Part 14

These experiences seemed to have a marked effect upon their future development. The qualities of courage, endurance, and masculine virility seemed of more importance than the intellectual and moral attributes. Jones declined a clerical position in the office of the skyscraper; and Smith, who could have been educated at college by the father of the bully, chose to ship in the navy as seaman apprentice. Shortly after, young Jones, unaware of Smith's step, yet influenced by the fate that was guiding their paths in parallel lines, joined the schoolship _St. Mary_, and on graduation entered the merchant marine as able seaman, with a scholar's knowledge of navigation. Smith served his time as apprentice, was honorably discharged as petty officer; and as to reach this rating he must master the study of navigation, he faced the world at twenty-one as well equipped in this as was Jones; then, as under the existing laws he could never obtain a commission in the navy, he chose a field where his knowledge was of use. About the same time as Jones he, too, shipped before the mast, and the Seven Seas engulfed them. But each learned of the other through letters from home.

Life in deep-water ships is a school of evolution in which the law of the survival of the fittest has full play. Weaklings, mental or physical, die on the first voyage, or quit at the end of it. Soft men become hard men; hard men become iron men; iron men lose their human attributes. As the stronger virtues of nerve, pluck, and stamina increase, so do the softer qualities of mercy and kindness decline. Both young men were starved and ill-treated before the mast, until, accepting it as the law of the calling, they fought against it to the after end of the ship, then to enforce it against the weaker spirits they had distanced. Each in time became a competent second mate with a growing sense of his importance; then a first mate, with a fixed and accepted reputation for "buckoism" that reached across the thousand miles of sea to the other. Smith, drinking in a saloon at Callao, heard of Black Jones's feat in quelling the _Eldorado_ mutiny with a belaying pin and cursed him mentally in furious envy. Jones, blackguarding a man he had just ironed in the 'tween deck at sea, heard from the victim of a man who could take him down--Bully Smith, who sailed out of New York.

Smith drank deeper from the news of Jones, and went to sea further committed to the blind worship of force. Jones insanely struck the man in irons, and in a week had ironed three others whom he had goaded into mutinous resentment of his abuse. Two strong, positive souls at the opposite ends of the earth, united by the first and lowest of primordial emotions--hatred and fear--were reinforcing each other to their mutual undoing. Had the kindergarten teacher done her duty and brought them together in childhood, or had they fought it out as boys, this might have been averted. Yet there came another chance in middle life.

The fate which gripped them sent one east from San Francisco, and the other west from New York, and the two ships sighted each other at the crossing point of voyages. Here a vicious, biting cold south-westerly gale blew the vessels against the rocky shores of Cape Horn, and in the furious turmoil of surf, backed by mountainous antarctic seas that picked both ships to pieces, but two men reached the shore alive--two strong, hardy, and enduring mates, Smith and Jones. Bruised and bleeding, drenched, freezing, and exhausted they painfully climbed the rocks five miles apart, and struck inland over a hummocky plateau, walking fast to keep out the cold while the moisture in their clothing stiffened to ice, not knowing where they were going, but dimly hoping for aid from the savages.

Through snow and sleet and raging polar wind they staggered on, making for the cañonlike aperture in the hills to the north that showed faintly in the lulls of the storm. Famished for want of food, tortured with thirst that snow would not relieve, racked in every bone and muscle with the awful pain of extreme fatigue, and not daring to halt for fear of the drowsiness that fought the fatigue and presaged death, with the name of God often on their lips--but not in prayer--they degenerated in two nights and a day into a couple of unreasoning wild beasts; but not yet insane, for they remembered one another when they rounded a huge pinnacle of rock at the head of the cañon and met face to face.

