The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  The row of stokers cried at once, eagerly: “He’s hurt, sir. He’s got a broken jaw, sir.”

  “So he has, so he has,” murmured the captain, much embarrassed.

  And because of all these affairs, the Foundling steamed toward Cuba with its crew in a sling, if one may be allowed to speak in that way.

  III

  At night the Foundling approached the coast like a thief. Her lights were muffled so that from the deck the sea shone with its own radiance, like the faint shimmer of some kinds of silk. The men on deck spoke in whispers, and even down in the fireroom the hidden stokers, working before the blood-red furnace doors, used no words, and walked tiptoe. The stars were out in the blue velvet sky, and their light, with the soft shine of the sea, caused the coast to appear black as the side of a coffin. The surf boomed in low thunder on the distant beach.

  The Foundling’s engines ceased their thumping for a time. She glided quietly forward until a bell chimed faintly in the engine room. Then she paused, with a flourish of phosphorescent waters.

  “Give the signal,” said the captain. Three times a flash of light went from the bow. There was a moment of waiting. Then an eye like the one on the coast of Florida opened and closed, opened and closed, opened and closed. The Cubans, grouped in a great shadow on deck, burst into a low chatter of delight. A hiss from their leader silenced them.

  “Well?” said the captain.

  “All right,” said the leader.

  At the giving of the word it was not apparent that any one on board the Foundling had ever been seasick. The boats were lowered swiftly—too swiftly. Boxes of cartridges were dragged from the hold and passed over the side with a rapidity that made men in the boats exclaim against it. They were being bombarded. When a boat headed for shore, its rowers pulled like madmen. The captain paced slowly to and fro on the bridge. In the engine room the engineers stood at their station, and in the stokehole the firemen fidgeted silently around the furnace doors.

  On the bridge Flanagan reflected. “Oh, I don’t know,” he observed; “this filibustering business isn’t so bad. Pretty soon I’ll be off to sea again, with nothing to do but some big lying when I get into port.”

  In one of the boats returning from shore came twelve Cuban officers, the greater number of them convalescing from wounds, while two or three of them had been ordered to America on commissions from the insurgents. The captain welcomed them, and assured them of a speedy and safe voyage.

  Presently he went again to the bridge and scanned the horizon. The sea was lonely, like the spaces amid the suns. The captain grinned, and softly smote his chest. “It’s dead easy,” said he. It was near the end of the cargo, and the men were breathing like spent horses, although their elation grew with each moment, when suddenly a voice spoke from the sky. It was not a loud voice, but the quality of it brought every man on deck to full stop and motionless, as if they had all been changed to wax. “Captain,” said the man at the masthead, “there’s a light to the west’ard, sir. Think it’s a steamer, sir.”

  There was a still moment until the captain called, “Well, keep your eye on it now.” Speaking to the deck, he said, “Go ahead with your unloading.”

  The second engineer went to the galley to borrow a tin cup. “Hear the news, second?” asked the cook. “Steamer coming up from the west’ard.”

  “Gee!” said the second engineer. In the engine room he said to the chief: “Steamer coming up to the west’ard, sir.”

  The chief engineer began to test various little machines with which his domain was decorated. Finally he addressed the stokeroom: “Boys, I want you to look sharp now. There’s a steamer coming up to the west’ard.”

  “All right, sir,” said the stokeroom.

  From time to time the captain hailed the masthead. “How is she now?”

  “Seems to be coming down on us pretty fast, sir.”

  The Cuban leader came anxiously to the captain. “Do you think we can save all the cargo? It is rather delicate business. No?”

  “Go ahead,” said Flanagan. “Fire away. I’ll wait for you.”

  There continued the hurried shuffling of feet on deck, and the low cries of the men unloading the cargo. In the engine room the chief and his assistant were staring at the gong. In the stokeroom the firemen breathed through their teeth. A shovel slipped from where it leaned against the side, and banged on the floor. The stokers started, and looked around quickly.

