Part 15

Some there might have gone, for the captain was a naturally humane man and very much in earnest. But the Orkneyman was a master spirit among them, and his example prevailed. No one would go. The skipper mounted a few ratlines of the main-rigging, and shouted to swim to the floating wreck of the foremast, not far from where they struggled with the life-buoy--an easy swim had they swum alone. They made no response, nor did they cease their futile struggles. But they did not struggle with each other, only with the life-buoy and with the sea. They drifted to leeward into the lagoon, past the wreckage that might have saved them both, and by which they could have regained the ship. With only their heads showing occasionally, for their struggles kept them under, they went out of sight in the smudge of rain and spindrift, gripping with all their strength the small life-buoy that would have supported one, but not two.

Cursed to the last with a fear of each other that matched their hate, they would not fight, but died as they lived, with their problem unsolved and their supremacy undetermined.

THE MATE OF HIS SOUL

Though he became a man later, he was a child of three when I first knew him, and I was a youngster of ten. He was fair-haired, pink-cheeked, and somewhat girlish--that is, a sweet-faced child, who attracted affection and attention. He had a father, mother, a couple of aunts--all in the same household, and several devoted cousins and neighbors, of various ages, who occasionally visited him. I was in the latter class, and, one day, after running an errand for his mother, I picked him up, after the manner of my elders, and petted him. He stood it tranquilly and smilingly, until his eyes rested on a corner of the room. Then they dilated in terror, and a piercing scream came from his lips. It was not the ordinary scream of nervous children--it was more. After the beginning it rose an octave higher, much as a policeman's whistle will rise from pressure of breath, or a steam siren take a new note when it is well at work. It was penetrating and harrowing, and his feminine relatives responded with inquiries and fumbling after possible pins. Yet the screams continued, while his eyes were fixed in indescribable intensity on the corner. He saw something there.

"What is it, boy?" I asked. "What do you see?"

"There!" he gasped, pointing. "Don't let it. Don't."

I gave him to his mother, and with the true intuition of a harum-scarum boy, I ran to the corner, shouting, "Get out of here," at the same time dealing a furious kick at an imaginary creature.

However, I was not affected at the time. Repeating my injunctions to get out, I kicked and pursued the imaginary thing out through the door, and returned, smiling, to the child.

"It's gone," he whimpered. "Don't let it come back."

"But what was it?" they asked. "What did you think you saw, Freddie?"

He did not answer, and I ventured a suggestion: "Ghosts?"

He shook his head. Perhaps he had no formulated speculations of ghosts.

"Goblins?" He still looked doubtful, and I went into detail.

"Horns?" I asked.

He nodded, and shook convulsively.

"Big mouth, with teeth?"

"Yes, and hair--long hair. And dirty, oh, so dirty."

"Did it have hands, or were they all feet?" I asked, enjoying the joke immensely; for in my babyhood I had felt these fears and seen these things.

"Claws," he answered, "like the cat, only bigger, and all bluggy--all bluggy."

"Tell us more, Freddie," I went on. "I couldn't see him very well, in that dark corner."

"He looked at me," answered Freddie, shivering in his mother's arms, "and he opened his eyes, until they were all white, and he opened his mouth, until it was all teeth. And he wanted to bite me. I knew he wanted to bite me."

"Did he have horns, Freddie?" I persisted.

"Yes--horns on his head, and wings--dirty wings, with claws. But when you kicked him, he looked at you and wanted to bite you; but you made him run. He backed out the door. Didn't you see?"

"Oh, see," I answered bravely, though my heart was beating rather fast, and my tongue somewhat dry against the roof of my mouth. "Don't ever be afraid while I'm around, Freddie. I'll take care of you."

Then his mother took me by the ear, led me out, and banished me, saying that if I taught her little boy any such nonsense I must stay away.

That night, in my darkened bedroom, I saw things myself--things with claws, and horns, and wings, and eyes. But as I had seen them since my earliest remembrance, and had only drawn upon my experiences in my suggestions to Freddie, I managed to banish them and go to sleep, not knowing then that Freddie, my pet playmate, had gathered up these primordial memories from me, and delivered them back. Later on I understood.

