Complete works of robert.., p.212
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, page 212
For some ten minutes more she careered under the impulse of the squall; but the captain was now master of himself and of his ship, and all danger at an end. And then, sudden as a trick change upon the stage, the squall blew by, the wind dropped into light airs, the sun beamed forth again upon the tattered schooner; and the captain, having secured the foresail boom and set a couple of hands to the pump, walked aft, sober, a little pale, and with the sodden end of a cigar still stuck between his teeth even as the squall had found it. Herrick followed him; he could scarce recall the violence of his late emotions, but he felt there was a scene to go through, and he was anxious and even eager to go through with it.
The captain, turning at the house end, met him face to face, and averted his eyes. ‘We’ve lost the two tops’ls and the stays’l,’ he gabbled. ‘Good business, we didn’t lose any sticks. I guess you think we’re all the better without the kites.’
‘That’s not what I’m thinking,’ said Herrick, in a voice strangely quiet, that yet echoed confusion in the captain’s mind.
‘I know that,’ he cried, holding up his hand. ‘I know what you’re thinking. No use to say it now. I’m sober.’
‘I have to say it, though,’ returned Herrick.
‘Hold on, Herrick; you’ve said enough,’ said Davis. ‘You’ve said what I would take from no man breathing but yourself; only I know it’s true.’
‘I have to tell you, Captain Brown,’ pursued Herrick, ‘that I resign my position as mate. You can put me in irons or shoot me, as you please; I will make no resistance — only, I decline in any way to help or to obey you; and I suggest you should put Mr Huish in my place. He will make a worthy first officer to your captain, sir.’ He smiled, bowed, and turned to walk forward.
‘Where are you going, Herrick?’ cried the captain, detaining him by the shoulder.
‘To berth forward with the men, sir,’ replied Herrick, with the same hateful smile. ‘I’ve been long enough aft here with you — gentlemen.
‘You’re wrong there,’ said Davis. ‘Don’t you be too quick with me; there ain’t nothing wrong but the drink — it’s the old story, man! Let me get sober once, and then you’ll see,’ he pleaded.
‘Excuse me, I desire to see no more of you,’ said Herrick.
The captain groaned aloud. ‘You know what you said about my children?’ he broke out.
‘By rote. In case you wish me to say it you again?’ asked Herrick.
‘Don’t!’ cried the captain, clapping his hands to his ears. ‘Don’t make me kill a man I care for! Herrick, if you see me put glass to my lips again till we’re ashore, I give you leave to put bullet through me; I beg you to do it! You’re the only man aboard whose carcase is worth losing; do you think I don’t know that? do you think I ever went back on you? I always knew you were in the right of it — drunk or sober, I knew that. What do you want? — an oath? Man, you’re clever enough to see that this is sure-enough earnest.’
‘Do you mean there shall be no more drinking?’ asked Herrick, ‘neither by you nor Huish? that you won’t go on stealing my profits and drinking my champagne that I gave my honour for? and that you’ll attend to your duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the ship’s work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman, and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what you mean? If it is, be so good as to say it categorically.’
‘You put these things in a way hard for a gentleman to swallow,’ said the captain. ‘You wouldn’t have me say I was ashamed of myself? Trust me this once; I’ll do the square thing, and there’s my hand on it.’
‘Well, I’ll try it once,’ said Herrick. ‘Fail me again...’
‘No more now!’ interrupted Davis. ‘No more, old man! Enough said. You’ve a riling tongue when your back’s up, Herrick. Just be glad we’re friends again, the same as what I am; and go tender on the raws; I’ll see as you don’t repent it. We’ve been mighty near death this day — don’t say whose fault it was! — pretty near hell, too, I guess. We’re in a mighty bad line of life, us two, and ought to go easy with each other.’
He was maundering; yet it seemed as if he were maundering with some design, beating about the bush of some communication that he feared to make, or perhaps only talking against time in terror of what Herrick might say next. But Herrick had now spat his venom; his was a kindly nature, and, content with his triumph, he had now begun to pity. With a few soothing words, he sought to conclude the interview, and proposed that they should change their clothes.
