The Donkeyman's Christmas

I

THE crew on the windlass labored with panting breath.

‘Fifteen fathoms in the hawsepipe; heave, men, heave!’ encouraged the mate.

Aft, and towering over the captain, stood the red-headed donkeyman, new aboard the four-masted schooner Mary Kent.

‘It’s me repitation ye’d roon,’ he shouted; ‘yez towld me what a foine donkey yez had; wit the shteam spluttering through her auld sieve of a boiler! Shure’n the eccenthric head’s cracked, the friction gear’s gone, the injector’s corroded. It ‘s a danger she is to the ship and the min!’

The captain stood nervously smoking the butt end of a cigar. He held it impaled on a toothpick, so short it was.

‘You’re a mechanic,’ he said sarcastically.

‘I am that,’ retorted the donkeyman; ‘ me father before me was as foine a wan as iver lipped a rivet. Me name is Dinnis Fay, I ‘d have ye undershtand — Dinnis Fay.’

‘You’re a beach-comber,’ shouted the captain. ‘I’m paying you five dollars more than the crew, for what? You don’t seem to know enough about the donkey to heave up the anchor.’

‘You’re a liar,’ yelled Fay; ‘annything that’ll hiss or whistle I can run; you ‘re —’

‘The anchor is up and down, sir,’ called the mate from the forecastle head.

‘Get sail on her,’ answered the captain. ‘You go ahead and repair the donkey,’ he said, turning to the donkey man.

‘I will not, surr, and that’s flat. You’re paying me to dhrive her, not to make a new wan out of her. Put me ashore or I ‘ll have the law on yez.’

The captain’s bony body seemed to contract in meditation. Donkeymen would not stay on the Mary Kent. Being master and owner, the thought of paying for repairs on the donkey engine gave him all the pains of greed and stinginess.

‘Fay,’ said he, finally, ‘fix her up, and if she runs to my satisfaction by the first time we need to use her, I’ll give you twenty dollars bonus. There now,’ he concluded grandly, ‘where’s the master who would do that for you? Think of it! Twenty dollars over your wages.’

The donkeyman went forward, muttering, but purposeful.

A man was sent aft to the wheel, the foresail and mainsail were set, and a dark-skinned pilot was aboard. The Mary Kent was under way through the narrow channel that leads from Suva Harbor to the open sea.

‘Good-bye,’ said the pilot, as he climbed over the side. ‘Pleasant voyage and a Merry Christmas!’

‘What?’ said the captain.

‘Merry Christmas, captain.’

‘Hum,’ grunted the captain, ‘Christmas is fifteen days away.’

The last thing he wanted was to be reminded of that day. It costs money to feed sailors; ship dividends were not earned to spend on suet and raisins, plum duff and canned turkey.

‘Give her the topsails, Mr. Blossom,’ he said irritably.

The wind being fresh and the sea smooth, the schooner raced away to the north’ard and west’ard of the Fiji group.

‘Put the log over, Mr. Blossom, put the log over; we must see what she is doing.’

As he watched the miles register, a miserly twitch came into his eyes.

‘ I ought to do well by her this voyage, eh, Mr. Blossom? ‘

‘You ought to,’ answered the mate dryly.

The crew were busy on deck, sweeping and coiling down ropes. They shot baleful glances at the donkey-room, where now it sounded as if Fay were breaking the donkey engine to pieces.

Eight bells rang. The cook’s head, with a feathery fringe of hair around it, shot out of the galley door to the limit of his short neck.

‘Come and get it!’ he shouted.

Two of the crew were late of the Nellie Swan. No longer slick and fat as when they sailed on that liberal craft, they now lazed along with the rest of the crew to the forecastle.

Gus brought the dinner, unappetizing enough with its pickled meat, and its coffee made from wheat burned black in the galley stove. Good enough, the captain thought, for inferior intellects.

Pete looked at it. ‘Salt horse leaving port,’ he groaned; ‘I ‘d like to roast his hidebound soul! We may save money on her all right, but give me the ship where a man can get his grub and his game. Damn the money, I say.’

In the cabin, eating dinner with the mate, the captain voiced his opinion otherwise.

