Captain Caution

by Kenneth Roberts

  "Aux filler de honnes maisons

  Comme it avail su plaire, Ses sulets avaient cent raisons De le nommer leur pere,"

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  he sang softly. Corunna stared severely at his widow's peak of close- cropped hair; but seemingly he was oblivious to everything except the task in hand.

  "Mr. Argandeaul" she said.

  Argandeau straightened. "You need me, lady?"

  "Yes," she said, "and I don't like the sound of 'lady.' You can call me Captain while we're aboard ship."

  Argandeau bowed so deeply that his bullethead seemed lower than his knees.

  "When these wounded men are aboard," she continued, "tell MT. Slade to run up his jib and fore-topmast staysail and get under way. I want her kept north by west a half west. We'll pass to the westward of the Cape Verdes. Get the decks cleared and divide the men into watches. Then call the hands aft and send word to me. I want to speak to them."

  "Yes, Captain," Argandeau said. "And Mr. Marvin? He is not an officer: therefore you let me choose him for my watch, perhaps. Then I give him lessons in many things." His gaze was candid. "When he has had a lesson or two from Argandeau, he will know how to throw the knife, how to be brave like a lion, how to make love so that every woman who sees him will pant for him." Modestly he added, "He has not had my advantages, poor fellow."

  Corunna raised an indifferent eye to the clouds overhead. "I'm afraid Mr. Marvin must get along without your guidance for the remainder of this voyage," she said. "He's to be bos'n of this vessel."

  "Ho-hol" Argandeau said softly. "You put him where he must exercise that patience of which he is so proud, eh nursing seamen and touching the hat to his betters! I think welll Very welll"

  Corunna looked hard at him; then turned quickly and entered the cabin.

  "Captain!" Argandeau murmured, skipping from the quarter-deck into the waist. "She is sugar caner Captain Sugar Canel With that to crunch, I would not recognize any other wife not for a very long timer"

  He swung himself into the main chains beside Marvin, who was splashing the twenty-four-foot sweep up and down beside the Beetle's long-boat as the last of the wounded men came over the side.

  "Pull your front hair and say 'sirl"' Argandeau told him. "Maybe you think this is a French vessel, Mr. Bos'n, and that we are all equal, eh? All perfectly equal?"

  Marvin stabbed with the long sweep at a grey shadow that flickered beneath the long-boat's stern. "Bos'n, eh?" he asked. "So she

  j

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  decided to take me down a peal" The sweep rose from the water as lightly as a fishing rod, and fell again with a smack. "Well, it's all one to me," he continued, "provided she gets me to a place where I can do some damage to a little piece of England. I'm surprised she didn't make me ship's cook, so she'd never have to look at me."

  "If she had, my friend," Argandeau assured him, "it would be what you deserve for saying to her that she must not do this and cannot do thatl That is something I learn about rabbits when I am six years old and in love for the first time, or maybe the second. They are like men, disliking to obey orders; and because they are built with nerves in the brain that we do not have, they explode, Pfoof inside the head, when they are forbidden to do this or that. If they are timid, they conceal the explosion; but later, when all is quiet, they take courage and do what they have been forbidden to do. If they are not timid, they snap the fingers in the face of those who forbidl Piffl" His fingers clicked contemptuously beneath Marvin's nose.

  A hoarse voice came up to them from the turbulence of the main deck. "Isn't this a little early to begin criticising a lady?"

  Argandeau turned from Marvin and looked down into the upturned face of Slade. "Criticize?" Argandeau asked innocently. "I? I criticize a lady? Neverl I learn from ladies learn only. I think, Captain, you might do the same to good advantage."

  There was a rasp to Slade's laugh like the bite of a saw on wood. "If I feel the need of lessons," he said, "I'll think about consulting you."

  "You will escape some trouble by doing it," Argandeau assured him, "and you will also escape some trouble by getting this barque under way and standing on quickly. The Captain, she told me to tell you: North by west a half west."

