Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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"IT looks to me, sir," said Trevor, the big mate, sulkily, "as if there's been too much of this hurry."
"Well, we're out of that stinking harbor and at sea, anyway," said Captain Graham.
"That's all very well, sir," grumbled the mate, "and I'm not shirking for myself. I'm willing to work till I drop."
"Yes, boy, I know that, and I shall report so to the firm when we get back home, and I'm sure I hope they give you the next vacant captaincy. I'm sure you deserve it, and you've had your skipper's ticket long enough."
"You've got to let me have my say," Trevor persisted doggedly. "I know quite well that it was awful gall to you not being able to get together a crew, and there was demurrage running up, and that agent just dancing to see us away to sea. But what's the result? Here's a big lump of a 6,000 ton steamer and not enough deckhands for a 500 ton coaster. And down in the stokehold they're just as bad. It isn't sailor-men I'm asking for. Any of their bally Argentine agriculturists would have done for me. But we haven't even got enough of them. And what we have shipped seem dead."
"Oh, they'll come to when they've had their sleep out."
"I wish I could think so. I've seen drugged men before, but none so bad as these. They're all twisted up in knots. That Spanish skunk of a boarding-house master that put them on board, must have mixed strychnine and sulphuric acid in the drink that laid them out, if one can judge by appearances. There's one of them, a littlish chap with a red peaked beard and a goodish lot of nose, that seems to me about dead already. I lifted one of his eyelids and put my finger on the eyeball, and that generally makes them wince unless they are about gone, but it got not so much as a wink from this joker."
"Well, Mr. Trevor, you've made your protest, and you can give it me in writing if you like, and a fat lot of good that will do. I hate putting to sea short-handed as much as you do, and when you've come to my time of life you'll understand that this infernal sailoring trade is mostly made up of doing things you dislike. I know just as well as you do the risks of taking a big, heavy steamboat like this across from South America to Liverpool practically without a crew. But it's been done before, and the odds are we do it again. I stand to lose more than you do if we hit an accident. If there's an inquiry...."
"Oh, of course, if it comes to that, I back you up loyally. Glosh! Yes."
"I know you would. But, let evidence be given how you like, it's astonishing how things do come out at one of their beastly inquiries. Anyway, you wouldn't even be censured, while the odds are I should lose my ticket. And I can no more help the state of things than you can."
"They couldn't have kicked the old packet out of the harbor without your consent," Trevor grumbled.
"You make me tired. Of course they couldn't. But, if you want to know the truth. I'll just tell you how it stands. I protested all I knew, and at last that dirty Greek agent handed me a cablegram that had just come in hot from Liverpool. All the firm could understand was that the ship had been delayed ten days because I didn't get her a crew, and all the time wages, and capital, and demurrage, and so on were running to waste. Natural they should look at it that way, I guess. So the cable gave Stephanopoulos clear instructions to fire me if I didn't contrive to get to sea in two days' time, and give you my berth. Now, boy, what would you have done if you suddenly found yourself a full-blown skipper on the one condition of taking a boat to sea short-handed?"
"Jumped at it, and cabled my girl I was coming home to marry her right off."
Captain Graham sighed drearily. "I married mine more years ago than I care to think about, and since then I've been keeping her and some little chaps she's given me, by the only means I know, and that's by carrying out the firm's instructions. It's you giddy bachelors that jibe at things. You wait, boy, till you're married, and the house begins to fill, and you'll tuck in your tail, and sing small, and take risks, and see accidents don't happen, and grow gray hairs like the rest of us."
The big mate rubbed his chin uncomfortably. "Ye—es, it isn't much of a prospect by all accounts. Well, I'm sorry I grumbled, sir. I'll do my best, of course, and for the present I suppose I'd better relieve the second mate at the wheel. Glosh! but it's a bit tough when you haven't even deckhands enough to take one wheel a watch."
And to the squat little second mate when he relieved him, and had received the course, in reply to a grunted question, he said: "Oh, the usual, no bally use. The Old Man hates it as much as we do. But there's no choice. Who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea?"