‘Give me the ship,’ he said, ‘where a man can save a little money as he goes along. Look at the crew now, eating me out of my profits, and getting thirty dollars a month for abusing me into the bargain. Keep your eye on the donkeyman, Mr. Blossom; I want a good job done. I ‘m paying well for it.’

‘He has her all in pieces,’ answered the mate regretfully.

The captain rubbed his thin hands. ‘Of course, if she ‘ll run, even if it is n’t a first-class job, I ‘ll be in pocket, eh? ‘

II

Fourteen days out from Suva the Mary Kent was six degrees north of the Equator. It was Christmas Eve, and all sorts of Christmas activities were going on in the forecastle. One man was shaving, another mending a white shirt. The rattle of clamshells betrayed the fact that Pete and Gus were celebrating with a little game, using empty clamshells for antes.

‘The Old Man has us dig ‘em at the Puget Sound,’ said Gus.

‘Gawd, how I wish there was clams in ‘em! ‘

‘Don’t you though, Pete. Show down. Aces up.’

‘Take the pot, Gus.’ Then, amid the clamshell transfer, ‘What do you think there ‘ll be for dinner, to-morrow, Gus? ‘

‘Plum duff for sure, matie. I saw the cook getting ready to get her together. Turkey too, maybe. The Old Man ‘ll not deny us one good feed.’ And the clamshells rattled merrily on.

Christmas spirit was pervading even the donkey-room, and Dennis Fay’s lips were pursed in a holiday whistle as he put the finishing touches to the donkey. The packing and daviting were done, the cylinder-head had a strap bolted around it. As he wrenched the nuts tight, he stopped whistling to have a word with the donkey.

‘Ye’ll run now, me lady. It ‘s bonus bucks ye’ll be fetching me, twinty av thim. A purty Christmas, and me the only wan to share it wit. Ah, now, a coat av black paint on your blisters would desave the eye of anny man. I ‘ll just be goin’ aft, now, to tell the Auld Man that I ‘m goin’ to put shteam in your boiler. It ‘s the poor Christmas he ‘ll be havin’ wit his twinty gone, the auld shkinflint!’

But when the donkey man reached the deck, the sniff of sullen elements met him, and he saw that long swells from the northeast were rolling.

‘I ‘ll wait awhile,’ he said, ‘and see what happens.’

The captain and the mate were nervously pacing the poop, keeping their eye on a falling barometer, and a sun setting in a smoked-glass sky. The second mate was battening down the hatches. The cook pulled storm shutters over the galley windows, and the watch below laid aside their Christmas cheerfulness and came on deck to pad around barefoot with the others, shortening sail. Haloed stars shone here and there through scuddy sky-shadows.

‘Strip her down to the poles,’ shouted the captain; and his voice seemed to fill the deck. The crew worked for dear life. Two bells rang out — nine o’clock.

Out of the east came a sound like roaring river waters. The sailors, with frightened looks, braced themselves to stem the storm; the shriveled captain had barely time to clutch the rail, when the hurricane swept in on them. The rigging howled with squeezing rage, seas came with centripetal swiftness, sending water over the decks in muslin-like sheets, and the Mary Kent, skeleton-helpless before it all, spun around and buried her head into the bight of the gale.

One by one the sailors secured themselves in the lee of the weather-bulwarks. Word sounds were out of the question now. They made signs and shook their heads sorrowfully. The captain on the poop took a turn of the spanker sheet around him, fastening it to the rail. His storm cap had blown away, his hair tugged at the scalp, his clothes ballooned and made him look twice his size. If his thoughts had found echo they would have come back slavering of money.

‘God, if only I had more insurance on her! Give me the chance again and I ‘ll make it as heavy as the wind that blows to-night.’

There were no bells struck on the schooner, and it was long after twelve that night when he crawled on his hands and knees to the cabin, followed by the mate. A sea with a rock-surf roar tumbled over the decks, flooding the Mary Kent fore and aft. Water, with the lapping jaws of a monster, gushed down the companionway into the cabin. The two men clung to the table, their legs floating helplessly, while the poor struggling schooner dove down, down. Was she never coming back? The salt sea in the cabin, like a wild, sucking thing, pitched its force against a bulkhead, bursting open the main-deck door, and releasing its captive viciousness after jamming all things movable in the door.

Up, up, came the Mary Kent, to make another fight for her life.

