The Classic American Short Story Megapack, Volume 1

by Ambrose Bierce

  “It’s Captain Robinson of the Roberta,” Grief said, introducing them.

  In the meantime Mulhall had shaken hands with Peter Gee.

  “I never fancied there were so many pearls in the world,” Mulhall said.

  “Nor have I ever seen so many together at one time,” Peter Gee admitted.

  “What ought they to be worth?”

  “Fifty or sixty thousand pounds—and that’s to us buyers. In Paris—” He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows at the incommunicableness of the sum.

  Mulhall wiped the sweat from his eyes. All were sweating profusely and breathing hard. There was no ice in the drink that was served, and whiskey and absinthe went down lukewarm.

  “Yes, yes,” Parlay was cackling. “Many dead men lie on the table there. I know those pearls, all of them. You see those three! Perfectly matched, aren’t they? A diver from Easter Island got them for me inside a week. Next week a shark got him; took his arm off and blood poison did the business. And that big baroque there—nothing much—if I’m offered twenty francs for it to-morrow I’ll be in luck; it came out of twenty-two fathoms of water. The man was from Raratonga. He broke all diving records. He got it out of twenty-two fathoms. I saw him. And he burst his lungs at the same time, or got the ‘bends,’ for he died in two hours. He died screaming. They could hear him for miles. He was the most powerful native I ever saw. Half a dozen of my divers have died of the bends. And more men will die, more men will die.”

  “Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay,” chided one of the captains. “It ain’t going to blow.”

  “If I was a strong man, I couldn’t get up hook and get out fast enough,” the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. “Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You’ll all stay, I wouldn’t advise you if I thought you’d go, You can’t drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp. Old Parlay’s selling out, and the buzzards are gathering—old Parlay who was a stronger man in his day than any of them and who will see most of them dead yet.”

  “If he isn’t a vile old beast!” the supercargo of the Malahini whispered to Peter Gee.

  “What if she does blow?” said the captain of the Dolly. “Hikihoho’s never been swept.”

  “The more reason she will be, then,” Captain Warfield answered back. “I wouldn’t trust her.”

  “Who’s croaking now?” Grief reproved.

  “I’d hate to lose that new engine before it paid for itself,” Captain Warfield replied gloomily.

  Parlay skipped with astonishing nimbleness across the crowded room to the barometer on the wall.

  “Take a look, my brave sailormen!” he cried exultantly.

  The man nearest read the glass. The sobering effect showed plainly on his face.

  “It’s dropped ten,” was all he said, yet every face went anxious, and there was a look as if every man desired immediately to start for the door.

  “Listen!” Parlay commanded.

  In the silence the outer surf seemed to have become unusually loud. There was a great rumbling roar.

  “A big sea is beginning to set,” some one said; and there was a movement to the windows, where all gathered.

  Through the sparse cocoanuts they gazed seaward. An orderly succession of huge smooth seas was rolling down upon the coral shore. For some minutes they gazed on the strange sight and talked in low voices, and in those few minutes it was manifest to all that the waves were increasing in size. It was uncanny, this rising sea in a dead calm, and their voices unconsciously sank lower. Old Parlay shocked them with his abrupt cackle.

  “There is yet time to get away to sea, brave gentlemen. You can tow across the lagoon with your whaleboats.”

  “It’s all right, old man,” said Darling, the mate of the Cactus, a stalwart youngster of twenty-five. “The blow’s to the southward and passing on. We’ll not get a whiff of it.”

  An air of relief went through the room. Conversations were started, and the voices became louder. Several of the buyers even went back to the table to continue the examination of the pearls.

  Parlay’s shrill cackle rose higher.

  “That’s right,” he encouraged. “If the world was coming to an end you’d go on buying.”

  “We’ll buy these to-morrow just the same,” Isaacs assured him.

  “Then you’ll be doing your buying in hell.”

  The chorus of incredulous laughter incensed the old man. He turned fiercely on Darling.

