The Mutiny of the Elsinore

We who are aft, besieged in the high place, are stronger in numbers than I dreamed until now, when I have just finished taking the ship’s census.  Of course Margaret, Mr. Pike, and myself are apart.  We alone represent the ruling class.  With us are servants and serfs, faithful to their salt, who look to us for guidance and life.

I use my words advisedly.  Tom Spink and Buckwheat are serfs and nothing else.  Henry, the training-ship boy, occupies an anomalous classification.  He is of our kind, but he can scarcely be called even a cadet of our kind.  He will some day win to us and become a mate or a captain, but in the meantime, of course, his past is against him.  He is a candidate, rising from the serf class to our class.  Also, he is only a youth, the iron of his heredity not yet tested and proven.

Wada, Louis, and the steward are servants of Asiatic breed.  So are the two Japanese sail-makers—scarcely servants, not to be called slaves, but something in between.

So, all told, there are eleven of us aft in the citadel.  But our followers are too servant-like and serf-like to be offensive fighters.  They will help us defend the high place against all attack; but they are incapable of joining with us in an attack on the other end of the ship.  They will fight like cornered rats to preserve their lives; but they will not advance like tigers upon the enemy.  Tom Spink is faithful but spirit-broken.  Buckwheat is hopelessly of the stupid lowly.  Henry has not yet won his spurs.  On our side remain Margaret, Mr. Pike, and myself.  The rest will hold the wall of the poop and fight thereon to the death, but they are not to be depended upon in a sortie.

At the other end of the ship—and I may as well give the roster, are: the second mate, either to be called Mellaire or Waltham, a strong man of our own breed but a renegade; the three gangsters, killers and jackals, Bert Rhine, Nosey Murphy, and Kid Twist; the Maltese Cockney and Tony the crazy Greek; Frank Fitzgibbon and Richard Giller, the survivors of the trio of “bricklayers”; Anton Sorensen and Lars Jacobsen, stupid Scandinavian sailor-men; Ditman Olansen, the crank-eyed Berserk; John Hackey and Arthur Deacon, respectively hoodlum and white slaver; Shorty, the mixed-breed clown; Guido Bombini, the Italian hound; Andy Pay and Mulligan Jacobs, the bitter ones; the three topaz-eyed dreamers, who are unclassifiable; Isaac Chantz, the wounded Jew; Bob, the overgrown dolt; the feeble-minded Faun, lung-wounded; Nancy and Sundry Buyers, the two hopeless, helpless bosuns; and, finally, the sea-lawyer, Charles Davis.

This makes twenty-seven of them against the eleven of us.  But there are men, strong in viciousness, among them.  They, too, have their serfs and bravos.  Guido Bombini and Isaac Chantz are certainly bravos.  And weaklings like Sorensen, and Jacobsen, and Bob, cannot be anything else than slaves to the men who compose the gangster clique.

I failed to tell what happened yesterday, after Mr. Pike emptied his automatic and cleared the deck.  The poop was indubitably ours, and there was no possibility of the mutineers making a charge on us in broad daylight.  Margaret had gone below, accompanied by Wada, to see to the security of the port and starboard doors that open from the cabin directly on the main deck.  These are still caulked and tight and fastened on the inside, as they have been since the passage of Cape Horn began.

Mr. Pike put one of the sail-makers at the wheel, and the steward, relieved and starting below, was attracted to the port quarter, where the patent log that towed astern was made fast.  Margaret had returned his knife to him, and he was carrying it in his hand when his attention was attracted astern to our wake.  Mike Cipriani and Bill Quigley had managed to catch the lazily moving log-line and were clinging to it.  The Elsinore was moving just fast enough to keep them on the surface instead of dragging them under.  Above them and about them circled curious and hungry albatrosses, Cape hens, and mollyhawks.  Even as I glimpsed the situation one of the big birds, a ten-footer at least, with a ten-inch beak to the fore, dropped down on the Italian.  Releasing his hold with one hand, he struck with his knife at the bird.  Feathers flew, and the albatross, deflected by the blow, fell clumsily into the water.

