The Ship

‘THE first you know,’ said Bonita Sam, ‘there won’t be one of us able to do a hand’s turn on her. She ‘s getting to be a bloody horspittle, that’s what she is.’

It was his watch below, and he was making the most of it to do his mending. Taking his pipe from his mouth, he held up a pair of pants to the light, and critically surveyed a fine new patch.

Oilskin Jack carefully dusted the dried brine from his sou ‘wester, and hung it up.

‘The Old Man seems to think’er tricks is natural,’ he said. ‘E walks the poop safe enough, but ‘ow is it with the rest of us? Wot does ‘e say Wen she dives and shivers, and one more gets ‘urt? Nothink. Just stares at the mizzen with a kind of sadness in ‘is eye.’

He picked his jackknife from his pocket and opened it, then reached above his head to the low-set beam of the forecastle ceiling, and deliberately began to add another large notch to the six recent ones which marred its finely finished surface.

‘Who ‘s that for?’ inquired Sam, picking up a sock. ‘You ‘ll have that beam all whittled up afore ever we get round the Horn.’

‘It ‘ll be a notch a man, if the whole packet gets whittled,’ answered Jack grimly. ‘This one ‘s for the cook. She lifted a pot o’ pea soup and dumped on his feet this morning, and him with his boots not laced.’

‘Wot did the Old Man say?’

'"Put St. Jacob’s Oil on them,” ‘e says, and marched away talkin’ to ‘isself.’

An appropriate silence fell.

‘I was there wen it ‘appened,’ said Jack, presently.

Sam nodded, his mouth full of darning cotton.

‘I was there wen it ‘appened, and a meaner piece of work I never see. Says I to ‘im this morning, “Pour me ‘ookpot full of coffee,” says I.

"‘There’ll be no more pouring aboard this ship, with everybody gettin’ ‘urt,” says ‘e, “ it’s dipping there ‘ll be. I don’t want any of your notches for me,” says ‘e. Wit that ‘e dips up me coffee and ‘ands it to me.

‘“It ought to be strained,” says I, “it ain’t fit for a man to drink.”

‘“There ain’t nobody knows that better than me,” he says, “but she ain’t still long enough to let the grounds settle.”

"‘Wot ‘s all this ‘ere for?” I arsks, catching sight of ‘ow ‘e ‘ad every pot wif a wire seizin’ runnin’ to the stove. Every one, that is, except the pot ‘o pea soup, wich ‘e was in the hact of fastenin’.

‘“Don’t arsk such damn-fool questions,” ‘e answers, turnin’ round; and then ‘e begins to ‘owl from the pain o’ the ‘ot soup, wich in that time she ‘ad lifted and spilled on ‘im, in one o’ them double-an’-twisted turns o’ her’n.’

The Rosabelle was a three-masted bark. Hailing from Cardiff, she was homeward bound with a cargo of grain from Puget Sound. The old crew who took her out from England left her the moment she docked. They had their reasons, they said. When she was loaded, she shipped a new crew, even to the cook; only the mates stood by her.

She was a fine ship to look at while she lay berthed, and her owners never failed to meet her in home waters. They were proud of her, and pointed her out as the model of the fleet for speed and economy. In spite of the complaints that often reached their ears, they were at a loss to know why she changed crews so often. The fault did n’t lie with the captain, they knew that. The food was n’t bad, and the wages were standardized. Had they made one voyage in the Rosabelle, their doubts would have vanished forever.

Before she cleared Cape Flattery the crew felt of the rope net spread under the flying jib boom, and wondered, and asked questions, but without satisfaction. Discussion ran high in the forecastle, some saying it was there to beautify the ship, others wagging their heads gloomily and guessing that it was meant to catch sailors washed from the flying jib boom.

‘Wait and see,’ said the mates.

