CHAPTER XV
Had the trade wind not failed on the second day after laying the
course for the Marquesas; had Captain Doane, at the mid-day meal,
not grumbled once again at being equipped with only one
chronometer; had Simon Nishikanta not become viciously angry
thereat and gone on deck with his rifle to find some sea-denizen
to kill; and had the sea-denizen that appeared close alongside
been a bonita, a dolphin, a porpoise, an albacore, or anything
else than a great, eighty-foot cow whale accompanied by her
nursing calf--had any link been missing from this chain of events,
the Mary Turner would have undoubtedly reached the Marquesas,
filled her water-barrels, and returned to the treasure-hunting;
and the destinies of Michael, Daughtry, Kwaque, and Cocky would
have been quite different and possibly less terrible.
But every link was present for the occasion. The schooner, in a
dead calm, was rolling over the huge, smooth seas, her boom sheets
and tackles crashing to the hollow thunder of her great sails,
when Simon Nishikanta put a bullet into the body of the little
whale calf. By an almost miracle of chance, the shot killed the
calf. It was equivalent to killing an elephant with a pea-rifle.
Not at once did the calf die. It merely immediately ceased its
gambols and for a while lay quivering on the surface of the ocean.
The mother was beside it the moment after it was struck, and to
those on board, looking almost directly down upon her, her dismay
and alarm were very patent. She would nudge the calf with her
huge shoulder, circle around and around it, then range up
alongside and repeat her nudgings and shoulderings.
All on the Mary Turner, fore and aft, lined the rail and stared
down apprehensively at the leviathan that was as long as the
schooner.
"If she should do to us, sir, what that other one did to the
Essex," Dag Daughtry observed to the Ancient Mariner.
"It would be no more than we deserve," was the response. "It was
uncalled-for--a wanton, cruel act."
Michael, aware of the excitement overside but unable to see
because of the rail, leaped on top of the cabin and at sight of
the monster barked defiantly. Every eye turned on him in
startlement and fear, and Steward hushed him with a whispered
command.
"This is the last time," Grimshaw muttered in a low voice, tense
with anger, to Nishikanta. "If ever again, on this voyage, you
take a shot at a whale, I'll wring your dirty neck for you. Get
me. I mean it. I'll choke your eye-balls out of you."
The Jew smiled in a sickly way and whined, "There ain't nothing
going to happen. I don't believe that Essex ever was sunk by a
whale."
Urged on by its mother, the dying calf made spasmodic efforts to
swim that were futile and caused it to veer and wallow from side
to side.
In the course of circling about it, the mother accidentally
brushed her shoulder under the port quarter of the Mary Turner,
and the Mary Turner listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a
yard or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The
instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact,
she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just
for'ard of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it
were no more than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board.
That was all, and an entire ship's company stared down in silence
and fear at a sea-monster grief-stricken over its dying progeny.
Several times, in the course of an hour, during which the schooner
and the two whales drifted farther and farther apart, the calf
strove vainly to swim. Then it set up a great quivering, which
culminated in a wild wallowing and lashing about of its tail.
"It is the death-flurry," said the Ancient Mariner softly.
"By damn, it's dead," was Captain Doane's comment five minutes
later. "Who'd believe it? A rifle bullet! I wish to heaven we
could get half an hour's breeze of wind to get us out of this
neighbourhood."
"A close squeak," said Grimshaw,
Captain Doane shook his head, as his anxious eyes cast aloft to
the empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-
ruffles on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of
all the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped
and mountainous, like so much quicksilver.
"It's all right," Grimahaw encouraged. "There she goes now,
beating it away from us."
"Of course it's all right, always was all right," Nishikanta
bragged, as he wiped the sweat from his face and neck and looked
with the others after the departing whale. "You're a fine brave
lot, you are, losing your goat to a fish."
"I noticed your face was less yellow than usual," Grimshaw
sneered. "It must have gone to your heart."
Captain Doane breathed a great sigh. His relief was too strong to
permit him to join in the squabbling.
"You're yellow," Grimshaw went on, "yellow clean through." He
nodded his head toward the Ancient Mariner. "Now there's the real
thing as a man. No yellow in him. He never batted an eye, and I
reckon he knew more about the danger than you did. If I was to
choose being wrecked on a desert island with him or you, I'd take
him a thousand times first. If--"
But a cry from the sailors interrupted him.