  Climbing to the rail and holding on to a stay, the captain gazed westward. A light had raised out of the deep. After watching this light for a time, he called to the Cuban leader, “Well, as soon as you’re ready now, we might as well be skipping out.”

  Finally the Cuban leader told him: “Well, this is the last load. As soon as the boats come back you can be off.”

  “Shan’t wait for the boats,” said the captain. “That fellow is too close.” As the last boat went shoreward the Foundling turned, and like a black shadow stole seaward to cross the bows of the oncoming steamer. “Waited about ten minutes too long,” said the captain to himself.

  Suddenly the light in the west vanished. “Hum,” said Flanagan; “he’s up to some meanness.”

  Every one outside the engine rooms was set on watch. The Foundling, going at full speed into the northeast, slashed a wonderful trail of blue silver on the dark bosom of the sea.

  A man on deck cried out hurriedly, “There she is, sir!” Many eyes searched the western gloom, and one after another the glances of the men found a tiny black shadow on the deep, with a line of white beneath it.

  “He couldn’t be heading better if he had a line to us,” said Flanagan.

  There was a thin flash of red in the darkness. It was long and keen, like a crimson rapier. A short, sharp report sounded, and then a shot whined swiftly in the air and blipped into the sea. The captain had been about to take a bite of plug tobacco at the beginning of this incident, and his arm was raised. He remained like a frozen figure while the shot whined, and then, as it blipped into the sea, his hand went to his mouth, and he bit the plug. He looked wide-eyed at the shadow with its line of white.

  The senior Cuban officer came hurriedly to the bridge. “It is no good to surrender,” he cried; “they would only shoot or hang all of us.”

  There was another thin red flash and a report. A loud whirring noise passed over the ship.

  “I’m not going to surrender,” said the captain, hanging with both hands to the rail. He appeared like a man whose traditions of peace are clenched in his heart. He was as astonished as if his hat had turned into a dog. Presently he wheeled quickly, and said: “What kind of a gun is that?”

  “It is a one-pounder,” cried the Cuban officer. “The boat is one of those little gunboats made from a yacht. You see?”

  “Well, if it’s only a yawl, he’ll sink us in five more minutes,” said Flanagan. For a moment he looked helplessly off at the horizon. His under jaw hung low. But a moment later something touched him like a stiletto-point of inspiration. He leaped to the pilothouse, and roared at the man at the wheel. The Foundling sheered suddenly to starboard, made a clumsy turn, and Flanagan was bellowing through the tube to the engine room before anybody discovered that the old basket was heading straight for the Spanish gunboat. The ship lunged forward like a draught horse on the gallop.

  This strange maneuver by the Foundling first dealt consternation on board. Men instinctively crouched on the instant, and then swore their supreme oath, which was unheard by their own ears.

  Later the maneuver of the Foundling dealt consternation on board the gunboat. She had been going victoriously forward, dim-eyed from the fury of her pursuit. Then this tall, threatening shape had suddenly loomed over her like a giant apparition.

  The people on board the Foundling heard panic shouts, hoarse orders. The little gunboat was paralyzed with astonishment.

  Suddenly Flanagan yelled with rage, and sprang for the wheel. The helmsman had turned his eyes away. As the captain whirled the wheel
far to starboard, he heard a crunch, as the Foundling, lifted on a wave, smashed her shoulder against the gunboat, and he saw, shooting past, a little launch sort of a thing with men on her that ran this way and that way. The Cuban officers, joined by the cook and a seaman, emptied their revolvers into the surprised terror of the seas.

  There was naturally no pursuit. Under comfortable speed the Foundling stood to the northward.

  The captain went to his berth chuckling. “There, by God!” he said. “There, now!”

  IV

  When Flanagan came again on deck, the first mate, his arm in a sling, walked the bridge. Flanagan was smiling a wide smile. The bridge of the Foundling was dipping afar and then afar. With each lunge of the little steamer the water seethed and boomed alongside, and the spray dashed high and swiftly.

  “Well,” said Flanagan, inflating himself, “we’ve had a great deal of a time, and we’ve come through it all right, and thank Heaven it is all over.”