They were reaching away south for the Horn. The air of that far southern latitude was bracing, and the little blue waves bore miniature combers, milk teeth of the angry snap of the stormy Horn. In spite of the helmsman’s most earnest efforts, the Rosabelle would every now and then leave her course a point or two, to juggle with the waves on her weather bow. The captain told the helmsman what he thought of him, every now and then, in pretty much the same words; and the helmsman, although from time to time he was a different man, varied little the phrases he used to describe the ship to the captain.

’I’ m a man that can make allowance for some things,’said the captain to the mate one day, ‘but she can’t wander all over the ocean with me. I ‘m going to take it out of her.’

‘ What are you going to do with her? ‘ the mate asked.

‘ Give her more head sail,’answered the captain spitefully.

‘She has all she can stand now, sir.’

‘Oh, she has, has she! What makes her head run into the wind, then?’

‘I was just saying, sir —’

‘Never mind what you were saying, Mr. Kane; go forward, haul down the flying jib, unbend it, and send two or three men here to get up the spare inner jib. Let the men have an eye to her while they are on the jib boom.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘Wot the ‘ell is ‘e up to now?’ said Jack, as the jib came flapping down.

‘His glass must be falling,’ said Sam, sarcastically, as he caught a turn with the downhaul.

‘Out with ye there, men,’ shouted the mate; ‘unbend it and send it in. Watch yourselves if her head comes up to the sea.’

‘The Old Man ‘as two men at the wheel now, and ‘e ‘s there ‘isself abossin of ‘em,’ said Jack, feeling his way out carefully along the jib boom.

‘She ‘s a queer ship, Jack, she is that,’ - Sam wove his legs around the boom guys, — ‘ it ‘s all the fault of the builders — Look out Jack, she ‘s acoming! The Old Man ‘s waving his arms! ‘

The Rosabelle had taken advantage of the opportunity between sails to broncho her head up to the wind and sea — suddenly, as the trick of her was. Jack and another sailor were washed off the boom into the net.

‘Hold on where you are, Jack!’ shouted Sam, from the backstay; then muttered to himself, ‘Blast her bloody heart! ‘

Jack was too full of water to speak. The mate came running forward, shouting, ‘Is there any of ye gone out there?’ Finding two men floundering about like restless sea lions in the net, he placed his hands around his mouth and called aft, ‘They’re all here yet, sir!’

‘Get it off of her quick, Mr. Kane, before she comes to again, and bend the inner jib as fast as you can.’

That night Sam came puffing from the wheel, with sweat dripping off his face.

‘How ‘s she now?’ Jack inquired tenderly.

Sam was in no mood for conversation. He made for the forecastle without a word. When he had changed his clothes and lighted his pipe, he came back on deck.

‘You ‘re a bit grumpy to-night, Sam.’

‘ God bless me, why ain’t I, with the sweat dropping off me in bucketsfull for two hours, and her a-racing and the Old Man a-cursing, and me a-doing me damndest to keep her from jibing!

‘“Put oil on the diamond screw,” says he to the mate, “the wheel turns a bit hard! ”

‘Then he says to me, as if I was a greenhorn, “Catch her with yer wheel when she starts to run off.”

‘Upon me soul, Jack, I lost me temper. Says I, “Captain,” says I, “the divil himself could n’t steer her. Look at her now. She won’t budge an inch. Stands there and defies us, that’s what she does.”

She ‘ll come to in a minute,” he says.

‘“Not with that big jib on her,” I says.

‘“Keep your helm down,” says he, “and shut up, and mind your steering.”

‘For two hours I fought her around the compass. How the Old Man can find anything to stick up for her about, I don’t see. I heard him and the mate talking.

‘ “ The half of her trouble ‘s from the barnacles,” says he.

‘“Maybe,” said the mate, looking up at the big jib. He knew better, o’ course he did. The Old Man stood there looking her over. Bless me if I don’t think he ‘s proud of her.

‘ “ There’s some of the crew has nails in their boots,” he says.

‘“Is that so?” says the mate.

‘“Yes,” says he, “I ‘ve seen where they marked the deck. We can’t allow that, not on the Rosabelle.” I ‘d like to know what he’d say if ever he saw the beam in the foc’s’le. There ‘s nine notches now, ain’t there?’

