“I see,” said the other with an answering gleam in his eyes. “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have some trouble in doing so for the present. If you should discover a way, I’d be glad to go with you. So far I’ve only been able to discover two ways out of this boat, the way down and the way up!”
Rowan looked startled but tried to grin. “Yes? Well, that’s a pleasant outlook. Just how do you figure this outfit?”
“I haven’t figured it yet. I’ve only been on board a couple of hours more than you have. I signed up in good faith because I hoped it was a possible way for me to get a bit of health back, but things go shadier and shadier and I was about to make a break for shore again when I found we were under way. I think they must have started as soon as some of their important men got back. They were mighty worried about something, I’m sure of that. There’s something crooked here, of course, and there’s nobody to ask. For some reason they wanted more men, and when they got them, they slipped away in the dark. You must have been the last of the number.”
“It looks that way,” said Rowan. “They certainly lost no time in moving when I came in sight. In fact, they almost went without me. If I hadn’t seen Whitney on deck somewhere holding a rope, I wouldn’t have been here myself. But then they hauled in the gangplank and I jumped. Someone grabbed me by the collar or I would have taken the way down right then. But meantime, here I am, and what in your opinion ought I to do?”
“Get busy doing something. My brief experience has taught me that if you appear to be busy at something, no matter what, nobody will bother you. I’ve figured it out that except for a neat little gang who run this thing, they are all strangers to each other and most of them talk foreign lingoes. Perhaps most of them don’t know any more than we do. I’m not sure of that, but I think so. Everybody seems to be suspicious of everybody else. You and your friend Whitney are the only decent men I’ve seen so far. The captain hasn’t been on view yet. They say he is drunk, but I have my suspicions from a few words I overheard that he’s been in a fight and he’s pretty well banged up. If you ask me I think he’d been pretty badly hurt. There was a sound of shots in the distance a few minutes before we sailed, and then there was a hubbub; they were carrying someone aboard. That Portuguese first mate seems to be all there. He kept me busy on the far side from shore till we started. Perhaps they thought you were in pursuit when you jumped. Though I should think, if so, they would have flung you into the water.”
“Perhaps they thought I’d swim out and give information,” said Rowan thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I’d better walk pretty circumspectly if there’s a possibility that I’m under surveillance.”
“I guess we’re all that. Have you talked with anyone else yet?”
“Yes, one sailor besides Whitney. I slept on a pile of unpleasant bags all night, too much all in to protest. The man who picked me up from the deck and flung me there advised me to keep still till morning and then he put out all the light there was and left me. This morning that second mate said I could swab decks, but he didn’t seem to care much what I did except that I was not to go beyond the hatch.”
“Yes. That’s it! There’s something odd beyond that hatch. Well, this isn’t exactly the garden of Eden, but it seems to have something that corresponds to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in that hatch, so I guess we might as well keep the rules. There comes somebody. I hear footsteps. Better get busy about something and not appear to know me. But I’m glad you’re here. It’s great to know there are two decent fellows on board, anyway.”
He put out a hand and grasped Rowan’s quickly and released it, but in that quick brief claps Rowan was suddenly aware that the man he had been talking to was a sick man. The hand he had touched was burning with fever, and looking at him more closely he saw the white ethereal look in his face. Poor fellow! He ought to be home in bed with his mother or someone dear nursing him! And he was here in all this filth and terrible uncertainty! Well, if he could take it with fortitude, it ill-befitted anyone else to make a fuss.
So Rowan went back to this futile scrubbing, for it seemed a hopeless task, at least with the few implements at his command, ever to hope to bring cleanliness out of the filth of years.
Eventually Rowan had an interview with the captain. His arm was in a sling and his face was badly bruised, but he had little piercing eyes that looked through Rowan. He asked a number of sharp quick questions, and Rowan felt like a mere butterfly who was being fixed with a pin by a collector.
The captain was a man who used curses as crutches to get him from one word to another, and he let Rowan have a good exhibition of what he could do oratorically. When he had finished with him, Rowan had no desire to go beyond bounds set, nor to call attention to himself by asking any more unnecessary questions. He had not been able to find out where he was bound, nor how long he would be gone, and he had a feeling he never would find out till he got there, perhaps not even then. He came away from the interview convinced that the only help must come from heaven, as human strategy would be vain.
He had been assigned few duties. He gathered that the time that his services would be most needed was not yet come, and that when it did it would be useless to refuse to obey. Obedience would be at the point of a gun. For the rest, his duties were merely nominal. The captain asked him if he had ever been to sea before, and when he said no, he waved him away with a kind of contempt that made him stiffen insensibly and shut his lips in that strong line that reminded of his mother, and resolve to show that captain that he was not afraid to work, and had as much courage as anyone. So he set himself the task of getting the deck clean, as far as he was allowed to go. It did little good, however, for no one on the whole boat excepting Jason and Kinder attempted to keep it so, and the grime was not easily removed.
As the days went by and the scene continued to be a grimy boat on an endless tossing leaden sea, with leaden skies overhead and a fearful cold beginning to grow around them, the future looked dark indeed, for the three young men who had by common consent drawn together and formed a close partnership.
