Moran of the Lady Letty
“Stand by for stays.”
As before, one of the Chinese hands stood by the sail rope of the jib.
“Draw y’r jib.”
The jib filled. The schooner came about on the port tack; Lime Point fell away over the stern rail. The huge ground swells began to come in, and as she rose and bowed to the first of these it was precisely as though the “Bertha Millner” were making her courtesy to the great gray ocean, now for the first time in full sight on her starboard quarter.
The schooner was beating out to sea through the Middle Channel. Once clear of the Golden Gate, she stood over toward the Cliff House, then on the next tack cleared Point Bonita. The sea began building up in deadly earnest—they were about to cross the bar. Everything was battened down, the scuppers were awash, and the hawse-holes spouted like fountains after every plunge. Once the Captain ordered all men aloft, just in time to escape a gigantic dull green roller that broke like a Niagara over the schooner’s bows, smothering the decks knee-deep in a twinkling.
The wind blew violent and cold, the spray was flying like icy small-shot. Without intermission the “Bertha Millner” rolled and plunged and heaved and sank. Wilbur was drenched to the skin and sore in every joint, from being shunted from rail to mast and from mast to rail again. The cordage sang like harp-strings, the schooner’s forefoot crushed down into the heaving water with a hissing like that of steam, blocks rattled, the Captain bellowed his orders, rope-ends flogged the hollow deck till it reverberated like a drum-head. The crossing of the bar was one long half-hour of confusion and discordant sound.
When they were across the bar the Captain ordered the cook to give the men their food.
“Git for’rd, sonny,” he added, fixing Wilbur with his eye. “Git for’rd, this is tawble dee hote, savvy?”
Wilbur crawled forward on the reeling deck, holding on now to a mast, now to a belaying-pin, now to a stay, watching his chance and going on between the inebriated plunges of the schooner.
He descended the fo’c’sle hatch. The Chinamen were already there, sitting on the edges of their bunks. On the floor, at the bottom of the ladder, punk-sticks were burning in an old tomato-can.
Charlie brought in supper—stewed beef and pork in a bread-pan and a wooden kit—and the Chinamen ate in silence with their sheath-knives and from tin plates. A liquid that bore a distant resemblance to coffee was served. Wilbur learned afterward to know the stuff as Black Jack, and to be aware that it was made from bud barley and was sweetened with molasses. A single reeking lamp swung with the swinging of the schooner over the centre of the group, and long after Wilbur could remember the grisly scene—the punk-sticks, the bread-pan full of hunks of meat, the horrid close and oily smell, and the circle of silent, preoccupied Chinese, each sitting on his bunk-ledge, devouring stewed pork and holding his pannikin of Black Jack between his feet against the rolling of the boat.
Wilbur looked fearfully at the mess in the pan, recalling the chocolate and stuffed olives that had been his last luncheon.
“Well,” he muttered, clinching his teeth, “I’ve got to come to it sooner or later.” His penknife was in the pocket of his waist-coat, underneath his oilskin coat. He opened the big blade, harpooned a cube of pork, and deposited it on his tin plate. He ate it slowly and with savage determination. But the Black Jack was more than he could bear.
“I’m not hungry enough for that just now,” he told himself. “Say, Jim,” he said, turning to the Chinaman next him on the bunk-ledge, “say, what kind of boat is this? What you do—where you go?”
The other moved away impatiently.
“No sabe, no sabe,” he answered, shaking his head and frowning. Throughout the whole of that strange meal these were the only words spoken.
When Wilbur came on deck again he noted that the “Bertha Millner” had already left the whistling-buoy astern. Off to the east, her sails just showing above the waves, was a pilot-boat with the number 7 on her mainsail. The evening was closing in; the Farallones were in plain sight dead ahead. Far behind, in a mass of shadow just bluer than the sky, he could make out a few twinkling lights—San Francisco.