The squat little second mate grunted his annoyance. He was never a man of words.
At midnight Trevor and the second engineer, both of them leaden-lidded and sick for the want of sleep, went to the fireman's forecastle and by blows and curses got together a watch to relieve the one below, and driving these before him, the second engineer was going to return to his regions of coal dust and oil.
But when they stepped out once more on to the reeling main deck under the starlight, Trevor stopped him. "Look here, Mac, fair dos. I've helped you with your mob, so just bear a hand with mine."
"My name's not Mac, but I'm ready to help. What's the trouble?" He pulled a heavy three-quarter inch spanner out of his jacket pocket.
"Anything in this line?"
"Oh, I should say they're all too sick to offer any fighting. Our crowd's been shanghaied just like yours, only ours has had the strongest dose. Here, come in. Glosh! Doesn't it look like an undertaker's storeroom?"
"Stinks like one. Phew! Cross between a next-morning public house and a stale chemist's shop. Merry life of it an old sailor seems to have."
"You never said a truer word, Notmac, my boy. Let it be a lesson to you. Don't you ever curse an engine-room again. Here, let me clean up the globe of the incandescent a bit, and have a wink more light on this scene of beauty. Glosh! Think of those as deckhands. Half of them snoring like apoplexy, and the other half of them not breathing at all. Just put your hand on this joker's head, Notmac."
"My Christmas! he's dead!"
"Dead as Julius Caesar. Healthy sort of joke that to play on a man, isn't it? How they think I'm going to work this packet across the big drink, glosh knows."
"Has that poor wretch been drugged to death?" asked the second engineer with a scared look.
The big mate made a quick examination, and brought away his hand all reddened. "The chap's head's been caved in; sandbagged, probably; they were pretty hard nuts ashore. But being sorry for him doesn't provide me with deckhands, does it? Send me up a firebar, Notmac, and I'll make it fast to Julius Caesar's heels, and we'll drop him over into the ditch when some of the others come to a bit to-morrow. Now, who's in this next bunk? Oh, yes, the small man with the nose and the red peaked beard. You don't look particularly healthy, my tulip. Here, come out of that, and let's look at you on the floor."
It was very clear evidence of the state in which poor Captain Kettle then was, that he bore his rough decanting without so much as the feeblest protest. He lay there on the dirty deck planks of that sailors' forecastle with eyes half shut and breathing stertorous.
The two officers eyed him with doubtful looks. They exchanged their opinions in high voices, as the noise of the seas which beat on the plates outside filled the place with clangour.
"Now, that's a man," said the engineer, "that could give trouble if there was only a bit more of him. Look at that face, and look at that jaw."
"That's a man that will have to work," said Trevor, "and if he doesn't work willingly, he'll work otherwise. He hasn't the look of a deckhand, I'll admit. He may be fifty things. But here he is, and deckhand he's got to be, and there's no mistake about it that he will work as such. It's my job to see that he does. That's what I'm mate of this packet for, Notmac."
"Well, you may be thankful there's not much of him," the engineer persisted.
The half-naked little form on the swaying deck stirred uneasily, and struggled stiffly up on to an elbow. The dull eyes unlidded themselves a trifle further. A dry, half-choked voice gasped out: "Size is no object to me. I've tackled three as big as you and—bashed their heads together. Yes, by James, and—can do it again."
"Glosh!" cried Trevor. "How's that for a half-dead bantam?"
"Hear the way he speaks though," said the engineer. "The chap's got a mouth on him like the bottom of a parrot cage."
He picked up a tin mug from one of the lockers, went outside on to the main deck to fill it, and re-turned. He held it toward Kettle with rough kindness. "Here, squire, let that sizzle down over your coppers. I've been on the tiles myself, and know what it's like."
"Tiles?" Kettle glared at the Samaritan, but drank thirstily none the less. "Tiles! Are you a doctor? Great James, no. You're a split-trousered mechanic. This isn't the boarding-house, either."