‘Damn you!’ shouted the captain, ‘don’t stand there thinking of yourself. My ship is foundering — she’sall I have!’

The mate’s eyes glistened with a something that brave men show in the face of danger.

‘Captain,’ he said, calmly, ‘to-day is Christmas Day. I am praying that we shall all live to see it through.’

Almost screaming with rage and fright, the captain ordered him out, bidding him reef the main jib, put a tarpaulin in the main rigging, anything, to keep her steady.

Out on the deck the crew, like drenched hens, lay cooped in shelter. The mate stirred them with wild gestures, and their cackling oaths were lost in wind and wave. Sail would not stay on the Mary Kent, and daylight found her still under bare poles. The galley was awash, and the crew made their Christmas breakfast on hard-tack flavored with brine, and found the heart, in their rugged simplicity, to mourn for what they might have had.

So the day passed, cheerless, dangerous, without even so much as a cup of black coffee to put heart into a man. Cross-seas washed the life boats away, and the flying jib boom went in one plunge that swallowed the Mary Kent to the breast of her. And yet she came back, always back. In those moments of calm when she rested in the hollows of the Pacific, sheltered by moving, massive walls of green water, the hearts of the men would choose to call it all a dream; and when she would rise to flutter on the crests, like a winged creature helpless to soar, their courage would sink into the lonely wastes of a mad ocean.

III

The morning of the twenty-sixth brought the sun again. The wind had withered away to gentleness, and the toothless waves rolled in sluggish, harmless heaps. The crew stretched themselves and yawned loudly. Smoke came from the galley stove. The captain walked around the decks with no regard for the sailors or the God who had saved him. He was figuring his losses angrily. As he passed the galleydoor the cook spoke: —

‘Captain, shall we have Christmas to-day? The men are badly done up.’

The captain turned on him savagely.

‘Christmas,’ he snapped, ‘was yesterday. It ‘s gone, and there ‘ll be none this year aboard the Mary Kent. Do you hear that?’

The galley and the donkey-room were housed together, separated by a thin wooden partition. The donkeyman heard the captain, and promptly stuck his head out of his door to answer him.

‘Ha,’ said he, ‘so it ‘s the Holy Day ye would be taking away from us, like the hurricane washed your boats away. Ye auld widow-robber! Nor is it anny wonder the luck ye be havin’.’

‘What’s Christmas,’ retorted the captain, ‘to a barefooted beach-comber like you? If I had n’t shipped you, you would be starving now.’

He turned and hurried aft.

Fay’s bare toenails scraped on the deck. He rolled up his sleeves.

‘Let me get one shwipe at ye,’ he shouted, ‘and your bonus and wages can go to hell! ‘

The master mounted the poop and hog-grunted to the binnacle. Fay, with leashed emotion, backed into the donkey-room.

The crew, tired and sore, were summoned to the work of turning a spare spar into a new jib boom, that the owner of the Mary Kent might not lose more money through delay in making sail. They groaned a good deal; but the most abused of sailors is interested in his work, and it was with some satisfaction that, as noon approached, they saw the new boom whittled and ready to fit. The task lay in getting it out where it belonged,

— a dangerous and heavy job on an unsteady ship, — and they had a great deal of advice to give as to how it should be done.

‘Put plenty of guy-ropes on it,’ said Pete; ‘if ever it gets away from us, it w ill be worse than the storm.’

‘What’s the donkey for, anyway?’ said Gus. ‘Let her do the work. Let donkeyman show us what ‘s the good of all the noise he ‘s been making. That’s all.’

While they argued, the mate and the captain stood on the poop shooting the sun. The captain looked at the mate suspiciously. He had never seen him so careful — he seemed completely absorbed in the figures he was transferring from the arc of the sextant to a little dirty piece of paper. He noted that his gait was springy as he dove below to juggle with the numbers.

Then the cook brought dinner into the cabin, and they faced each other across the table.

‘Well,’ said the mate, showing humorous wrinkles around his eyes; ‘it is n’t as bad as I thought it. would be. We are only twenty miles east of the hundred and eightieth meridian.’

‘That’s a long way without sail,’ munched the captain.

‘It is,’ answered the mate, with spirit, ‘she ‘ll never drift across it in time. The whole thing is a question of getting sail on her in a hurry, after the boom goes out. It’s a good thing that the donkey’s in order.’

