All the Brothers Were Valiant Part 3

Now and then, through those days, Priscilla's enthusiasm would send her skittering up the companion to fetch Joel to see some new wonder--a window set in the stern, or a bench completed, or a door hung. And Joel, looking far oftener at Priscilla than at the object she wished him to consider, would chuckle, and touch her shoulder affectionately, and go back to his post.

In the sixth week, the last nail had been driven, and the last lick of paint was dry. In the result, Priscilla was as happy as a bride has a right to be.

Across the very stern of the ship, with windows looking out upon the wake, ran what might have been called a sitting room. It was perhaps twenty feet wide and eight feet deep; and its rear wall--formed by the overhanging stern--sloped outward toward the ceiling. Against this slope, beneath the three windows, a broad, cushioned bench was built, to serve as couch or seat. The bench was broken in one place to make room for Joel's desk, and the cabinet wherein he kept his records and his instruments. Priss had put curtains on the windows; and she had a lily, in a pot, at one of them, and a clump of pansies at another. Joel's cabin opened off this compartment, on the starboard side; hers was opposite.

The main cabin, with its folding table built about the thick b.u.t.t of the mizzenmast, had been extended forward to make room for the enlargement of this stern apartment; and the mates were quartered off this main cabin.

The galley and the store rooms were on the main deck, in the after house, on either side of the awkward "walking wheel" by which the ship was steered; and the cabin companion was just forward of this wheel.

There were aboard the _Nathan Ross_ about thirty men, all told; but the most of them were not of Priscilla's world. The foremast hands never came aft of the try works, save on tasks a.s.signed; and the secondary officers--boat-steerers and the like--slept in the steerage and kept forward of the boathouse. Thus the after deck was shared only by Priscilla and Joel, the mates, the cook, and old Aaron, who was a man of many privileges.

This world, Priscilla ruled. Joel adored her; Jim Finch gave her the clumsy homage of a puppy--and was at times just as oppressively amiable.

Old Aaron talked to her by the hour, while he went about his work. And the other mates--Varde, the sullen; and Hooper, who was old and losing his grip; and d.i.c.k Morrell, who was young and finding his--paid her the respect that was her due. Young Morrell--he was not even as old as she was--helped her on her first climb to the mast head. He was only a boy.... The girl, when the first homesick pangs were past, was happy.

Until the day they killed their whale, a seventy-barrel cachalot cow who died as peaceably as a chicken, with only a convulsive flop or two when the lances found the life. Priscilla took a single glimpse of the shuddering, b.l.o.o.d.y, oily work of cutting in the carca.s.s, and then she fled to her cabin and remained there steadfastly until the long task was done. The smoke from the bubbling try pots, and the persistent smell of boiling blubber sickened her; and the grime that descended over everything appalled her dainty soul. Not until the men had cleaned ship did she go on deck again; and even then she scolded Joel for the affair as though it were a matter for which he was wholly to blame.

"There just isn't any sense in making so much dirt," she told him. "I've had to wash out every one of my curtains; and I can't ever get rid of that smell."

Joel chuckled. "Aye, the smell sticks," he agreed. "But you'll be used to it soon, Priss. You'll come to like it, I'm thinking. Any case, we'll not be rid of it while the cruise is on."

She was so angry that she wanted to cry. "Do you actually mean, Joel Sh.o.r.e, that I've got to live with that sickening, hot-oil smell for th-three years?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes, Priss. No way out of it. It's part of the work.

Come another month, and you'll not mind at all."

She said positively: "I may not say anything, but I shall always hate that smell."

His eyes twinkled slowly; and she stamped her foot. "If I'd known it was going to be like this, I wouldn't have come, Joel. Now don't you laugh at me. If there was any way to go back, I'd go. I hate it. I hate it all.

You ought not to have brought me...."

They were on the broad bench across the stern, in their cabin; and he put his big arm about her shoulders and laughed at her till she could do no less than laugh back at him. But--she a.s.sured herself of this--she was angry, just the same. Nevertheless, she laughed....

Joel had put the _Nathan Ross_ on the most direct southward course, touching neither Azores nor Cape Verdes. For it was in his mind, as he had told Asa Worthen, to make direct for the Gilbert Islands and seek some trace of his brother there. That had been his plan before he left port; but the plan had become determination after a word with Aaron Burnham, one day. Joel, resting in the cabin while old Aaron worked there, fell to thinking of his brother, and so asked:

"Aaron, what is your belief about my brother, Mark Sh.o.r.e? Is he dead?"

Aaron was building, that day, the forward part.i.tion of the new cabin, fitting his boards meticulously, and driving home each nail with hammer strokes that seemed smooth and effortless, yet sank the nail to the head in an instant. He looked up over his shoulder at Joel, between nails.