Half an hour later Kitchell came on deck from his supper in the cabin aft. He glanced in the direction of the mainland, now almost out of sight, then took the wheel from one of the Chinamen and commanded, “Ease off y’r fore an’ main sheets.” The hands eased away and the schooner played off before the wind.
The staysail was set. The “Bertha Millner” headed to southwest, bowling easily ahead of a good eight-knot breeze.
Next came the order “All hands aft!” and Wilbur and his mates betook themselves to the quarterdeck. Charlie took the wheel, and he and Kitchell began to choose the men for their watches, just as Wilbur remembered to have chosen sides for baseball during his school days.
“Sonny, I’ll choose you; you’re on my watch,” said the Captain to Wilbur, “and I will assoom the ree-sponsibility of your nautical eddoocation.”
“I may as well tell you at once,” began Wilbur, “that I’m no sailor.”
“But you will be, soon,” answered the Captain, at once soothing and threatening; “you will be, Mister Lilee of the Vallee, you kin lay to it as how you will be one of the best sailormen along the front, as our dear friend Jim says. Before I git throo with you, you’ll be a sailorman or shark-bait, I can promise you. You’re on my watch; step over here, son.”
The watches were divided, Charlie and three other Chinamen on the port, Kitchell, Wilbur, and two Chinamen on the starboard. The men trooped forward again.
The tiny world of the schooner had lapsed to quiet. The “Bertha Millner” was now clear of the land, that lay like a blur of faintest purple smoke—ever growing fainter—low in the east. The Farallones showed but their shoulders above the horizon. The schooner was standing well out from shore—even beyond the track of the coasters and passenger steamers—to catch the Trades from the northwest. The sun was setting royally, and the floor of the ocean shimmered like mosaic. The sea had gone down and the fury of the bar was a thing forgotten. It was perceptibly warmer.
On board, the two watches mingled forward, smoking opium and playing a game that looked like checkers. Three of them were washing down the decks with kaiar brooms. For the first time since he had come on board Wilbur heard the sound of their voices.
The evening was magnificent. Never to Wilbur’s eyes had the Pacific appeared so vast, so radiant, so divinely beautiful. A star or two burned slowly through that part of the sky where the pink began to fade into the blue. Charlie went forward and set the side lights—red on the port rigging, green on the starboard. As he passed Wilbur, who was leaning over the rail and watching the phosphorus flashing just under the surface, he said:
“Hey, you go talkee-talk one-piecey Boss, savvy Boss—chin-chin.”
Wilbur went aft and came up on the poop, where Kitchell stood at the wheel, smoking an inverted “Tarrier’s Delight.”
“Now, son,” began Kitchell, “I natch’ly love you so that I’m goin’ to do you a reel favor, do you twig? I’m goin’ to allow you to berth aft in the cabin, ‘long o’ me an’ Charlie, an’ beesides you can make free of my quarterdeck. Mebbee you ain’t used to the ways of sailormen just yet, but you can lay to it that those two are reel concessions, savvy? I ain’t a mush-head, like mee dear friend Jim. You ain’t no water-front swine, I can guess that with one hand tied beehind me. You’re a toff, that’s what you are, and your lines has been laid for toffs. I ain’t askin’ you no questions, but you got brains, an’ I figger on gettin’ more outa you by lettin’ you have y’r head a bit. But mind, now, you get gay once, sonny, or try to flimflam me, or forget that I’m the boss of the bathtub, an’ strike me blind, I’ll cut you open, an’ you can lay to that, son. Now, then, here’s the game: You work this boat ‘long with the coolies, an’ take my orders, an’ walk chalk, an’ I’ll teach you navigation, an’ make this cruise as easy as how-do-you-do. You don’t, an’ I’ll manhandle you till y’r bones come throo y’r hide.”
“I’ve no choice in the matter,” said Wilbur. “I’ve got to make the best of a bad situation.”
“I ree-marked as how you had brains,” muttered the Captain.