At any other time the mate’s enthusiasm would have found answer in the captain’s miser-leather heart. Now it struck him chill. He knew what the mate was referring to. If the Mary Kent crossed 180 degrees before twelve that night, she would lose a day, and that day would be December twenty-sixth, and they would once more have Christmas Day.

‘Nothing tastes good to me,’ he said; and he went up on deck, leaving the mate happily interested in his dinner. The crew were eating in the forecastle, exchanging pleasantries with the cook. No one noticed that the captain stole forward to the donkey-room. No one saw him pause and regard the donkey malevolently, his eye passing over the davitings, neatly cut and scraped, the sandpapered bearings, and the fine coat of black paint. No one heard him mutter to himself: —

‘Five hundred dollars for repairs. Loss of time. Water in the hold. Then twenty dollars, to pay a man to be insulted on his own ship, and highpriced food and an idle day for a worthless crew. It ‘s more than flesh and blood can stand.’

Whining and sweating as he worked, crawly as is the thief who robs himself, he seized a wrench, and, unscrewing the blow-off valve, put it into his pocket and left the donkey-room unseen. His courage returned as he neared the poop, and it was with a smile that he greeted the mate, emerging from the cabin picking his teeth.

‘How soon will you have the jib boom ready to heave out? ‘ he inquired.

‘As soon as we can get steam up in the donkey,’ replied the mate.

The captain went down to the cabin patting his pocket. The sea had a more normal heave to it now, and a little breeze was coming from the westward.

‘A waste of time,’ he said, ‘but it can’t be helped. Let them fuss it out. I may as well have a sleep.’

He threw himself down on his bunk, and drifted off into pleasant dreams.

The mate went forward to the forecastle. He shouted down to the men: —

‘Turn to, men, I ‘ve a piece of good news for you.’

The crew crowded around him.

‘If we sail the schooner across a hundred and eighty before twelve o’clock to-night, we’ll all have Christmas to-morrow.’

While he was explaining this great good news, a volley of oaths sizzled from the donkey-room, followed by the owner of the voice that uttered them, and the donkeyman came on deck with a hammer in his hand.

‘I ‘ll brain the savage that shtole me valve. Shtand where yez are!’ he roared. ‘Me hammer hangs over yez until yez are inshpected! ‘

Worn with fatigue and disappointment, there was something so tragic at that moment about Dennis Fay that it appealed even to those much-abused men. Silent and submissive they stood, while, with hammer suspended, he asked them one by one, ‘Did ye shteal me valve?’ and each one answered convincingly, ‘No.’

‘Begorra thin, ye ‘d have me belave it walked off. Where is it thin? Ah! and it ‘s the bad day I iver —’ His words trailed off formlessly, except for occasional illumination of oaths like smelted slag. He stood there before them, a very picture of misery, his lower lip twitching, one wandering hand aimlessly clawing long strands of hair that hung down like greasy ropeends. The more he thought of it the angrier he got; and the crew stood as he had lined them up, watching him.

At last the mate approached him gently, and whispered in his ear. He nodded, and the two went into the donkey-room. The crew were left speechless in the face of the fresh disaster that had crushed their new hope. Pete was the first to speak, and his voice had a sad ring to it.

‘That’s the way with a sailor. He ‘s either ahead or behind, never there when there ‘s anything good for him.’

‘I ‘m so sleepy,’ yawned Gus, ‘I don’t care what becomes of us.’

They started to move off, but were held again by the sound of the donkeyman’s voice.

‘ Damn him, and it ‘s me Christmas and me bonus he ‘d be afther bating me out av. Ha, ha, me bucko, it ‘s the Blue Funnel Liners I have n’t been sailing on for nothing! And he calls me a beach-comber. Ah, wait till I lay me hands on him! ‘

‘Can you do it? ‘ they heard the mate ask.

‘I can, me bye, tin thousand toimes, if I have to burn the heart out av her! ‘

The mate came out on deck. ‘ Now,’ said he to the crew, ‘work, and work with a will. Not a growl out of one of you. We ‘ll slip a day and catch our Christmas. Are you willing, men ?’

‘We arc,’ they shouted, and limbered up accordingly, and started a race against time, in order to lose time.