‘Not right yet,’ said Davis. ‘There’s another thing I want to tell you first. You know what you said about my children? I want to tell you why it hit me so hard; I kind of think you’ll feel bad about it too. It’s about my little Adar. You hadn’t ought to have quite said that — but of course I know you didn’t know. She — she’s dead, you see.’
‘Why, Davis!’ cried Herrick. ‘You’ve told me a dozen times she was alive! Clear your head, man! This must be the drink.’
‘No, SIR,’ said Davis. ‘She’s dead. Died of a bowel complaint. That was when I was away in the brig Oregon. She lies in Portland, Maine. “Adar, only daughter of Captain John Davis and Mariar his wife, aged five.” I had a doll for her on board. I never took the paper off’n that doll, Herrick; it went down the way it was with the Sea Ranger, that day I was damned.’
The Captain’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, he talked with an extraordinary softness but a complete composure; and Herrick looked upon him with something that was almost terror.
‘Don’t think I’m crazy neither,’ resumed Davis. ‘I’ve all the cold sense that I know what to do with. But I guess a man that’s unhappy’s like a child; and this is a kind of a child’s game of mine. I never could act up to the plain-cut truth, you see; so I pretend. And I warn you square; as soon as we’re through with this talk, I’ll start in again with the pretending. Only, you see, she can’t walk no streets,’ added the captain, ‘couldn’t even make out to live and get that doll!’
Herrick laid a tremulous hand upon the captain’s shoulder.
‘Don’t do that,’ cried Davis, recoiling from the touch. ‘Can’t you see I’m all broken up the way it is? Come along, then; come along, old man; you can put your trust in me right through; come along and get dry clothes.’
They entered the cabin, and there was Huish on his knees prising open a case of champagne.
‘‘Vast, there!’ cried the captain. ‘No more of that. No more drinking on this ship.’
‘Turned teetotal, ‘ave you?’ inquired Hu’sh. ‘I’m agreeable. About time, eh? Bloomin’ nearly lost another ship, I fancy.’ He took out a bottle and began calmly to burst the wire with the spike of a corkscrew.
‘Do you hear me speak?’ cried Davis.
‘I suppose I do. You speak loud enough,’ said Huish. ‘The trouble is that I don’t care.’
Herrick plucked the captain’s sleeve. ‘Let him free now,’ he said. ‘We’ve had all we want this morning.’
‘Let him have it then,’ said the captain. ‘It’s his last.’
By this time the wire was open, the string was cut, the head of glided paper was torn away; and Huish waited, mug in hand, expecting the usual explosion. It did not follow. He eased the cork with his thumb; still there was no result. At last he took the screw and drew it. It came out very easy and with scarce a sound.
‘‘Illo!’said Huish. ‘‘Ere’s a bad bottle.’
He poured some of the wine into the mug; it was colourless and still. He smelt and tasted it.
‘W’y, wot’s this?’ he said. ‘It’s water!’
If the voice of trumpets had suddenly sounded about the ship in the midst of the sea, the three men in the house could scarcely have been more stunned than by this incident. The mug passed round; each sipped, each smelt of it; each stared at the bottle in its glory of gold paper as Crusoe may have stared at the footprint; and their minds were swift to fix upon a common apprehension. The difference between a bottle of champagne and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one or the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.
A second bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a stateroom; these two were brought out, broken open, and tested. Still with the same result: the contents were still colourless and tasteless, and dead as the rain in a beached fishing-boat.
‘Crikey!’ said Huish.
‘Here, let’s sample the hold!’ said the captain, mopping his brow with a back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of the house, grim and heavy-footed.
All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside the coamings.
‘Are you going to let the men know?’ whispered Herrick.
‘Damn the men!’ said Davis. ‘It’s beyond that. We’ve got to know ourselves.’
Three cases were sent on deck and sampled in turn; from each bottle, as the captain smashed it with the axe, the champagne ran bubbling and creaming.
‘Go deeper, can’t you?’ cried Davis to the Kanakas in the hold.