"Merciful God!" Captain Doane breathed aloud.
The great cow whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was
charging straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore
was raised by her nose like that which a Dreadnought or an
Atlantic liner raises on the sea.
"Hold fast, all!" Captain Doane roared.
Every man braced himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the
sailor at the wheel, spread his legs, crouched down, and stiffened
his shoulders and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes of the
wheel. Several of the crew fled from the waist to the poop, and
others of them sprang into the main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand
on the rail, with his free arm clasped the Ancient Mariner around
the waist.
All held. The whale struck the Mary Turner just aft of the fore-
shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take in
simultaneously, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried
away a ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched
by an ankle and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner
cracked and shuddered, uplifted on the port side, and was flung
down on her starboard side till the ocean poured level over her
rail. Michael, on the smooth roof of the cabin, slithered down
the steep slope to starboard and disappeared, clawing and
snarling, into the runway. The port shrouds of the foremast
carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast leaned over
drunkenly to starboard.
"My word," quoth the Ancient Mariner. "We certainly felt that."
"Mr. Jackson," Captain Doane commanded the mate, "will you sound
the well."
The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale,
which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the
eastward.
"You see, that's what you get," Grimshaw snarled at Nishikanta.
Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, "And
I'm satisfied. I got all I want. I didn't think a whale had it
in it. I'll never do it again."
"Maybe you'll never have the chance," the captain retorted.
"We're not done with this one yet. The one that charged the Essex
made charge after charge, and I guess whale nature hasn't changed
any in the last few years."
"Dry as a bone, sir," Mr. Jackson reported the result of his
sounding.
"There she turns," Daughtry called out.
Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged
back.
"Stand from under for'ard there!" Captain Doane shouted to one of
the sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle scuttle, sea-
bag in hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying giddily.
"He's packed for the get-away," Daughtry murmured to the Ancient
Mariner. "Like a rat leaving a ship."
"We're all rats," was the reply. "I learned just that when I was
a rat among the mangy rats of the poor-farm."
By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their
contagion of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so
that he might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized
fresh grips against the impending shock and when he saw her close
at hand and oncoming.
The Mary Turner was struck aft of the mizzen shrouds. As she was
hurled down to starboard, whither Michael was ignominiously flung,
the crack of shattered timbers was plainly heard. Henrik
Gjertsen, at the wheel, clutching the wheel with all his strength,
was spun through the air as the wheel was spun by the fling of the
rudder. He fetched up against Captain Doane, whose grip had been
torn loose from the rail. Both men crumpled down on deck with the
wind knocked out of them. Nishikanta leaned cursing against the
side of the cabin, the nails of both hands torn off at the quick
by the breaking of his grip on the rail.
While Daughtry was passing a turn of rope around the Ancient
Mariner and the mizzen rigging and giving the turn to him to hold,
Captain Doane crawled gasping to the rail and dragged himself
erect.
"That fetched her," he whispered huskily to the mate, hand pressed
to his side to control his pain. "Sound the well again, and keep
on sounding."
More of the sailors took advantage of the interval to rush for'ard
under the toppling fore-topmast, dive into the forecastle, and
hastily pack their sea-bags. As Ah Moy emerged from the steerage
with his own rotund sea-bag, Daughtry dispatched Kwaque to pack
the belongings of both of them.
"Dry as a bone, sir," came the mate's report.
"Keep on sounding, Mr. Jackson," the captain ordered, his voice
already stronger as he recovered from the shock of his collision
with the helmsman. "Keep right on sounding. Here she comes
again, and the schooner ain't built that'd stand such hammering."
By this time Daughtry had Michael tucked under one arm, his free
arm ready to anticipate the next crash by swinging on to the
rigging.
In making its circle to come back, the cow lost her bearings
sufficiently to miss the stern of the Mary Turner by twenty feet.
Nevertheless, the bore of her displacement lifted the schooner's
stern gently and made her dip her bow to the sea in a stately
curtsey.
"If she'd a-hit . . . " Captain Doane murmured and ceased.
"It'd a-ben good night," Daughtry concluded for him. "She's a-
knocked our stern clean off of us, sir."
