The Classic American Short Story Megapack, Volume 1

by Ambrose Bierce

  Five vessels now remained, and of them the Malahini was the only one with an engine. Fearing either the Nuhiva’s or the Winifdred’s fate, two of them followed the Roberta’s example, knocking out the chain-shackles and running for the passage. The Dolly was the first, but her tarpaulin was carried away, and she went to destruction on the lee-rim of the atoll near the Misi and the Cactus. Undeterred by this, the Moana let go and followed with the same result.

  “Pretty good engine that, eh?” Captain Warfield yelled to his owner.

  Grief put out his hand and shook. “She’s paying for herself!” he yelled back. “The wind’s shifting around to the southward, and we ought to lie easier!”

  Slowly and steadily, but with ever-increasing velocity, the wind veered around to the south and the southwest, till the three schooners that were left pointed directly in toward the beach. The wreck of Parlay’s house was picked up, hurled into the lagoon, and blown out upon them. Passing the Malahini, it crashed into the Papara, lying a quarter of a mile astern. There was wild work for’ard on her, and in a quarter of an hour the house went clear, but it had taken the Papara’s foremast and bowsprit with it.

  Inshore, on their port bow, lay the Tahaa, slim and yacht-like, but excessively oversparred. Her anchors still held, but her captain, finding no abatement in the wind, proceeded to reduce windage by chopping down his masts.

  “Pretty good engine that,” Grief congratulated his skipper, “It will save our sticks for us yet.”

  Captain Warfield shook his head dubiously.

  The sea on the lagoon went swiftly down with the change of wind, but they were beginning to feel the heave and lift of the outer sea breaking across the atoll. There were not so many trees remaining. Some had been broken short off, others uprooted. One tree they saw snap off halfway up, three persons clinging to it, and whirl away by the wind into the lagoon. Two detached themselves from it and swam to the Tahaa. Not long after, just before darkness, they saw one jump overboard from that schooner’s stern and strike out strongly for the Malahini through the white, spitting wavelets.

  “It’s Tai-Hotauri,” was Grief’s judgment. “Now we’ll have the news.”

  The Kanaka caught the bobstay, climbed over the bow, and crawled aft. Time was given him to breathe, and then, behind the part shelter of the cabin, in broken snatches and largely by signs, he told his story.

  “Narii… damn robber… He want steal… pearls… Kill Parlay… One man kill Parlay… No man know what man… Three Kanakas, Narii, me… Five beans… hat… Narii say one bean black… Nobody know… Kill Parlay… Narii damn liar… All beans black… Five black… Copra-shed dark… Every man get black bean… Big wind come… No chance… Everybody get up tree… No good luck them pearls… I tell you before… No good luck.”

  “Where’s Parlay?” Grief shouted.

  “Up tree… Three of his Kanakas same tree. Narii and one Kanaka’nother tree… My tree blow to hell, then I come on board.”

  “Where’s the pearls?”

  “Up tree along Parlay. Mebbe Narii get them pearl yet.”

  In the ear of one after another Grief passed on Tai-Hotauri’s story. Captain Warfield was particularly incensed, and they could see him grinding his teeth.

  Hermann went below and returned with a riding light, but the moment it was lifted above the level of the cabin wall the wind blew it out. He had better success with the binnacle lamp, which was lighted only after many collective attempts.

  “A fine night of wind!” Grief yelled in Mulhall’s ear. “And blowing harder all the time.”

  “How hard?”

  “A hundred miles an hour… two hundred… I don’t know… Harder than I’ve ever seen it.”

  The lagoon grew more and more troubled by the sea that swept across the atoll. Hundreds of leagues of ocean was being backed up by the hurricane, which more than overcame the lowering effect of the ebb tide. Immediately the tide began to rise the increase in the size of the seas was noticeable. Moon and wind were heaping the South Pacific on Hikihoho atoll.

  Captain Warfield returned from one of his periodical trips to the engine room with the word that the engineer lay in a faint.

  “Can’t let that engine stop!” he concluded helplessly.

  “All right!” Grief said, “Bring him on deck. I’ll spell him.”

  The hatch to the engine room was battened down, access being gained through a narrow passage from the cabin. The heat and gas fumes were stifling. Grief took one hasty, comprehensive examination of the engine and the fittings of the tiny room, then blew out the oil-lamp. After that he worked in darkness, save for the glow from endless cigars which he went into the cabin to light. Even-tempered as he was, he soon began to give evidences of the strain of being pent in with a mechanical monster that toiled, and sobbed, and slubbered in the shouting dark. Naked to the waist, covered with grease and oil, bruised and skinned from being knocked about by the plunging, jumping vessel, his head swimming from the mixture of gas and air he was compelled to breathe, he laboured on hour after hour, in turns petting, blessing, nursing, and cursing the engine and all its parts. The ignition began to go bad. The feed grew worse. And worst of all, the cylinders began to heat. In a consultation held in the cabin the half-caste engineer begged and pleaded to stop the engine for half an hour in order to cool it and to attend to the water circulation. Captain Warfield was against any stopping. The half-caste swore that the engine would ruin itself and stop anyway and for good. Grief, with glaring eyes, greasy and battered, yelled and cursed them both down and issued commands. Mulhall, the supercargo, and Hermann were set to work in the cabin at double-straining and triple-straining the gasoline. A hole was chopped through the engine room floor, and a Kanaka heaved bilge-water over the cylinders, while Grief continued to souse running parts in oil.

