by Graeme Davis
One other thing I noticed was that he never had the book about after that. He fell into our ways next Sunday more easy.
They don’t take the Bible just the way you would, Tom,—as a general thing, sailors don’t; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea who didn’t give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn.
But I tell you, Tom Brown, I felt sorry for that boy. It’s punishment bad enough for a little scamp like him leaving the honest shore, and folks to home that were a bit tender of him maybe, to rough it on a trader, learning how to slush down a back-stay, or tie reef-points with frozen fingers in a snow-squall.
But that’s not the worst of it, by no means. If ever there was a cold-blooded, cruel man, with a wicked eye and a fist like a mallet, it was Job Whitmarsh, taken at his best. And I believe, of all the trips I’ve taken, him being mate of the Madonna, Kentucky found him at his worst. Bradley—that’s the second mate—was none too gentle in his ways, you may be sure; but he never held a candle to Mr. Whitmarsh. He took a spite to the boy from the first, and he kept it on a steady strain to the last, right along, just about so.
I’ve seen him beat that boy till the blood ran down in little pools on deck; then send him up, all wet and red, to clear the to’sail halliards; and when, what with the pain and faintness, he dizzied a little, and clung to the ratlines, half blind, he would have him down and flog him till the cap’n interfered,—which would happen occasionally on a fair day when he had taken just enough to be good-natured. He used to rack his brains for the words he slung at the boy working quiet enough beside him. It was odd, now, the talk he would get off. Bob Smart couldn’t any more come up to it than I could: we used to try sometimes, but we had to give in always. If curses had been a marketable article, Whitmarsh would have taken out his patent and made his fortune by inventing of them, new and ingenious. Then he used to kick the lad down the fo’castle ladder; he used to work him, sick or well, as he wouldn’t have worked a dray-horse; he used to chase him all about deck at the rope’s end; he used to mast-head him for hours on the stretch; he used to starve him out in the hold. It didn’t come in my line to be over-tender, but I turned sick at heart, Tom, more times than one, looking on helpless, and me a great stout fellow.
I remember now—don’t know as I’ve thought of it for twenty years—a thing McCallum said one night; McCallum was Scotch,—an old fellow with gray hair; told the best yarns on the fo’castle always.
“Mark my words, shipmates,” says he, “when Job Whitmarsh’s time comes to go as straight to hell as Judas, that boy will bring his summons. Dead or alive, that boy will bring his summons.”
One day I recollect especial that the lad was sick with fever on him, and took to his hammock. Whitmarsh drove him on deck, and ordered him aloft. I was standing near by, trimming the spanker. Kentucky staggered for’ard a little and sat down. There was a rope’s-end there, knotted three times. The mate struck him.
“I’m very weak, sir,” says he.
He struck him again. He struck him twice more. The boy fell over a little, and lay where he fell.
I don’t know what ailed me, but all of a sudden I seemed to be lying off Long Wharf, with the clouds the color of silver, and the air the color of gold, and Molly in a white apron with her shining needles, and the baby a-play in his red stockings about the deck.
“Think if it was him!” says she, or she seems to say,—“think if it was him!”
And the next I knew I’d let slip my tongue in a jiffy, and given it to the mate that furious and onrespectful as I’ll wager Whitmarsh never got before. And the next I knew after that they had the irons on me.
“Sorry about that, eh?” said he, the day before they took ’em off.
“No, sir,” says I. And I never was. Kentucky never forgot that. I had helped him occasional in the beginning,—learned him how to veer and haul a brace, let go or belay a sheet,—but let him alone generally speaking, and went about my own business. That week in irons I really believe the lad never forgot.
One time—it was on a Saturday night, and the mate had been oncommon furious that week—Kentucky turned on him, very pale and slow (I was up in the mizzen-top, and heard him quite distinct).
“Mr. Whitmarsh,” says he,—“Mr. Whitmarsh,”—he draws his breath in,—“Mr. Whitmarsh,”—three times,—“you’ve got the power and you know it, and so do the gentlemen who put you here; and I’m only a stow-away boy, and things are all in a tangle, but you’ll be sorry yet for every time you’ve laid your hands on me!”
