Devil Stories Part 31

So forrard they went, and the chain was lighted up and flaked along the deck all clear for running.

"Now, Chips," says the old man to the carpenter, "just bend the spare anchor to the end of that chain, and clear away the fo'c's'le rails ready for when we let go."

So they did this, too.

"Now," said the old man, "get them tubs of slush from the galley. Pa.s.s that slush along there, doctor. Very well that. Now turn to, all hands, and slush away every link in that chain a good inch thick in grease."

So they did that, too, and wondered what the old man meant.

"Very well that," cries the old man. "Now get below all hands! Chips, on to the fo'c's'le head with you and stand by! I'll keep the deck, Mr. Mate! Very well that."

So all hands tumbled down below; Chips took a fill o' baccy to leeward of the capstan, and the old man walked the weather-p.o.o.p looking for a sign of h.e.l.l-fire.

It was still dead calm--but presently, towards six bells, he raised a black cloud away to leeward, and saw the glimmer of the lightning in it; only the flashes were too red, and came too quick.

"Now," says he to himself, "stand by."

Very soon that black cloud worked up to windward, right alongside, and there came a red flash, and a strong sulphurous smell, and then a loud peal of thunder as the devil steps aboard.

"Mornin', Cap'n," says he.

"Mornin', Mr. Devil," says the old man, "and what in blazes do you want aboard _my_ ship?"

"Why, Captain," said the devil, "I've come for the soul of one of your hands as per signed agreement: and, as my time's pretty full up in these wicked days, I hope you won't keep me waiting for him longer than need be."

"Well, Mr. Devil," says the old man, "the man you come for is down below, sleeping, just at this moment. It's a fair pity to call him up till it's right time. So supposin' I set you them three tasks. How would that be? Have you any objections?"

"Why, no," said the devil, "fire away as soon as you like."

"Mr. Devil," said the old man, "you see that main-tops'l yard? Suppose you lay out on that main-tops'l yard and take in three reefs singlehanded."

"Ay, ay, sir," the devil said, and he ran up the rat-lines, into the top, up the topmast rigging and along the yard.

Well, when he found the sail stiff up and down, he hailed the deck:

"Below there! On deck there! Lower away ya halliards!"

"I will not," said the old man, "nary a lower."

"Come up your sheets, then," cries the devil. "This main-topsail's stiff up-and-down. How'm I to take in three reefs when the sail's stiff up-and-down?"

"Why," said the old man, "_you can't do it_. Come out o' that! Down from aloft, you hoof-footed son. That's one to me."

"Yes," says the devil, when he got on deck again, "I don't deny it, Cap'n. That's one to you."

"Now, Mr. Devil," said the old man, going towards the rail, "suppose you was to step into that little boat alongside there. Will you please?"

"Ay, ay, sir," he said, and he slid down the forrard fall, got into the stern sheets, and sat down.

"Now, Mr. Devil," said the skipper, taking a little salt spoon from his vest pocket, "supposin' you bail all the water on that side the boat on to this side the boat, using this spoon as your dipper."

Well!--the devil just looked at him.

"Say!" he said at length, "which of the New England States d'ye hail from anyway?"

"Not Jersey, anyway," said the old man. "That's two up, alright; ain't it, sonny?"

"Yes," growls the devil, as he climbs aboard. "That's two up. Two to you and one to play. Now, what's your next contraption?"

"Mr. Devil," said the old man, looking very innocent, "you see, I've ranged my chain ready for letting go anchor. Now Chips is forrard there, and when I sing out, he'll let the anchor go. Supposin' you stopper the chain with them big hands o' yourn and keep it from running out clear. Will you, please?"

So the devil takes off his coat and rubs his hands together, and gets away forrard by the bitts, and stands by.

"All ready, Cap'n," he says.

"All ready, Chips?" asked the old man.

"All ready, sir," replies Chips.

"Then, stand by--Let _go_ the anchor," and clink, clink, old Chips knocks out the pin, and away goes the spare anchor and greased chain into a five mile deep of G.o.d's sea. As I said, they were in the Indian Ocean.

Well--there was the devil, making a grab here and a grab there, and the slushy chain just slipping through his claws, and at whiles a bight of chain would spring clear and rap him in the eye.

So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the devil ran to the last big link (which was seized to the heel of the foremast), and he put both his arms through it, and hung on to it like grim death.

But the chain gave such a _Yank_ when it came-to, that the big link carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it went through the hawsehole, in a shower of bright sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no devil now. The devil's dead.

As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching the bubbles burst, but the devil never rose. Then he went to the fo'c's'le scuttle and banged thereon with a hand-spike.

"Rouse out, there, the port watch!" he called, "an' get my dinghy inboard."

NOTES

THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY

BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN

According to a German legend, the devil is master of all arts, and certainly he has given sufficient proof of his musical talent. Certain Church Fathers ascribed, not without good reason, the origin of music to Satan. "The Devil," says Mr. Huneker in his diabolical story "The Supreme Sin" (1920), "is the greatest of all musicians," and Rowland Hill long ago admitted the fact that the devil has all the good tunes.

Perhaps his greatest composition is the _Sonata del Diavolo_, which Tartini wrote down in 1713. This diabolical master-piece is the subject of Gerard de Nerval's story _La Sonate du Diable_ (1830).

While the devil plays all instruments equally well, he seems to prefer the violin. Satan appears as fiddler in the poem "Der Teufel mit der Geige," which has been ascribed to the Swiss anti-Papist Pamphilus Gengenbach of the sixteenth century. In Leanu's _Faust_ (1836) Mephistopheles takes the violin out of the hands of one of the musicians at a peasant-wedding and plays a diabolical _czardas_, which fills the hearts of all who hear it with voluptuousness. An opera _Un Violon du Diable_ was played in Paris in 1849. _The Devil's Violin_, an extravaganza in verse by Benjamin Webster, was performed the same year in London. In his story "Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire" Baudelaire presents the Demon of Love as holding in his left hand a violin "which without doubt served to sing his pleasures and pains." The devil also appears as limping fiddler in a California legend, which appeared under the t.i.tle "The Devil's Fiddle" in a Californian magazine in 1855. Death, the devil's first cousin, if not his _alter ego_, has the souls, in the Dance of Death, march off to h.e.l.l to a merry tune on his violin. Death appears as a musician also in the Piper of Hamlin. In this legend, well known to the English world through Browning's poem "Pied Piper of Hamelin" (1843) and Miss Peabody's play _The Piper_ (1909), the rats are the human souls, which Death charms with his music into following him. In the Middle Ages the soul was often represented as leaving the body in the form of a mouse.

The soul of a good man comes out of his mouth as a white mouse, while at the death of a sinner the soul escapes as a black mouse, which the devil catches and brings to h.e.l.l. Mephistopheles, it will be recalled, calls himself "the lord of rats and mice" (_Faust_, 1, 1516).