  "Westl" Slade exclaimed. "You mean eastI"

  "East?" Argandeau whispered. "Is it east I mean? Now I am con- fusedl She said west, I thought; but perhaps, as you say, it was east. You must go quickly and ask her." He struck his forehead with his hand. "My God, what horror if it should appear that Argandeau could not repeat orders properly that if he were told to raise the

  I ensign, he would let go the anchor instead! Oh yes! You must hurry

  to the Captain and tell her it was not west, but east."

  "We'll see about thisl" Slade said. "Diron told her to make the Cape Verdesl" His drooping lid seemed almost to close over his eye as he stared up at Argandeau.

  "Ah, yesl" Argandeau said thoughtfully. "Well, maybe she has for- gotten what she was told. It is possible she does not realize that

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  Dominique intends to share the captaincy of this vessel with her, even after he has sailed away in his own schooner." He smiled innocently at Slade. "Perhaps," he continued, "perhaps you should go to her and inform her that she has made a mistake: that she is wrong: that her orders have not been to Dominique's liking. Perhaps, before it is too late, you should even send word to Dominique that he must come aboard once more and put his orders in writing, so they may never again be misunderstood by absent-minded ladies."

  Slade peered over the bulwarks. The Beetle's long-boat, freed of her cargo, had pushed off from the Olive Branch's counter. A cable length away, the Beetle swayed lazily, her rigging filled with seamen busy repairing severed shrouds and stays; and behind her squat bulk the slender, raking masts of the Decatur towered high against the billowing pink clouds that hung above the streamyhorizon. There seemed to be something of remoteness about the two vessels, despite their nearness, as though already they had forgotten the very exist- ence of the Olive Branch. Slade ran his fingers through his long black hair, glanced uncertainly from Argandeau's face to the empty quarter-deck; then turned abruptly to the throng of seamen who were noisily sluicing from themselves the muck of their imprisonment in the Beetle.

  "Set the jib and fore-topmast staysail!" he shouted hoarsely. "Man the lee fore bracel Slack away fore tack and stand by to swing the main yardl"

  The Olive Branch fell off, the fore-topsail filled and she slowly wore into the northwest.

  Corunna, Marvin saw, had come on deck, carrying a glass tumbler in her hand. She set it down carefully at the foot of the binnacle; then stood by the taffrail, staring back at the Beetle, her grey Chinese jacket and trousers dark against the glowing cloud banks beyond, and her smoothly combed black hair bound tightly in place by a thin red cord. Marvin jumped from the chains and ran aft. "Corunna," he said, "aren't you going to give 'em a gun?"

  She turned slowly. "As bos'n of this vessel," she said, "I'll thank you to address the quarter-deck properly."

  "Corunna," Marvin protested, "don't be like this, Corunnal You know there isn't anybody that - "

  She moved away from him and glanced at the card in the binnacle. "Keep her so," she told the helmsman; then looked coolly at Marvin. "Give them a gun?" she asked. "It seems to me you're a little

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  backward about gunslI think you'd better dip the ensign instead; that's more in your line."

  He eyed her in silence, smiled faintly and moved to the ensign halyards.

  She stamped her foot. "You think I'm pretending! You think I'm playing! Well, I'm notl I can sail this vessel as well as any man better than most. I can fight the British as well as any manl Nobody hates 'em as much as I do, the murderers!"

  Marvin, staring steadily at the masthead, carefully dipped the ensign three times, made fast the halyards and turned away. Forward of the main hatch he saw Slade, half conceal
ed by the lumber amidships, staring at him; and the whiteness of that single eye seemed to Marvin to give the slaver's face a look of confident contempt.

  Marvin turned back to her. "There's nobody like you, Corunna," he said. "You know how I feel about that."

  "You had your chance," she reminded him.

  He moved his hand vaguely. "You know how I feel," he repeated. "You're a woman, and women don't fight or captain vessels. There's something they haven't got, Corunna. They aren't hard enough, maybe. Maybe they do things too much from personal reasons. They're apt to be hasty, they're - "

  She caught at his upper arm and half turned him toward her. "Let me look at you," she said solicitously. "I think it must be the heat that makes your head like this all mixed and muddled. Why don't you put a little cool water on it, so not to hurt it permanently, trying to make it express all the things you don't know about womenl Just belay all that, and step down to the main hatch and tell Mr. Slade to bring the men aftl"

  She whirled and left him, to stand again at the taffrail, looking back at the brig and the schooner, already shrunken to the size of toys. Sighing, Marvin eyed the flatness of her back and the sturdiness of her shoulders; then went forward toward Slade.

