by Jack London
“I knew I was right,” he almost shouted, when he had worked up the observation. “Twenty-one, fifty-five, south; one-thirty-six, two, west. There you are. We’re eight miles to windward yet. What did you make it out, Mr. Konig?”
The first mate glanced at his own figures, and said in a low voice:
“Twenty-one, fifty-five all right; but my longitude’s one-thirty-six, forty-eight. That puts us considerably to leeward—”
But Captain Davenport ignored his figures with so contemptuous a silence as to make Mr. Konig grit his teeth and curse savagely under his breath.
“Keep her off,” the captain ordered the man at the wheel. “Three points—steady there, as she goes!”
Then he returned to his figures and worked them over. The sweat poured from his face. He chewed his mustache, his lips, and his pencil, staring at the figures as a man might at a ghost. Suddenly, with a fierce, muscular outburst, he crumpled the scribbled paper in his fist and crushed it under foot. Mr. Konig grinned vindictively and turned away, while Captain Davenport leaned against the cabin and for half an hour spoke no word, contenting himself with gazing to leeward with an expression of musing hopelessness on his face.
“Mr. McCoy,” he broke silence abruptly. “The chart indicates a group of islands, but not how many, off there to the north’ard, or nor’-nor’westward, about forty miles—the Acteon Islands . What about them?”
“There are four, all low,” McCoy answered. “First to the southeast is Matuerui—no people, no entrance to the lagoon. Then comes Tenarunga. There used to be about a dozen people there, but they may be all gone now. Anyway, there is no entrance for a ship—only a boat entrance, with a fathom of water. Vehauga and Teua-raro are the other two. No entrances, no people, very low. There is no bed for the Pyrenees in that group. She would be a total wreck.”
“Listen to that!” Captain Davenport was frantic. “No people! No entrances! What in the devil are islands good for?
“Well, then,” he barked suddenly, like an excited terrier, “the chart gives a whole mess of islands off to the nor’west. What about them? What one has an entrance where I can lay my ship?”
McCoy calmly considered. He did not refer to the chart. All these islands, reefs, shoals, lagoons, entrances, and distances were marked on the chart of his memory. He knew them as the city dweller knows his buildings, streets, and alleys.
“Papakena and Vanavana are off there to the westward, or west-nor’westward a hundred miles and a bit more,” he said. “One is uninhabited, and I heard that the people on the other had gone off to Cadmus Island . Anyway, neither lagoon has an entrance. Ahunui is another hundred miles on to the nor’west. No entrance, no people.”
“Well, forty miles beyond them are two islands?” Captain Davenport queried, raising his head from the chart.
McCoy shook his head.
” Paros and Manuhungi—no entrances, no people. Nengo-Nengo is forty miles beyond them, in turn, and it has no people and no entrance. But there is Hao Island . It is just the place. The lagoon is thirty miles long and five miles wide. There are plenty of people. You can usually find water. And any ship in the world can go through the entrance.”
He ceased and gazed solicitously at Captain Davenport, who, bending over the chart with a pair of dividers in hand, had just emitted a low groan.
“Is there any lagoon with an entrance anywhere nearer than Hao Island ?” he asked.
“No, Captain; that is the nearest.”
“Well, it’s three hundred and forty miles.” Captain Davenport was speaking very slowly, with decision. “I won’t risk the responsibility of all these lives. I’ll wreck her on the Acteons. And she’s a good ship, too,” he added regretfully, after altering the course, this time making more allowance than ever for the westerly current.
An hour later the sky was overcast. The southeast trade still held, but the ocean was a checker board of squalls.
“We’ll be there by one o’clock,” Captain Davenport announced confidently. “By two o’clock at the outside. McCoy, you put her ashore on the one where the people are.”
The sun did not appear again, nor, at one o’clock, was any land to be seen. Captain Davenport looked astern at the Pyrenees ‘ canting wake.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “An easterly current? Look at that!”
Mr. Konig was incredulous. McCoy was noncommittal, though he said that in the Paumotus there was no reason why it should not be an easterly current. A few minutes later a squall robbed the Pyrenees temporarily of all her wind, and she was left rolling heavily in the trough.