"It's your boarding-house, my man, till we get to Liverpool," said the big mate, with grim geniality. "So you'd better make the pleasantest of it."
Captain Kettle shuddered, blinked, and stared around him. "A bally fo'c'stle! A stinking half-wedge of an electric-lighted steamboat's fo'c'stle. And you're Mr. Mate, I suppose. Oh, great James! my head. I've been shanghaied, and that's what's the matter with me."
He tottered to his feet, and stood there swaying. Then his dulled eye fell on his clothing, and his cheek lit up with blushes.
In person and attire it was his pride to be one of the neatest and sprucest of men, and here he was, filthy and disreputable beyond words. He was rigged out in a faded blue dungaree overall, an ingenious garment made all in one piece, which is affected by American mechanics, and the patients in the epileptic-idiot wards of British asylums. His feet were bare and dirty; his head was bare and tousled; his red peaked beard was a nest of litter; his hands were black; the overalls themselves were gratuitously daubed with grease and grime.
Trevor watched the passage of his eye. "You don't seem to admire yourself. I must say you are a filthy-looking beachcomber. But if you'll clean up a bit, I'll see if I can't get some duds out of the slop chest that will be down to your size. After that, you quite understand, you'll have to turn to. I wonder if you're man enough to twig a course, if it's given you, and take a wheel."
Captain Kettle made a few remarks about the slop chest, and the mate's personal appearance, and other matters that were very much to the point. He had seldom used his bitter little tongue with more effect.
Trevor winced. "Now clearly understand, you ugly little ruffian, that I'm your superior officer, and I'll take no purple language from you or any one else with whiskers on."
"You'll just take what's given you," replied Kettle, with open truculence, and then they closed.
The big mate, confident in his thews and his professional skill as a fighting man, made the initial mistake of despising his antagonist, and as a consequence, before enough time had passed for one of his sledgehammer blows to get home, he tore himself away from the struggle with a shriek of surprise and pain, and stood back with fingers carefully fumbling at one of his eyeballs.
The engineer lifted his spanner threateningly. "Has the beggar stabbed you?"
"Stabbed, no. But he got his thumb in my eye-socket, and by glosh, he darned nearly had the eyeball out."
Kettle staggered to a sea-chest, and sat there sick and half fainting. "I never—gouge," he gasped, "if there's anything else—to be done. But I'm poorly now and not up to form. If you'll wait an hour or so—till I've—pulled round—I'll fight you level. If you come at me again now—I'll have that eye clean out and—tread on it."
Trevor looked at him thoughtfully. "You're a fair sportsman, and that's a fact. I wonder what the blazes to do with you."
"Send me back, and we'll call it quits. I've some very pressing business ashore."
"Oh, it's probable we shall turn the packet round and steam back just for your convenience. Perhaps you'd like to navigate her in yourself?"
"Why, of course, if I'm wanted. I know the fair-way into the harbor as well as any of those blessed dago pilots."
Trevor tenderly rubbed at his bruised eyeball. "Now look here, my man, who might you be? You aren't an Argentine farmer, and you don't seem quite a deckhand. But for the sake of fiction, I'd just like to have your own account of yourself before I turn you to on a job."
"Kettle's my name, and I held a master's ticket when you were being spanked on a training ship."
"Not by any chance the captain," interrupted the engineer, "who brought in the Ashville the day before we sailed?"
"Yes, sir."
"And fitted her with a new tail-shaft in mid-ocean?"
"Well, you see, some one had to do it."
"My Christmas, but it's a thing that's only been done six times in all history. We mustn't make you a deckhand here."
"Steady on," said Trevor warningly. "You go slow, Notmac, and keep your spare philanthropy for the stokehold. I'm very sorry for Captain Kettle's misfortunes, but I don't see how we can spare a single one of our hands who have signed on as such. As for running back to put him ashore on South America again, of course that's skittles. However, it's a thing our Old Man shall decide, and in the meanwhile, as none of these gentlemen in the forecastle seem ripe for work just now, they'd better stay below for another watch, and finish snoring off their drug."