  For such a vessel as the Olive Branch, the throng of seamen who gathered at the break in the quarter-deck was as cumbersome as it was motley. There were a score of tall Yankees who had made up the original crew of the barque; another twoscore Frenchmen from Argandeau's schooner short and swarthy men for the most part and a jostling knot of shifty-eyed nondescripts from Slade's slaver. These last, Marvin decided, were sweepings from the foulest corners of the brown countries.

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  Sailors filled the waist of the barque from larboard to starboard bulwarks. They perched on carronadeslides and clung to shrouds and backstays, scuffling and swaying and breaking into suppressed exclamations and hoarse, short bursts of laughter as they stared openmouthed at the trousered figure of Corunna standing at the weather rail.

  Slade pushed through them, mounted to the quarter-deck and spoke briefly to her, at which she advanced to the taffrail, set her hands on her hips and coldly eyed the grinning faces below.

  "I'm the captain of this vessel," she said. "A few of you may have some difficulty getting that into your heads, but the sooner you get it, the better off you'll be. I've sailed in the Olive Branch for eight years. I know her better than any man alive, and I can get more out of her. I aim to bring all of you safe to land; and when thaYs done, I aim to fight the British for what they did to my father. I'd like all of you to bear in mind that if I hadn't brought knives and pistols to you, you'd still be rotting in the mud in the Beetle. I'll do the best I know how for all of you; and for your own good there's certain rules you've got to observe, whether you like 'em or not. Probably most of you won't like 'em, but this is going to be a healthy ship, and you'll do as I tell you.

  "There's to be no fighting and no cursing. You'll get greens to boil in your food, and I want 'em eatenl You'll wash between decks every day, and you'll dry out, even if we have to build fires in the hottest spells. Mornings, weather permitting, you'll air your bedding; and finally you'll wash yourselves and your clothes daily, and put on dry clothes when wet. I aim to have no scurvy aboard this barque."

  From the rear of the throng of seamen there came a shrill caterwauling in no way different from the cry of an irritated infant, and hard on its heels rose a great burst of laughter. Corunna stepped up on the taffrail and stared hard at the most distant ranks of her audience.

  "Silencel" Slade shouted hoarsely.

  Corunna swept him with fleeting, angry eyes. "Apply that word to yourself, Mr. Slade," she said. "This is my affairs"

  She dropped from the taffrail, ran to the binnacle and picked up the tumbler she had left at its foot. With it in her hand, she ran down from the quarter-deck and pushed her way through the throng of seamen until she reached, in the back row, a sallow, shambling sailor with black eyes that squinted at her with a hard defiance.

  "I heard you yelping because your insides are out of order," she

  3~34 CAPTAIN CAUTION

  said. "I thought somebody's would be, so I made this medicine! Drink itl"

  She pressed the glass, two-thirds full of a dark liquid, into his hand.

  "Me?" he said contemptuously; but casting a glance about him and beholding only delightedly unsympathetic faces, he became uneasy. "I ain't got no trouble with my insides, and I ain't goin' to - "

  "Drink itl"

  "Lady," he said, "I ain't done nuthin'."

  "Captain!" she said. "Not lady Captainl And don't lie to me about your insides! I heard youl Drink it or spend a week in the black hole getting welll Drink ill Every drop you spill you'll get a day black hotel"

  The seaman took the glass helplessly and drank. Movements of his throat denoted repulsion. With the last swallow he choked; then began to mutter protestingly.

  Corunna took the glass from him and looked at him thoughtfully, while his fellows, puzzled, shifted and drew a little away from him. He pressed one hand questioningly upon his stomach and with an expression of misgiving turned and walked in silence toward the knightheads.