But they had little opportunity for taking the comfort of each other’s company, for it seemed to be a part of the plan of their captain that they should be kept apart as much as possible. Perhaps he suspected that allowed to herd together they would become a formidable foe at some time when he needed them under his power. So though they tried to arrange to occupy the same quarters, with the hope that they could at least have a clean place to sleep, it was refused them, and so it was seldom that the three could talk together undisturbed.
It was on one of the first of these occasions that they hovered together behind a sheltering pile of canvas at dusk. They had been discussing their desperate situation and Kinder suddenly said, “Are you fellows Christians? Are you saved?”
Rowan looked startled.
“I’m a church member,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, but that won’t save you. Are you saved?”
“I used to think I was,” said Rowan. “But that was before I went to college.”
“Well, college and all they teach there won’t help you now. You’re here on this boat with all this ocean between us and any help but God. Are you saved, friend?”
“Well, what they taught me at college didn’t really bother me much as far as belief is concerned. I had too wonderful a father and mother at home to doubt their God. But college made me forget a lot. I’m just beginning to remember it now, these long nights lying alone in that dirty bunk, without even any stars overhead to help. I’ve been wondering if I was ever really saved.”
“I guess it’s too late for me,” said Jason, speaking up wistfully. “I’ve had plenty of chance to be good, but I was just a fool. I see it now. I don’t suppose I could be any better if I ever do get off this blasted ship and get home again. I’ve tried sometimes to be really good, but—I can’t!”
“That’s where God comes in,” said Kinder, flashing him a yearning look. “There isn’t a soul on earth wh
o can be good enough for God, Whitney. That isn’t what I mean by being saved. God planned the way of salvation just for sinners like you and me, who want to be good and can’t of ourselves. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life here, so that He wouldn’t have to die for any sin of His own, and then God took your sin and mine, and the sin of the whole world, and put it on His Son and put Him to death for it! Then God raised Him from the dead to show that He was satisfied. So you and I never need bear the punishment for sin. Do you see? And it’s believing that He did that for you that saves you. It’s accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior.”
The stood thoughtfully looking out into the dark billows for a moment and then Kinder said earnestly, “Won’t you two take Him that way, now” Without an instant’s hesitation Rowan said, “I will!” and turned and knelt beside the canvas.
Jason looked at his new friend and said humbly, like a little child: “Why, of course! I didn’t know He did that for me!”
There in the stern of the filthy old boat with only a weird lantern swinging low amidship, they knelt and prayed.
Kinder prayed first. Such a prayer. It took Rowan back to his father’s hearthside and the old days of family worship, and suddenly he felt that God could be here on this ship in the darkness, was here, as much as He had been at home.
Then they had to scatter suddenly, for the first mate was roaring toward them with orders. There was sound of thunder, and lightning shivered across the wide heavens. Sails must be tended and orders must be carried out. But they went out, those three, with a feeling that now they were in God’s hands in a different way from ever before, and come what might, they were safe.
The days went by, each one seemingly worse than the other, because of the awful monotony, and now terrible cold had settled down. It searched the crannies of the old ship, and hurtled through their inadequate clothing. Jason and Rowan felt it worse than the others, for they had absolutely no extra things with them and were obliged to take the filthy blankets from their bunks and wrap them up for garments or they would have perished.
Kinder shared his sparse wardrobe with them as far as they would let him, woolen underwear and socks. They did a washing every day to the vast amusement of the rest of the crew who treated them almost with contempt because of their cleanliness.
Whenever possible Rowan and Jason snatched a few minutes with Kinder, while he read to them from his little Bible and talked of the Lord Jesus, and then they all prayed together.
Rowan had prayed before, often in his younger days, had in fact led young people’s meetings at home when he was in high school. But his prayers had been worked out with words before this. Now they came from the heart and breathed a spirit that was genuine.
Jason had not done much praying since the days when his mother, and later Joyce, had made him kneel at night and say his prayers. But now he took his turn with the rest, praying like a child, simply, earnestly, as a soul prays who is in great need and very humble.
As the days went by it became evident that Kinder was growing weaker all the time. When his friends touched him they drew back frightened at the hot hands, the burning head. He did not eat enough, either. The coarse food was revolting to him, though he resolutely swallowed some whenever it was time. Rowan and Jason tried to save the best morsels from him if anything of the uncouth fare that was dealt out on that ship could be called best. They had grown to love him like a brother, and their every thought outside the actual duties of the ship was turned toward helping Kinder. They insisted on doing most of his work; they were continually sending him to rest.
And now the rest of the crew began to notice that the young man who had come among them so strangely out of another world as it were was not long to stay with them. They ceased to call him Softy and gave him Kinder instead, speaking it almost gently sometimes, giving it its true meaning, as if he were a little child and they were calling him so. It was incredible that most of these rough men should suddenly soften. Even the captain came in to see him one day, after he had lain for hours in his bunk, coughing and racked with pain and fever.