Again wheeling, this time at no more than two hundred yards, the
whale charged back, not completing her semi-circle sufficiently,
so that she bore down upon the schooner's bow from starboard. Her
back hit the stem and seemed just barely to scrape the martingale,
yet the Mary Turner sat down till the sea washed level with her
stern-rail. Nor was this all. Martingale, bob-stays and all
parted, as well as all starboard stays to the bowsprit, so that
the bowsprit swung out to port at right angles and uplifted to the
drag of the remaining topmast stays. The topmast anticked high in
the air for a space, then crashed down to deck, permitting the
bowsprit to dip into the sea, go clear with the butt of it of the
forecastle head, and drag alongside.
"Shut up that dog!" Nishikanta ordered Daughtry savagery. "If you
don't . . . "
Michael, in Steward's arms, was snarling and growling
intimidatingly, not merely at the cow whale but at all the hostile
and menacing universe that had thrown panic into the two-legged
gods of his floating world.
"Just for that," Daughtry snarled back, "I'll let 'm sing. You
made this mess, and if you lift a hand to my dog you'll miss
seeing the end of the mess you started, you dirty pawnbroker,
you."
"Perfectly right, perfectly right," the Ancient Mariner nodded
approbation. "Do you think, steward, you could get a width of
canvas, or a blanket, or something soft and broad with which to
replace this rope? It cuts me too sharply in the spot where my
three ribs are missing."
Daughtry thrust Michael into the old man's arm.
"Hold him, sir," the steward said. "If that pawnbroker makes a
move against Killeny Boy, spit in his face, bite him, anything.
I'll be back in a jiffy, sir, before he can hurt you and before
the whale can hit us again. And let Killeny Boy make all the
noise he wants. One hair of him's worth more than a world-full of
skunks of money-lenders."
Daughtry dashed into the cabin, came back with a pillow and three
sheets, and, using the first as a pad and knotting the last
together in swift weaver's knots, he left the Ancient Mariner safe
and soft and took Michael back into his own arms.
"She's making water, sir," the mate called. "Six inches--no,
seven inches, sir."
There was a rush of sailors across the wreckage of the fore-
topmast to the forecastle to pack their bags.
"Swing out that starboard boat, Mr. Jackson," the captain
commanded, staring after the foaming course of the cow as she
surged away for a fresh onslaught. "But don't lower it. Hold it
overside in the falls, or that damned fish'll smash it. Just
swing it out, ready and waiting, let the men get their bags, then
stow food and water aboard of her."
Lashings were cast off the boat and the falls attached, when the
men fled to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She
struck the Mary Turner squarely amidships on the port beam, so
that, from the poop, one saw, as well as heard, her long side bend
and spring back like a limber fabric. The starboard rail buried
under the sea as the schooner heeled to the blow, and, as she
righted with a violent lurch, the water swashed across the deck to
the knees of the sailors about the boat and spouted out of the
port scuppers.
"Heave away!" Captain Doane ordered from the poop. "Up with her!
Swing her out! Hold your turns! Make fast!"
The boat was outboard, its gunwale resting against the Mary
Turner's rail.
"Ten inches, sir, and making fast," was the mate's information, as
he gauged the sounding-rod.
"I'm going after my tools," Captain Doane announced, as he started
for the cabin. Half into the scuttle, he paused to add with a
sneer for Nishikanta's benefit, "And for my one chronometer."
"A foot and a half, and making," the mate shouted aft to him.
"We'd better do some packing ourselves," Grimshaw, following on
the captain, said to Nishikanta.
"Steward," Nishikanta said, "go below and pack my bedding. I'll
take care of the rest."
"Mr. Nishikanta, you can go to hell, sir, and all the rest as
well," was Daughtry's quiet response, although in the same breath
he was saying, respectfully and assuringly, to the Ancient
Mariner: "You hold Killeny, sir. I'll take care of your dunnage.
Is there anything special you want to save, sir?"
Jackson joined the four men below, and as the five of them, in
haste and trepidation, packed articles of worth and comfort, the
Mary Turner was struck again. Caught below without warning, all
were flung fiercely to port and from Simon Nishikanta's room came
wailing curses of announcement of the hurt to his ribs against his
bunk-rail. But this was drowned by a prodigious smashing and
crashing on deck.