Quite methodically, just as part of the day’s work, the steward chopped down with his knife, catching the log-line between the steel edge and the rail.  At once, no longer buoyed up by the Elsinore’s two-knot drag ahead, the wounded men began to swim and flounder.  The circling hosts of huge sea-birds descended upon them, with carnivorous beaks striking at their heads and shoulders and arms.  A great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey as they strove for the living meat.  And yet, somehow, I was not very profoundly shocked.  These were the men whom I had seen eviscerate the shark and toss it overboard, and shout with joy as they watched it devoured alive by its brethren.  They had played a violent, cruel game with the things of life, and the things of life now played upon them the same violent, cruel game.  As they that rise by the sword perish by the sword, just so did these two men who had lived cruelly die cruelly.

“Oh, well,” was Mr. Pike’s comment, “we’ve saved two sacks of mighty good coal.”

* * * * *

Certainly our situation might be worse.  We are cooking on the coal-stove and on the oil-burners.  We have servants to cook and serve for us.  And, most important of all, we are in possession of all the food on the Elsinore .

Mr. Pike makes no mistake.  Realizing that with our crowd we cannot rush the crowd at the other end of the ship, he accepts the siege, which, as he says, consists of the besieged holding all food supplies while the besiegers are on the imminent edge of famine.

“Starve the dogs,” he growls.  “Starve ’m until they crawl aft and lick our shoes.  Maybe you think the custom of carrying the stores aft just happened.  Only it didn’t.  Before you and I were born it was long-established and it was established on brass tacks.  They knew what they were about, the old cusses, when they put the grub in the lazarette.”

Louis says there is not more than three days’ regular whack in the galley; that the barrel of hard-tack in the forecastle will quickly go; and that our chickens, which they stole last night from the top of the ’midship-house, are equivalent to no more than an additional day’s supply.  In short, at the outside limit, we are convinced the men will be keen to talk surrender within the week.

We are no longer sailing.  In last night’s darkness we helplessly listened to the men loosing headsail-halyards and letting yards go down on the run.  Under orders of Mr. Pike I shot blindly and many times into the dark, but without result, save that we heard the bullets of answering shots strike against the chart-house.  So to-day we have not even a man at the wheel.  The Elsinore drifts idly on an idle sea, and we stand regular watches in the shelter of chart-house and jiggermast.  Mr. Pike says it is the laziest time he has had on the whole voyage.

I alternate watches with him, although when on duty there is little to be done, save, in the daytime, to stand rifle in hand behind the jiggermast, and, in the night, to lurk along the break of the poop.  Behind the chart-house, ready to repel assault, are my watch of four men: Tom Spink, Wada, Buckwheat, and Louis.  Henry, the two Japanese sail-makers, and the old steward compose Mr. Pike’s watch.

It is his orders that no one for’ard is to be allowed to show himself, so, to-day, when the second mate appeared at the corner of the ’midship-house, I made him take a quick leap back with the thud of my bullet against the iron wall a foot from his head.  Charles David tried the same game and was similarly stimulated.

Also, this evening, after dark, Mr. Pike put block-and-tackle on the first section of the bridge, heaved it out of place, and lowered it upon the poop.  Likewise he hoisted in the ladder at the break of the poop that leads down to the main deck.  The men will have to do some climbing if they ever elect to rush us.

I am writing this in my watch below.  I came off duty at eight o’clock, and at midnight I go on deck to stay till four to-morrow morning.  Wada shakes his head and says that the Blackwood Company should rebate us on the first-class passage paid in advance.  We are working our passage, he contends.

Margaret takes the adventure joyously.  It is the first time she has experienced mutiny, but she is such a thorough sea-woman that she appears like an old hand at the game.  She leaves the deck to the mate and me; but, still acknowledging his leadership, she has taken charge below and entirely manages the commissary, the cooking, and the sleeping arrangements.  We still keep our old quarters, and she has bedded the new-comers in the big after-room with blankets issued from the slop-chest.

In a way, from the standpoint of her personal welfare, the mutiny is the best thing that could have happened to her.  It has taken her mind off her father and filled her waking hours with work to do.  This afternoon, standing above the open booby-hatch, I heard her laugh ring out as in the old days coming down the Atlantic .  Yes, and she hums snatches of songs under her breath as she works.  In the second dog-watch this evening, after Mr. Pike had finished dinner and joined us on the poop, she told him that if he did not soon re-rig his phonograph she was going to start in on the piano.  The reason she advanced was the psychological effect such sounds of revelry would have