And finally he gave the order that Kinder might be moved to a place with his two friends, for in spite of their precautions the ship had come to accept the friendship between the three and set them apart for themselves, as they would have set another race.
Tenderly the two boys carried their friend to the bunk and prepared to nurse him, hoping against hope that he might get well. Tenderly they worked over him night and day as he lay there weak and sick, but brave and smiling.
The captain finally turned him over unreservedly to the two who were his own kind, and all hands were relieved. Perhaps the captain thought it would keep them out of the way, for he held many grave councils of war these days, and he wanted those three otherwise occupied so that they would not be likely to suspect what was going on or to overhear words or see anxious looks on the faces of the officers, nor yet to notice signals from an accomplice craft.
So, as Kinder grew worse, the two did not leave him at all except when they had to, and they tried to make that little bunk room where he lay as neat as they could.
It had been a great shock to Rowan to discover day by day in spite of his earnest efforts to do his share of the work on the ship, that he was not as popular as he had always been in every other group of men among whom he had been thrown. His shipmates generally resented his gentlemanly ways and his ability to understand quicker than they did what was expected of him and to do it more intelligently. They had nicknamed him “Smarty,” and he had difficulty in concealing his contempt and disgust at the whole crew.
In the same way they had called Jason “Sonny,” though not with quite so much animosity as they seemed to have toward Rowan.
Sometimes as Rowan sat on watch with their sick friend he would get to thinking of Joyce. Would he ever see her again? Would he be able to take her in his arms and feel her soft lips against his? Would all this living horror ever be gone and he be back with home and friends and able to tell Joyce of his great love for her?
He thrilled to think how glad she would be if he might only let her know that he had found the Lord. She was a wonderful Christian. He had always known that. she seemed almost like an angelic being.
Then suddenly as he was thinking such thoughts, while he sat beside his friend, he saw the vermin walking about on the pillow.
He sprang up angrily and went for the evil little creatures. He had thought that at least from this small spot where his friend lay he had exterminated them. The had hoped that his vigilance would prevent their coming again. But now here they were, bold as an invading host, marching across the poor pillow for which Rowan had bungled a pillow case made from an old flour sack begged from the cook.
“This place is unbearable!” he exploded. “It is filthy everywhere. If there is one thing I never could stand it is dirt of any kind! I’ve never been used to it! It’s an awful comedown, I tell you!”
His lip curled and he held his head high as he remembered his immaculate home.
Kinder looked at him with a gentle pity. “It’s no more of a comedown than it was for the Lord Jesus Christ to step into this world from heaven,” he said. “It must have been hard for Him to stand sin all around Him for thirty-three years, and then to take it all on Him.”
Rowan stared in amazement. Then he looked out at the sea for a long time. Kinder, as he watched him, could almost read his thoughts. He saw the pride begin to melt away from his face; wonder took its place. Then shame came and sat in his eyes until sorrow brought a look of almost tears.
At last Rowan turned back to his companion. His voice was low and broken.
“I never thought of that before!” he said earnestly. “And I suppose I look like that to Him!” He waved his hand toward his vile surroundings. Then he sat down on the edge of the bunk and his head sank into his hands. “I always thought I was pretty good,” he murmured sadly.
“We are all as an unclean thing,” repeated Kinder quietl
y, “‘and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags’ in His sight, friend. It’s pride in all of us, and an evil heart of unbelief that looks vile to Him.”
“I suppose that is true,” mused Rowan. “I thought I was fit to be an example to that young kid Jason, and I had visions of leading him out of a life of failure to nobility. But I suppose I’m not a bit better than he is, if as good. He didn’t have half a chance in his home. I have a wonderful father and mother!”
Rowan choked back the wave of homesickness that swept over him at thought of them.
“Well, the whole trouble is that most people count goodness as a state of not doing obviously wrong things,” said Kinder. “With God nothing counts except our personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Kinder’s voice was very earnest now. “When once a man takes Jesus Christ as his Savior, the personal relationship must be kept close and vital at all costs or that man is going to show a mighty inconsistent Christian life to the world, besides grieving his heavenly Father.”
Rowan looked thoughtfully again at the lighted face of his friend.
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, “and that’s what makes you so different from any man I ever met except my father. You are like Jesus Christ. Everyone on this ship sees it! You let them see Him all the time. That’s where I’ve failed miserably,” he added humbly. “I think I really took Christ as my Savior when I was a little kid, but I just took for granted that once I did that, my part was to live the best I could. I didn’t see Him this way. I didn’t see that He had to do it all, and I’m just here for Him. Oh, if I’d shown Jesus Christ to Jason as you do, we wouldn’t have to be here. But God had to send me out here to find all this out!”
“I’m mighty glad He sent you, friend—sent you both,” he added as Jason entered the place. “What would I have done without you?”
Kinder reached out a feeble hand and laid it on Rowan’s. “I’ve wondered sometimes why He let me come out here to die, for I’ve known almost from the first it was going to be death, not life, for me—not this life. I’ve wondered why it had to be, but now I’m glad!”
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