"Kindling wood--there won't be anything else left of her," Captain
Doane commented in the ensuing calm, as he crept gingerly up the
companionway with his chronometer cuddled on an even keel to his
breast.
Placing it in the custody of a sailor, he returned below and was
helped up with his sea-chest by the steward. In turn, he helped
the steward up with the Ancient Mariner's sea-chest. Next, aided
by anxious sailors, he and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette
through the cabin floor, and began breaking out and passing up a
stream of supplies--cases of salmon and beef, of marmalade and
biscuit, of butter and preserved milk, and of all sorts of the
tinned, desiccated, evaporated, and condensed stuff that of modern
times goes down to the sea in ships for the nourishment of men.
Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both
stared upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky-
scraping top-hamper, where, only minutes before, the main- and
mizzen-topmasts had been. A second moment they devoted to the
wreckage of the same on deck--the mizzen-topmast, thrust through
the spanker and supported vertically by the stout canvas,
thrashing back and forth with each thrash of the sail, the main-
topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the steerage.
While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement in terms of
violence and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance
for another charge, all hands of the Mary Turner gathered about
the starboard boat swung outboard ready for lowering. A
respectable hill of case goods, water-kegs, and personal dunnage
was piled on the deck alongside. A glance at this, and at the
many men of fore and aft, demonstrated that it was to be a
perilously overloaded boat.
"We want the sailors with us, at any rate--they can row," said
Simon Nishikanta.
"But do we want you?" Grimshaw queried gloomily. "You take up too
much room, for your size, and you're a beast anyway."
"I guess I'll be wanted," the pawnbroker observed, as he jerked
open his shirt, tearing out the four buttons in his impetuousness
and showing a Colt's .44 automatic, strapped in its holster
against the bare skin of his side under his left arm, the butt of
the weapon most readily accessible to any hasty dip of his right
hand. "I guess I'll be wanted. But just the same we can dispense
with the undesirables."
"If you will have your will," the wheat-farmer conceded
sardonically, although his big hand clenched involuntarily as if
throttling a throat. "Besides, if we should run short of food you
will prove desirable--for the quantity of you, I mean, and not
otherwise. Now just who would you consider undesirable?--the
black nigger? He ain't got a gun."
But his pleasantries were cut short by the whale's next attack--
another smash at the stern that carried away the rudder and
destroyed the steering gear.
"How much water?" Captain Doane queried of the mate.
"Three feet, sir--I just sounded," came the answer. "I think,
sir, it would be advisable to part-load the boat; then, right
after the next time the whale hits us, lower away on the run,
chuck the rest of the dunnage in, and ourselves, and get clear."
Captain Doane nodded.
"It will be lively work," he said. "Stand ready, all of you.
Steward, you jump aboard first and I'll pass the chronometer to
you."
Nishikanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain,
opened his shirt, and exposed his revolver.
"There's too many for the boat," he said, "and the steward's one
of 'em that don't go along. Get that. Hold it in your head. The
steward's one of 'em that don't go along."
Captain Doane coolly surveyed the big automatic, while at the fore
of his consciousness burned a vision of his flat buildings in San
Francisco.
He shrugged his shoulders. "The boat would be overloaded, with
all this truck, anyway. Go ahead, if you want to make it your
party, but just bear in mind that I'm the navigator, and that, if
you ever want to lay eyes on your string of pawnshops, you'd
better see that gentle care is taken of me.--Steward!"
Daughtry stepped close.
"There won't be room for you . . . and for one or two others, I'm
sorry to say."
"Glory be!" said Daughtry. "I was just fearin' you'd be wantin'
me along, sir.--Kwaque, you take 'm my fella dunnage belong me,
put 'm in other fella boat along other side."
While Kwaque obeyed, the mate sounded the well for the last time,
reporting three feet and a half, and the lighter freightage of the
starboard boat was tossed in by the sailors.
A rangy, gangly, Scandinavian youth of a sailor, droop-shouldered,
six feet six and slender as a lath, with pallid eyes of palest
blue and skin and hair attuned to the same colour scheme, joined
Kwaque in his work.
"Here, you Big John," the mate interfered. "This is your boat.
You work here."
The lanky one smiled in embarrassment as he haltingly explained:
"I tank I lak go along cooky."