“But there’s one thing,” continued Wilbur; “if I’m to have my head a little, as you say, you’ll find we can get along better if you put me to rights about this whole business. Why was I brought aboard, why are there only Chinese along, where are we going, what are we going to do, and how long are we going to be gone?”
Kitchell spat over the side, and then sucked the nicotine from his mustache.
“Well,” he said, resuming his pipe, “it’s like this, son. This ship belongs to one of the Six Chinese Companies of Chinatown in Frisco. Charlie, here, is one of the shareholders in the business. We go down here twice a year off Cape Sain’ Lucas, Lower California, an’ fish for blue sharks, or white, if we kin ketch ‘em. We get the livers of these an’ try out the oil, an’ we bring back that same oil, an’ the Chinamen sell it all over San Francisco as simon-pure cod-liver oil, savvy? An’ it pays like a nitrate bed. I come in because it’s a Custom-house regulation that no coolie can take a boat out of Frisco.”
“And how do I come in?” asked Wilbur.
“Mee dear friend Jim put a knock-me-out drop into your Manhattan cocktail. It’s a capsule filled with a drug. You were shanghaied, son,” said the Captain, blandly.
About an hour later Wilbur turned in. Kitchell showed him his bunk with its “donkey’s breakfast” and single ill-smelling blanket. It was located under the companionway that led down into the cabin. Kitchell bunked on one side, Charlie on the other. A hacked deal table, covered with oilcloth and ironed to the floor, a swinging-lamp, two chairs, a rack of books, a chest or two, and a flaring picture cut from the advertisement of a ballet, was the room’s inventory in the matter of furniture and ornament.
Wilbur sat on the edge of his bunk before undressing, reviewing the extraordinary events of the day. In a moment he was aware of a movement in one of the other two bunks, and presently made out Charlie lying on his side and holding in the flame of an alcohol lamp a skewer on which some brown and sticky stuff boiled and sizzled. He transformed the stuff to the bowl of a huge pipe and drew on it noisily once or twice. In another moment he had sunk back in his bunk, nearly senseless, but with a long breath of an almost blissful contentment.
“Beast!” muttered Wilbur, with profound disgust.
He threw off his oilskin coat and felt in the pocket of his waistcoat (which he had retained when he had changed his clothes in the fo’c’sle) for his watch. He drew it out. It was just nine o’clock. All at once an idea occurred to him. He fumbled in another pocket of the waistcoat and brought out one of his calling-cards.
For a moment Wilbur remained motionless, seated on the bunk-ledge, smiling grimly, while his glance wandered now to the sordid cabin of the “Bertha Millner” and the opium-drugged coolie sprawled on the “donkey’s breakfast,” and now to the card in his hand on which a few hours ago he had written:
“First waltz—Jo.”
III. THE LADY LETTY
Another day passed, then two. Before Wilbur knew it he had settled himself to his new life, and woke one morning to the realization that he was positively enjoying himself. Daily the weather grew warmer. The fifth day out from San Francisco it was actually hot. The pitch grew soft in the “Bertha Millner’s” deck seams, the masts sweated resin. The Chinamen went about the decks wearing but their jeans and blouses. Kitchell had long since abandoned his coat and vest. Wilbur’s oilskins became intolerable, and he was at last constrained to trade his pocket-knife to Charlie for a suit of jeans and wicker sandals, such as the coolies wore—and odd enough he looked in them.
The Captain instructed him in steering, and even promised to show him the use of the sextant and how to take an observation in the fake short and easy coasting style of navigation. Furthermore, he showed him how to read the log and the manner of keeping the dead reckoning.
During most of his watches Wilbur was engaged in painting the inside of the cabin, door panels, lintels, and the few scattered moldings; and toward the middle of the first week out, when the “Bertha Millner” was in the latitude of Point Conception, he and three Chinamen, under Kitchell’s directions, ratlined down the forerigging and affixed the crow’s nest upon the for’mast. The next morning, during Charlie’s watch on deck, a Chinaman was sent up into the crow’s nest, and from that time on there was always a lookout maintained from the masthead.
