The Mutiny of the Elsinore

poop from the cabin on to the main deck.  These doors the men proceeded to attack with sledge-hammers, while the rest of the gang, sheltered by the ’midship-house, showed that it stood ready for the rush when the doors were battered down.

Inside, the steward guarded one door with his hacking knife, while with his spear Wada guarded the other door.  Nor, while I had dispatched them to this duty, was I idle.  Behind the jiggermast I lighted the fuse of one of my extemporized bombs.  When it was sputtering nicely I ran across the poop to the break and dropped the bomb to the main deck beneath, at the same time making an effort to toss it in under the overhang where the men battered at the port-door.  But this effort was distracted and made futile by a popping of several revolver shots from the gangways amidships.  One is jumpy when soft-nosed bullets putt-putt around him.  As a result, the bomb rolled about on the open deck.

Nevertheless, the illuminators had earned the respect of the mutineers for my fireworks.  The sputtering and fizzling of the fuse were too much for them, and from under the poop they ran for’ard like so many scuttling rabbits.  I know I could have got a couple with my rifle had I not been occupied with lighting the fuse of a second bomb.  Margaret managed three wild shots with her revolver, and the poop was immediately peppered by a scattering revolver fire from for’ard.

Being provident (and lazy, for I have learned that it takes time and labour to manufacture home-made bombs), I pinched off the live end of the fuse in my hand.  But the fuse of the first bomb, rolling about on the main deck, merely fizzled on; and as I waited I resolved to shorten my remaining fuses.  Any of the men who fled, had he had the courage, could have pinched off the fuse, or tossed the bomb overboard, or, better yet, he could have tossed it up amongst us on the poop.

It took fully five minutes for that blessed fuse to burn its slow length, and when the bomb did go off it was a sad disappointment.  I swear it could have been sat upon with nothing more than a jar to one’s nerves.  And yet, in so far as the intimidation goes, it did its work.  The men have not since ventured under the overhang of the poop.

That the mutineers were getting short of food was patent.  The Elsinore , sailless, drifted about that morning, the sport of wind and wave; and the gang put many lines overboard for the catching of mollyhawks and albatrosses.  Oh, I worried the hungry fishers with my rifle.  No man could show himself for’ard without having a bullet whop against the iron-work perilously near him.  And still they caught birds—not, however, without danger to themselves, and not without numerous losses of birds due to my rifle.

Their procedure was to toss their hooks and bait over the rail from shelter and slowly to pay the lines out as the slight windage of the Elsinore’s hull, spars, and rigging drifted her through the water.  When a bird was hooked they hauled in the line, still from shelter, till it was alongside.  This was the ticklish moment.  The hook, merely a hollow and acute-angled triangle of sheet-copper floating on a piece of board at the end of the line, held the bird by pinching its curved beak into the acute angle.  The moment the line slacked the bird was released.  So, when alongside, this was the problem: to lift the bird out of the water, straight up the side of the ship, without once jamming and easing and slacking.  When they tried to do this from shelter invariably they lost the bird.

They worked out a method.  When the bird was alongside the several men with revolvers turned loose on me, while one man, overhauling and keeping the line taut, leaped to the rail and quickly hove the bird up and over and inboard.  I know this long-distance revolver fire seriously bothered me.  One cannot help jumping when death, in the form of a piece of flying lead, hits the rail beside him, or the mast over his head, or whines away in a ricochet from the steel shrouds.  Nevertheless, I managed with my rifle to bother the exposed men on the rail to the extent that they lost one hooked bird out of two.  And twenty-six men require a quantity of albatrosses and mollyhawks every twenty-four hours, while they can fish only in the daylight.

As the day wore along I improved on my obstructive tactics.  When the Elsinore was up in the eye of the wind, and making sternway, I found that by putting the wheel sharply over, one way or the other, I could swing her bow off.  Then, when she had paid off till the wind was abeam, by reversing the wheel hard across to the opposite hard-over I could take advantage of her momentum away from the wind and work her off squarely before it.  This made all the wood-floated triangles of bird-snares tow aft along her sides.

The first time I was ready for them.  With hooks and sinkers on our own lines aft, we tossed out, grappled, captured, and broke off nine of their lines.  But the next time, so slow is the movement of so large a ship, the mutineers hauled all their lines safely inboard ere they towed aft within striking distance of my grapnels.

Still I improved.  As long as I kept the Elsinore before the wind they could not fish.  I experimented.  Once before it, by means of a winged-out spanker coupled with patient and careful steering, I could keep her before it.  This I did, hour by hour one of my men relieving another at the wheel.  As a result all fishing ceased.

Margaret was holding the first dog-watch, four to six.  Henry was at the wheel steering.  Wada and Louis were below cooking the evening meal over the big coal-stove and the oil-burners.  I had just come up from below and was standing beside the sounding-machine, not half a dozen feet from Henry at the wheel.  Some obscure sound from the ventilator must have attracted me, for I was gazing at it when the thing happened.

But first, the ventilator.  This is a steel shaft that leads up from the coal-carrying bowels of the ship beneath the lazarette and that wins to the outside-world via the after-wall of the chart-house.  In fact, it occupies the hollow inside of the double walls of the afterwall of the chart-house.  Its opening, at the height of a man’s head, is screened with iron bars so closely set that no mature-bodied rat can squeeze between.  Also, this opening commands the wheel, which is a scant fifteen feet away and directly across the booby-hatch.  Some mutineer, crawling along the space between the coal and the deck of the lower hold, had climbed the ventilator shaft and was able to take aim through the slits between the bars.

Practically simultaneously, I saw the out-rush of smoke and heard the report.  I heard a grunt from Henry, and, turning my head, saw him cling to the spokes and turn the wheel half a revolution as he sank to the deck.  It must have been a lucky shot.  The boy was perforated through the heart or very near to the heart—we have no time for post-mortems on the Elsinore .

Tom Spink and the second sail-maker, Uchino, sprang to Henry’s side.  The revolver continued to go off through the ventilator slits, and the bullets thudded into the front of the half wheel-house all about them.  Fortunately they were not hit, and they immediately scrambled out of range.  The boy quivered for the space of a few seconds, and ceased to move; and one more cadet of the perishing breed perished as he did his day’s work at the wheel of the Elsinore off the west coast of South America, bound from Baltimore to Seattle with a cargo of coal.

CHAPTER XLVIII

The situation is hopelessly grotesque.  We in the high place command the food of the Elsinore , but the mutineers have captured her steering-gear.  That is to say, they have captured it without coming into possession of it.  They cannot steer, neither can we.  The poop, which is the high place, is ours.  The wheel is on the poop, yet we cannot touch the wheel.  From that slitted opening in the ventilator-shaft they are able to shoot down any man who approaches the wheel.  And with that steel wall of the chart-house as a shield they laugh at us as from a conning tower.

I have a plan, but it is not worth while putting into execution unless its need becomes imperative.  In the darkness of night it would be an easy trick to disconnect the steering-gear from the short tiller on the rudder-head, and then, by re-rigging the preventer tackles, steer from both sides of the poop well enough for’ard to be out of the range of the ventilator.

In the meantime, in this fine weather, the Elsinore drifts as she lists, or as the windage of her lists and the sea-movement of waves lists.  And she can well drift.  Let the mutineers starve.  They can best be brought to their senses through their stomachs.

* * * * *

And what are wits for, if not for use?  I am breaking the men’s hungry hearts.  It is great fun in its way.  The mollyhawks and albatrosses, after their fashion, have followed the Elsinore up out of their own latitudes.  This means that there are only so many of them and that their numbers are not recruited.