He hadn’t a pleasant look about the eyes either, when he said it.
Fact was, that first month on the Madonna had done the lad no good. He had a surly, sullen way with him, some’at like what I’ve seen about a chained dog. At the first, his talk had been clean as my baby’s, and he would blush like any girl at Bob Smart’s stories; but he got used to Bob, and pretty good, in time, at small swearing.
I don’t think I should have noticed it so much if it had not been for seeming to see Molly, and the sun, and the knitting-needles, and the child upon the deck, and hearing of it over, “Think if it was him!” Sometimes on a Sunday night I used to think it was a pity. Not that I was any better than the rest, except so far as the married men are always steadier. Go through any crew the sea over, and it is the lads who have homes of their own and little children in ’em as keep the straightest.
Sometimes, too, I used to take a fancy that I could have listened to a word from a parson, or a good brisk psalm-tune, and taken it in very good part. A year is a long pull for twenty-five men to be becalmed with each other and the devil. I don’t set up to be pious myself, but I’m not a fool, and I know that if we’d had so much as one officer aboard who feared God and kept his commandments, we should have been the better men for it. It’s very much with religion as it is with cayenne pepper,—if it’s there, you know it.
If you had your ships on the sea by the dozen, you’d bethink you of that? Bless you, Tom! if you were in Rome you’d do as the Romans do. You’d have your ledgers, and your children, and your churches and Sunday schools, and freed n——,* and ’lections, and what not, and never stop to think whether the lads that sailed your ships across the world had souls, or not,—and be a good sort of man too. That’s the way of the world. Take it easy, Tom,—take it easy.
Well, things went along just about so with us till we neared the Cape. It’s not a pretty place, the Cape, on a winter’s voyage. I can’t say as I ever was what you may call scar’t after the first time rounding it, but it’s not a pretty place.
I don’t seem to remember much about Kent along there till there come a Friday at the first of December. It was a still day, with a little haze, like white sand sifted across a sunbeam on a kitchen table. The lad was quiet-like all day, chasing me about with his eyes.
“Sick?” says I.
“No,” says he.
“Whitmarsh drunk?” says I.
“No,” says he.
A little after dark I was lying on a coil of ropes, napping it. The boys were having the Bay of Biscay quite lively, and I waked up on the jump in the choruses. Kent came up while they were telling
“How she lay
On that day
In the Bay of BISCAY O!”
He was not singing. He sat down beside me, and first I thought I wouldn’t trouble myself about him, and then I thought I would.
So I opens one eye at him encouraging. He crawls up a little closer to me. It was rather dark where we sat, with a great greenish shadow dropping from the mainsail. The wind was up a little, and the light at helm looked flickery and red.
“Jake,” says he all at once, “where’s your mother?”
“In—heaven!” says I, all taken aback; and if ever I came nigh what you might call a little disrespect to your mother, it was on that occasion, from being taken so aback.
“Oh!” said he. “Got any women-folks to home that miss you?” asks he, by and by.
Said I, “Shouldn’t won
der.”
After that he sits still a little with his elbows on his knees; then he speers at me sidewise awhile; then said he, “I s’pose I’ve got a mother to home. I ran away from her.”
This, mind you, is the first time he has ever spoke about his folks since he came aboard.
“She was asleep down in the south chamber,” says he. “I got out the window. There was one white shirt she’d made for meetin’ and such. I’ve never worn it out here. I hadn’t the heart. It has a collar and some cuffs, you know. She had a headache making of it. She’s been follering me round all day, a sewing on that shirt. When I come in she would look up bright-like and smiling. Father’s dead. There ain’t anybody but me. All day long she’s been follering of me round.”
So then he gets up, and joins the lads, and tries to sing a little; but he comes back very still and sits down. We could see the flickery light upon the boys’ faces, and on the rigging, and on the cap’n, who was damning the bo’sen a little aft.
“Jake,” says he, quite low, “look here. I’ve been thinking. Do you reckon there’s a chap here—just one, perhaps—who’s said his prayers since he came aboard?”
