The Mutiny of the Elsinore

to bed I dismissed all forebodings and speculated as to how many more voyages he could last after this sudden onslaught of old age.

I fell asleep quickly, and awoke at midnight, my lamp still burning, Conrad’s Mirror of the Sea on my breast where it had dropped from my hands.  I heard the watches change, and was wide awake and reading when Mr. Pike came below by the booby-hatch and passed down my hail by my open door, on his way to his room.

In the pause I had long since learned so well I knew he was rolling a cigarette.  Then I heard him cough, as he always did, when the cigarette was lighted and the first inhalation of smoke flushed his lungs.

At twelve-fifteen, in the midst of Conrad’s delightful chapter, “The Weight of the Burden,” I heard Mr. Pike come along the hall.

Stealing a glance over the top of my book, I saw him go by, sea-booted, oilskinned, sou’westered.  It was his watch below, and his sleep was meagre in this perpetual bad weather, yet he was going on deck.

I read and waited for an hour, but he did not return; and I knew that somewhere up above he was staring into the driving dark.  I dressed fully, in all my heavy storm-gear, from sea-boots and sou’-wester to sheepskin under my oilskin coat.  At the foot of the stairs I noted along the hall that Margaret’s light was burning.  I peeped in—she keeps her door open for ventilation—and found her reading.

“Merely not sleepy,” she assured me.

Nor in the heart of me do I believe she had any apprehension.  She does not know even now, I am confident, the Samurai’s blunder—if blunder it was.  As she said, she was merely not sleepy, although there is no telling in what occult ways she may have received though not recognized Mr. Pike’s anxiety.

At the head of the stairs, passing along the tiny hall to go out the lee door of the chart-house, I glanced into the chart-room.  On the couch, lying on his back, his head uncomfortably high, I thought, slept Captain West.  The room was warm from the ascending heat of the cabin, so that he lay unblanketed, fully dressed save for oilskins and boots.  He breathed easily and steadily, and the lean, ascetic lines of his face seemed softened by the light of the low-turned lamp.  And that one glance restored to me all my surety and faith in his wisdom, so that I laughed at myself for having left my warm bed for a freezing trip on deck.

Under the weather cloth at the break of the poop I found Mr. Mellaire.  He was wide awake, but under no strain.  Evidently it had not entered his mind to consider, much less question, the manoeuvre of wearing ship the previous afternoon.

“The gale is breaking,” he told me, waving his mittened hand at a starry segment of sky momentarily exposed by the thinning clouds.

But where was Mr. Pike?  Did the second mate know he was on deck?  I proceeded to feel Mr. Mellaire out as we worked our way aft, along the mad poop toward the wheel.  I talked about the difficulty of sleeping in stormy weather, stated the restlessness and semi-insomnia that the violent motion of the ship caused in me, and raised the query of how bad weather affected the officers.

“I noticed Captain West, in the chart-room, as I came up, sleeping like a baby,” I concluded.

We leaned in the lee of the chart-house and went no farther.

“Trust us to sleep just the same way, Mr. Pathurst,” the second mate laughed.  “The harder the weather the harder the demand on us, and the harder we sleep.  I’m dead the moment my head touches the pillow.  It takes Mr. Pike longer, because he always finishes his cigarette after he turns in.  But he smokes while he’s undressing, so that he doesn’t require more than a minute to go deado.  I’ll wager he hasn’t moved, right now, since ten minutes after twelve.”

So the second mate did not dream the first was even on deck.  I went below to make sure.  A small sea-lamp was burning in Mr. Pike’s room, and I saw his bunk unoccupied.  I went in by the big stove in the dining-room and warmed up, then again came on deck.  I did not go near the weather cloth, where I was certain Mr. Mellaire was; but, keeping along the lee of the poop, I gained the bridge and started for’ard.

I was in no hurry, so I paused often in that cold, wet journey.  The gale was breaking, for again and again the stars glimmered through the thinning storm-clouds.  On the ’midship-house was no Mr. Pike.  I crossed it, stung by the freezing, flying spray, and carefully reconnoitred the top of the for’ard-house, where, in such bad weather, I knew the lookout was stationed.  I was within twenty feet of them, when a wider clearance of starry sky showed me the figures of the lookout, whoever he was, and of Mr. Pike, side by side.  Long I watched them, not making my presence known, and I knew that the old mate’s eyes were boring like gimlets into the windy darkness that separated the Elsinore from the thunder-surfed iron coast he sought to find.