The command gave the signal for a disastrous change. Case after case came up, bottle after bottle was burst and bled mere water. Deeper yet, and they came upon a layer where there was scarcely so much as the intention to deceive; where the cases were no longer branded, the bottles no longer wired or papered, where the fraud was manifest and stared them in the face.
‘Here’s about enough of this foolery!’ said Davis. ‘Stow back the cases in the hold, Uncle, and get the broken crockery overboard. Come with me,’ he added to his co-adventurers, and led the way back into the cabin.
CHAPTER 6. THE PARTNERS
Each took a side of the fixed table; it was the first time they had sat down at it together; but now all sense of incongruity, all memory of differences, was quite swept away by the presence of the common ruin.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the captain, after a pause, and with very much the air of a chairman opening a board-meeting, ‘we’re sold.’
Huish broke out in laughter. ‘Well, if this ain’t the ‘ighest old rig!’ he cried. ‘And Dyvis, ‘ere, who thought he had got up so bloomin’ early in the mornin’! We’ve stolen a cargo of spring water! Oh, my crikey!’ and he squirmed with mirth.
The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.
‘Here’s Old Man Destiny again,’ said he to Herrick, ‘but this time I guess he’s kicked the door right in.’
Herrick only shook his head.
‘O Lord, it’s rich!’ laughed Huish. ‘It would really be a scrumptious lark if it ‘ad ‘appened to somebody else! And wot are we to do next? Oh, my eye! with this bloomin’ schooner, too?’
‘That’s the trouble,’ said Davis. ‘There’s only one thing certain: it’s no use carting this old glass and ballast to Peru. No, SIR, we’re in a hole.’
‘O my, and the merchand’ cried Huish; ‘the man that made this shipment! He’ll get the news by the mail brigantine; and he’ll think of course we’re making straight for Sydney.’
‘Yes, he’ll be a sick merchant,’ said the captain. ‘One thing: this explains the Kanaka crew. If you’re going to lose a ship, I would ask no better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there’s one thing it don’t explain; it don’t explain why she came down Tahiti ways.’
‘Wy, to lose her, you byby!’ said Huish.
‘A lot you know,’ said the captain. ‘Nobody wants to lose a schooner; they want to lose her ON HER COURSE, you skeericks! You seem to think underwriters haven’t got enough sense to come in out of the rain.’
‘Well,’ said Herrick, ‘I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came so far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned. It seems these two unhappy devils, Wiseman and Wishart, were drunk on the champagne from the beginning — and died drunk at the end.’
The captain looked on the table.
‘They lay in their two bunks, or sat here in this damned house,’ he pursued, with rising agitation, ‘filling their skins with the accursed stuff, till sickness took them. As they sickened and the fever rose, they drank the more. They lay here howling and groaning, drunk and dying, all in one. They didn’t know where they were, they didn’t care. They didn’t even take the sun, it seems.’
‘Not take the sun?’ cried the captain, looking up. ‘Sacred Billy! what a crowd!’
‘Well, it don’t matter to Joe!’ said Huish. ‘Wot are Wiseman and the t’other buffer to us?’
‘A good deal, too,’ says the captain. ‘We’re their heirs, I guess.’
‘It is a great inheritance,’ said Herrick.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ returned Davis. ‘Appears to me as if it might be worse. ‘Tain’t worth what the cargo would have been of course, at least not money down. But I’ll tell you what it appears to figure up to. Appears to me as if it amounted to about the bottom dollar of the man in ‘Frisco.’
‘‘Old on,’ said Huish. ‘Give a fellow time; ‘ow’s this, umpire?’
‘Well, my sons,’ pursued the captain, who seemed to have recovered his assurance, ‘Wiseman and Wishart were to be paid for casting away this old schooner and its cargo. We’re going to cast away the schooner right enough; and I’ll make it my private business to see that we get paid. What were W. and W. to get? That’s more’n I can tell. But W. and W. went into this business themselves, they were on the crook. Now WE’RE on the square, we only stumbled into it; and that merchant has just got to squeal, and I’m the man to see that he squeals good. No, sir! there’s some stuffing to this Farallone racket after all.’
‘Go it, cap!’ cried Huish. ‘Yoicks! Forrard! ‘Old ‘ard! There’s your style for the money! Blow me if I don’t prefer this to the hother.’