“No!” said I, quite short: for I’d have bet my head on it.
I can remember, as if it was this morning, just how the question sounded, and the answer. I can’t seem to put it into words how it came all over me. The wind was turning brisk, and we’d just eased her with a few reefs; Bob Smart, out furling the flying jib, got soaked; me and the boy sitting silent, were spattered. I remember watching the curve of the great swells, mahogany color, with the tip of white, and thinking how like it was to a big creature hissing and foaming at the mouth, and thinking all at once something about Him holding of the sea in a balance, and not a word bespoke to beg his favor respectful since we weighed our anchor, and the cap’n yonder calling on Him just that minute to send the Madonna to the bottom, if the bo’sen hadn’t disobeyed his orders about the squaring of the after-yards.
“From his Affecshunate mother who prays, For you evry day, Amen,” whispers Kentucky, presently, very soft. “The book’s tore up. Mr. Whitmarsh wadded his old gun with it. But I remember.”
Then said he: “It’s ’most bedtime to home. She’s setting in a little rocking-chair,—a green one. There’s a fire, and the dog. She sets all by herself.”
Then he begins again: “She has to bring in her own wood now. There’s a gray ribbon on her cap. When she goes to meetin’ she wears a gray bunnet. She’s drawed the curtains and the door is locked. But she thinks I’ll be coming home sorry some day,—I’m sure she thinks I’ll be coming home sorry.”
Just then there comes the order, “Port watch ahoy! Tumble up there lively!” so I turns out, and the lad turns in, and the night settles down a little black, and my hands and head are full. Next day it blows a clean, all but a bank of gray, very thin and still,—about the size of that cloud you see through the side window, Tom,—which lay just abeam of us.
The sea, I thought, looked like a great purple pincushion, with a mast or two stuck in on the horizon for the pins. “Jake’s poetry,” the boys said that was.
By noon that little gray bank had grown up thick, like a wall. By sundown the cap’n let his liquor alone, and kept the deck. By night we were in chop-seas, with a very ugly wind.
“Steer small, there!” cries Whitmarsh, growing hot about the face,—for we made a terribly crooked wake, with a broad sheer, and the old hull strained heavily,—“steer small there, I tell you! Mind your eye now, McCallum, with your foresail! Furl the royals! Send down the royals! Cheerily, men! Where’s that lubber Kent? Up with you, lively now!”
Kentucky sprang for’ard at the order, then stopped short. Anybody as knows a royal from an anchor wouldn’t have blamed the lad. I’ll take oath to’t it’s no play for an old tar, stout and full in size, sending down the royals in a gale like that; let alone a boy of fifteen year on his first voyage.
But the mate takes to swearing (it would have turned a parson faint to hear him), and Kent shoots away up,—the great mast swinging like a pendulum to and fro, and the reef-points snapping, and the blocks creaking, and the sails flapping to that extent as you wouldn’t consider possible unless you’d been before the mast yourself. It reminded me of evil birds I’ve read of, that stun a man with their wings; strike you to the bottom, Tom, before you could say Jack Robinson.
Kent stuck bravely as far as the cross-trees. There he slipped and struggled and clung in the dark and noise awhile, then comes sliding down the back-stay.
“I’m not afraid, sir,” says he; “but I cannot do it.”
For answer Whitmarsh takes to the rope’s-end. So Kentucky is up again, and slips and struggles and clings again, and then lays down again.
At this the men begin to grumble a little low.
“Will you kill the lad?” said I. I get a blow for my pains, that sends me off my feet none too easy; and when I rub the stars out of my eyes the boy is up again, and the mate behind him with the rope. Whitmarsh stopped when he’d gone far enough. The lad climbed on. Once he looked back. He never opened his lips; he just looked back. If I’ve seen him once since, in my thinking, I’ve seen him twenty times,—up in the shadow of the great gray wings, a looking back.
After that there was only a cry, and a splash, and the Madonna racing along with the gale twelve knots. If it had been the whole crew overboard, she could never have stopped for them that night.
“Well,” said the cap’n, “you’ve done it now.”
Whitmarsh turns his back.