More than once Wilbur looked around him at the empty coruscating indigo of the ocean floor, wondering at the necessity of the lookout, and finally expressed his curiosity to Kitchell. The Captain had now taken not a little to Wilbur; at first for the sake of a white man’s company, and afterward because he began to place a certain vague reliance upon Wilbur’s judgment. Kitchell had reemarked as how he had brains.
“Well, you see, son,” Kitchell had explained to Wilbur, “os-tensiblee we are after shark-liver oil—and so we are; but also we are on any lay that turns up; ready for any game, from wrecking to barratry. Strike me, if I haven’t thought of scuttling the dough-dish for her insoorance. There’s regular trade, son, to be done in ships, and then there’s pickin’s an’ pickin’s an’ pickin’s. Lord, the ocean’s rich with pickin’s. Do you know there’s millions made out of the day-bree and refuse of a big city? How about an ocean’s day-bree, just chew on that notion a turn; an’ as fur a lookout, lemmee tell you, son, cast your eye out yon,” and he swept the sea with a forearm; “nothin’, hey, so it looks, but lemmee tell you, son, there ain’t no manner of place on the ball of dirt where you’re likely to run up afoul of so many things—unexpected things—as at sea. When you’re clear o’ land lay to this here pree-cep’, ‘A million to one on the unexpected.’”
The next day fell almost dead calm. The hale, lusty-lunged nor’wester that had snorted them forth from the Golden Gate had lapsed to a zephyr, the schooner rolled lazily southward with the leisurely nonchalance of a grazing ox. At noon, just after dinner, a few cat’s-paws curdled the milky-blue whiteness of the glassy surface, and the water once more began to talk beneath the bow-sprit. It was very hot. The sun spun silently like a spinning brass discus over the mainmast. On the fo’c’sle head the Chinamen were asleep or smoking opium. It was Charlie’s watch. Kitchell dozed in his hammock in the shadow of the mainsheet. Wilbur was below tinkering with his paint-pot about the cabin. The stillness was profound. It was the stillness of the summer sea at high noon.
The lookout in the crow’s nest broke the quiet.
“Hy-yah, hy-yah!” he cried, leaning from the barrel and calling through an arched palm. “Hy-yah, one two, plenty, many tortle, topside, wattah; hy-yah, all-same tortle.”
“Hello, hello!” cried the Captain, rolling from his hammock. “Turtle? Where-away?”
“I tink-um ‘bout quallah mile, mebbee, four-piecee tortle all-same weatha bow.”
“Turtle, hey? Down y’r wheel, Jim, haul y’r jib to win’ward,” he commanded the man at the wheel; then to the men forward: “Get the dory overboard. Son, Charlie, and you, Wing, tumble in. Wake up now and see you stay so.”
The dory was swung over the side, and the men dropped into her and took their places at the oars. “Give way,” cried the Captain, settling himself in the bow with the gaff in his hand. “Hey, Jim!” he shouted to the lookout far above, “hey, lay our course for us.” The lookout nodded, the oars fell, and the dory shot forward in the direction indicated by the lookout.
“Kin you row, son? asked Kitchell, with sudden suspicion. Wilbur smiled.
“You ask Charlie and Wing to ship their oars and give me a pair.” The Captain complied, hesitating.
“Now, what,” he said grimly, “now, what do you think you’re going to do, sonny?”
“I’m going to show you the Bob Cook stroke we used in our boat in ‘95, when we beat Harvard,” answered Wilbur.
Kitchell gazed doubtfully at the first few strokes, then with growing interest watched the tremendous reach, the powerful knee-drive, the swing, the easy catch, and the perfect recover. The dory was cutting the water like a gasoline launch, and between strokes there was the least possible diminishing of the speed.