  “Didn’t know you were a gasoline expert,” Captain Warfield admired when Grief came into the cabin to catch a breath of little less impure air.

  “I bathe in gasoline,” he grated savagely through his teeth. “I eat it.”

  What other uses he might have found for it were never given, for at that moment all the men in the cabin, as well as the gasoline being strained, were smashed forward against the bulkhead as the Malahini took an abrupt, deep dive. For the space of several minutes, unable to gain their feet, they rolled back and forth and pounded and hammered from wall to wall. The schooner, swept by three big seas, creaked and groaned and quivered, and from the weight of water on her decks behaved logily. Grief crept to the engine, while Captain Warfield waited his chance to get through the companion-way and out on deck.

  It was half an hour before he came back.

  “Whaleboat’s gone!” he reported. “Galley’s gone! Everything gone except the deck and hatches! And if that engine hadn’t been going we’d be gone! Keep up the good work!”

  By midnight the engineer’s lungs and head had been sufficiently cleared of gas fumes to let him relieve Grief, who went on deck to get his own head and lungs clear. He joined the others, who crouched behind the cabin, holding on with their hands and made doubly secure by rope-lashings. It was a complicated huddle, for it was the only place of refuge for the Kanakas. Some of them had accepted the skipper’s invitation into the cabin but had been driven out by the fumes. The Malahini was being plunged down and swept frequently, and what they breathed was air and spray and water commingled.

  “Making heavy weather of it, Mulhall!” Grief shouted to his guest between immersions.

  Mulhall, strangling and choking, could only nod. The scuppers could not carry off the burden of water on the schooner’s deck. She rolled it out and took it in over one rail and the other; and at times, nose thrown skyward, sitting down on her heel, she avalanched it aft. It surged along the poop gangways, poured over the top of the cabin, submerging and bruising those that clung on, and went out over the stern-rail.

  Mulhall
saw him first, and drew Grief’s attention. It was Narii Herring, crouching and holding on where the dim binnacle light shone upon him. He was quite naked, save for a belt and a bare-bladed knife thrust between it and the skin.

  Captain Warfield untied his lashings and made his way over the bodies of the others. When his face became visible in the light from the binnacle it was working with anger. They could see him speak, but the wind tore the sound away. He would not put his lips to Narii’s ear. Instead, he pointed over the side. Narii Herring understood. His white teeth showed in an amused and sneering smile, and he stood up, a magnificent figure of a man.

  “It’s murder!” Mulhall yelled to Grief.

  “He’d have murdered Old Parlay!” Grief yelled back.

  For the moment the poop was clear of water and the Malahini on an even keel. Narii made a bravado attempt to walk to the rail, but was flung down by the wind. Thereafter he crawled, disappearing in the darkness, though there was certitude in all of them that he had gone over the side. The Malahini dived deep, and when they emerged from the flood that swept aft, Grief got Mulhall’s ear.

  “Can’t lose him! He’s the Fish Man of Tahiti! He’ll cross the lagoon and land on the other rim of the atoll if there’s any atoll left!”

  Five minutes afterward, in another submergence, a mess of bodies poured down on them over the top of the cabin. These they seized and held till the water cleared, when they carried them below and learned their identity. Old Parlay lay oh his back on the floor, with closed eyes and without movement. The other two were his Kanaka cousins. All three were naked and bloody. The arm of one Kanaka hung helpless and broken at his side. The other man bled freely from a hideous scalp wound.

  “Narii did that?” Mulhall demanded.

  Grief shook his head. “No; it’s from being smashed along the deck and over the house!”

  Something suddenly ceased, leaving them in dizzying uncertainty. For the moment it was hard to realize there was no wind. With the absolute abruptness of a sword slash, the wind had been chopped off. The schooner rolled and plunged, fetching up on her anchors with a crash which for the first time they could hear. Also, for the first time they could hear the water washing about on deck. The engineer threw off the propeller and eased the engine down.

  “We’re in the dead centre,” Grief said. “Now for the shift. It will come as hard as ever.” He looked at the barometer. “29:32,” he read.

  Not in a moment could he tone down the voice which for hours had battled against the wind, and so loudly did he speak that in the quiet it hurt the others’ ears.

  “All his ribs are smashed,” the supercargo said, feeling along Parlay’s side. “He’s still breathing, but he’s a goner.”

  Old Parlay groaned, moved one arm impotently, and opened his eyes. In them was the light of recognition.

