The Mutiny of the Elsinore

so far removed from them were we.  It was this contrast that caught my fancy.  Here were the high and low, slaves and masters, beauty and ugliness, cleanness and filth.  Their feet were bare and scaled with patches of tar and pitch.  Their unbathed bodies were garmented in the meanest of clothes, dingy, dirty, ragged, and sparse.  Each one had on but two garments—dungaree trousers and a shoddy cotton shirt.

And we, in our comfortable deck-chairs, our two servants at our backs, the quintessence of elegant leisure, sipped delicate tea from beautiful, fragile cups, and looked on at these wretched ones whose labour made possible the journey of our little world.  We did not speak to them, nor recognize their existence, any more than would they have dared speak to us.

And Miss West, with the appraising eye of a plantation mistress for the condition of her field slaves, looked them over.

“You see how they have fleshed up,” she said, as they coiled the last turns of the ropes over the pins and faded away for’ard off the poop.  “It is the regular hours, the good weather, the hard work, the open air, the sufficient food, and the absence of whisky.  And they will keep in this fettle until they get off the Horn.  And then you will see them go down from day to day.  A winter passage of the Horn is always a severe strain on the men.

“But then, once we are around and in the good weather of the Pacific, you will see them gain again from day to day.  And when we reach Seattle they will be in splendid shape.  Only they will go ashore, drink up their wages in several days, and ship away on other vessels in precisely the same sodden, miserable condition that they were in when they sailed with us from Baltimore .”

And just then Captain West came out the chart-house door, strolled by for a single turn up and down, and with a smile and a word for us and an all-observant eye for the ship, the trim of her sails, the wind, and the sky, and the weather promise, went back through the chart-house door—the blond Aryan master, the king, the Samurai.

And I finished sipping my tea of delicious and most expensive aroma, and our slant-eyed, dark-skinned servitors carried the pretty gear away, and I read, continuing De Casseres:

“‘Instinct wills, creates, carries on the work of the species.  The Intellect destroys, negatives, satirizes and ends in pure nihilism, instinct creates life, endlessly, hurling forth profusely and blindly its clowns, tragedians and comedians.  Intellect remains the eternal spectator of the play.  It participates at will, but never gives itself wholly to the fine sport.  The Intellect, freed from the trammels of the personal will, soars into the ether of perception, where Instinct follows it in a thousand disguises, seeking to draw it down to earth.’”

CHAPTER XXVII

We are now south of Rio and working south.  We are out of the latitude of the trades, and the wind is capricious.  Rain squalls and wind squalls vex the Elsinore .  One hour we may be rolling sickeningly in a dead calm, and the next hour we may be dashing fourteen knots through the water and taking off sail as fast as the men can clew up and lower away.  A night of calm, when sleep is well-nigh impossible in the sultry, muggy air, may be followed by a day of blazing sun and an oily swell from the south’ard, connoting great gales in that area of ocean we are sailing toward—or all day long the Elsinore , under an overcast sky, royals and sky sails furled, may plunge and buck under wind-pressure into a short and choppy head- sea.

And all this means work for the men.  Taking Mr. Pike’s judgment, they are very inadequate, though by this time they know the ropes.  He growls and grumbles, and snorts and sneers whenever he watches them doing anything.  To-day, at eleven in the morning, the wind was so violent, continuing in greater gusts after having come in a great gust, that Mr. Pike ordered the mainsail taken off.  The great crojack was already off.  But the watch could not clew up the mainsail, and, after much vain sing-songing and pull-hauling, the watch below was routed out to bear a hand.

“My God!” Mr. Pike groaned to me.  “Two watches for a rag like that when half a decent watch could do it!  Look at that preventer bosun of mine!”

Poor Nancy !  He looked the saddest, sickest, bleakest creature I had ever seen.  He was so wretched, so miserable, so helpless.  And Sundry Buyers was just as impotent.  The expression on his face was of pain and hopelessness, and as he pressed his abdomen he lumbered futilely about, ever seeking something he might do and ever failing to find it.  He pottered.  He would stand and stare at one rope for a minute or so at a time, following it aloft with his eyes through the maze of ropes and stabs and gears with all the intentness of a man working out an intricate problem.  Then, holding his hand against his stomach, he would lumber on a few steps and select another rope for study.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Mr. Pike lamented.  “How can one drive with bosuns like that and a crew like that?  Just the same, if I was captain of this ship I’d drive ’em.  I’d show ’em what drive was, if I had to lose a few of them.  And when they grow weak off the Horn what’ll we do?  It’ll be both watches all the time, which will weaken them just that much the faster.”

Evidently this winter passage of the Horn is all that one has been led to expect from reading the narratives of the navigators.  Iron men like the two mates are very respectful of “ Cape Stiff ,” as they call that uttermost tip of the American continent.  Speaking of the two mates, iron-made and iron-mouthed that they are, it is amusing that in really serious moments both of them curse with “Oh dear, oh dear.”

In the spells of calm I take great delight in the little rifle.  I have already fired away five thousand rounds, and have come to consider myself an expert.  Whatever the knack of shooting may be, I’ve got it.  When I get back I shall take up target practice.  It is a neat, deft sport.

Not only is Possum afraid of the sails and of rats, but he is afraid of rifle-fire, and at the first discharge goes yelping and ki-yi-ing below.  The dislike Mr. Pike has developed for the poor little puppy is ludicrous.  He even told me that if it were his dog he’d throw it overboard for a target.  Just the same, he is an affectionate, heart-warming little rascal, and has already crept so deep into my heart that I am glad Miss West did not accept him.

And—oh!—he insists on sleeping with me on top the bedding; a proceeding which has scandalized the mate.  “I suppose he’ll be using your toothbrush next,” Mr. Pike growled at me.  But the puppy loves my companionship, and is never happier than when on the bed with me.  Yet the bed is not entirely paradise, for Possum is badly frightened when ours is the lee side and the seas pound and smash against the glass ports.  Then the little beggar, electric with fear to every hair tip, crouches and snarls menacingly and almost at the same time whimpers appeasingly at the storm-monster outside.

“Father knows the sea,” Miss West said to me this afternoon.  “He understands it, and he loves it.”

“Or it may be habit,” I ventured.

She shook her head.

“He does know it.  And he loves it.  That is why he has come back to it.  All his people before him were sea folk.  His grandfather, Anthony West, made forty-six voyages between 1801 and 1847.  And his father, Robert, sailed master to the north-west coast before the gold days and was captain of some of the fastest Cape Horn clippers after the gold discovery.  Elijah West, father’s great-grandfather, was a privateersman in the Revolution.  He commanded the armed brig New Defence .  And, even before that, Elijah’s father, in turn, and Elijah’s father’s father, were masters and owners on long-voyage merchant adventures.

“Anthony West, in 1813 and 1814, commanded the David Bruce , with letters of marque.  He was half-owner, with Gracie & Sons as the other half-owners.  She was a two-hundred-ton schooner, built right up in Maine .  She carried a long eighteen-pounder, two ten-pounders, and ten six-pounders, and she sailed like a witch.  She ran the blockade off Newport and got away to the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay .  And, do you know, though she only cost twelve thousand dollars all told, she took over three hundred thousand dollars of British prizes.  A brother of his was on the Wasp .

“So, you see, the sea is in our blood.  She is our mother.  As far back as we can trace all our line was born to the sea.”  She laughed and went on.  “We’ve pirates and slavers in our family, and all sorts of disreputable sea- rovers.  Old Ezra West, just how far back I don’t remember, was executed for piracy and his body hung in chains at Plymouth .