My banishment was thorough, and enforced to the limit. I saw little of Freddie through the years of boyhood, only hearing at times that he was a model boy, an example of good behavior to his fellow schoolmates, and a reproach to me, a black sheep of a family in which were no ewes or lambs. My father was a policeman, my two brothers firemen, and my mother a woman of such soul and character that she could master the four of us. She thrashed me through high school, but I evaded the ministry, for which she was preparing me, by running away to sea at the age of eighteen.

I was a second mate when I met Freddie again. It was when I, with the first mate of the schooner I belonged to, and two of the crew, were returning from an evening at the theater, that we passed a group of young men, smoking cigarettes, and one of the men said:

"Get onto the dudes."

One of them promptly followed, spoke a few sharp, incisive words, and gave the critic such a thrashing as astonished us all. It was Freddie, twenty years old, well-dressed and gentlemanly, but with an aggressiveness that never found warrant in his childhood. When he had licked the man, I talked with him amicably.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I'm a seafaring man, too, only I went through Annapolis, and will start on my practice cruise in a week or so. Then I'll get my commission in the navy."

"You've done well, Fred." I felt moved to drop the "Freddie." "I've put in seven years, and am only second mate in schooners."

"But you can do better," he answered. "Why, every day of my life I've thought of you, done the things and said the things that I fancied you might do or say. I never forgot the time you kicked the monster."

"Oh, when you were a baby?" I answered. "Why, I'd about forgotten that, myself."

"Shake your crowd," he said, "and I'll shake mine. Come with me, and talk. I've lots to say."

We talked that evening, to little results. I found Fred vapid, flippant, and uninteresting. He had spent his childhood and youth at home, winning prizes at Sunday school and at the dancing academy. At Annapolis, he had learned boxing and football; but, never in his life had he struck a blow in anger until this evening, when he had thrashed an able seaman. He was as surprised at the feat as I was myself, and asked me if he had done it in the fit and proper manner. I was disappointed in him, and left him, with a willingness not to meet him again. And that night I had the frightful dreams of my childhood, though not then, nor before nor since, have I been a drinking man.

I may as well describe them now, for they appeared again and again while we lay in port, and bear strongly upon this story. There was the menacing monster that I had recognized by Fred's childish description, and the imaginary thing which I had kicked away from him--a creature of teeth and eyes, of horns, claws, wings, and scales, familiar to all sensitive children, perhaps, and possibly descended through the ages as a primordial memory of some prehistoric reptile. But this, terrifying though it was, did not afflict me greatly; for I was somewhat familiar with it, and even in my dreams knew that I could escape it by flight, and in the waking, or half-waking, condition drive it from me by imagined attack.

It was a new element in these new dreams that made me dread the night as a time of torment and horror, and finally so worked upon my nerves that, ascribing it to the influence of my environment, I quit my berth long before the day of sailing.

This new thing can be described easier than realized. It was dark, deadly quiet, and inert, formless, except for its three dimensions--about two feet long, and six inches broad and high, with neither eyes, feet, wings, teeth, tail, ears, nor even a mouth. Yet it had power of volition, and was always behind me. It followed me across miles of open country, through pathless jungles, through long, spacious halls, sometimes lighted, but always empty.

In one dream I took to an open boat, and pulled frantically to sea, only to find it at my back when I turned for a sight ahead. Again I climbed a tree, and saw it resting on the bough behind me.

It was on this account that I changed my berth, shipping before the mast on a deep-water ship, to get out of that port the more hurriedly. And as I wakened at seven bells, on the first morning out, and rolled out for my breakfast, I heard the plaintive voice of my childhood friend, Fred. He was out on deck, evidently of the other watch; for he was dressed in the tarry rags of a merchant sailor, and held in his hand a deck swab, with which he was endeavoring to dry a wet scupper, while the second mate lashed him with a rope's end.