“Where’s that deep lead? Over with it, you there!” Captain Davenport held the lead line and watched it sag off to the northeast. “There, look at that! Take hold of it for yourself.”
McCoy and the mate tried it, and felt the line thrumming and vibrating savagely to the grip of the tidal stream.
“A four-knot current,” said Mr. Konig.
“An easterly current instead of a westerly,” said Captain ” Davenport , glaring accusingly at McCoy, as if to cast the blame for it upon him.
“That is one of the reasons, Captain, for insurance being eighteen per cent in these waters,” McCoy answered cheerfully. “You can never tell. The currents are always changing. There was a man who wrote books, I forget his name, in the yacht Casco. He missed Takaroa by thirty miles and fetched Tikei, all because of the shifting currents. You are up to windward now, and you’d better keep off a few points.”
“But how much has this current set me?” the captain demanded irately. “How am I to know how much to keep off?”
“I don’t know, Captain,” McCoy said with great gentleness.
The wind returned, and the PYRENEES , her deck smoking and shimmering in the bright gray light, ran off dead to leeward. Then she worked back, port tack and starboard tack, crisscrossing her track, combing the sea for the Acteon Islands , which the masthead lookouts failed to sight.
Captain Davenport was beside himself. His rage took the form of sullen silence, and he spent the afternoon in pacing the poop or leaning against the weather shrouds. At nightfall, without even consulting McCoy, he squared away and headed into the northwest. Mr. Konig, surreptitiously consulting chart and binnacle, and McCoy, openly and innocently consulting the binnacle, knew that they were running for Hao Island . By midnight the squalls ceased, and the stars came out. Captain Davenport was cheered by the promise of a clear day.
“I’ll get an observation in the morning,” he told McCoy, “though what my latitude is, is a puzzler. But I’ll use the Sumner method, and settle that. Do you know the Sumner line?”
And thereupon he explained it in detail to McCoy.
The day proved clear, the trade blew steadily out of the east, and the Pyrenees just as steadily logged her nine knots. Both the captain and mate worked out the position on a Sumner line, and agreed, and at noon agreed again, and verified the morning sights by the noon sights.
“Another twenty-four hours and we’ll be there,” Captain Davenport assured McCoy. “It’s a miracle the way the old girl’s decks hold out. But they can’t last. They can’t last. Look at them smoke, more and more every day. Yet it was a tight deck to begin with, fresh-calked in Frisco. I was surprised when the fire first broke out and we battened down. Look at that!”
He broke off to gaze with dropped jaw at a spiral of smoke that coiled and twisted in the lee of the mizzenmast twenty feet above the deck.
“Now, how did that get there?” he demanded indignantly.
Beneath it there was no smoke. Crawling up from the deck, sheltered from the wind by the mast, by some freak it took form and visibility at that height. It writhed away from the mast, and for a moment overhung the captain like some threatening portent. The next moment the wind whisked it away, and the captain’s jaw returned to place.
“As I was saying, when we first battened down, I was surprised. It was a tight deck, yet it leaked smoke like a sieve. And we’ve calked and calked ever since.
There must be tremendous pressure underneath to drive so much smoke through.”
That afternoon the sky became overcast again, and squally, drizzly weather set in. The wind shifted back and forth between southeast and northeast, and at midnight the Pyrenees was caught aback by a sharp squall from the southwest, from which point the wind continued to blow intermittently.
“We won’t make Hao until ten or eleven,” Captain Davenport complained at seven in the morning, when the fleeting promise of the sun had been erased by hazy cloud masses in the eastern sky. And the next moment he was plaintively demanding, “And what are the currents doing?”