Now, Captain Graham was an easy-going man, and his great ambition at sea was to work his ship between ports with the smallest outlay of trouble. The big mate reported to him when he came on the bridge yawning and blinking, in the morning, that one of the new shipped deckhands was "a stone broke skipper of sorts, according to his own account," and asked for instructions.
Captain Graham swigged thirstily at his coffee. "Oh, I'm afraid he'll have to turn to. You mates are put on already, far more than's proper. I daresay this man Kettle's had bad luck, but he must stand to it like the rest of us have to. What's the matter with your eye? Have you been trying to break him up, and did he paste you? Do you want me to come down and bear a hand?"
"When I want your help, sir, I'll come and ask you for it, and till then I'm mate of this packet, and I know my job, and can do it. I only wanted to know where I stood."
Now, part of the professional equipment of mates in the British merchant service is a sound knowledge of the arts of man-driving and self-defence, and Trevor flattered himself that few men living could give him lessons on either subject. But he was sensible enough to take precautions, and, having had already one taste of the quality of the little person with the red peaked beard, was in no mood for further surprises. If Kettle, in a half-fainting condition, could very nearly gouge him, Kettle refreshed by another eight hours' sleep might well be dangerous.
So on his next visit to the forecastle he took with him a revolver, and was prepared, if necessary, to use it, as the law of mates directs. The other lodgers in the forecastle might have come to their senses by this time (those of them who did not happen to be dead, that is) and outraged humanity of that class is apt to be violent. Indeed, it took an officer with a lot of full-blooded courage to go near that forecastle at all.
But, as it chanced, Captain Kettle had waked up some half hour previously, had glared with disgust at his own personal uncleanliness, and had gone out to wash himself. Instinct made him pick a belaying pin out of the rail, and instinct was presently making him use it. The big mate came to the forecastle doorway, and threw into it a roar of sound. "Now, you skulkers, turn out. Where's that man Kettle? I'm going to have him turn out first of all."
"I've told you who I am," said Kettle dangerously.
"And I've told the Old Man, and he says he's the only captain on this packet, and we carry no passengers. So you'll just turn to. You hear me?"
What followed passed quickly. Kettle rushed, and the mate flung up his pistol hand for a snap shot. The belaying pin crashed sideways on to the mate's wrist, and a lighter bone would have cracked. As it was, the revolver clattered down on to the deck, and Kettle was driving the big mate aft under a shower of blows. Captain Owen Kettle, from long acquaintance with that weapon, was an artist with a belaying pin. He knew where to hit, and how to hit, and, moreover, he kept on hitting. He showed exquisite skill in contriving that his opponent should have no chance to turn.
Right across the main deck did he chivvy Mr. Trevor and into the starboard alleyway, where that unfortunate man dived into the engineer's mess room, and slammed the door. But there the little sailor turned, and made his way sharply back to the forecastle.
The revolver had vanished, but he made a sharp demand for it. "Now, look here," he said, "that's my gun, and I want it handed over quick, or I'll wade in and murder the lot of you."
The weapon was surrendered with nervous hurry. "If you're going to stick up for our rights, pard, I'm on," said one. "The shark that shanghaied us will have touched all our advance notes, and there'll be no wages to pocket at the other end, unless we put in a fresh claim and get the skipper to agree. I got no use for working for nothing."
"What are you all? Deckhands?"
"You can log us as such."
"Well and good. I should advise you to turn to, or you'll have the mates coming in here and red war made."
"But," gasped the fellow, "that's just what you've been fighting against yourself, pard."
"I'll thank you to call me 'sir,' when you speak. I'm Captain Owen Kettle, and your superior, and what I choose to do is no bally concern of yours. By James, no! I'm a man that requires respect, and gets it."
Captain Kettle cocked his chin, and marched out of the forecastle on to the main deck. At the starboard side of the upper deck a very indignant mate was trying to convince that easy-going person, Captain Graham, that the forward end of the ship was in a state of rapid mutiny, and that he had been set upon by a coalition of the whole of the deckhands. Kettle saw, heard and hankered. His alone was the credit of the overthrow, and he was keenly desirous of going up to claim it, and to partake in whatever other scuffle might follow upon such a rash announcement.