"Dead, d'ye say?" he countered quizzically.

Joel nodded. "The Islanders? Did they do it, do you believe?"

Old Aaron chuckled asthmatically. He had lost a fore tooth, and the effect of his mirth was not rea.s.suring. "There's a brew i' the Islands,"

he said. "More like 'twas the island brew nor the island men."

Joel, for a moment, sat very still and considered. He knew Mark Sh.o.r.e had never scrupled to take strong drink when he chose; but Mark had always been a strong man to match his drink, and conquer it. Said Joel, therefore, after a s.p.a.ce of thought:

"Why do you think that, Aaron? Drink was never like to carry Mark away."

Aaron squinted up at him. "Have ye sampled that island brew? 'Tis made of pineapples, or sago, or the like outlandish stuff, I've heard. And one sip is deviltry, and two is madness, and three is corruption. Some stomachs are used to it; they can handle it. But a raw man...."

There was significance in the pause, and the unfinished sentence. Joel considered the matter. There had always been, between him and Mark, something of that sleeping enmity that so often arises between brothers.

Mark was a man swift of tongue, flashing, and full of laughter and hot blood; a colorful man, like a splash of pigment on white canvas. Joel was in all things his opposite, quiet, and slow of thought and speech, and steady of gait. Mark was accustomed to jeer at him, to taunt him; and Joel, in the slow fashion of slow men, had resented this. Nevertheless, he cast aside prejudice now in his estimate of the situation; and he asked old Aaron:

"Do you know there were Islanders about? Or this wild brew you speak of?"

Aaron drove home a nail, and with his punch set it flush with the soft wood. "There was some drunken crew, shouting and screeching a mile up the beach," he said. "Some few of them came off to us with fruit. The sober ones. 'Twas them Mark Sh.o.r.e went to pandander with."

"He went to them?" Joel echoed. Aaron nodded.

"Aye. That he did."

There was a long moment of silence before Joel asked huskily: "But was it like that he should stay with them freely?" For it is a black and shameful thing that a captain should desert his ship. When he had asked the question, he waited in something like fear for the carpenter's answer.

"It comes to me," said Aaron slowly at last, "that you did not well know your brother. Ye'd only seen him ash.o.r.e. And--I'm doubting that you knew all the circ.u.mstances of his departure from this ship."

"I know that he went ash.o.r.e," said Joel. "Went ash.o.r.e, and left his men, and departed; and I know that they searched for him three weeks without a sign."

Aaron sat back on his heels, and rubbed the smooth head of his hammer thoughtfully against his dry old cheek. "I'm not one to speak harm," he said. "And I've said naught, in the town. But--you have some right to know that Mark Sh.o.r.e was not a sober man when he left the ship. I' truth, he had not been sober--cold sober--for a week. And he left with a bottle in his coat." He nodded his gray old head, eyes not on Joel, but on the hammer in his hand. "Also, there was a pearling schooner in the lagoon, with drunk white men aboard."

He glanced sidewise at Joel then, and saw the Captain's cheek bones slowly whiten. Whereupon old Aaron bent swiftly to his task, half fearful of what he had said. But when Joel spoke, it was only to say quietly:

"Asa should have told me this."

Aaron shook his head vehemently, but without looking up from his task.

"Not so," he said. "There was no need the town should chew Mark's name.

Better--" He glanced at Joel. "Better if he were thought dead. Asa's a good man, you mind. And--he knew your father."

Joel nodded at that. "Asa meant wisest, I've no doubt," he agreed.

"But--Mark would do nothing that he was shamed of."

"Mark Sh.o.r.e," said Aaron thoughtfully, "did many things without shame for which other men would have blus.h.i.t."

Joel said curtly: "Aaron, ye'll say no more such things as that."

"Ye're right," Aaron agreed. "I should no have said it. But--'tis so."

Joel left him and went on deck, and his eyes were troubled.... Priss was there, with d.i.c.k Morrell showing her some trick of the wheel, and they were laughing together like children. Joel felt immensely older than Priss.... Yet the difference was scarce six years.... She saw him, and left Morrell and came running to Joel's side. "Did you sleep?" she asked.

"You needed rest, Joe."

"I rested," he told her, smiling faintly. "I'll be fine...."

V

They drifted past Pernambuco, and touched at Trinidad, and so worked south and somewhat westward for Cape Horn. And in Joel grew, stronger and ever, the resolve to hunt out Mark, and find him, and fetch him home....

The blood tie was strong on Joel; stronger than any memory of Mark's derision. And--for the honor of the House of Sh.o.r.e, it were well to prove the matter, if Mark were dead. It is not well for a Sh.o.r.e to abandon his ship in strange seas.