"Sure, let him go, the more the easier," Nishikanta took charge of
the situation. "Anybody else?"
"Sure," Dag Daughtry sneered to his face. "I reckon what's left
of the beer goes with my boat . . . unless you want to argue the
matter."
"For two cents--" Nishikanta spluttered in affected rage.
"Not for two billion cents would you risk a scrap with me, you
money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort. "You've got their
goats, but I've got your number. Not for two billion billion
cents would you excite me into callin' it right now.--Big John!
Just carry that case of beer across, an' that half case, and store
in my boat.--Nishikanta, just start something, if you've got the
nerve."
Simon Nishikanta did not dare, nor did he know what to do; but he
was saved from his perplexity by the shout:
"Here she comes!"
All rushed to holding-ground, and held, while the whale broke more
timbers and the Mary Turner rolled sluggishly down and back again.
"Lower away! On the run! Lively!"
Captain Doane's orders were swiftly obeyed. The starboard boat,
fended off by sailors, rose and fell in the water alongside while
the remainder of the dunnage and provisions showered into her.
"Might as well lend a hand, sir, seein' you're bent on leaving in
such a hurry," said Daughtry, taking the chronometer from Captain
Doane's hand and standing ready to pass it down to him as soon as
he was in the boat.
"Come on, Greenleaf," Grimshaw called up to the Ancient Mariner.
"No, thanking you very kindly, sir," came the reply. "I think
there'll be more room in the other boat."
"We want the cook!" Nishikanta cried out from the stern sheets.
"Come on, you yellow monkey! Jump in!"
Little old shrivelled Ah Moy debated. He visibly thought,
although none knew the intrinsicness of his thinking as he stared
at the gun of the fat pawnbroker and at the leprosy of Kwaque and
Daughtry, and weighed the one against the other and tossed the
light and heavy loads of the two boats into the balance.
"Me go other boat," said Ah Moy, starting to drag his bag away
across the deck.
"Cast off," Captain Doane commanded.
Scraps, the big Newfoundland puppy, who had played and pranced
about through all the excitement, seeing so many of the Mary
Turner's humans in the boat alongside, sprang over the rail, low
and close to the water, and landed sprawling on the mass of sea-
bags and goods cases.
The boot rocked, and Nishikanta, his automatic in his hand, cried
out:
"Back with him! Throw him on board!"
The sailors obeyed, and the astounded Scraps, after a brief flight
through the air, found himself arriving on his back on the Mary
Turner's deck. At any rate, he took it for no more than a rough
joke, and rolled about ecstatically, squirming vermicularly, in
anticipation of what new delights of play were to be visited upon
him. He reached out, with an enticing growl of good fellowship,
for Michael, who was now free on deck, and received in return a
forbidding and crusty snarl.
"Guess we'll have to add him to our collection, eh, sir?" Daughtry
observed, sparing a moment to pat reassurance on the big puppy's
head and being rewarded with a caressing lick on his hand from the
puppy's blissful tongue.
No first-class ship's steward can exist without possessing a more
than average measure of executive ability. Dag Daughtry was a
first-class ship's steward. Placing the Ancient Mariner in a nook
of safety, and setting Big John to unlashing the remaining boat
and hooking on the falls, he sent Kwaque into the hold to fill
kegs of water from the scant remnant of supply, and Ah Moy to
clear out the food in the galley.
The starboard boat, cluttered with men, provisions, and property
and being rapidly rowed away from the danger centre, which was the
Mary Turner, was scarcely a hundred yards away, when the whale,
missing the schooner clean, turned at full speed and close range,
churning the water, and all but collided with the boat. So near
did she come that the rowers on the side next to her pulled in
their oars. The surge she raised, heeled the loaded boat gunwale
under, so that a degree of water was shipped ere it righted.
Nishikanta, automatic still in hand, standing up in the
sternsheets by the comfortable seat he had selected for himself,
was staggered by the lurch of the boat. In his instinctive,
spasmodic effort to maintain balance, he relaxed his clutch on the
pistol, which fell into the sea.
"HA-AH!" Daughtry girded. "What price Nishikanta? I got his
number, and he's lost you fellows' goats. He's your meat now.
Easy meat? I should say! And when it comes to the eating, eat
him first. Sure, he's a skunk, and will taste like one, but
many's the honest man that's eaten skunk and pulled through a
tight place. But you'd better soak 'im all night in salt water,
first."