‘I do not understand,’ said Herrick. ‘I have to ask you to excuse me; I do not understand.’
‘Well now, see here, Herrick,’ said Davis, ‘I’m going to have a word with you anyway upon a different matter, and it’s good that Huish should hear it too. We’re done with this boozing business, and we ask your pardon for it right here and now. We have to thank you for all you did for us while we were making hogs of ourselves; you’ll find me turn-to all right in future; and as for the wine, which I grant we stole from you, I’ll take stock and see you paid for it. That’s good enough, I believe. But what I want to point out to you is this. The old game was a risky game. The new game’s as safe as running a Vienna Bakery. We just put this Farallone before the wind, and run till we’re well to looard of our port of departure and reasonably well up with some other place, where they have an American Consul. Down goes the Farallone, and good-bye to her! A day or so in the boat; the consul packs us home, at Uncle Sam’s expense, to ‘Frisco; and if that merchant don’t put the dollars down, you come to me!’
‘But I thought,’ began Herrick; and then broke out; ‘oh, let’s get on to Peru!’
‘Well, if you’re going to Peru for your health, I won’t say no!’ replied the captain. ‘But for what other blame’ shadow of a reason you should want to go there, gets me clear. We don’t want to go there with this cargo; I don’t know as old bottles is a lively article anywheres; leastways, I’ll go my bottom cent, it ain’t Peru. It was always a doubt if we could sell the schooner; I never rightly hoped to, and now I’m sure she ain’t worth a hill of beans; what’s wrong with her, I don’t know; I only know it’s something, or she wouldn’t be here with this truck in her inside. Then again, if we lose her, and land in Peru, where are we? We can’t declare the loss, or how did we get to Peru? In that case the merchant can’t touch the insurance; most likely he’ll go bust; and don’t you think you see the three of us on the beach of Callao?’
‘There’s no extradition there,’ said Herrick.
‘Well, my son, and we want to be extraded,’ said the captain.
‘What’s our point? We want to have a consul extrade us as far as San Francisco and that merchant’s office door. My idea is that Samoa would be found an eligible business centre. It’s dead before the wind; the States have a consul there, and ‘Frisco steamers call, so’s we could skip right back and interview the merchant.’
‘Samoa?’ said Herrick. ‘It will take us for ever to get there.’
‘Oh, with a fair wind!’ said the captain.
‘No trouble about the log, eh?’ asked Huish.
‘No, SIR,’ said Davis. ‘Light airs and baffling winds. Squalls and calms. D. R.: five miles. No obs. Pumps attended. And fill in the barometer and thermometer off of last year’s trip.’ ‘Never saw such a voyage,’ says you to the consul. ‘Thought I was going to run short...’ He stopped in mid career. ‘Say,’ he began again, and once more stopped. ‘Beg your pardon, Herrick,’ he added with undisguised humility, ‘but did you keep the run of the stores?’
‘Had I been told to do so, it should have been done, as the rest was done, to the best of my little ability,’ said Herrick. ‘As it was, the cook helped himself to what he pleased.’
Davis looked at the table.
‘I drew it rather fine, you see,’ he said at last. ‘The great thing was to clear right out of Papeete before the consul could think better of it. Tell you what: I guess I’ll take stock.’
And he rose from table and disappeared with a lamp in the lazarette.
‘‘Ere’s another screw loose,’ observed Huish.
‘My man,’ said Herrick, with a sudden gleam of animosity, ‘it is still your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?’
‘You come the ‘eavy swell, don’t you, ducky?’ said Huish.
‘Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w’eel, my man. Yah.’
He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and strolled into the waist with his hands in his pockets.
In a surprisingly short time, the captain reappeared; he did not look at Herrick, but called Huish back and sat down.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’ve taken stock — roughly.’ He paused as if for somebody to help him out; and none doing so, both gazing on him instead with manifest anxiety, he yet more heavily resumed. ‘Well, it won’t fight. We can’t do it; that’s the bed rock. I’m as sorry as what you can be, and sorrier. We can’t look near Samoa. I don’t know as we could get to Peru.’