Lookouts at the mastheads could report no land, and the day passed in drizzling calms and violent squalls. By nightfall a heavy sea began to make from the west. The barometer had fallen to 29.50. There was no wind, and still the ominous sea continued to increase. Soon the Pyrenees was rolling madly in the huge waves that marched in an unending procession from out of the darkness of the west. Sail was shortened as fast as both watches could work, and, when the tired crew had finished, its grumbling and complaining voices, peculiarly animal-like and menacing, could be heard in the darkness. Once the starboard watch was called aft to lash down and make secure, and the men openly advertised their sullenness and unwillingness. Every slow movement was a protest and a threat. The atmosphere was moist and sticky like mucilage, and in the absence of wind all hands seemed to pant and gasp for air. The sweat stood out on faces and bare arms, and Captain Davenport for one, his face more gaunt and care-worn than ever, and his eyes troubled and staring, was oppressed by a feeling of impending calamity.
“It’s off to the westward,” McCoy said encouragingly. “At worst, we’ll be only on the edge of it.”
But Captain Davenport refused to be comforted, and by the light of a lantern read up the chapter in his Epitome that related to the strategy of shipmasters in cyclonic storms. From somewhere amidships the silence was broken by a low whimpering from the cabin boy.
“Oh, shut up!” Captain Davenport yelled suddenly and with such force as to startle every man on board and to frighten the offender into a wild wail of terror.
“Mr. Konig,” the captain said in a voice that trembled with rage and nerves, “will you kindly step for’ard and stop that brat’s mouth with a deck mop?”
But it was McCoy who went forward, and in a few minutes had the boy comforted and asleep.
Shortly before daybreak the first breath of air began to move from out the southeast, increasing swiftly to a stiff and stiffer breeze. All hands were on deck waiting for what might be behind it. “We’re all right now, Captain,” said McCoy, standing close to his shoulder. “The hurricane is to the west’ard, and we are south of it. This breeze is the in-suck. It won’t blow any harder. You can begin to put sail on her.”
“But what’s the good? Where shall I sail? This is the second day without observations, and we should have sighted Hao Island yesterday morning. Which way does it bear, north, south, east, or what? Tell me that, and I’ll make sail in a jiffy.”
“I am no navigator, Captain,” McCoy said in his mild way.
“I used to think I was one,” was the retort, “before I got into these Paumotus.”
At midday the cry of “Breakers ahead!” was heard from the lookout. The Pyrenees was kept off, and sail after sail was loosed and sheeted home. The Pyrenees was sliding through the water and fighting a current that threatened to set her down upon the breakers. Officers and men were working like mad, cook and cabin boy, Captain Davenport himself, and McCoy all lending a hand. It was a close shave. It was a low shoal, a bleak and perilous place over which the seas broke unceasingly, where no man could live, and on which not even sea birds could rest. The PYRENEES was swept within a hundred yards of it before the wind carried her clear, and at this moment the panting crew, its work done, burst out in a torrent of curses upon the head of McCoy—of McCoy who had come on board, and proposed the run to Mangareva, and lured them all away from the safety of Pitcairn Island to certain destruction in this baffling and terrible stretch of sea. But McCoy’s tranquil soul was undisturbed. He smiled at them with simple and gracious benevolence, and, somehow, the exalted goodness of him seemed to penetrate to their dark and somber souls, shaming them, and from very shame stilling the curses vibrating in their throats.
“Bad waters! Bad waters!” Captain Davenport was murmuring as his ship forged clear; but he broke off abruptly to gaze at the shoal which should have been dead astern, but which was already on the PYRENEES ‘ weather-quarter and working up rapidly to windward.
He sat down and buried his face in his hands. And the first mate saw, and McCoy saw, and the crew saw, what he had seen. South of the shoal an easterly current had set them down upon it; north of the shoal an equally swift westerly current had clutched the ship and was sweeping her away.
“I’ve heard of these Paumotus before,” the captain groaned, lifting his blanched face from his hands. “Captain Moyendale told me about them after losing his ship on them. And I laughed at him behind his back. God forgive me, I laughed at him. What shoal is that?” he broke off, to ask McCoy.
“I don’t know, Captain.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“Because I never saw it before, and because I have never heard of it. I do know that it is not charted. These waters have never been thoroughly surveyed.”
“Then you don’t know where we are?”
“No more than you do,” McCoy said gently.
At four in the afternoon cocoanut trees were sighted, apparently growing out of the water. A little later the low land of an atoll was raised above the sea.