By and by, when the wind fell, and the hurry was over, and I had the time to think a steady thought, being in the morning watch, I seemed to see the old lady in the gray bunnet setting by the fire. And the dog. And the green rocking-chair. And the front door, with the boy walking in on a sunny afternoon to take her by surprise.
Then I remember leaning over to look down, and wondering if the lad were thinking of it too, and what had happened to him now, these two hours back, and just about where he was, and how he liked his new quarters, and many other strange and curious things.
And while I sat there thinking, the Sunday-morning stars cut through the clouds, and the solemn Sunday-morning light began to break upon the sea.
We had a quiet run of it, after that, into port, where we lay about a couple of months or so, trading off for a fair stock of palm-oil, ivory, and hides. The days were hot and purple and still. We hadn’t what you might call a blow, if I recollect accurate, till we rounded the Cape again, heading for home.
We were rounding that Cape again, heading for home, when that happened which you may believe me or not, as you take the notion, Tom; though why a man who can swallow Daniel and the lion’s den, or take down t’other chap who lived three days comfortable into the inside of a whale, should make faces at what I’ve got to tell I can’t see.
It was just about the spot that we lost the boy that we fell upon the worst gale of the trip. It struck us quite sudden. Whitmarsh was a little high. He wasn’t apt to be drunk in a gale, if it gave him warning sufficient.
Well, you see, there must be somebody to furl the main-royal again, and he pitched onto McCallum. McCallum hadn’t his beat for fighting out the royal in a blow.
So he piled away lively, up to the to’-sail yard. There, all of a sudden, he stopped. Next we knew he was down like heat-lightning.
His face had gone very white.
“What’s to pay with you?” roared Whitmarsh.
Said McCallum, “There’s somebody up there, sir.”
Screamed Whitmarsh, “You’re gone an idiot!”
Said McCallum, very quiet and distinct: “There’s somebody up there, sir. I saw him quite plain. He saw me. I called up. He called down. Says he, ‘Don’t you come up!’ and hang me if I’ll stir a step for you or any other man to-night!”
I never saw the face of any man alive go the turn that mate’s face went. If he wouldn’t have relished knocking the Scotchman dead before his eye
s, I’ve lost my guess. Can’t say what he would have done to the old fellow, if there’d been any time to lose.
He’d the sense left to see there wasn’t overmuch, so he orders out Bob Smart direct.
Bob goes up steady, with a quid in his cheek and a cool eye. Half-way amid to’-sail and to’-gallant he stops, and down he comes, spinning.
“Be drowned if there ain’t!” said he. “He’s sitting square upon the yard. I never see the boy Kentucky, if he isn’t sitting on that yard. ‘Don’t you come up!’ he cries out,—‘don’t you come up!’”
“Bob’s drunk, and McCallum’s a fool!” said Jim Welch, standing by. So Welch wolunteers up, and takes Jaloffe with him. They were a couple of the coolest hands aboard,—Welch and Jaloffe. So up they goes, and down they comes like the rest, by the back-stays, by the run.
“He beckoned of me back!” says Welch. “He hollered not to come up! not to come up!”
After that there wasn’t a man of us would stir aloft, not for love nor money.
Well, Whitmarsh he stamped, and he swore, and he knocked us about furious; but we sat and looked at one another’s eyes, and never stirred. Something cold, like a frost-bite, seemed to crawl along from man to man, looking into one another’s eyes.
“I’ll shame ye all, then, for a set of cowardly lubbers!” cries the mate; and what with the anger and the drink he was as good as his word, and up the ratlines in a twinkle.
In a flash we were after him,—he was our officer, you see, and we felt ashamed,—me at the head, and the lads following after.
I got to the futtock shrouds, and there I stopped, for I saw him myself,—a palish boy, with a jerk of thin hair on his forehead; I’d have known him anywhere in this world or t’other. I saw him just as distinct as I see you, Tom Brown, sitting on that yard quite steady with the royal flapping like to flap him off.
I reckon I’ve had as much experience fore and aft, in the course of fifteen years aboard, as any man that ever tied a reef-point in a nor’easter; but I never saw a sight like that, not before nor since.