  "My father had respect and obedience on this vessel," Corunna said to the staring crew. "So will II Jalap and tartar emetic's what that man's got in him for his curejalap and tartar emetic, and he'd rather have the smallpox! It'll last three days, and there's more where that came from for any other man who thinks there isn't going to be discipline aboard the Olive Branch."

  OF AID the sea captains that Marvin had ever known, Corunna Dorman, he made sure, was the most unremittently exasperating. Often he watched her from the main topmast crosstrees, to which he climbed whenever the opportunity offered, not only because he feared that other eyes than his own might be slow to catch the distant glint of an enemy sail but also because he could view unseen, from this lofty height, the comings and goings on the quarter-deck.

  There had been times when, between the owl-like twistings of his head as he scanned the horizon, he wondered whether Corunna's seamanship was a matter of chance or of design. He had seen her work the barque with her shining black head bent low over the worsted likeness of the Holy Family. Seemingly she never raised her eyes, except to give an order; and more than once, when she was tacking ship to gain an advantage from the shifting winds, he had leaned far out to watch her, fearful that she would either be too early with her commands, so that the vessel would not come round, or so late that everything would be caught aback and the barque put in irons.

  Yet on each occasion Corunna, looking up from her bright worsteds, as if by chance, had at the precise moment called "Mainsail haull" in a voice that came as clearly to his ears as though she stood beside him; and each time the ship had come about as smartly as a Baltimore pilot boat.

  More exasperating than this to Marvin was the manner in which Slade followed Corunna about the deck, hanging over her when she was busy with her needlework, and almost seeming to lie in wait for her whenever she left the deck to go below. Marvin, gazing down from the crosstrees, came to think of him as a swarthy long-haired spider, watchfully sidling about the center of his web in expectation of the moment when he might pounce with certainty.

  Yet Argandeau, coming to sit with Marvin on the crosstrees, found nothing exasperating in anything Corunna did and nothing repellent in Slade's activities.

  "This pigeon of ours," he told Marvin, "she is different from all pigeons and rabbits. Out of the thousands and thousands of rabbits

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  I have seen, she is the only one who is able to seem always like a rabbit, even while doing the work a man should do. You have noticed this, dear Marvin how a rabbit who engages herself to play like a man, or dress like a man, or exert herself like a man with the brain or the body, loses something out of herself, so that she is useless to look at? You have found it so, eh?Inmy early youth I discovered that I had no overpowering desire to gaze
upon such a rabbit; and as for kissing small choice between her and the binnacle!"

  "I never noticed," Marvin admitted gloomily.

  "But it is sol" Argandeau exclaimed. "Kiss one like that, and the next time you will ask for the binnacle! You must pay attention to women, and then you will see it is sol But with this pigeon of ours, she is somehow protected against that loss of something out of herself. I am conscious of herl I must restrain myself, so that I do not make myself desirable to herl I think it is possible that if I am not obliged to think continuously of other matters, very important mat- ters to think about how I shall get a privateer for myself when we are safely in France I would give some thought to letting her be attracted to me. So little is needed. Pfool" He snapped his fingers. "Like that, I only need to let my consciousness of her become known to herl"

  He peered earnestly to starboard and larboard, and glanced quickly at Marvin from the corners of his eyes.

  "It is unfortunate," the Frenchman continued, as Marvin remained silent, "that I am unable to give my attention to this affair, if only to make it more difficult for Slade. I tell you, dear Marvin, I do not love him. Beneath that eyelid of his there is a look that means he is too easy in his mind about the future. I am not easy, and you are not easy, eh? Why should he be easy, this long-haired buzzard? Here is something worthy of our thought!"

  Marvin laughed sourly and shook his head. "Corunna's from Arundel. She wouldn't consider a slave captain, not even if he was as handsome as George Washington. When the slave captain has a damaged binnacle to boot, she wouldn't look at him unless she had to."

  "Pooil" Argandeau cried. "You think beauty makes a difference with women? Or occupation? It makes no difference I tell you it does not make so much difference"" Between his thumb and forefinger he plucked an imaginary atom from the air and tossed it carelessly from him. "It happens that I have been found captivating. I do not boast; I state the fact, claiming no virtues for it. These things are not talents; they occurl But it was not for my beauty that