“I know where we are now, Captain.” McCoy lowered the glasses from his eyes. “That’s Resolution Island . We are forty miles beyond Hao Island , and the wind is in our teeth.”
“Get ready to beach her then. Where’s the entrance?”
“There’s only a canoe passage. But now that we know where we are, we can run for Barclay de Tolley. It is only one hundred and twenty miles from here, due nor’-nor’west. With this breeze we can be there by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Captain Davenport consulted the chart and debated with himself.
“If we wreck her here,” McCoy added, “we’d have to make the run to Barclay de Tolley in the boats just the same.”
The captain gave his orders, and once more the Pyrenees swung off for another run across the inhospitable sea.
And the middle of the next afternoon saw despair and mutiny on her smoking deck. The current had accelerated, the wind had slackened, and the Pyrenees had sagged off to the west. The lookout sighted Barclay de Tolley to the eastward, barely visible from the masthead, and vainly and for hours the PYRENEES tried to beat up to it. Ever, like a mirage, the cocoanut trees hovered on the horizon, visible only from the masthead. From the deck they were hidden by the bulge of the world.
Again Captain Davenport consulted McCoy and the chart. Makemo lay seventy-five miles to the southwest. Its lagoon was thirty miles long, and its entrance was excellent. When Captain Davenport gave his orders, the crew refused duty. They announced that they had had enough of hell fire under their feet. There was the land. What if the ship could not make it? They could make it in the boats. Let her burn, then. Their lives amounted to something to them. They had served faithfully the ship, now they were going to serve themselves.
They sprang to the boats, brushing the second and third mates out of the way, and proceeded to swing the boats out and to prepare to lower away. Captain Davenport and the first mate, revolvers in hand, were advancing to the break of the poop, when McCoy, who had climbed on top of the cabin, began to speak.
He spoke to the sailors, and at the first sound of his dovelike, cooing voice they paused to hear. He extended to them his own ineffable serenity and peace. His soft voice and simple thoughts flowed out to them in a magic stream, soothing them against their wills. Long forgotten things came back to them, and some remembered lullaby song
s of childhood and the content and rest of the mother’s arm at the end of the day. There was no more trouble, no more danger, no more irk, in all the world. Everything was as it should be, and it was only a matter of course that they should turn their backs upon the land and put to sea once more with hell fire hot beneath their feet.
McCoy spoke simply; but it was not what he spoke. It was his personality that spoke more eloquently than any word he could utter. It was an alchemy of soul occultly subtile and profoundly deep—a mysterious emanation of the spirit, seductive, sweetly humble, and terribly imperious. It was illumination in the dark crypts of their souls, a compulsion of purity and gentleness vastly greater than that which resided in the shining, death-spitting revolvers of the officers.
The men wavered reluctantly where they stood, and those who had loosed the turns made them fast again. Then one, and then another, and then all of them, began to sidle awkwardly away.
McCoy’s face was beaming with childlike pleasure as he descended from the top of the cabin. There was no trouble. For that matter there had been no trouble averted. There never had been any trouble, for there was no place for such in the blissful world in which he lived.
“You hypnotized em,” Mr. Konig grinned at him, speaking in a low voice.
“Those boys are good,” was the answer. “Their hearts are good. They have had a hard time, and they have worked hard, and they will work hard to the end.”
Mr. Konig had not time to reply. His voice was ringing out orders, the sailors were springing to obey, and the PYRENEES was paying slowly off from the wind until her bow should point in the direction of Makemo.
The wind was very light, and after sundown almost ceased. It was insufferably warm, and fore and aft men sought vainly to sleep. The deck was too hot to lie upon, and poisonous vapors, oozing through the seams, crept like evil spirits over the ship, stealing into the nostrils and windpipes of the unwary and causing fits of sneezing and coughing. The stars blinked lazily in the dim vault overhead; and the full moon, rising in the east, touched with its light the myriads of wisps and threads and spidery films of smoke that intertwined and writhed and twisted along the deck, over the rails, and up the masts and shrouds.