‘Nine,’ answered Jack laconically; ‘seven and two more for the net. Don’t put it in ‘is ‘ecad to look at the beam. Things is bad enough as they are. Were ‘e gets ‘is liking for ‘er, I ‘ll be blowed if I knows. “Jack,” says he to me this mornin’, “when I wants you to scrape teakwood, I wants it scraped, not slivered; and when I wants it sandpapered I wants it sandpapered.”’

‘What were the job?’ Sam asked.

And so they talked and gossiped about the Rosabelle until the moon came up, and changed the white sails into a hazy amber. The yards were off the backstays, the wind was about a point free, and fresh, with clear skies. To leeward the shadows of spars and canvas showed speed as the bark surfaced the foamy backwash of the waves.

She was smoothly, powerfully beautiful there, under the flattering moon’s silvery gaze; and such beauty is dear to the heart of sailormen, for all the vixenish ways of her. They fell into a contented silence, broken, presently, by the opening of a door amidships.

‘How ‘s the weather?’ inquired the cook, sticking his head out of the galley door.

‘It ‘s a beautiful night,’ said Sam.

‘How is she? ‘ The cook came out on deck with bandaged feet, and walking on his heels.

‘ She ‘s as unsartain as a eel, and yet to look at ‘er you’d think she was ‘armless,’ said Jack, as he followed the cook’s example, and lighted his pipe.

The cook looked at Sam thoughtfully.

‘How does it happen that you ‘ev been on her over a month, Sam, and never got scratched up yet?’

Sam slobbered and snickered. ‘It ain’t her fault, doctor; I ‘m just a little wiser than she is, that ‘s all. The minute me eye fell on that net, I says, “ She ‘ll be wet and tricky, by all the signs”; and tricky she is.’

‘Tricky all right, but not wet,’ said the cook sagely. ‘If she were wet, things would be different. A man might feel happy in his galley.’

The words were hardly uttered, when the Rosabelle gathered up a wave on her weather bow, and sent it racing away to the scuppers.

‘Blast your bloody cruel heart!' said Sam, between his teeth, shaking the water out of himself like a black spaniel.

Jack helped the cook to his room, and he could be heard talking there long after eight bells.

Soon after this the captain inspected the ship. She was pointed around the Horn now, and was beginning to feel the force of the southwest winds. He wanted to make sure that all was in order, in case of bad weather.

Everything seemed satisfactory until he came to the forecastle. Then his sharp eye traveled to the notched beam, and rested on it like a homing eagle lighting on his craggy nest. There was dead silence in the forecastle.

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,’counted the master; and then he fell on those unfortunate few, demanding to know the meaning of the notches. One man shifted a bandaged hand uneasily; another started to put his thumb in his mouth, and thought better of it when it was halfway there. They all weakly protested that they did n’t know a thing about it.

‘You don’t, don’t you?’ snapped the master. ‘Well, I’ll find out. Great Heavens, men, this is an outrage! Why, what will my owners say! Mr. Kane, Mr. Kane! ‘ he called to the mate. ‘ Call all hands aft, every one of them! I’ll get it out of ‘em,’ he murmured to himself.

The crew laid aft to the main deck, some with sober looks, others brazen about it. Jack, the guilty one, swore that the notches were cut when he came aboard. The captain turned to Sam. ‘You know,’ he said, with a wicked look, ‘who whittled the beam of my ship.’

Sam squirmed under the master’s gaze. Jack cleared his throat hoarsely.

‘Tell the truth, Sam,’ coaxed the captain, ‘and the man who did it will sandpaper it out in his watch below if it takes till the Judgment Day.’

It was a tense moment for Jack, and a worse one for Sam.

‘The ship can’t go back to her owners looking as if she had schoolboys for sailors,’ said the captain shrewdly. ‘I know by your face, Sam, that you are going to lie to me. It will go hard with you if I find you out. Mr. Kane,’he continued, turning to the mate, ‘Sam’s the man that did it. Look at him wriggle. Look at the liar. What did you do it for? What in hell possessed you to cut up the Rosabelle?’