“I’m a bit out of form just now,” remarked Wilbur, “and I’m used to the sliding seat; but I guess it’ll do.” Kitchell glanced at the human machine that once was No. 5 in the Yale boat and then at the water hissing from the dory’s bows. “My Gawd!” he said, under his breath. He spat over the bows and sucked the nicotine from his mustache, thoughtfully.
“I ree-marked,” he observed, “as how you had brains, my son.”
A few minutes later the Captain, who was standing in the dory’s bow and alternately conning the ocean’s surface and looking back to the Chinaman standing on the schooner’s masthead, uttered an exclamation:
“Steady, ship your oars, quiet now, quiet, you damn fools! We’re right on ‘em—four, by Gawd, an’ big as dinin’ tables!”
The oars were shipped. The dory’s speed dwindled. “Out your paddles, sit on the gun’l, and paddle ee-asy.” The hands obeyed. The Captain’s voice dropped to a whisper. His back was toward them and he gestured with one free hand. Looking out over the water from his seat on the gun’l, Wilbur could make out a round, greenish mass like a patch of floating seaweed, just under the surface, some sixty yards ahead.
“Easy sta’board,” whispered the Captain under his elbow. “Go ahead, port; e-e-easy all, steady, steady.”
The affair began to assume the intensity of a little drama—a little drama of midocean. In spite of himself, Wilbur was excited. He even found occasion to observe that the life was not so bad, after all. This was as good fun as stalking deer. The dory moved forward by inches. Kitchell’s whisper was as faint as a dying infant’s: “Steady all, s-stead-ee, sh-stead—”
He lunged forward sharply with the gaff, and shouted aloud: “I got him—grab holt his tail flippers, you fool swabs; grab holt quick—don’t you leggo—got him there, Charlie? If he gets away, you swine, I’ll rip y’ open with the gaff—heave now—heave—there—there—soh, stand clear his nippers. Strike me! he’s a whacker. I thought he was going to get away. Saw me just as I swung the gaff, an’ ducked his nut.”
Over the side, bundled without ceremony into the boat, clawing, thrashing, clattering, and blowing like the exhaust of a donkey-engine, tumbled the great green turtle, his wet, green shield of shell three feet from edge to edge, the gaff firmly transfixed in his body, just under the fore-flipper. From under his shell protruded his snake-like head and neck, withered like that of an old man. He was waving his head from side to side, the jaws snapping like a snapped silk handkerchief. Kitchell thrust him away with a paddle. The turtle craned his neck, and catching the bit of wood in his jaw, bit it in two in a single grip.
“I tol’ you so, I tol’ you to stand clear his snapper. If that had been your shin now, eh? Hello, what’s that?”
Faintly across the water came a prolonged hallooing from the schooner. Kitchell stood up in the dory, shading his eyes with his hat.
“What’s biting ‘em now?” he muttered, with the uneasiness of a captain away from his ship. “Oughta left Charlie on board—or you, son. Who’s doin’ that yellin’, I can’t make out.”
“Up in the crow’s nest,” exclaimed Wilbur. “It’s Jim, see, he’s waving his arms.”
“Well, whaduz he wave his dam’ fool arms for?” growled Kitchell, angry because something was going forward he did not understand.
“There, he’s shouting again. Listen—I can’t make out what he’s yelling.”
“He’ll yell to a different pipe when I get my grip of him. I’ll twist the head of that swab till he’ll have to walk back’ard to see where he’s goin’. Whaduz he wave his arms for—whaduz he yell like a dam’ philly-loo bird for? What’s him say, Charlie?”
“Jim heap sing, no can tell. Mebbee—tinkum sing, come back chop-chop.”
“We’ll see. Oars out, men, give way. Now, son, put a little o’ that Yale stingo in the stroke.”
In the crow’s nest Jim still yelled and waved like one distraught, while the dory returned at a smart clip toward the schooner. Kitchell lathered with fury.
