The Mutiny of the Elsinore

It was a dreary enough day, no sun, with occasional splatters of rain and a persistent crash of seas over the weather rail and swash of water across the deck.  With my eyes glued to the cabin ports, which gave for’ard along the main deck, I could see the wretched sailors, whenever they were given some task of pull and haul, wet through and through by the boarding seas.  Several times I saw some of them taken off their feet and rolled about in the creaming foam.  And yet, erect, unstaggering, with certitude of weight and strength, among these rolled men, these clutching, cowering ones, moved either Mr. Pike or Mr. Mellaire.  They were never taken off their feet.  They never shrank away from a splash of spray or heavier bulk of down-falling water.  They had fed on different food, were informed with a different spirit, were of iron in contrast with the poor miserables they drove to their bidding.

In the afternoon I dozed for half-an-hour in one of the big chairs in the cabin.  Had it not been for the violent motion of the ship I could have slept there for hours, for the hives did not trouble.  Captain West, stretched out on the cabin sofa, his feet in carpet slippers, slept enviably.  By some instinct, I might say, in the deep of sleep, he kept his place and was not rolled off upon the floor.  Also, he lightly held a half-smoked cigar in one hand.  I watched him for an hour, and knew him to be asleep, and marvelled that he maintained his easy posture and did not drop the cigar.

After dinner there was no phonograph.  The second dog-watch was Mr. Pike’s on deck.  Besides, as he explained, the rolling was too severe.  It would make the needle jump and scratch his beloved records.

And no sleep!  Another weary night of torment, and another dreary, overcast day and leaden, troubled sea.  And no Miss West.  Wada, too, is sea-sick, although heroically he kept his feet and tried to tend on me with glassy, unseeing eyes.  I sent him to his bunk, and read through the endless hours until my eyes were tired, and my brain, between lack of sleep and over-use, was fuzzy.

Captain West is no conversationalist.  The more I see of him the more I am baffled.  I have not yet found a reason for that first impression I received of him.  He has all the poise and air of a remote and superior being, and yet I wonder if it be not poise and air and nothing else.  Just as I had expected, that first meeting, ere he spoke a word, to hear fall from his lips words of untold beneficence and wisdom, and then heard him utter mere social commonplaces, so I now find myself almost forced to conclude that his touch of race, and beak of power, and all the tall, aristocratic slenderness of him have nothing behind them.

And yet, on the other hand, I can find no reason for rejecting that first impression.  He has not shown any strength, but by the same token he has not shown any weakness.  Sometimes I wonder what resides behind those clear blue eyes.  Certainly I have failed to find any intellectual backing.  I tried him out with William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience .  He glanced at a few pages, then returned it to me with the frank statement that it did not interest him.  He has no books of his own.  Evidently he is not a reader.  Then what is he?  I dared to feel him out on politics.  He listened courteously, said sometimes yes and sometimes no, and, when I ceased from very discouragement, said nothing.

Aloof as the two officers are from the men, Captain West is still more aloof from his officers.  I have not seen him address a further word to Mr. Mellaire than “Good morning” on the poop.  As for Mr. Pike, who eats three times a day with him, scarcely any more conversation obtains between them.  And I am surprised by what seems the very conspicuous awe with which Mr. Pike seems to regard his commander.

Another thing.  What are Captain West’s duties?  So far he has done nothing, save eat three times a day, smoke many cigars, and each day stroll a total of one mile around the poop.  The mates do all the work, and hard work it is, four hours on deck and four below, day and night with never a variation.  I watch Captain West and am amazed.  He will loll back in the cabin and stare straight before him for hours at a time, until I am almost frantic to demand of him what are his thoughts.  Sometimes I doubt that he is thinking at all.  I give him up.  I cannot fathom him.

Altogether a depressing day of rain-splatter and wash of water across the deck.  I can see, now, that the problem of sailing a ship with five thousand tons of coal around the Horn is more serious than I had thought.  So deep is the Elsinore in the water that she is like a log awash.  Her tall, six-foot bulwarks of steel cannot keep the seas from boarding her.  She has not the buoyancy one is accustomed to ascribe to ships.  On the contrary, she is weighted down until she is dead, so that, for this one day alone, I am appalled at the thought of how many thousands of tons of the North Atlantic have boarded her and poured out through her spouting scuppers and clanging ports.

Yes, a depressing day.  The two mates have alternated on deck and in their bunks.  Captain West has dozed on the cabin sofa or read the Bible.  Miss West is still sea-sick.  I have tired myself out with reading, and the fuzziness of my unsleeping brain makes for melancholy.  Even Wada is anything but a cheering spectacle, crawling out of his bunk, as he does at stated intervals, and with sick, glassy eyes trying to discern what my needs may be.  I almost wish I could get sea-sick myself.  I had never dreamed that a sea voyage could be so unenlivening as this one is proving.

CHAPTER XII

Another morning of overcast sky and leaden sea, and of the Elsinore , under half her canvas, clanging her deck ports, spouting water from her scuppers, and dashing eastward into the heart of the Atlantic.  And I have failed to sleep half-an-hour all told.  At this rate, in a very short time I shall have consumed all the cream of tartar on the ship.  I never have had hives like these before.  I can’t understand it.  So long as I keep my lamp burning and read I am untroubled.  The instant I put out the lamp and drowse off the irritation starts and the lumps on my skin begin to form.

Miss West may be sea-sick, but she cannot be comatose, because at frequent intervals she sends the steward to me with more cream of tartar.

I have had a revelation to-day.  I have discovered Captain West.  He is a Samurai.—You remember the Samurai that H.  G.  Wells describes in his Modern Utopia —the superior breed of men who know things and are masters of life and of their fellow-men in a super-benevolent, super-wise way?  Well, that is what Captain West is.  Let me tell it to you.

We had a shift of wind to-day.  In the height of a south-west gale the wind shifted, in the instant, eight points, which is equivalent to a quarter of the circle.  Imagine it!  Imagine a gale howling from out of the south- west.  And then imagine the wind, in a heavier and more violent gale, abruptly smiting you from the north-west.  We had been sailing through a circular storm, Captain West vouchsafed to me, before the event, and the wind could be expected to box the compass.

Clad in sea-boots, oilskins and sou’wester, I had for some time been hanging upon the rail at the break of the poop, staring down fascinated at the poor devils of sailors, repeatedly up to their necks in water, or submerged, or dashed like straws about the deck, while they pulled and hauled, stupidly, blindly, and in evident fear, under the orders of Mr. Pike.

Mr. Pike was with them, working them and working with them.  He took every chance they took, yet somehow he escaped being washed off his feet, though several times I saw him entirely buried from view.  There was more than luck in the matter; for I saw him, twice, at the head of a line of the men, himself next to the pin.  And twice, in this position, I saw the North Atlantic curl over the rail and fall upon them.  And each time he alone remained, holding the turn of the rope on the pin, while the rest of them were rolled and sprawled helplessly away.

Almost it seemed to me good fun, as at a circus, watching their antics.  But I did not apprehend the seriousness of the situation until, the wind screaming higher than ever and the sea a-smoke and white with wrath, two men did not get up from the deck.  One was carried away for’ard with a broken leg—it was Iare Jacobson, a dull-witted Scandinavian; and the other, Kid Twist, was carried away, unconscious, with a bleeding scalp.

In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape being blown away.  My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain.

And all the time, slender, aristocratic, graceful in streaming oilskins, in apparent unconcern, giving no orders, effortlessly accommodating his body to the violent rolling of the Elsinore , Captain West strolled up and down.

It was at this stage in the gale that he unbent sufficiently to tell me that we were going through a circular