Grimshaw, whose seat in the sternsheets was none of the best,
grasped the situation simultaneously with Daughtry, and, with a
quick upstanding, and hooking out-reach of hand, caught the fat
pawn-broker around the back of the neck, and with anything but
gentle suasion jerked him half into the air and flung him face
downward on the bottom boards.
"Ha-ah!" said Daughtry across the hundred yards of ocean.
Next, and without hurry, Grimshaw took the more comfortable seat
for himself.
"Want to come along?" he called to Daughtry.
"No, thank you, sir," was the latter's reply. "There's too many
of us, an' we'll make out better in the other boat."
With some bailing, and with others bending to the oars, the boat
rowed frantically away, while Daughtry took Ah Moy with him down
into the lazarette beneath the cabin floor and broke out and
passed up more provisions.
It was when he was thus below that the cow grazed the schooner
just for'ard of amidships on the port side, lashed out with her
mighty tail as she sounded, and ripped clean away the chain plates
and rail of the mizzen-shrouds. In the next roll of the huge,
glassy sea, the mizzen-mast fell overside.
"My word, some whale," Daughtry said to Ah Moy, as they emerged
from the cabin companionway and gazed at this latest wreckage.
Ah Moy found need to get more food from the galley, when Daughtry,
Kwaque, and Big John swung their weight on the falls, one at a
time, and hoisted the port boat, one end at a time, over the rail
and swung her out.
"We'll wait till the next smash, then lower away, throw everything
in, an' get outa this," the steward told the Ancient Mariner.
"Lots of time. The schooner'll sink no faster when she's awash
than she's sinkin' now."
Even as he spoke, the scuppers were nearly level with the ocean,
and her rolling in the big sea was sluggish.
"Hey!" he called with sudden forethought across the widening
stretch of sea to Captain Doane. "What's the course to the
Marquesas? Right now? And how far away, sir?"
"Nor'-nor'-east-quarter-east!" came the faint reply. "Will fetch
Nuka-Hiva! About two hundred miles! Haul on the south-east trade
with a good full and you'll make it!"
"Thank you, sir," was the steward's acknowledgment, ere he ran
aft, disrupted the binnacle, and carried the steering compass back
to the boat.
Almost, from the whale's delay in renewing her charging, did they
think she had given over. And while they waited and watched her
rolling on the sea an eighth of a mile away, the Mary Turner
steadily sank.
"We might almost chance it," Daughtry was debating aloud to Big
John, when a new voice entered the discussion.
"Cocky! --Cocky!" came plaintive tones from below out of the
steerage companion.
"Devil be damned!" was the next, uttered in irritation and anger.
"Devil be damned! Devil be damned!"
"Of course not," was Daughtry's judgment, as he dashed across the
deck, crawled through the confusion of the main-topmast and its
many stays that blocked the way, and found the tiny, white morsel
of life perched on a bunk-edge, ruffling its feathers, erecting
and flattening its rosy crest, and cursing in honest human speech
the waywardness of the world and of ships and humans upon the sea.
The cockatoo stepped upon Daughtry's inviting index finger,
swiftly ascended his shirt sleeve, and, on his shoulder, claws
sunk into the flimsy shirt fabric till they hurt the flesh
beneath, leaned head to ear and uttered in gratitude and relief,
and in self-identification: "Cocky. Cocky."
"You son of a gun," Daughtry crooned.
"Glory be!" Cooky replied, in tones so like Daughtry's as to
startle him.
"You son of a gun," Daughtry repeated, cuddling his cheek and ear
against the cockatoo's feathered and crested head. "And some
folks thinks it's only folks that count in this world."
Still the whale delayed, and, with the ocean washing their toes on
the level deck, Daughtry ordered the boat lowered away. Ah Moy
was eager in his haste to leap into the bow. Nor was Daughtry's
judgment correct that the little Chinaman's haste was due to fear
of the sinking ship. What Ah Moy sought was the place in the boat
remotest from Kwaque and the steward.