But the obscene filth of that one garment that covered his nakedness flashed up into his mind, and, with warm blushes covering him, he made for the port ladder, and ran nimbly and silently up to the upper deck. One door of the chart-house lay open before him. He stepped inside, closing it sharply. Captain Graham and Trevor were within a yard of the starboard door, and at the slam, were disturbed for an instant in their conversation.
But before they knew of the invasion, and certainly before they had any idea of taking action, Kettle stepped across the chart-house deck, and swung-to that door also, shooting the heavy brass bolts at its head and foot. Then he paid similar attention to the door he had entered by, and by that time the starboard porthole framed segments of the faces of Captain Graham and his mate, flushed in colour, and emitting quarrelsome language.
There were three other portholes to the charthouse, and Kettle closed them all, screwing home the clamps, and sliding over each the green curtain which ran on a rod above it, all to a fine accompaniment of remarks from the two onlookers. He came to them at last.
"If you'll be advised, by me," he said, "you'll take those faces away from here and tow them overboard for half an hour to cool. At the end of that time I shall have leisure to talk to you again." With which remark he slammed the heavy, brass-framed glass against their noses, screwed home the clamps, and coyly shrouded that also with its appointed blind. Then, with disgusted fingers, he stripped from his body the comprehensive garment in which he stood, swung down and filled Captain Graham's folding washbasin, and gave his spare, muscular little body a most thorough grooming.
Outside the stronghold threats were being pelted at him with noisy vehemence. But he was too much engaged in the pleasures of the toilet to find leisure for suitable retort. He overhauled the drawers and lockers which held Captain Graham's spare apparel, and viewed each item with renewed distaste. The waistcoats lacked buttons, the shirts and collars were badly got up, the sleeves of the coats were ragged in the cuff. But in a distant corner Kettle discovered the usual biscuit-box containing needles and thread, and after attiring himself in a shirt and white drill trousers, proceeded to darn a pair of socks, to mend a pair of canvas shoes, to repair a waistcoat, and finally to take in the back seams of a white drill coat so as to fit the more slender lines of his own slim figure.
In the meanwhile there was no attempt at storming his fortress. The chart-house w r as built of iron, and its doors were of three-inch teak, and, although its outraged proprietor might by the aid of the carpenter have battered down a door, or stove in the glass of a port, he possessed an uncomfortable feeling that the invader still carried his belaying pin and the mate's revolver, and would certainly use both vigorously before he was captured.
Trevor was all for an immediate assault. He was a man of full-blooded courage, and felt deeply the insults he had already received himself, the insult to the ship, and the insult to his captain, and spoke of them all in bitter words. But Captain Graham was an easy-going man. He said that one-half bottle of rye whiskey represented all the provisions in the chart-house, and that in due time the invader would come out weak with hunger, and surrender himself to justice without a scuffle.
"It's no use getting on a high horse," said Graham placidly. "If we bashed down one of the chart-house doors, it would be a bigger job than Chips could repair on board, and it would have to be reported to the superintendent ashore, and as likely as not he'd hand it on to the office, and then there'd be paraffin in the fire."
"Well, I don't know," grumbled the big mate.
"Oh, you'd like to shine as a warrior, would you? Well, I've given up being martial. I like to take things easy, and if you let 'em alone long enough, it's surprising how often they come out all right."
Now, Captain Kettle had been under no illusions about the victualling of his fortress. With pocket knife and needle he unpicked, re-cut, and stitched till he had produced a well-fitting jacket. He arrayed himself in it, looked himself carefully over in the small rectangular glass above the washstand, and then frowned and took it off again. The edges of the sleeves were frayed, and he abused Captain Graham as he set to work and turned them in. Then, when finally dressed, he took out the whiskey bottle (which he had found long before), helped himself to a stiff second mate's nip, opened one of the ports, and pressed the button of the electric bell.