“Oh-h,” he murmured softly through his gritted teeth. “Jess lemmee lay mee two hands afoul of you wunst, you gibbering, yellow philly-loo bird, believe me, you’ll dance. Shut up!” he roared; “shut up, you crazy do-do, ain’t we coming fast as we can?”
The dory bumped alongside, and the Captain was over the rail like quicksilver. The hands were all in the bow, looking and pointing to the west. Jim slid down the ratlines, bubbling over with suppressed news. Before his feet had touched the deck Kitchell had kicked him into the stays again, fulminating blasphemies.
“Sing!” he shouted, as the Chinaman clambered away like a bewildered ape; “sing a little more. I would if I were you. Why don’t you sing and wave, you dam’ fool philly-loo bird?”
“Yas, sah,” answered the coolie.
“What you yell for? Charlie, ask him whaffo him sing.”
“I tink-um ship,” answered Charlie calmly, looking out over the starboard quarter.
“Ship!”
“Him velly sick,” hazarded the Chinaman from the ratlines, adding a sentence in Chinese to Charlie.
“He says he tink-um ship sick, all same; ask um something—ship velly sick.”
By this time the Captain, Wilbur, and all on board could plainly make out a sail some eight miles off the starboard bow. Even at that distance, and to eyes so inexperienced as those of Wilbur, it needed but a glance to know that something was wrong with her. It was not that she failed to ride the waves with even keel, it was not that her rigging was in disarray, nor that her sails were disordered. Her distance was too great to make out such details. But in precisely the same manner as a trained physician glances at a doomed patient, and from that indefinable look in the face of him and the eyes of him pronounces the verdict “death,” so Kitchell took in the stranger with a single comprehensive glance, and exclaimed:
“Wreck!”
“Yas, sah. I tink-um velly sick.”
“Oh, go to ‘ll, or go below and fetch up my glass—hustle!”
The glass was brought. “Son,” exclaimed Kitchell—“where is that man with the brains? Son, come aloft here with me.” The two clambered up the ratlines to the crow’s nest. Kitchell adjusted the glass.
“She’s a bark,” he muttered, “iron built—about seven hundred tons, I guess—in distress. There’s her ensign upside down at the mizz’nhead—looks like Norway—an’ her distress signals on the spanker gaff. Take a blink at her, son—what do you make her out? Lord, she’s ridin’ high.”
Wilbur took the glass, catching the stranger after several clumsy attempts. She was, as Captain Kitchell had announced, a bark, and, to judge by her flag, evidently Norwegian.
“How she rolls!” muttered Wilbur.
“That’s what I can’t make out,” answered Kitchell. “A bark such as she ain’t ought to roll thata way; her ballast’d steady her.”
“What’s the flags on that boom aft—one’s red and white and square-shaped, and the other’s the same color, only swallow-tail in shape?”
“That’s H. B., meanin: ‘I am in need of assistance.’”
“Well, where’s the crew? I don’t see anybody on board.”
“Oh, they’re there right enough.”
“Then they’re pretty well concealed about the premises,” turned Wilbur, as he passed the glass to the Captain.
“She does seem kinda empty,” said the Captain in a moment, with a sudden show of interest that Wilbur failed to understand.
“An’ where’s her boats?” continued Kitchell. “I don’t just quite make out any boats at all.” There was a long silence.
“Seems to be a sort of haze over her,” observed Wilbur.
“I noticed that, air kinda quivers oily-like. No boats, no boats—an’ I can’t see anybody aboard.” Suddenly Kitchell lowered the glass and turned to Wilbur. He was a different man. There was a new shine in his eyes, a wicked line appeared over the nose, the jaw grew salient, prognathous.
“Son,” he exclaimed, gimleting Wilbur with his contracted eyes; “I have reemarked as how you had brains. I kin fool the coolies, but I can’t fool you. It looks to me as if that bark yonder was a derelict; an’ do you know what that means to us? Chaw on it a turn.”