  “My brave gentlemen,” he whispered haltingly. “Don’t forget… the auction… at ten o’clock… in hell.”

  His eyes dropped shut and the lower jaw threatened to drop, but he mastered the qualms of dissolution long enough to omit one final, loud, derisive cackle.

  Above and below pandemonium broke out.

  The old familiar roar of the wind was with them. The Malahini, caught broadside, was pressed down almost on her beam ends as she swung the arc compelled by her anchors. They rounded her into the wind, where she jerked to an even keel. The propeller was thrown on, and the engine took up its work again.

  “Northwest!” Captain Warfield shouted to Grief when he came on deck. “Hauled eight points like a shot!”

  “Narii’ll never get across the lagoon now!” Grief observed.

  “Then he’ll blow back to our side, worse luck!”

  V

  After the passing of the centre the barometer began to rise. Equally rapid was the fall of the wind. When it was no more than a howling gale, the engine lifted up in the air, parted its bed-plates with a last convulsive effort of its forty horsepower, and lay down on its side. A wash of water from the bilge sizzled over it and the steam arose in clouds. The engineer wailed his dismay, but Grief glanced over the wreck affectionately and went into the cabin to swab the grease off his chest and arms with bunches of cotton waste.

  The sun was up and the gentlest of summer breezes blowing when he came on deck, after sewing up the scalp of one Kanaka and setting the other’s arm. The Malahini lay close in to the beach. For’ard, Hermann and the crew were heaving in and straightening out the tangle of anchors. The Papara and the Tahaa were gone, and Captain Warfield, through the glasses, was searching the opposite rim of the atoll.

  “Not a stick left of them,” he said. “That’s what comes of not having engines. They must have dragged across before the big shift came.”

  Ashore, where Parlay’s house had been, was no vestige of any house. For the space of three hundred yards, where the sea had breached, no tree or even stump was left. Here and there, farther along, stood an occasional palm, and there were numbers which had been snapped off above the ground. In the crown of one surviving palm Tai-Hotauri asserted he saw something move. There were no boats left to the Malahini, and they watched him swim ashore and climb the tree.

  When he came back, they helped over the rail a young native girl of Parley’s household. But first she passed up to them a battered basket. In it was a litter of blind kittens—all dead save one, that feebly mewed and staggered on awkward legs.

  “Hello!” said Mulhall. “Who’s that?”

  Along the beach they saw a man walking. He moved casually, as if out for a morning stroll. Captain Warfield gritted his teeth. It was Narii Herring.

  “Hello, skipper!” Narii called, when he was abreast of them. “Can I come aboard and get some breakfast?”

  Captain Warfield’s face and neck began to swell and turn purple. He tried to speak, but choked.

  “For two cents—for two cents—” was all he could manage to articulate.

  ABOUT STEPHEN CRANE

  Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

  The eighth surviving child of Methodist Protestant parents, Crane began writing at the age of four and had published several articles by the age of 16. Having little interest in university studies, he left school in 1891 and began work as a reporter and writer. Crane’s first novel was the 1893 Bowery tale Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which critics generally consider the first work of American literary Naturalism. He won international acclaim for his 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, which he wrote without any battle experience.

  In 1896, Crane endured a highly publicized scandal after acting as witness for a suspected prostitute. Late that year he accepted an offer to cover the Spanish-American War as a war correspondent. As he waited in Jacksonville, Florida for passage to Cuba, he met Cora Taylor, the madam of a brothel, with whom he would have a lasting relationship. While en route to Cuba, Crane’s ship sank off the coast of Florida, leaving him adrift for several days in a dinghy. His ordeal was later described in “The Open Boat”. During the final years of his life, he covered conflicts in Greece and lived in England with Cora, where he befriended writers such as Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells. Plagued by financial difficulties and ill health, Crane died of tuberculosis in a Black Forest sanatorium at the age of 28.

  At the time of his death, Crane had become an important figure in American literature. He was nearly forgotten, however, until two decades later when critics revived interest in his life and work. Stylistically, Crane’s writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crises and social isolation. Although recognized prim
arily for The Red Badge of Courage, which has become an American classic, Crane is also known for short stories such as “The Open Boat”, “The Blue Hotel”, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”, and The Monster. His writing made a deep impression on 20th century writers, most prominent among them Ernest Hemingway, and is thought to have inspired the Modernists and the Imagists.

  THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY, by Stephen Crane

  I

  The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued spaces of mesquite and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over the horizon, a precipice.

  A newly married pair had boarded this coach at San Antonio. The man’s face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct result of his new black clothes was that his brick-colored hands were constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time he looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a barber’s shop. The glances he devoted to other passengers were furtive and shy.

  The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head to regard her puff sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in placid, almost emotionless lines.

  They were evidently very happy. “Ever been in a parlor-car before?” he asked, smiling with delight.

  “No,” she answered, “I never was. It’s fine, ain’t it?”

  “Great! And then after a while we’ll go forward to the diner and get a big layout. Finest meal in the world. Charge a dollar.”