The captain's steward came up from below, and after some hurried instructions, rapped at the door, and said "Yessir."
"Bring tea," Kettle demanded, "and some good thick corned-beef sandwiches with pickles in them."
"Yessir. Shall I come and lay a cloth in there?"
"No. You can hand the stuff in through the port."
The legitimate tenant of the chart-house was close outside, and this last request was too much for even his easy-going temper. "Hand somewhere-hot in through the port. Come out, you skulking, dirty pirate, and face the music like a man. You filthy, crawling beachcomber, d'ye think I'll let you order victuals like that aboard of me?"
The bolts of the door snapped back, the lock and the handle turned, and there was Captain Kettle on the threshold, spruce, truculent and ready.
"If you want a row, by James, I'm not the man to balk you. My name is Captain O. Kettle, as I've informed Mr. Mate already, and as you've got me on this packet against my convenience, you've jolly well got to treat me with proper respect, or I'll make hay round here in a way that will surprise you."
"I don't see what you can do," the other grumbled doubtfully.
"If you want to see, just mention it," retorted Kettle.
"You've got the pistol, I'll admit. But there are only four chambers loaded, so Trevor said, and even if you did contrive to make use of those, there'd be plenty of us left to swamp you. Besides, you needn't be sure of hitting anybody at all. Pistol shots miss."
"Mine don't. If you'll put your pipe in your mouth, I'll break the stem of it for you at ten yards every time."
"My pipe does very well as it is," said Graham drily. "Look here, suppose you go down below and get a meal, and then we'll talk."
"I prefer my own orders to be carried out. I told your steward to bring tea and corned-beef sandwiches in here, and it's right here I want them. If you'd like a final clincher as to why I'm going to have my own way, look at this." He brought from his pocket a sheaf of documents, tied together with spun yarn and weighted with a heavy leaden ink bottle. "Here's your ship's papers. Now, if you begin to worry me, over into the ditch they go as a start."
This was too much for even Graham's equanimity.
"Good Heavens, man, if you throw those overboard you'll ruin me."
"D'ye suppose I don't know that?"
"Well, man, have some consideration."
"Why should I? What consideration have you shown for me? I was shanghaied, which is an accident, I'll admit, if you like, that might happen to anybody. I find myself in your beastly fo'c'stle. I send aft my name, and mention that I carry a master's ticket. Do you give word that I'm to be treated as one gentleman should treat another who has met with misfortune? Not you. You tell the mate to turn me on as a deckhand, and break me up if I turn rusty. Well, Mr. Mate was well intentioned, but the job was beyond his limit. I've broke up six the size of Mr. Mate before now all at once, and all on my very own. So that's how we stand, and now I'd like to hear the rest of the programme."
"If you put back those papers where you took them from, there's a spare room down below that you can have for the run home."
The little sailor put the papers in a drawer beside him, locked it, and threw Graham the keys.
"But if you think you're going to come aboard of me, and take charge, and scoff my clothes, and grab free passages all for nothing, well, there you make a mistake. I shall give you in charge as soon as she is docked, and we'll see what a magistrate's got to say on the subject."
"About that you can do as you choose. But in the meanwhile I want that tea and sandwiches. Slack seems to do for you, Captain, but while I'm here, that steward's got to be smart if he's going to avoid trouble with me."
Now Captain Kettle's dignity had been badly hurt, and this was an offence he did not forgive easily. Captain Graham, to save himself trouble, was disposed to hold out the olive branch; but he did this neither gracefully nor often; and Kettle was disposed to take no half advances. The engineer who went by the name of Notmac was openly full of admiration for that repair of a tail-shaft at sea, but Kettle respected himself too much to come down to familiar terms with a mere subordinate engineer; and as for Trevor, the pair of them never met without preparing for battle.
Kettle lived for the most part in the room which had been assigned to him, eating there, and on occasion, it is to be supposed, taking some rest, though no one on board through all the voyage caught him with a shut eye. For occupation he had procured paper and a piece of pencil, and produced verse of such pleasing quality, that at times it even found favour with that severe critic, himself.