Two six-foot, bearded, ragged, and disheveled human brutes faced each other a hundred miles from their kind. And instead of their common suffering uniting them, their common soul mutually repelled them. But instead of silently and scowlingly backing away like the tomcats of boyhood, they snarled and growled incoherently like two rival polar bears, then turned and walked apart, each with what dignity he could assume under the circumstances. They did not enter the cañon; Smith turned east, Jones west, and their further suffering has no place in this story. They were on Hermite Island, and in time, with the help of sealers, Smith reached the Falklands, where he shipped before the mast for Liverpool; and Jones, Punta Arenas, where he got passage for Valparaiso.

It is easy for believers in reincarnation to picture the history of this warfare of soul. Back in the beginning of things two monera collide, and, neither able to absorb the other, separate and remember. Two ameboid organisms struggle for the mastery and rend each other to death. Two monster fish battle in the warm, steaming sea, and swim away, wounded, to be devoured by their kind. Two huge reptiles war to the death. Two mammals fight and run. Two manlike apes grapple on the bough of a tree, and, locked in vicious embrace, with teeth buried in each other's flesh, fall to a common death on the ground. Two apelike men battle with clubs and crack each other's skull. Two human beings duel with sword or pistol and kill each other. Two babies meet in a park and squall. And never, from the beginning, victory for one or forgiveness from either.

Fate gave them another meeting and another chance. Four years later both were paid off at San Francisco, and in looking for berths each met a skipper looking for mates, but at different times. Smith met him first, and, his credentials being good, while his reputation was world-wide and splendid, from a skipper's viewpoint, he was gladly accepted as first officer and sent aboard the ship, lying at anchor in the bay. Jones, rather than wait indefinitely for a berth as first mate, shipped as second, but only after a delay that brought him aboard as the ship was lifting her anchor. Neither knew of the other's presence in port, and their meeting on the poop as the tug was towing the ship to the Golden Gate was a matter of speculation to Captain Brown for some days after. They were introduced by the polite and enthusiastic skipper, who congratulated himself at the moment on his getting two such stars into his ship as Bully Smith and Black Jones of New York--and they stood stock-still and silent, staring at each other, while beads of perspiration gathered on their brows; then both wheeled and walked away, as they had done on the frozen plateau of Cape Horn. Mr. Smith to the forecastle, where the men, under the boatswains, were catting and fishing the anchor; Mr. Jones, to his room off the forward companion-alley. Here he sat on his chest, reviling Smith, his luck, the skipper who had shipped him, and the God above who had created him and brought him into contact with Smith and the things concerning Smith that he could not understand. Why, he asked himself, had he not thrashed him as a boy, or made friends with him?

Dimly, through this inquiry indexed by his curses, Jones at this moment had a fleeting glimpse into the scientific basis of the Golden Rule, ever a fallacy to him. But his past and his present would not permit of a continuance of the mind process. Here he was, a competent first mate with a master's certificate, second mate under a first mate, who was Smith. And at this he listened to a message delivered by the steward from the captain, that his presence was required on deck.

He went up, nervous as a cat in a strange place. Even though the ship was on her way and far from the beach, he approached the captain to ask that he be put ashore. But the captain quietly said, "Report to Mr. Smith, sir," and Jones walked forward to report, meeting Smith coming aft from the forecastle.

"Ready for work, sir," stammered Jones. "What do you wish?"

"No--nothing," answered Smith, equally embarrassed. They passed on, Smith aft to speak to the captain, Jones forward, around the house, meekly bearing the scrutiny of the men, and back to the main-rigging, where he stood idly looking aloft for a moment or two; then he coiled up a rope--a task that ordinarily he would have summoned a man to in a burst of invective.

Mr. Smith walked up to the captain.

"Anchor's on the rail, sir," he said. "What next, sir?"

"What next?" queried the captain, sharply. "Don't you know? Get both anchors inboard and stow them for sea. Pass that chain down into the lockers. Send down the fish-tackle. Get chafing-gear aloft. Stow away those fenders and clear up the decks. Get to work, Mr. Smith. Keep those twenty-four rope-haulers busy. They're looking at you now."