  “Since when have children like you come to the knowledge of storms? And who is the man who has plotted the hurricane-courses of the Paumotus? What books will you find it in? I sailed the Paumotus before the oldest of you drew breath. I know. To the eastward the paths of the hurricanes are on so wide a circle they make a straight line. To the westward here they make a sharp curve. Remember your chart. How did it happen the hurricane of ’91 swept Auri and Hiolau? The curve, my brave boy, the curve! In an hour, or two or three at most, will come the wind. Listen to that!”

  A vast rumbling crash shook the coral foundations of the atoll. The house quivered to it. The native servants, with bottles of whiskey and absinthe in their hands, shrank together as if for protection and stared with fear through the windows at the mighty wash of the wave lapping far up the beach to the corner of a copra-shed.

  Parlay looked at the barometer, giggled, and leered around at his guests. Captain War-field strode across to see.

  “29:75,” he read. “She’s gone down five more. By God! the old devil’s right. She’s a-coming, and it’s me, for one, for aboard.”

  “It’s growing dark,” Isaacs half whispered.

  “Jove! it’s like a stage,” Mulhall said to Grief, looking at his watch. “Ten o’clock in the morning, and it’s like twilight. Down go the lights for the tragedy. Where’s the slow music!”

  In answer, another rumbling crash shook the atoll and the house. Almost in a panic the company started for the door. In the dim light their sweaty faces appeared ghastly. Isaacs panted asthmatically in the suffocating heat.

  “What’s your haste?” Parlay chuckled and girded at his departing guests. “A last drink, brave gentlemen.” No one noticed him. As they took the shell-bordered path to the beach he stuck his head out the door and called, “Don’t forget, gentlemen, at ten to-morrow old Parlay sells his pearls.”

  III

  On the beach a curious scene took place. Whaleboat after whaleboat was being hurriedly manned and shoved off. It had grown still darker. The stagnant calm continued, and the sand shook under their feet with each buffet of the sea on the outer shore. Narii Herring walked leisurely along the sand. He grinned at the very evident haste of the captains and buyers. With him were three of his Kanakas, and also Tai-Hotauri.

  “Get into the boat and take an oar,” Captain Warfield ordered the latter.

  Tai-Hotauri came over jauntily, while Narii Herring and his three Kanakas paused and looked on from forty feet away.

  “I work no more for you, skipper,” Tai-Hotauri said insolently and loudly. But his face belied his words, for he was guilty of a prodigious wink. “Fire me, skipper,” he huskily whispered, with a second significant wink.

  Captain Warfield took the cue and proceeded to do some acting himself. He raised his fist and his voice.

  “Get into that boat,” he thundered, “or I’ll knock seven bells out of you!”

  The Kanaka drew back truculently, and Grief stepped between to placate his captain.

  “I go to work on the Nuhiva,” Tai-Hotauri said, rejoining the other group.

  “Come back here!” the captain threatened.

  “He’s a free man, skipper,” Narii Herring spoke up. “He’s sailed with me in th
e past, and he’s sailing again, that’s all.”

  “Come on, we must get on board,” Grief urged. “Look how dark it’s getting.”

  Captain Warfield gave in, but as the boat shoved off he stood up in the sternsheets and shook his fist ashore.

  “I’ll settle with you yet, Narii,” he cried. “You’re the only skipper in the group that steals other men’s sailors,” He sat down, and in lowered voice queried: “Now what’s Tai-Hotauri up to? He’s on to something, but what is it?”

  IV

  As the boat came alongside the Malahini, Hermann’s anxious face greeted them over the rail.

  “Bottom out fall from barometer,” he announced. “She’s goin’ to blow. I got starboard anchor overhaul.”

  “Overhaul the big one, too,” Captain Warfield ordered, taking charge. “And here, some of you, hoist in this boat. Lower her down to the deck and lash her bottom up.”