He shrank under the blows, and tears ran from his eyes; but he had no sooner spied me, staring in amazement from the forecastle door, than his attitude changed. Dropping the swab, with fury in his still wet eyes, and oaths on his lips, he launched himself at his tormentor. There was a confused tangle of limbs for a few moments, and Fred emerged the victor.

The second mate, his face somewhat disfigured, limped aft for assistance, and Fred turned to me.

"God!" he said brokenly. "I'm glad you're here."

"Yes, but what brought _you_ here?" I answered. "Shanghaied?"

"Yes, I suppose so," he chuckled. "Fact is, I went on a dreadful bat the night I left you. Wonder what the folks at home'll think--and the commandant at the academy?"

He did not seem to feel his position, and I answered coldly: "Looks as though your prospects were done for."

Then, along came the first mate, carrying wrist irons, and the skipper, with a pistol.

"Where's this man killer?" demanded the mate, stalking up to us. Fred did not flinch; he looked him squarely in the eye. But I, spying the skipper's gun on a level with my head, stepped back into the forecastle. Our combined attitude influenced the mate.

"You!" he snarled at me. "Come out of that."

He sprang to the door, the manacles swinging over his head, and before I could dodge he had laid my cheek open with the blow.

Though I had done my deep-water sailing under American mates--the harshest in the world--I had never yet, in my whole nine years at sea, received a blow; and, as second mate in big schooners, I had not found need to strike one. The pain and the shock of this assault upon my person and dignity drove out of me every sentiment and attribute of a civilized man trained to respect authority--all regard for law except the great first law, and for a few moments I was an animal. And in those few moments the mate died.

He was a large, strong man, but I was his equal. I do not know just what part of his body I first closed my hands upon. I only know that my thick finger nails sank in, wherever I gripped. He seemed no harder than a ripe melon, and I shifted my hold, while we reeled about, again and again, until I had him by the throat; then, with all my strength, I closed my hands until my thumb and finger nails met--somewhere. Then my limited consciousness went out in a flash of light, ending in darkness; and, when I came to, I was ironed in the lazaret, my head aching badly, blood on my face; and Fred, also manacled, sitting opposite, and looking at me. I could see, even in the half light, that his eyes were red from weeping.

"What's happened?" I asked, as I painfully sat up, and looked at my manacles.

"Oh, you're in for it," he answered loftily, yet with a jerky, hysterical twang to his voice. "You killed the mate, and the captain thinks I've killed the second mate. He struck you down with an iron belaying pin, and held me under his gun while the steward put the irons on us both. Oh, why did you do it? What will become of me?" He began to cry.

"Shut up, you whimpering ninny!" I growled. "What troubles me just now is, what kind of a man _are_ you? You can fight, but you cry over it. If I killed the mate, I expect to swing for it, but I'm not crying."

"But I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't appeared," he quavered. "You encouraged me."

"What's that? You'll say I encouraged you to drink next, and get shanghaied!"

"You did. I never drank in my life till I met you, the other night. I never fought anybody. I never swore. I woke up last night aboard this ship, but I don't know how I got here. It must have been because you shipped."

"Yes, and pulled you on board with an invisible rope! Stop that kind of talk. I want to sleep."

I felt the stupor that comes of extreme physical pain; for, besides the bruise on my head, caused by the captain's belaying pin, every bone and joint ached with the exertions I had put forth in my struggle with the mate. I lay back, but Fred would not be still. He mumbled to himself and a few words that I caught indicated that he wanted a drink. Opening my eyes and looking, I beheld him brushing his knees, and squirming to the length of his tether, as though to get away from something.

"Drive it off, Jim," he choked. "Kick it away. It's afraid of you."

Wondering what was in his mind, yet remembering the incident of his childhood and my own late nightmares, I struck out with my heels, and firmly commanded the creature to go. It went, I suppose, for he thanked me, and subsided; then I lay back, and was almost asleep when he roused me again, this time with a shriek.

"The thing!" he gasped. "The thing without legs, or arms, or head! Help me, Jim!"