But on the whole, the ship's officers had leisure to give him little enough attention. The hardly used crew were in a state of chronic mutiny. Twice, indeed, they sent deputations to that successful mutineer, Captain Kettle, praying that he would lead them in any kind of outbreak he cared to organize. But Kettle was intensely loyal to his cloth, and drove these back with tongue and toe, and they had to content themselves with unorganized measures, which consisted chiefly of passive disobedience to orders. The vessel had bad luck in the way of weather also, and it is probable that few 6,000 ton tramps have ever wallowed more uncomfortably home across the two Atlantics.
Still, there is a deadly certainty about steam, and the big cargo boat pegged away, reeling off the knots with a callous disregard for the personal discomforts of her population; and the nearer he got to home, so much the nearer did Captain Kettle see an unsympathetic magistrate, with the door of an ugly jail just behind his elbow. He himself was a man with an instinctive dread of shore law, and at sea made the law for himself. But he grew an opinion that Graham was his opposite in this respect.
Graham had proved openly that he was no hand at reforming an unruly crew on the spot, and Kettle naturally set him among that class which prefers to take its criminals before police or consular courts ashore.
For himself, in this event, he saw no loophole. Papers he had none. He had been sent on board stripped. His name would be on the ship's articles, signed with a cross—the shipping agent would have seen to that. The magistrate, on Captain Graham's word, would decide his case in two minutes, and send him down for two months' hard, if not more. For the disgrace of this he had small concern. But once in prison he could not earn money, and the mortgage on the Wharfedale farm where his family lived was dangerously overdue, and must be paid. It was this that decided him.
The night they picked up the coast he raided the steward's pantry, and carried to one of the quarter-boats bottles of water, a box of biscuits and four tins of meat. He cast off the awning, threw out the falls, cut the grips, and swung the davits. One of the deckhands saw him at this point, and out of sheer malice gave the alarm. A very angry Trevor dropped down off the upper bridge and came running aft. Kettle lowered away handsomely on the falls, and the boat hit the water with a heavy smack, riding there at the end of her painter, and bumping dangerously alongside.
Kettle had his pistol still, and had half a mind to stop its former owner with a shot. Out at sea he probably would have done so. But in soundings he grew more law-respecting. He reached out for the falls, and slid down to the boat almost at the pace of a dropping stone.
The boat leaped and swayed beneath him, and water sliced up in heavy sheets between her and the steamer's side. Kettle unhooked one of the blocks. The furious mate leaped to the fall of the other to haul it taut and spill the boat. But Kettle, with the tiller, contrived to jam that in the sheave, and presently had managed to haggle through the fall with a table knife—the only cutlery he had got with him; and then in the nick of time, for the quarter-boat was swamping beneath him, cast off his painter, and bobbled away on the yeasty wake astern.
The big steamboat slid out into the night ahead, and if she returned to find him, he did not see her. It was his business next to bale the boat clear, and afterward to ship his rudder and step the mast. Then, with lug-sail hoisted, he sat at the tiller and stood in for the coast.
He reached it with the dawn, and concerning the future fate of the quarter-boat the present historian can tell nothing further. But Captain Owen Kettle, with an unbroken spirit, set out once more over the face of the country to find employment which would bring him in that most necessary income.
As it happened, a report of that tramp steamer's coming into dock has reached me. Captain Graham buttoned a collar on to his rumpled shirt, fitted in his three false teeth, and went ashore. He told the superintendent that the passage had been a beast, and that they had lost one of the quarter-boats in a breeze. He gave some details about the shanghaied crew. But he made no mention whatever of having entertained Captain Owen Kettle. He was an easy-going man.
There was silence on the matter also from other quarters. "Glosh!" said Trevor to his friend, the second engineer, "I should like to put a spoke in that little beggar's wheel, Notmac, even if our Old Man won't."
"Still, I'll bet you never do," said the second engineer, and the second mate, who was never a person of words, grunted adhesion to this idea.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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