The Mutiny of the Elsinore

We had chatted a bare five minutes, when again he lifted his head.  This time the Elsinore heeled over slightly and remained heeled over, while the sighing whistle of a rising breeze awoke in the rigging.

“It’s beginning to make,” he said, in the good old Anglo-Saxon of the sea.

And then I heard Mr. Pike snarling out orders, and in my heart discovered a growing respect for Cape Horn— Cape Stiff, as the sailors call it.

An hour later we were hove to on the port tack under upper-topsails and foresail.  The wind had come out of the south-west, and our leeway was setting us down upon the land.  Captain West gave orders to the mate to stand by to wear ship.  Both watches had been taking in sail, so that both watches were on deck for the manoeuvre.

It was astounding, the big sea that had arisen in so short a time.  The wind was blowing a gale that ever, in recurring gusts, increased upon itself.  Nothing was visible a hundred yards away.  The day had become black-gray.  In the cabin lamps were burning.  The view from the poop, along the length of the great labouring ship, was magnificent.  Seas burst and surged across her weather-rail and kept her deck half filled, despite the spouting ports and gushing scuppers.

On each of the two houses and on the poop the ship’s complement, all in oilskins, was in groups.  For’ard, Mr. Mellaire had charge.  Mr. Pike took charge of the ’midship-house and the poop.  Captain West strolled up and down, saw everything, said nothing; for it was the mate’s affair.

When Mr. Pike ordered the wheel hard up, he slacked off all the mizzen-yards, and followed it with a partial slacking of the main-yards, so that the after-pressures were eased.  The foresail and fore-lower– and-upper-topsails remained flat in order to pay the head off before the wind.  All this took time.  The men were slow, not strong, and without snap.  They reminded me of dull oxen by the way they moved and pulled.  And the gale, ever snorting harder, now snorted diabolically.  Only at intervals could I glimpse the group on top the for’ard-house.  Again and again, leaning to it and holding their heads down, the men on the ’midship-house were obliterated by the drive of crested seas that burst against the rail, spouted to the lower-yards, and swept in horizontal volumes across to leeward.  And Mr. Pike, like an enormous spider in a wind-tossed web, went back and forth along the slender bridge that was itself a shaken thread in the blast of the storm.

So tremendous were the gusts that for the time the Elsinore refused to answer.  She lay down to it; she was swept and racked by it; but her head did not pay off before it, and all the while we drove down upon that bitter, iron coast.  And the world was black-gray, and violent, and very cold, with the flying spray freezing to ice in every lodgment.

We waited.  The groups of men, head down to it, waited.  Mr. Pike, restless, angry, his blue eyes as bitter as the cold, his mouth as much a-snarl as the snarl of the elements with which he fought, waited.  The Samurai waited, tranquil, casual, remote.  And Cape Horn waited, there on our lee, for the bones of our ship and us.

And then the Elsinore’s bow paid off.  The angle of the beat of the gale changed, and soon, with dreadful speed, we were dashing straight before it and straight toward the rocks we could not see.  But all doubt was over.  The success of the manoeuvre was assured.  Mr. Mellaire, informed by messenger along the bridge from Mr. Pike, slacked off the head-yards.  Mr. Pike, his eye on the helmsman, his hand signalling the order, had the wheel put over to port to check the Elsinore’s rush into the wind as she came up on the starboard tack.  All was activity.  Main– and mizzen-yards were braced up, and the Elsinore , snugged down and hove to, had a lee of thousands of miles of Southern Ocean.

And all this had been accomplished in the stamping ground of storm, at the end of the world, by a handful of wretched weaklings, under the drive of two strong mates, with behind them the placid will of the Samurai.

It had taken thirty minutes to wear ship, and I had learned how the best of shipmasters can lose their ships without reproach.  Suppose the Elsinore had persisted in her refusal to payoff?  Suppose anything had carried away?  And right here enters Mr. Pike.  It is his task ever to see that every rope and block and all the myriad other things in the vast and complicated gear of the Elsinore are in strength not to carry away.  Always have the masters of our race required henchmen like Mr. Pike, and it seems the race has well supplied those henchmen.

Ere I went below I heard Captain West tell Mr. Pike that while both watches were on deck it would be just as well to put a reef in the foresail before they furled it.  The mainsail and the crojack being off, I could see the men black on the fore-yard.  For half-an-hour I lingered, watching them.  They seemed to make no progress with the reef.  Mr. Mellaire was with them, having direct supervision of the job, while Mr. Pike, on the poop, growled and grumbled and spat endless blasphemies into the flying air.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Two watches on a single yardarm and unable to put a reef in a handkerchief like that!” he snorted.  “What’ll it be if we’re off here a month?”

“A month!” I cried.

“A month isn’t anything for Cape Stiff ,” he said grimly.  “I’ve been off here seven weeks and then turned tail and run around the other way.”

“Around the world?” I gasped.

“It was the only way to get to ’Frisco,” he answered.  “The Horn’s the Horn, and there’s no summer seas that I’ve ever noticed in this neighbourhood.”

My fingers were numb and I was chilled through when I took a last look at the wretched men on the fore-yard and went below to warm up.

A little later, as I went in to table, through a cabin port I stole a look for’ard between seas and saw the men still struggling on the freezing yard.

The four of us were at table, and it was very comfortable, in spite of the Elsinore’s violent antics.  The room was warm.  The storm-racks on the table kept each dish in its place.  The steward served and moved about with ease and apparent unconcern, although I noticed an occasional anxious gleam in his eyes when he poised some dish at a moment when the ship pitched and flung with unusual wildness.

And now and again I thought of the poor devils on the yard.  Well, they belonged there by right, just as we belonged here by right in this oasis of the cabin.  I looked at Mr. Pike and wagered to myself that half-a-dozen like him could master that stubborn foresail.  As for the Samurai, I was convinced that alone, not moving from his seat, by a tranquil exertion of will, he could accomplish the same thing.

The lighted sea-lamps swung and leaped in their gimbals, ever battling with the dancing shadows in the murky gray.  The wood-work creaked and groaned.  The jiggermast, a huge cylinder of hollow steel that perforated the apartment through deck above and floor beneath, was hideously vocal with the storm.  Far above, taut ropes beat against it so that it clanged like a boiler-shop.  There was a perpetual thunder of seas falling on our deck and crash of water against our for’ard wall; while the ten thousand ropes and gears aloft bellowed and screamed as the storm smote them.

And yet all this was from without.  Here, at this well-appointed table, was no draught nor breath of wind, no drive of spray nor wash of sea.  We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the storm.  Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the clang of the jiggermast.  Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well enough to attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the inefficients futilely freezing on the yard.  As for me, I looked about at the four of us—blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and royal blond—and somehow it seemed that I had long since lived this, and that with me and in me were all my ancestors, and that their lives and memories were mine, and that all this vexation of the sea and air and labouring ship was of old time and a thousand times before.

CHAPTER XXXIV

“How are you for a climb?” Margaret asked me, shortly after we had left the table.

She stood challengingly at my open door, in oilskins, sou’wester, and sea-boots.

“I’ve never seen you with a foot above the deck since we sailed,” she went on.  “Have you a good head?”