This was too much for me. Dimly realizing that there was a psychic, if not moral, sympathy between us, yet unwilling to defy _this_ THING that troubled him, or even to question him, I sang out to the man at the wheel, whom I could just perceive through a crack left by the partly opened hatch.

"On deck, there!" I called. "On deck, you at the wheel! Tell the skipper that this man down here has the jimjams, and needs attention."

He answered me, and then I heard his voice, calling forward. Soon the captain appeared, dropping down the hatch, and stepping quickly out of our reach. In spite of his demonstration with the pistol, he was a kindly faced man of about fifty, slight and stoop-shouldered, a man that any troubled soul might appeal to.

"What seems to be the matter here?" he asked, looking us over.

"D. T.'s, captain," I answered, pointing to Fred. "He needs a drink, and then some bromide, or whatever you have for the symptoms."

"But _you_ seem to be all right."

"All but the scalp wound from your belaying pin, captain," I answered. "It came too late, from what I have heard."

"Yes, you had killed my first mate before I could reach you. I did not want to shoot. What manner of men are you, who can kill with your hands? My mate is dead; my second mate unable to speak, scarcely able to breathe. How did you do it?"

"As for me, captain," I answered, "I did not know I was doing it. He struck me in my watch below; I wasn't on deck. I never was struck before in my life, not even as a boy. And when I have been aft, I never needed to. Of course, I'm sorry if I have killed him."

"You have," he responded mournfully. "We gave him sea burial at noon. Have you been aft?"

"As second mate in schooners. I am not a good navigator. My friend, here, my playmate, schoolmate, and townsman, is a graduate of Annapolis, and if you can get the jimjams out of him he can navigate; for, captain"--I looked him squarely in the face--"I understand your predicament."

"I will think," he answered, after a pause. "I will admit this, now--that you were both sorely provoked, and that I am sorry I shipped such mates. Like you, I never struck a blow or received one in all my going to sea. But I want to know how this young man mastered my second mate." He looked at Fred, still brushing his knees, and staring into the dark corners. The query was repeated before Fred answered.

"Oh," he said, as he raised his manacled hands, and pressed his fingers into his throat below the ears. "I did this. I've studied it, and when I felt his thumbs in my eyes I gave it to him. He will recover speech and breathing in time."

"Jiu jitsu, captain," I added, in explanation. "I've heard of the trick. They teach a great many things at Annapolis not down in the curriculum."

What the captain might have said in response was prevented by Fred's plea for a drink, and the sad-faced man withdrew, promising to send the steward.

Fred, tranquilized by a drink of whiskey and a large dose of bromide, was soon sound asleep; and a few moments later I followed him into the land of Nod, where I found the clawed monster and the clawless, headless, eyeless _thing_. I fought the former and fled from the latter, wakening at last from extremity of terror, with my clothing drenched with perspiration. Fred was still asleep, and I was satisfied to leave him so, and remain awake myself. Even then, with my limited knowledge of psychology, I remembered that I tried to puzzle out this strange bond of soul between this weakling and myself; but I could not solve the problem. All that I could formulate was that in my presence he could fight, and be a man; in my absence, or when unconscious, he was a sniveling whiner. As for the nightmares that came to me lately from contact with him, I had suffered from them before he was born. This was what stopped me; I could not understand this.

After supper, when Fred was awake, and more or less normal, we received another visit from the captain. He spoke first to me.

"You are a man of force and character," he said, "and of some education, I can see."

"A high-school graduate, captain, nothing more."

"Are you a navigator, as you say?"

"I can take the sun for latitude, that's all."

"I am sorry. It will not do. I need a mate who can stand watch, command the men--for I have a hard crowd--and keep the log."

"I can command the men, if you're thinking of me; but I never saw a log."

"And your friend?"

"A graduate navigator from Annapolis," spoke up Fred. "But I never commanded men."

"You will do. The laws of insurance demand that the first mate be a navigator. You two men must stand trial for manslaughter at the next port. Will you sail to that port as officers of my ship, or do you prefer to remain in irons?"