  The sky in the northeast was of a dull brick-red in tone, shaded here and there by black masses that billowed out in some fashion from the flat heavens.

  “Look there,” said the mate.

  “Hum,” said the captain. “Looks like a blow, don’t it?”

  Later the surface of the water rippled and flickered in the preliminary wind. The sea had become the color of lead. The swashing sound of the waves on the sides of the Foundling was now provided with some manner of ominous significance. The men’s shouts were hoarse.

  A squall struck the Foundling on her starboard quarter, and she leaned under the force of it as if she were never to return to the even keel. “I’ll be glad when we get in,” said the mate. “I’m going to quit then. I’ve got enough.”

  “Hell!” said the beaming Flanagan.

  The steamer crawled on into the northwest. The white water sweeping out from her deadened the chug-chug-chug of the tired old engines.

  Once, when the boat careened, she laid her shoulder flat on the sea and rested in that manner. The mate, looking down the bridge, which slanted more than a coal chute, whistled softly to himself. Slowly, heavily, the Foundling arose to meet another sea.

  At night waves thundered mightily on the bows of the steamer, and water, lighted with the beautiful phosphorescent glamor, went boiling and howling along the deck.

  By good fortune the chief engineer crawled safely, but utterly drenched, to the galley for coffee. “Well, how goes it, chief?” said the cook, standing with his fat arms folded, in order to prove that he could balance himself under any condition.

  The engineer shook his head slowly. “This old biscuit-box will never see port again. Why, she’ll fall to pieces.”

  Finally, at night, the captain said, “Launch the boats.” The Cubans hovered about him. “Is the ship going to sink?” The captain addressed them politely: “Gentlemen, we are in trouble; but all I ask of you is that you do just what I tell you, and no harm will come to anybody.”

  The mate directed the lowering of the first boat, and the men performed this task with all decency, like people at the side of a grave.

  A young oiler came to the captain. “The chief sends word, sir, that the water is almost up to the fires.”

  “Keep at it as long as you can.”

  “Keep at it as long as we can, sir.”

  Flanagan took the senior Cuban officer to the rail, and, as the steamer sheered high on a great sea, showed him a yellow dot on the horizon. It was smaller than a needle when its point is toward you.

  “There,” said the captain. The wind-driven spray was lashing his face. “That’s Jupiter Light on the Florida coast. Put your men in the boat we’ve just launched, and the mate will take you to that light.”

  Afterward Flanagan turned to the chief engineer. “We can never beach her,” said the old man. “The stokers have got to quit in a minute.” Tears were in his eyes.

  The Foundling was a wounded thing. She lay on the water with gasping engines, and each wave resembled her death blow.

  Now the way of a good ship on the sea is finer than swordplay; but this is when she is alive. If a time comes that the ship dies, then her way is the way of a floating old glove, and she has that much vim, spirit, buoyancy. At this time many men on the Foundling suddenly came to know that they were clinging to a corpse.

  The captain went to the stokeroom, and what he saw as he swung down the companion suddenly turned him hesitant and dumb. He had served the sea for many years, but this fireroom said something to him which he had not heard in his other voyages. Water was swirling to and fro with the roll of the ship, fuming greasily around half-strangled machinery that still attempted to perform its duty. Steam arose from the water, and through its clouds shone the red glare of the dying fires. As for the stokers, death might have been with silence in this room. One lay in his berth, his hands under his head, staring moodily at the wall. One sat near the foot of the companion, his face hidden in his arms. One leaned against the side, and gazed at the snarling water as it rose, and its mad eddies among the machinery. In the unholy red light and gray mist of this stifling, dim inferno they were strange figures with their silence and their immobility. The wretched Foundling groaned deeply as she lifted, and groaned deeply as she sank into the trough, while hurried waves then thundered over her with the noise of landslides.

  But Flanagan took control of himself suddenly, and then he stirred the fireroom. The stillness had been so unearthly that he was not altogether inapprehensive of strange and grim deeds when he charged into them; but precisely as they had submitted to the sea, so they submitted to Flanagan. For a moment they rolled their eyes like hurt cows, but they obeyed the voice. The situation simply required a voice.