  Men were busy at work on the decks of all the schooners. There was a great clanking of chains being overhauled, and now one craft, and now another, hove in, veered, and dropped a second anchor. Like the Malahini, those that had third anchors were preparing to drop them when the wind showed what quarter it was to blow from.

  The roar of the big surf continually grew though the lagoon lay in the mirror-like calm.

  There was no sign of life where Parlay’s big house perched on the sand. Boat and copra-sheds and the sheds where the shell was stored were deserted.

  “For two cents I’d up anchors and get out,” Grief said. “I’d do it anyway if it were open sea. But those chains of atolls to the north and east have us pocketed. We’ve a better chance right here. What do you think, Captain Warfield?”

  “I agree with you, though a lagoon is no mill-pond for riding it out. I wonder where she’s going to start from? Hello! There goes one of Parlay’s copra-sheds.”

  They could see the grass-thatched shed lift and collapse, while a froth of foam cleared the crest of the sand and ran down to the lagoon.

  “Breached across!” Mulhall exclaimed. “That’s something for a starter. There she comes again!”

  The wreck of the shed was now flung up and left on the sand-crest, A third wave buffeted it into fragments which washed down the slope toward the lagoon.

  “If she blow I would as be cooler yet,” Hermann grunted. “No longer can I breathe. It is damn hot. I am dry like a stove.”

  He chopped open a drinking cocoanut with his heavy sheath-knife and drained the contents. The rest of them followed his example, pausing once to watch one of Parlay’s shell sheds go down in ruin. The barometer now registered 29:50.

  “Must be pretty close to the centre of the area of low pressure,” Grief remarked cheerfully. “I was never through the eye of a hurricane before. It will be an experience for you, too, Mulhall. From the speed the barometer’s dropped, it’s going to be a big one.”

  Captain Warfield groaned, and all eyes drew to him. He was looking through the glasses down the length of the lagoon to the southeast.

  “There she comes,” he said quietly.

  They did not need glasses to see. A flying film, strangely marked, seemed drawing over the surface of the lagoon. Abreast of it, along the atoll, travelling with equal speed, was a stiff bending of the cocoanut palms and a blur of flying leaves. The front of the wind on the water was a solid, sharply defined strip of dark-coloured, wind-vexed water. In advance of this strip, like skirmishers, were flashes of windflaws. Behind this strip, a quarter of a mile in width, was a strip of what seemed glassy calm. Next came another dark strip of wind, and behind that the lagoon was all crisping, boiling whiteness.

  “What is that calm streak?” Mulhall asked.

  “Calm,” Warfield answered.

  “But it travels as fast as the wind,” was the other’s objection.

  “It has to, or it would be overtaken and it wouldn’t be any calm. It’s a double-header, I saw a big squall like that off Savaii once. A regular double-header. Smash! it hit us, then it lulled to nothing, and smashed us a second time. Stand by and hold on! Here she is on top of us. Look at the Roberta!”

  The Roberta, lying nearest to the wind at slack chains, was swept off broadside like a straw. Then her chains brought her up, bow on to the wind, with an astonishing jerk. Schooner after schooner, the Malahini with them, was now sweeping away with the first gust and fetching up on taut chains. Mulhall and several of the Kanakas were taken off their feet when the Malahini jerked to her anchors.

  And then there was no wind. The flying calm streak had reached them. Grief lighted a match, and the unshielded flame burned without flickering in the still air. A very dim twilight prevailed. The cloud-sky, lowering as it had been for hours, seemed now to have descended quite down upon the sea.

  The Roberta tightened to her chains when the second head of the hurricane hit, as did schooner after schooner in swift succession. The sea, white with fury, boiled in tiny, spitting wavelets. The deck of the Malahini vibrated under the men’s feet. The taut-stretched halyards beat a tattoo against the masts, and all the rigging, as if smote by some mighty hand, set up a wild thrumming. It was impossible to face the wind and breathe. Mulhall, crouching with the others behind the shelter of the cabin, discovered this, and his lungs were filled in an instant with so great a volume of driven air which he could not expel that he nearly strangled ere he could turn his head away.