We gladly chose the former, and gave our words of honor not to attempt an escape at the end of the passage. Thus secured, the captain made me second mate, and Fred first mate, and as he unlocked our irons promised to give us his sympathy and testimony at the trial. For he had witnessed the tormenting of Fred by the second mate, and had verified my protest of noncombativeness.

So Fred, an untried boy of twenty, with only a book-taught knowledge of navigation and seamanship, assumed the duties of first officer in a two-thousand-ton, square-rigged ship, in place of a man I had killed; and I, a schooner second mate, stepped into a like position in this big square-rigger. In place of the man he had disabled--both of us prisoners under the law--for the simple reason that among the crew no others were in any way capable.

I do not say that I assumed my new duties without misgivings at the future, or that I wholly justified myself _to_ myself in regard to my killing the mate; but I won the skipper's approval at once; and, as Fred got the whiskey out of him, slept well in my watch below, seeing neither monsters nor _things_.

For a few days, Fred was more of a third mate than a first, as the skipper stood watch with him, until, under his tutelage, Fred had mastered the merchant-ship rig. Then he proved competent, and the men, respecting his position, if not him, gave him no trouble.

He and I agreed very well. I was more amused than irritated at his quarter-deck airs; and a quiet hint from the skipper that I study up on navigation, with the loan of an "Epitome," a nautical almanac, and an old log book, gave promise that our positions might some time be reversed. And, so adjusted, we sailed out into the broad Atlantic.

So far I have said nothing of the weather. As a fact, it blew a gale from the west or northwest continually from the first day out until we hit the Gulf Stream, by which time, though fair, the wind forced us to heave the ship to--that is, to bring her up on the starboard tack under short sail. We performed the maneuver successfully, and the darkness had come when the gear was coiled up, and the watch sent below. The ship took it easily, plunging up and down in the same hole, and taking very little water on board. But the change from the long, swinging heave and roll of a ship running free, to the short, jerky lifts and dives of a ship hove to, was too sudden for the steward in the cabin. I had the deck, and from my position in the weather alley could hear the crashing of dishes sent to the floor, and the scraping and bumping of cabin furniture. Also, I heard a scream, and wondered if Fred had the jumps again; but before I could even speculate on the matter, the after companion opened, and the steward appeared, his face twisting in excitement. He was German, and he stammered; and, while wondering what he had on his mind, as he endeavored to speak, I noticed a cloud of smoke floating away to leeward from one of the lee cabin windows. I sprang aft to the steward, and he found voice.

"Fire!" he said explosively. "Der lamp f-f-fell der t-t-t-table off."

"Call all hands forward there," I sang out. "Bring the deck pump aft, and bear a hand." Then I tumbled down into the smoke-filled after cabin, followed by the steward.

"In der s-s-s-storeroom," he stammered.

"Where's the captain?" I asked, as I groped my way through the smoke.

"Der c-c-cappen is fall down by der storeroom," he answered.

A stifled scream came out of the smoke, and a slim figure in a dressing gown staggered into view, falling helplessly into my arms. It was a girl, and by the dim light from the swinging lamp above, I saw that she was young, pale, and sweet of face.

"In God's name, what's this?" I said. "Here, steward, take her on deck; then come back, and get something warm to cover her."

He took the fainting girl from me, and went up the companion. Then I sought my way through the choking fumes to the door leading into the forward cabin, off which was the steward's storeroom. Taking a good breath of the best air available--near the floor--I plunged through and stumbled over a prostrate body.

Grabbing it by the collar and stooping low, in case I had to take a new breath, I dragged it swiftly back through the door and up to the companion, where the air was somewhat sweeter. I recognized the captain, and as men were overhead on the poop, waiting for orders, I had them haul him up, and lead the deck hose into the forward companion. Then, to get there the more quickly, and thinking of Fred, possibly suffocating in his room, I took another blind dash into the forward cabin, and found sweeter air, also more light. And there was Fred, who had opened the forward door for air, coolly playing the stream from a fire extinguisher into the blazing storeroom.

"Never mind your hose," he said. "I'll have it out in a jiffy."