"Yes, sir," answered the subdued Mr. Smith; and he went forward among the men. Mr. Jones found other ropes to coil.

But the ship must be got ready for sea; and after a wearing day of work, with tentative orders from the two mates, with sarcastic comment from the captain, and insolent protest from the bewildered "rope-haulers," this was finally accomplished; and at eight bells in the evening, with the tug cast off and the towline coiled down to dry, with canvas set and the course given to the helmsman, Smith and Jones mustered the men into the waist to choose watches. They picked their men, one after another, with less interest in the proceedings than manifested by the men themselves. Then the first mate said, wearily: "Relieve the wheel and lookout. That'll do the port watch," and went to his berth demoralized and despondent, sick at heart--in the mind state of a prize-fighter lately whipped. The second mate walked the deck in about the same mood, until four bells struck, when, about the time that Smith fell asleep, he roused up his individuality and proved himself a competent and masterful second mate. The watch responded slowly to his call to the main-brace, and he went among them with a belaying pin.

When Smith relieved him at midnight he, too, felt the inhibition until Jones fell asleep, when his powers revived and his watch learned his caliber. Neither man knew the cause of the change of mood. As far as they could analyze their emotions they were nervous, broody, hateful, revengeful, and cowardly, until some reluctancy or misdoing of the men roused them to righteous rage. They did not, and could not, know that this revulsion did not occur until the other was asleep. This brought about a somewhat amusing condition of affairs a few days out.

An Orkney-Islander of Mr. Jones's watch--an intelligent, self-respecting man, who was aloft on the mizzen with a tar-pot--spilled a few drops on the clean white paintwork of the house; and Mr. Jones, standing beside the window of the sleeping Mr. Smith, witnessed the careless act, and shouted:

"Come down here, you long-headed billy-goat, and I'll make you smell hell!"

"Ay, that I will," answered the man, scrambling down in a hurry.

Irreverent forecastle tradition has it that the Orkney Islands are peopled by the descendants of a shipwrecked Dane and a nanny-goat. This tradition found its birth and acceptance, no doubt, from the goatlike characteristics of the heads, faces, and beards of this hardy race of people. But to apply the epithet goat to an Orkneyman is like saying Sawney to a Scot or nigger to a man-and-brother. Mr. Jones faced a raging lunatic; but Mr. Smith had wakened at his shout, was intently listening in the berth below, and Mr. Jones's efficiency left him. He backed away from the enraged sailor, then incontinently fled, pelted in the back by a hard and tarry fist, and occasionally kicked by a heavy sea-boot. Around the house they went, the man in an unspent fury of anger, Jones in an agony of fear and humiliation, until, at the second lap, Mr. Smith appeared at the forward companion, which opened on to the extension of the poop around which they had raced, with as much disquiet in his face as was in Jones's.

"You, too," bellowed the man. "Stand still, an' I'll no eat my dinner till I've licked you baith."

Mr. Smith stood for a moment or two, long enough to receive several crashing blows in the face, which he only tried to shield with his open, enfolding hands; then he, too, fled, but to his room, where he locked himself in.

Mr. Jones had put the house between himself and the enemy, who, having conquered both mates, now seemed to be looking for the captain; but when the captain appeared with a revolver he quieted down, and tamely went in irons. The captain's opinion of his mates must not be given; and the two mates' experiences with the men before, by individual action while the other slept, they had regained their ascendancy and authority, need not be detailed.

The ship was bound for Melbourne, a long passage full of possibilities; but they ate at separate tables, and after the first day's work seldom met except at the change of watches, when one would report to the other the happenings of the watch--the course, speed, direction and changes of the wind, and the progress of routine work--in a strained tone that was answered by the other with an equally embarrassed response. When both were awake their attitude and behavior were such as to merit the frankly expressed contempt of the skipper. When one was asleep, the other earned and won the hatred of his own watch, and this, by forecastle communion, was extended to the other.