On deck halyards were bent on to the boom. Guys to steady it were tied. In the donkey-room Fay worked like one possessed, and chips flew, as he made a hardwood plug to substitute for the stolen valve, and a wild whistle of triumph pierced the walls, as he drove it in and lashed it with seizing wire.

Water was poured into the boiler and the fire lighted. The crew were tense with excitement, fearing that the plug would not hold till the boom was out, and morally certain that, if it did n’t, there would be more than one man burned, and possibly a donkey engine broken past the power of man to repair.

The halyards were taken to the gypsy. The smell of hot grease came from the donkey. Twenty pounds of steam showed in the gauge. The donkeyman was silent now as any sphinx, but his eyes were everywhere; not a nut escaped him, not a rivet. He shoveled more coal into the fire. The crew stood at their posts, waiting for him to give the word to heave away.

Forty pounds showed on the gauge; steam was spluttering and hissing in the cylinder-head. The donkeyman stuck his head out of his room and called, ‘Shtand away from the blowoff valve!’

As the pressure crept up in the old donkey boiler, the wooden plug commenced to bobble. The mate came running in. ‘It ‘s no use,’ he said; ‘draw the fire; the seizings won’t hold.’

‘Shure it ‘s not me ye know at all, at all,’ answered the donkeyman, ‘for it ‘s not me fire I ‘d dhraw. If the seizin’s don’t hold, I ‘ll blow her up before I ‘ll give her up! That’s Dinnis Fay fer ye, and his father before him! ‘

Steam started to whistle out of the blow-off valve. The donkey-room was moist with it. Something had to be done and done quickly. The beachcombing engineer seemed as live as the forces he was trying to control. With one wild motion to the mate to get to his post, he jumped up on the engine in front of the donkey, seizing as he did so a short length of three-inch plank which he had torn from the floor when he repaired the engine, and had not yet replaced. He stood the three-inch plank on end in place against the wooden plug to hold it in, and brought all his strength to bear on it in a death grip, with his left hand. With his right he could just reach the steam valve that fed the cylinders. Standing there spread as he was in the white mist, he looked like the skin of some bear pinned up for curing.

‘Are yez ready?’ he shouted; and without waiting for an answer he started up the Mary Kent’s donkey.

There was no need to tell the crew what to do. They bounced about like rubber balls. Up came the spar. The ship vibrated from the whistlings of the donkey; steam seemed to be coming from everywhere. The cook ran out of the galley and took to the rigging; the mate stood on the forecastle head giving anxious orders. Outhauls and downhauls, halyards and guy-ropes were straining with the weight of the new jib boom.

The donkeyman was growing weaker from his stretched strain, and the heat and steam were suffocating. He shouted for someone to throw water over him. His voice sounded muffled as by many folds of mist. In that convulsion of steam he stood there like a toy that was made to wiggle.

‘Avast heaving!’ shouted the mate from the forecastle head; ‘the boom is in place. Stop the donkey. Bela-ay!

Not one but all of them ran for the donkey-room. Through the fog of steam they saw the donkeyman, still spread out, his teeth stripped, his eyes bulging, every muscle in his body locked. They wrenched his hand from the steam valve and shut it off. As he fell back into their arms, the plank fell from his other hand, and the wooden plug blew out with a noise louder than any hurricane.

The captain jumped out of his bunk and ran to the deck, scared out of his wits. Coming forward, he saw the donkeyman lying on the fore-hatch. While some of the crew threw salt water over him, others were making sail. No one paid any attention to the master, nor answered his questions.

Fay opened his eyes. ‘Did we get her out?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ answered the mate, and his voice was ragged with emotion; ‘the jib boom is in place, Fay; look how the sail is going on her now. You ‘ve saved our Christmas.’

The donkeyman sat up and rubbed his burned places. His eyes met those of the captain, churning a glowering challenge. It was too much for the master and owner of the Mary Kent. He turned and walked away, replacing the new cigar he had been about to light, and taking instead, from its cache in his vest pocket, an old and battered stub. His walk, as he sought the poop, was bent and weatherbeaten.

A flicker of a smile that showed pain came into Dennis Fay’s face. ‘The beach-comber’s bonus will be a taste of rum for all of yez,’ he said, addressing the crew.

‘Cheers for the donkeyman!’ echoed round the ship.