enough as it is," he told me, when he joined us
on the poop. "We can't afford to lose him even if he is crazy. We
need him. He's a good sailor most of the time."
The hail came from the mizzen-skysail-yard. The Maltese Cockney it
was who first sighted the man and called down the information. The
mate, looking to windwards, suddenly lowered his glasses, rubbed his
eyes in a puzzled way, and looked again. Then Miss West, using
another pair of glasses, cried out in surprise and began to laugh.
"What do you make of it, Miss West?" the mate asked.
"He doesn't seem to be in the water. He's standing up."
Mr. Pike nodded.
"He's on the ladder," he said. "I'd forgotten that. It fooled me at
first. I couldn't understand it." He turned to the second mate.
"Mr. Mellaire, will you launch the long boat and get some kind of a
crew into it while I back the main-yard? I'll go in the boat. Pick
men that can pull an oar."
"You go, too," Miss West said to me. "It will be an opportunity to
get outside the Elsinore and see her under full sail."
Mr. Pike nodded consent, so I went along, sitting near him in the
stern-sheets where he steered, while half a dozen hands rowed us
toward the suicide, who stood so weirdly upon the surface of the sea.
The Maltese Cockney pulled the stroke oar, and among the other five
men was one whose name I had but recently learned--Ditman Olansen, a
Norwegian. A good seaman, Mr. Mellaire had told me, in whose watch
he was; a good seaman, but "crank-eyed." When pressed for an
explanation Mr. Mellaire had said that he was the sort of man who
flew into blind rages, and that one never could tell what little
thing would produce such a rage. As near as I could grasp it, Ditman
Olansen was a Berserker type. Yet, as I watched him pulling in good
time at the oar, his large, pale-blue eyes seemed almost bovine--the
last man in the world, in my judgment, to have a Berserker fit.
As we drew close to the Greek he began to scream menacingly at us and
to brandish a sheath-knife. His weight sank the ladder until the
water washed his knees, and on this submerged support he balanced
himself with wild writhing and outflinging of arms. His face,
grimacing like a monkey's, was not a pretty thing to look upon. And
as he continued to threaten us with the knife I wondered how the
problem of rescuing him would be solved.
But I should have trusted Mr. Pike for that. He removed the boat-
stretcher from under the Maltese Cockney's feet and laid it close to
hand in the stern-sheets. Then he had the men reverse the boat and
back it upon the Greek. Dodging a sweep of the knife, Mr. Pike
awaited his chance, until a passing wave lifted the boat's stern
high, while Tony was sinking toward the trough. This was the moment.
Again I was favoured with a sample of the lightning speed with which
that aged man of sixty-nine could handle his body. Timed precisely,
and delivered in a flash and with weight, the boat-stretcher came
down on the Greek's head. The knife fell into the sea, and the
demented creature collapsed and followed it, knocked unconscious.
Mr. Pike scooped him out, quite effortlessly it seemed to me, and
flung him into the boat's bottom at my feet.
The next moment the men were bending to their oars and the mate was
steering back to the Elsinore. It was a stout rap Mr. Pike had
administered with the boat-stretcher. Thin streaks of blood oozed on
the damp, plastered hair from the broken scalp. I could but stare at
the lump of unconscious flesh that dripped sea-water at my feet. A
man, all life and movement one moment, defying the universe, reduced
the next moment to immobility and the blackness and blankness of
death, is always a fascinating object for the contemplative eye of
the philosopher. And in this case it had been accomplished so
simply, by means of a stick of wood brought sharply in contact with
his skull.
If Tony the Greek be accounted an APPEARANCE, what was he now?--a
DISAPPEARANCE? And if so, whither had he disappeared? And whence
would he journey back to reoccupy that body when what we call
consciousness returned to him? The first word, much less the last,
of the phenomena of personality and consciousness yet remains to be
uttered by the psychologists.
Pondering thus, I chanced to lift my eyes, and the glorious spectacle
of the Elsinore burst upon me. I had been so long on board, and in
board of her, that I had forgotten she was a white-painted ship. So
low to the water was her hull, so delicate and slender, that the
tall, sky-reaching spars and masts and the hugeness of the spread of
canvas seemed preposterous and impossible, an insolent derision of
the law of gravitation. It required effort to realize that that slim
curve of hull inclosed and bore up from the sea's bottom five
thousand tons of coal. And again, it seemed a miracle that the mites
of men had conceived and constructed so stately and magnificent an
element-defying fabric--mites of men, most woefully like the Greek at
my feet, prone to precipitation into the blackness by means of a rap
on the head with a piece of wood.
Tony made a struggling noise in his throat, then coughed and groaned.
From somewhere he was reappearing. I noticed Mr. Pike look at him
quickly, as if apprehending some recrudescence of frenzy that would
require more boat-stretcher. But Tony merely fluttered his big black
eyes open and stared at me for a long minute of incurious amaze ere
he closed them again.
"What are you going to do with him?" I asked the mate.
"Put 'm back to work," was the reply. "It's all he's good for, and
he ain't hurt. Somebody's got to work this ship around the Horn."
When we hoisted the boat on board I found Miss West had gone below.
In the chart-room Captain West was winding the chronometers. Mr.
Mellaire had turned in to catch an hour or two of sleep ere his watch
on deck at noon. Mr. Mellaire, by the way, as I have forgotten to
state, does not sleep aft. He shares a room in the 'midship-house
with Mr. Pike's Nancy.
Nobody showed sympathy for the unfortunate Greek. He was bundled out
upon Number Two hatch like so much carrion and left there unattended,
to recover consciousness as he might elect. Yes, and so inured have
I become that I make free to admit I felt no sympathy for him myself.
My eyes were still filled with the beauty of the Elsinore. One does
grow hard at sea.