There came a spell of bad weather, in which all hands were up occasionally, and then it was noticeable that both mates would blurt out the same order to the men at the same time. It only increased the general strain, and each mate mentally cursed himself and the other for the contretemps. Next, the men observed that the pet antipathies of Mr. Smith among them received more or less of the unkind attention of Mr. Jones, and _vice versa_. A Dutchman, kicked by the first mate in the morning washing down the deck, for working his broom athwartwise instead of fore and aft, was knocked down by the second mate in the dog-watch for passing to windward of him. An Irishman, damned at the wheel by Jones for bad steering, was set to work in his watch below by Smith for the small matter of eating his breakfast on deck. Other resemblances of thought and action occurred, more or less unfortunate, such as both showing kindness to the sick steward until they met at his bedside, then ignoring and neglecting him; and Mr. Jones's untactful appearance with his sextant when Mr. Smith was taking the sun at midday--an uncalled-for and regrettable piece of assumption on his part; for a second mate is not shipped to navigate, no matter what his proficiency. Again, each mate, unknown to the other, stopped the morning coffee of his watch on the flimsiest pretexts.

This communion of soul, mutually strengthened, became a force which pervaded the entire ship's company. The captain grew peevish, fretful, suspicious, and unkind to all. The steward became insolent as he recovered his health. The men quarreled and divided among themselves, uniting only in their hatred of the mates. The cook was mobbed for unprofessional treatment of the forecastle menu, and the carpenter and sailmaker fought a drawn battle for choice of seats at the second-cabin table--a matter that the steward might have decided, but would not. And thus animated, the floating hell sailed slantingly across the Pacific until hit by the outer fringe of a typhoon near the Society Islands, by which time the Orkneyman was released.

Mr. Jones had the deck at the beginning of it, and skillfully got the canvas in down to the maintopgallant sail, when the captain appeared, and, with a falling barometer in mind, decided to call all hands and shorten down to lower topsails. This brought the other mate on deck, and trouble began. The maintopgallantsail and upper mizzentopsail, however, came in easily, and were stowed before the evil genius of the mates could get to work. But then--the port watch to the fore, the starboard to the main--all hands manned the topsail downhauls and weather-braces, while the two mates slacked away the halyards and roared officerlike behests. It was a scene of wild confusion. The yards had been braced for a beam wind; but this wind was hauling aft and increasing rapidly to a screaming gale, which, bearing hard upon the fixed ground-swell, raised an ugly cross-sea that occasionally lifted a ton or two of green water over the rail. Captain Brown, to get his topsails in the easier, followed the wind as it changed, keeping it abeam; and, with a poor helmsman at the wheel, stood close beside him and added his voice to the uproar of whistling wind, pounding seas, the formless shouts of the four gangs at the downhauls, and the senseless upbraiding of the mates.

"Don't part those rotten downhauls!" roared the captain. "Watch out up aloft!" But the mates could not hear distinctly.

"Haul away on your downhauls!" shouted Mr. Jones at the main-rigging, and "Haul away on your downhauls!" repeated Mr. Smith from forward, each speech embellished with stock profanity. The yards were down, and the tackles aloft "two blocks," but the fatuous mates did not see nor hear.

"Belay your downhauls! Belay all!" yelled the furious skipper at the wheel. "Man the spilling-lines, and send a man aft who can steer!"

"Haul on your downhauls!" thundered the mutual-minded mates, and the exasperated men hauled with all their strength. There were six to a gang, and they could have broken new manila under the circumstances. The weather downhauls went first, and the wind within the hollow tube of canvas lifted the yardarms. Then a sea hit the weather quarter, boarded the ship, and washed the incompetent helmsman to the lee alley, where he lay quiet for a time. The captain seized the wheel and ground it up, yelling the while to "send a man aft, to haul away on the spilling-lines, to shut up that d--d noise at the halyards, and 'tend to business."