‘I did n’t do it, sir, as God is me judge!'

‘Well then, you know who did.'

‘I ‘ll tell you, sir, it was this way. You know there has been a lot hurt on the ship since we came on board; twelve to-day, and God knows how bad the thir —’

‘So that’s it,’ interrupted the captain; ‘one notch for each one hurt. That ‘s all you have to do, eh? Come aboard of a man’s ship and start carving her!’

In spite of himself, Sam looked from under his eyebrows at Jack. The captain understood instantly. ‘So you’re the one?’ he said. ‘Ho, ho! so you re going on to cut a thirteenth notch, are you?’

A perceptible shiver ran through the crew.

’Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I may as well out with it. I ‘m the bloke as cut the beam.’

‘Mr. Kane,’said the captain, ‘see to it that he has plenty of sandpaper, and that he works in his watch below. Remember, I want a smooth beam before we reach England. That ‘ll do, men; go forward.’

Sam kept to himself the remainder of the watch. The crew would have none of him. They did n’t soften even when he passed the word along by Sailor Pete, the temporary cook, that he would relieve Jack in his watch below, and work on the beam.

That afternoon the wind was strong and the sea came lumpy. The Rosabelle was hard to manage. The pivot waves wore on the captain’s nerves. Never had she acted this way before, he told the mate.

‘Take in the royals and the gaff topsail, Mr Kane, and see how she behaves.'

Even that did not quiet her. She would not stay on her course, in spite of the united efforts of the captain and the mate.

‘I ‘ll have to insist on her going into dry-dock at Cardiff,’ said the skipper.

‘It ‘s an awful expense,’ answered the mate awkwardly.

‘Well, maybe we won’t’; the captain looked relieved.

While they were talking, the weather fore-sheet carried away. The cannon noise brought all hands on deck. The captain and the mate ran forward, the captain shouting over his shoulder to the helmsman, ‘For God’s sake, don’t let her come to!’

Sam and Jack, whose watch below it was, came cautiously out of the forecastle.

‘Man the buntlines, men, man the buntlines, before she loses the sail!’

The captain was so excited that he, too, pulled on the buntlines.

‘Pull with a will, men!’ he shouted, and to Sam, ‘Catch a turn before it ‘s too late.’

Sam had not the time to obey. With foresail strain gone, a tugboat could not have kept the Rosabelle from broaching to. She lifted a green sea over her bows. As it swept down the deck, Sam and the captain, locked in each other’s arms, went rolling along. The sea had a bite of Arctic icebergs; boisterously it raced along, bearing its human playthings with soaking, squashing force, finally depositing them against the bulwarks, as it raced away through the scuppers to rejoin the ocean.

As Jack unwove from a web of tangled ropes, he saw the captain lift himself clear of Sam, who, being the buffer, lay huddled in the corner where they had finally lodged against a bulkhead.

‘Blime me,’ he cried, ‘poor old Sam! Got ‘is this time. Who would ‘ave thought it, and ‘im so ‘appy this morning!’

Sam groaned: ‘She ‘s got me in the rib, she has, and me the thirteenth — stove up off the Horn!’

The captain said never a word. Shaking the water out of himself as he went, he jumped for the poop deck. A fire-axe hung on the after part of the cabin house. He grabbed it, and with blazing eyes and grinding white teeth, he swung past the helmsman.

‘Lord ha’ mercy!’ said the man at the wheel.

Straight to the spot where he had landed went the captain, paying no attention to Sam, who looked on with interest from the scuppers. Up to the beautiful teakwood rail he went, and swung high the axe, the while he called the curse of Heaven upon every rope and spar of the Rosabelle. Down came the axe, and a monstrous teakwood chip ricochetted in the air, and fell at the foot of the helmsman.

‘There,’ cried the captain, ‘that ‘s for you. Take your notch to your Cardiff owners!'