Shoving clear, they roughly stored the supplies and dunnage out of
the way of the thwarts and took their places, Ah Moy pulling bow-
oar, next in order Big John and Kwaque, with Daughtry (Cocky still
perched on his shoulder) at stroke. On top of the dunnage, in the
stern-sheets, Michael gazed wistfully at the Mary Turner and
continued to snarl crustily at Scraps who idiotically wanted to
start a romp. The Ancient Mariner stood up at the steering sweep
and gave the order, when all was ready, for the first dip of the
oars.
A growl and a bristle from Michael warned them that the whale was
not only coming but was close upon them. But it was not charging.
Instead, it circled slowly about the schooner as if examining its
antagonist.
"I'll bet it's head's sore from all that banging, an' it's
beginnin' to feel it," Daughtry grinned, chiefly for the purpose
of keeping his comrades unafraid.
Barely had they rowed a dozen strokes, when an exclamation from
Big John led them to follow his gaze to the schooners forecastle-
head, where the forecastle cat flashed across in pursuit of a big
rat. Other rats they saw, evidently driven out of their lairs by
the rising water.
"We just can't leave that cat behind," Daughtry soliloquized in
suggestive tones.
"Certainly not," the Ancient Mariner responded swinging his weight
on the steering-sweep and heading the boat back.
Twice the whale gently rolled them in the course of its leisurely
circling, ere they bent to their oars again and pulled away. Of
them the whale seemed to take no notice. It was from the huge
thing, the schooner, that death had been wreaked upon her calf;
and it was upon the schooner that she vented the wrath of her
grief.
Even as they pulled away, the whale turned and headed across the
ocean. At a half-mile distance she curved about and charged back.
"With all that water in her, the schooner'll have a real kick-back
in her when she's hit," Daughtry said. "Lordy me, rest on your
oars an' watch."
Delivered squarely amidships, it was the hardest blow the Mary
Turner had received. Stays and splinters of rail flew in the air
as she rolled so far over as to expose half her copper wet-
glistening in the sun. As she righted sluggishly, the mainmast
swayed drunkenly in the air but did not fall.
"A knock-out!" Daughtry cried, at sight of the whale flurrying the
water with aimless, gigantic splashings. "It must a-smashed both
of 'em."
"Schooner he finish close up altogether," Kwaque observed, as the
Mary Turner's rail disappeared.
Swiftly she sank, and no more than a matter of moments was it when
the stump of her mainmast was gone. Remained only the whale,
floating and floundering, on the surface of the sea.
"It's nothing to brag about," Daughtry delivered himself of the
Mary Turner's epitaph. "Nobody'd believe us. A stout little
craft like that sunk, deliberately sunk, by an old cow-whale! No,
sir. I never believed that old moss-back in Honolulu, when he
claimed he was a survivor of the sinkin' of the Essex, an' no more
will anybody believe me."
"The pretty schooner, the pretty clever craft," mourned the
Ancient Mariner. "Never were there more dainty and lovable
topmasts on a three-masted schooner, and never was there a three-
masted schooner that worked like the witch she was to windward."
Dag Daughtry, who had kept always foot-loose and never married,
surveyed the boat-load of his responsibilities to which he was
anchored--Kwaque, the Black Papuan monstrosity whom he had saved
from the bellies of his fellows; Ah Moy, the little old sea-cook
whose age was problematical only by decades; the Ancient Mariner,
the dignified, the beloved, and the respected; gangly Big John,
the youthful Scandinavian with the inches of a giant and the mind
of a child; Killeny Boy, the wonder of dogs; Scraps, the
outrageously silly and fat-rolling puppy; Cocky, the white-
feathered mite of life, imperious as a steel-blade and wheedlingly
seductive as a charming child; and even the forecastle cat, the
lithe and tawny slayer of rats, sheltering between the legs of Ah
Moy. And the Marquesas were two hundred miles distant full-hauled
on the tradewind which had ceased but which was as sure to live
again as the morning sun in the sky.
The steward heaved a sigh, and whimsically shot into his mind the
memory-picture in his nursery-book of the old woman who lived in a
shoe. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his
hand, and was dimly aware of the area of the numbness that
bordered the centre that was sensationless between his eyebrows,
as he said:
"Well, children, rowing won't fetch us to the Marquesas. We'll
need a stretch of wind for that. But it's up to us, right now, to
put a mile or so between us an' that peevish old cow. Maybe
she'll revive, and maybe she won't, but just the same I can't help
feelin' leary about her."