But in spite of his objurgations the mates could not obey. They ran about the flooded waist of the ship, shouting futile instructions to the demoralized crew to do this or that--and their orders were curiously similar, though inapplicable. Then, in spite of the captain's mighty heavings on the wheel, the ship broached to, spilling the topsails first, next the courses. The first slatted back against the masts, then forward against the strain of the bolt-ropes, started rents here and there, and in three minutes were in rags and shreds, while the yards, with slackened weather-braces, swung and banged about in a manner to send the crew from under. They flocked to the break of the poop, the two mates among them.

"Come aft here to me, you two hell-fired farmers!" bellowed the captain, and the two came. "D--n your wretched, miserable hearts and souls, if it wasn't for the law I'd slaughter you both! Look at my ship! Just look at her, now! Call yourself competent mates? Someone must have told you that. Take this wheel! Take it, both of you, and steer! Get this ship dead before the wind and keep her so! You can't shorten sail, but you can steer, and steer you will, straight and true, or I'll put you 'fore the mast!"

They gripped the spokes meekly, Smith to starboard, Jones to port, and with the aid of the shivered mizzentopsail got the ship before it, and steered--beautifully, with no sign or word from one to assist the other. Neither took charge, as is usual with two men at the wheel. Their movements were simultaneous and harmonious, with no conflicting judgments of pressure or release. They steered as one man with the strength of two; and Captain Brown glared at them awhile, then, unable to criticise, went forward among his men to secure his wabbly upper topsailyards. He tautened the braces; then, as all the downhauls had parted at or near the splices of the upper blocks, sent the whipped ends aloft to be rove off and knotted. But the first man up the fore had hardly reached the futtock rigging, when he sang out: "Land ho! Land dead ahead! Breakers under the bow, sir! It's a reef--a barrier reef. Hard a-port, sir, for God's sake!"

"Port your wheel!" yelled the captain from amidships. "Hard over! Port main-braces, all of you!"

The wheel went over and the men rushed to the braces, but it was too late. Hardly had the ship's head swung a point before there was a crash and a jolt that shook every man from his feet; then came another and heavier crash, and the stern lifted with a sea, swung through an irregular arc of radius equal to the ship's length, and came down with another crash that sent the wheel spinning and both helmsmen to the deck. The foremast went by the board, snapping six feet above the deck, and carrying with it the main-topgallantmast. It fell across the reef that had caught the ship, and the royal and topgallant masts and yards floated in the fairly quiet water of the lagoon within. The stern lifted again, swung farther in, and came down with a jar that shook out the main and mizzen topmasts; but these spars disintegrated as they fell, and landed close aboard or on the reef. Then came a mighty sea that swept over the dismantled wreck as over a breakwater; and the two mates, bruised and half stunned--nearly shocked out of their now limited faculties--were caught just as they stood erect, and carried with it, high over the rail, high over the barrier reef, and dropped in the swirling turmoil of yeasty water within it.

The captain had struggled aft to the starboard alley on the poop, and saw them go. A following sea hit the ship and bore him back in its rush along the alley. Recovering, he again scrambled aft to where, on the house just forward of the wheel, hung a small, circular life-buoy to be thrown by the helmsman in an emergency.

"Stand by!" he called. "Stand by for this life-buoy!" He could see their two shaggy heads rising out of the froth, each of them apparently uninjured, and swimming vigorously toward the reef. "Stand by!" he shouted, encouragingly, and sent the circular ring of cork and canvas whirling toward them with a round-arm throw. It fell near them, and both swam toward it, each getting a grip.

The captain ran forward as he could between the sweeping seas to where his crew clustered under the weather-rail, hanging on to coils of rope and belaying pins.

"Go out there, some of you!" he shouted. "Go down the foremast and throw them a line! I'll clear away the running-gear, so you can overhaul enough. Bear a hand, now, or they can't get back!"

"To hell with them!" said the Orkney-Islander. "Think you, cappen, that I or any man here would go down that spar after yon two buckos?"