  “It’s incredible,” he gasped, but no one heard him.

  Hermann and several Kanakas were crawling for’ard on hands and knees to let go the third anchor. Grief touched Captain Warfield and pointed to the Roberta. She was dragging down upon them. Warfield put his mouth to Grief’s ear and shouted:

  “We’re dragging, too!”

  Grief sprang to the wheel and put it hard over, veering the Mahhini to port. The third anchor took hold, and the Roberta went by, stern-first, a dozen yards away. They waved their hands to Peter Gee and Captain Robinson, who, with a number of sailors, were at work on the bow.

  “He’s knocking out the shackles!” Grief shouted. “Going to chance the passage! Got to! Anchors skating!”

  “We’re holding now!” came the answering shout. “There goes the Cactus down on the Misi. That settles them!”

  The Misi had been holding, but the added windage of the Cactus was too much, and the entangled schooners slid away across the boiling white. Their men could be seen chopping and fighting to get them apart. The Roberta, cleared of her anchors, with a patch of tarpaulin set for’ard, was heading for the passage at the northwestern end of the lagoon. They saw her make it and drive out to sea. But the Misi and Cactus, unable to get clear of each other, went ashore on the atoll half a mile from the passage. The wind merely increased on itself and continued to increase. To face the full blast of it required all one’s strength, and several minutes of crawling on deck against it tired a man to exhaustion. Hermann, with his Kanakas, plodded steadily, lashing and making secure, putting ever more gaskets on the sails. The wind ripped and tore their thin undershirts from their backs. They moved slowly, as if their bodies weighed tons, never releasing a hand-hold until another had been secured. Loose ends of rope stood out stiffly horizontal, and, when a whipping gave, the loose end frazzled and blew away.

  Mulhall touched one and then another and pointed to the shore. The grass-sheds had disappeared, and Parlay’s house rocked drunkenly, Because the wind blew lengthwise along the atoll, the house had been sheltered by the miles of cocoanut trees. But the big seas, breaking across from outside, were undermining it and hammering it to pieces. Already tilted down the slope of sand, its end was imminent. Here and there in the cocoanut trees people had lashed themselves. The trees did not sway or thresh about. Bent over rigidly from the wind, they remained in that position and vibrated monstrously. Underneath, across the sand, surged the white spume of the breakers. A big sea was likewise making down the length of the l
agoon. It had plenty of room to kick up in the ten-mile stretch from the windward rim of the atoll, and all the schooners were bucking and plunging into it. The Malahini had begun shoving her bow and fo’c’sle head under the bigger ones, and at times her waist was filled rail-high with water.

  “Now’s the time for your engine!” Grief bellowed; and Captain Warfield, crawling over to where the engineer lay, shouted emphatic commands.

  Under the engine, going full speed ahead, the Malahini behaved better. While she continued to ship seas over her bow, she was not jerked down so fiercely by her anchors. On the other hand, she was unable to get any slack in the chains. The best her forty horsepower could do was to ease the strain.

  Still the wind increased. The little Nuhiva, lying abreast of the Malahini and closer in to the beach, her engine still unrepaired and her captain ashore, was having a bad time of it. She buried herself so frequently and so deeply that they wondered each time if she could clear herself of the water. At three in the afternoon buried by a second sea before she could free herself of the preceding one, she did not come up.

  Mulhall looked at Grief.

  “Burst in her hatches,” was the bellowed answer.

  Captain Warfield pointed to the Winifred, a little schooner plunging and burying outside of them, and shouted in Grief’s ear. His voice came in patches of dim words, with intervals of silence when whisked away by the roaring wind.

  “Rotten little tub… Anchors hold… But how she holds together… Old as the ark—”

  An hour later Hermann pointed to her. Her for’ard bitts, foremast, and most of her bow were gone, having been jerked out of her by her anchors. She swung broadside, rolling in the trough and settling by the head, and in this plight was swept away to leeward.