Coming back to the poop I was caught by the surprised Mr. Mellaire.

“Thought you were asleep, sir,” he chided.

“I’m too restless,” I explained.  “I’ve read until my eyes are tired, and now I’m trying to get chilled so that I can fall asleep while warming up in my blankets.”

“I envy you, sir,” he answered.  “Think of it!  So much of all night in that you cannot sleep.  Some day, if ever I make a lucky strike, I shall make a voyage like this as a passenger, and have all watches below.  Think of it!  All blessed watches below!  And I shall, like you, sir, bring a Jap servant along, and I’ll make him call me at every changing of the watches, so that, wide awake, I can appreciate my good fortune in the several minutes before I roll over and go to sleep again.”

We laughed good night to each other.  Another peep into the chart-room showed me Captain West sleeping as before.  He had not moved in general, though all his body moved with every roll and fling of the ship.  Below, Margaret’s light still burned, but a peep showed her asleep, her book fallen from her hands just as was the so frequent case with my books.

And I wondered.  Half the souls of us on the Elsinore slept.  The Samurai slept.  Yet the old first mate, who should have slept, kept a bitter watch on the for’ard-house.  Was his anxiety right?  Could it be right?  Or was it the crankiness of ultimate age?  Were we drifting and leewaying to destruction?  Or was it merely an old man being struck down by senility in the midst of his life-task?

Too wide awake to think of sleeping, I ensconced myself with The Mirror of the Sea at the dining-table.  Nor did I remove aught of my storm-gear save the soggy mittens, which I wrung out and hung to dry by the stove.  Four bells struck, and six bells, and Mr. Pike had not returned below.  At eight bells, with the changing of the watches, it came upon me what a night of hardship the old mate was enduring.  Eight to twelve had been his own watch on deck.  He had now completed the four hours of the second mate’s watch and was beginning his own watch, which would last till eight in the morning—twelve consecutive hours in a Cape Horn gale with the mercury at freezing.

Next—for I had dozed—I heard loud cries above my head that were repeated along the poop.  I did not know till afterwards that it was Mr. Pike’s command to hard-up the helm, passed along from for’ard by the men he had stationed at intervals on the bridge.

All that I knew at this shock of waking was that something was happening above.  As I pulled on my steaming mittens and hurried my best up the reeling stairs, I could hear the stamp of men’s feet that for once were not lagging.  In the chart-house hall I heard Mr. Pike, who had already covered the length of the bridge from the for’ard-house, shouting:

“Mizzen-braces!  Slack, damn you!  Slack on the run!  But hold a turn!  Aft, here, all of you!  Jump!  Lively, if you don’t want to swim!  Come in, port-braces!  Don’t let ’m get away!  Lee-braces!—if you lose that turn I’ll split your skull!  Lively!  Lively!—Is that helm hard over!  Why in hell don’t you answer?”

All this I heard as I dashed for the lee door and as I wondered why I did not hear the Samurai’s voice.

Then, as I passed the chart-room door, I saw him.

He was sitting on the couch, white-faced, one sea-boot in his hands, and I could have sworn his hands were shaking.  That much I saw, and the next moment was out on deck.

At first, just emerged from the light, I could see nothing, although I could hear men at the pin-rails and the mate snarling and shouting commands.  But I knew the manoeuvre.  With a weak crew, in the big, tail-end sea of a broken gale, breakers and destruction under her lee, the Elsinore was being worn around.  We had been under lower-topsails and a reefed foresail all night.  Mr. Pike’s first action, after putting the wheel up, had been to square the mizzen-yards.  With the wind-pressure thus eased aft, the stern could more easily swing against the wind while the wind-pressure on the for’ard-sails paid the bow off.

But it takes time to wear a ship, under short canvas, in a big sea.  Slowly, very slowly, I could feel the direction of the wind altering against my cheek.  The moon, dim at first, showed brighter and brighter as the last