CHAPTER XIV
Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was
to fetch the day's supply of water for the galley and cabin,
discovered that the barrels were empty. Mr. Jackson was so
alarmed that he immediately called Captain Doane, and not many
minutes elapsed ere Captain Doane had routed out Grimshaw and
Nishikanta to tell them the disaster.
Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient
Mariner and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and
bewailed. Captain Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta
was fiendish in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done
the deed and of how he should be made to suffer for it, while
Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched his great hands as if
throttling some throat.
"I remember, it was in forty-seven--nay, forty-six--yes, forty-
six," the Ancient Mariner chattered. "It was a similar and worse
predicament. It was in the longboat, sixteen of us. We ran on
Glister Reef. So named it was after our pretty little craft
discovered it one dark night and left her bones upon it. The reef
is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane will verify me . . . "
No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and
admiring. But Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the
old man was babbling, bellowed out ferociously:
"Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired with your
everlasting 'I remember.'"
The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had
slipped somewhere in his narrative.
"No, I assure you," he continued. "It must have been some error
of my poor old tongue. It was not the Wide Awake, but the brig
Glister. Did I say Wide Awake? It was the Glister, a smart
little brig, almost a toy brig in fact, copper-bottomed, lines
like a dolphin, a sea-cutter and a wind-eater. Handled like a
top. On my honour, gentlemen, it was lively work for both watches
when she went about. I was supercargo. We sailed out of New
York, ostensibly for the north-west coast, with sealed orders--"
"In the name of God, peace, peace! You drive me mad with your
drivel!" So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that was real
and quivering. "Old man, have a heart. What do I care to know of
your Glister and your sealed orders!"
"Ah, sealed orders," the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly. "A
magic phrase, sealed orders." He rolled it off his tongue with
unction. "Those were the days, gentlemen, when ships did sail
with sealed orders. And as supercargo, with my trifle invested in
the adventure and my share in the gains, I commanded the captain.
Not in him, but in me were reposed the sealed orders. I assure
you I did not know myself what they were. Not until we were
around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the
Pacific, did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van
Dieman's Land. They called it Van Dieman's Land in those days . .
. "
It was a day of discoveries. Captain Doane caught the mate
stealing the ship's position from his desk with the duplicate key.
There was a scene, but no more, for the Finn was too huge a man to
invite personal encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize
his conduct to a running reiteration of "Yes, sir," and "No, sir,"
and "Sorry, sir."
Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it
at the time, was that of Dag Daughtry. It was after the course
had been changed and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner
had privily informed him that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their
objective, that Daughtry gaily proceeded to shave. But one
trouble was on his mind. He was not quite sure, in such an out-
of-the-way place as Taiohae, that good beer could be procured.
As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his
face white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his
forehead just between the eye-brows and above. When he had
finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had
been sunburned in such a spot. But he did not know he had touched
it in so far as there was any response of sensation. The dark
place was numb.
"Curious," he thought, wiped his face, and forgot all about it.
No more than he knew what horror that dark spot represented, did
he know that Ah Moy's slant eyes had long since noticed it and
were continuing to notice it, day by day, with secret growing
terror.
Close-hauled on the south-east trades, the Mary Turner began her
long slant toward the Marquesas. For'ard, all were happy. Being
only seamen, on seamen's wages, they hailed with delight the news
that they were bound in for a tropic isle to fill their water-
barrels. Aft, the three partners were in bad temper, and
Nishikanta openly sneered at Captain Doane and doubted his ability
to find the Marquesas. In the steerage everybody was happy--Dag
Daughtry because his wages were running on and a further supply of
beer was certain; Kwaque because he was happy whenever his master
was happy; and Ah Moy because he would soon have opportunity to
desert away from the schooner and the two lepers with whom he was
domiciled.
Michael shared in the general happiness of the steerage, and
joined eagerly with Steward in learning by heart a fifth song.
This was "Lead, kindly Light." In his singing, which was no more
than trained howling after all, Michael sought for something he
knew not what. In truth, it was the LOST PACK, the pack of the
primeval world before the dog ever came in to the fires of men,
and, for that matter, before men built fires and before men were
men.
He had been born only the other day and had lived but two years in
the world, so that, of himself, he had no knowledge of the lost
pack. For many thousands of generations he had been away from it;
yet, deep down in the crypts of being, tied about and wrapped up
in every muscle and nerve of him, was the indelible record of the
days in the wild when dim ancestors had run with the pack and at
the same time developed the pack and themselves. When Michael was
asleep, then it was that pack-memories sometimes arose to the
surface of his subconscious mind. These dreams were real while
they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered them little if at
all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he sensed and yearned
for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten way to
it.
Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed of
Steward, Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient
forbears had ran with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage
was the lair of this pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the
whole world, which was the Mary Turner ever rocking, heeling,
reeling on the surface of the unstable sea.
But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the
mere pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early
invented God, often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in
trees and mountains and among the stars. This was because man
observed that man passed and was lost out of the tribe, or family,
or whatever name he gave to his group, which was, after all, the
human pack. And man did not want to be lost out of the pack. So,
of his imagination, he devised a new pack that would be eternal
and with which he might for ever run. Fearing the dark, into
which he observed all men passed, he built beyond the dark a
fairer region, a happier hunting-ground, a jollier and robuster
feasting-hall and wassailing-place, and called it variously
"heaven."
Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael
never dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind
and worshipping it as God. He did not worship shadows. He
worshipped a real and indubitable god, not fashioned in his own
four-legged, hair-covered image, but in the flesh-and-blood image,
two-legged, hairless, upstanding, of Steward.