  When the captain returned to the deck the hue of this fireroom was in his mind, and then he understood doom and its weight and complexion.

  When finally the Foundling sank, she shifted and settled as calmly as an animal curls down in the bush-grass. Away over the waves three bobbing boats paused to witness this quiet death. It was a slow maneuver, altogether without the pageantry of uproar; but it flashed pallor into the faces of all men who saw it, and they groaned when they said, “There she goes!” Suddenly the captain whirled and knocked his head on the gunwale. He sobbed for a time, and then he sobbed and swore also.

  V

  There was a dance at the Imperial Inn. During the evening some irresponsible young men came from the beach, bringing the statement that several boatloads of people had been perceived offshore. It was a charming dance, and none cared to take time to believe this tale. The fountain in the courtyard plashed softly, and couple after couple paraded through the aisles of palms, where lamps with red shades threw a rose light upon the gleaming leaves. High on some balcony a mockingbird called into the evening. The band played its waltzes slumbrously, and its music to the people among the palms came faintly and like the melodies in dreams.

  Sometimes a woman said, “Oh, it is not really true, is it, that there was a wreck out at sea?”

  A man usually said, “No; of course not.”

  At last, however, a youth came violently from the beach. He was triumphant in manner. “They’re out there,” he cried—“a whole boatload!” He received eager attention, and he told all that he supposed. His news destroyed the dance. After a time the band was playing delightfully to space. The guests had donned wraps and hurried to the beach. One little girl cried, “Oh, mama, may I go too?” Being refused permission, she pouted.

  As they came from the shelter of the great hotel, the wind was blowing swiftly from the sea, and at intervals a breaker shone livid. The women shuddered, and their bending companions seized the opportunity to draw the cloaks closer. The sand of the beach was wet, and dainty slippers made imprints in it clear and deep.

  “Oh dear,” said a girl; “supposin’ they were out there drowning while we were dancing!”

  “Oh, nonsense!” said her younger brother; “that don’t happen.”

  “Well, it might, you know,
Roger. How can you tell?”

  A man who was not her brother gazed at her then with profound admiration. Later she complained of the damp sand and, drawing back her skirts, looked ruefully at her little feet.

  A mother’s son was venturing too near to the water in his interest and excitement. Occasionally she cautioned and reproached him from the background.

  Save for the white glare of the breakers, the sea was a great wind-crossed void. From the throng of charming women floated the perfume of many flowers. Later there floated to them a body with a calm face of an Irish type. The expedition of the Foundling will never be historic.

  August 28, 1897

  [The Illustrated London News, Vol. III, pp. 279–282.]

  AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING

  The melancholy fisherman made his way through a street that was mainly as dark as a tunnel. Sometimes an open door threw a rectangle of light upon the pavement, and within the cottages were scenes of working women and men, who comfortably smoked and talked. From them came the sounds of laughter and the babble of children. Each time the old man passed through one of these radiant zones the light etched his face in profile with touches flaming and somber, until there was a resemblance to a stern and mournful Dante portrait.

  Once a whistling lad came through the darkness. He peered intently for purposes of recognition. “Good avenin’, Mickey,” he cried cheerfully. The old man responded with a groan, which intimated that the lamentable reckless optimism of the youth had forced from him an expression of an emotion that he had been enduring in saintly patience and silence. He continued his pilgrimage toward the kitchen of the village inn.

  The kitchen is a great and worthy place. The long range with its lurid heat continually emits the fragrance of broiling fish, roasting mutton, joints, and fowl. The high black ceiling is ornamented with hams and flitches of bacon. There is a long, dark bench against one wall, and it is fronted by a dark table, handy for glasses of stout. On an old mahogany dresser rows of plates face the distant range, and reflect the red shine of the peat. Smoke which has in it the odor of an American forest fire eddies through the air. The great stones of the floor are scarred by the black mud from the inn yard. And here the gossip of a countryside goes on amid the sizzle of broiling fish and the loud protesting splutter of joints taken from the oven.