The Mutineers Part 15

Then Captain Falk called, "Come here, two or three of you, and take this man below."

Old Bill was moaning when we got there. "Sure," he groaned, "I've got a rolling--howling--old Barney's bull of a pain in my innards." But when we laid him in his bunk, he began to laugh queerly, and he seemed to pretend that he was talking to his little wee girl; for we heard him saying that her old father had come to her and that he was never going to leave her again.

To me--only a boy, you must remember--it was a horrible experience, even though I did not completely understand all that was happening; and to the others old Bill's rambling talk seemed to bring an unnamed terror.

All night he restlessly tossed, though he soon ceased his wild talking and slept lightly and fitfully. The men watching him were wakeful, too, and as I lay trying to sleep and trying not to see the swaying lantern and the fantastic shadows, I heard at intervals s.n.a.t.c.hes of their low conversation.

"They hadn't ought to 'a' called him out. It warn't human. A sick man has got _some_ rights," one of the men from Boston repeated interminably. He seemed unable to hold more than one idea at a time.

Then Blodgett would say, "Ay, it don't seem right. But we've all got to stand by the skipper. That's how we'll serve our ends best. It don't do to get too much excited."

I imagined that Blodgett's voice did not sound as if he were fully convinced of the doctrine he was preaching.

"Ay," the other would return, "but they hadn't ought to 'a' called him out.

It warn't human. A sick man has got _some_ rights, and he was allers quiet."

They talked on endlessly, while I tried in vain to sleep and while poor Bill tossed away, getting no good from the troubled slumber that the Lord sent him.

No sooner, it seemed to me, did I actually close my eyes than I woke and heard him moaning, "Water--a--drink--of--water."

The others by then had left him, so I got up and fetched water, and he muttered something more about the "pain in his innards." Then my watch was called and I went on deck with the rest.

For the most part it was a day of coa.r.s.e weather. Now intermittent squalls from the southwest swept upon us with lightning and thunder, driving before them rain in solid sheets; now the ship danced in choppy waves, with barely enough wind to give her steerage-way and with a warm, gentle drizzle that wet us to the skin and penetrated into the forecastle, where blankets and clothing soon became soggy and uncomfortable. But the greater part of the time we lurched along in a gale of wind, with an occasional dash of rain, which we accepted as a compromise between those two worse alternatives, the cloudbursts that accompanied the squalls, and the enervating warm drizzle.

That Bill Hayden did not stand watch with the others, no one, apparently, noticed. The men were glad enough to forget him, I think, and the officers let his absence pa.s.s, except Davie Paine, who found opportunity to inquire of me secretly about him and sadly shook his gray head at the tidings I gave.

Below we could not forget him. I heard the larboard watch talking of it when they relieved us; and no sooner had we gone below in turn than Blodgett cried, "Look at old Bill! His face is all of a sweat."

He was up on his elbow when we came down, staring as if he had expected some one; and when he saw who it was, he kept his eyes on the hatch as if waiting for still another to come. Presently he fell back in his bunk. "Oh, I've got such a pain in my innards," he moaned.

By and by he began to talk again, but he seemed to have forgotten his pain completely, for he talked about doughnuts and duff, and Sundays ash.o.r.e when he was a little shaver, and going to church, and about the tiny wee girl on the bank of the Merrimac who would be looking for her dad to come home, and lots of things that no one would have thought he knew. He seemed so natural now and so cheerful that I was much relieved about him, and I whispered to Blodgett that I thought Bill was better. But Blodgett shook his head so gravely that I was frightened in spite of my hopes, and we lay there, some of us awake, some asleep, while Bill rambled cheerily on and the lantern swung with the motion of the ship.

To-day I remember those watches below at that time in the voyage as a succession of short unrestful s.n.a.t.c.hes of sleep broken by vivid pictures of the most trivial things--the swinging lantern, the distorted shadows the muttered comments of the men, Bill leaning on his elbow at the edge of his bunk and staring toward the hatch as if some one long expected were just about to come. I do not pretend to understand the reason, but in my experience it is the trifling unimportant things that after a time of stress or tragedy are most clearly remembered.

When next I woke I heard the bell--_clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang, clang_--faint and far off. Then I saw that Blodgett was sitting on the edge of his bunk, counting the strokes on his fingers. When he had finished he gravely shook his head and nodded toward Bill who was breathing harder now.

"He's far gone," Blodgett whispered. "He ain't going to share in no split-up at Manila. He ain't going to put back again to India when we've got rid of the cargo. His time's come."

I didn't believe a word that Blodgett said then, but I sat beside him as still as the grave while the forecastle lantern nodded and swung as casually as if old Bill were not, for all we knew, dying. By and by we heard the bell again, and some one called from the hatch, "Eight bells!

Roll out!"

The very monotony of our life--the watches below and on deck, each like every other, marked off by the faint clanging of the ship's bell--made Bill's sickness seem less dreadful. There is little to thrill a lad or even, after a time, to interest him, in the interminable routine of a long voyage.

When we came on deck Davie Paine looked us over and said, "Where's Bill?"

Blodgett shook his head. Even this simple motion had a sleepy quality that made me think of a cat.

"I'm afraid, sir," he replied, "that Bill has stood his last watch."

"So!" said old Davie, reflectively, in his deep voice, "so!--I was afraid of that." Ignorant though Davie was, and hopelessly incompetent as an officer, he had a certain kindly tolerance, increased, perhaps, by his own recent difficulties, that made him more approachable than any other man in the cabin. After a time he added, "I cal'ate I got to tell the captain."

Davie's manner implied that he was taking us into his confidence.

"Yes," Neddie Benson muttered under his breath, "tell the captain! If it wasn't for Mr. Kipping and the captain, Bill would be as able a man this minute as any one of us here. It didn't do to abuse him. He ain't got the spirit to stand up under it."

Davie shuffled away without hearing what was said, and soon, instead of Captain Falk, Mr. Kipping appeared, bristling with anger.

"What's all this?" he snapped, with none of the mildness that he usually affected. "Who says Bill Hayden has stood his last watch? Is mutiny brewing? I'll have you know I'm mate here, legal and lawful, and what's more I'll show you I'm mate in a way that none of you won't forget if he thinks he can try any more of his sojering on me. I'll fix him. You go forward, Blodgett, and drag him out by the scalp-lock."

Blodgett walked off, keeping close to the bulwark, and five minutes later he was back again.

Mr. Kipping grew very red. "Well, my man," he said in a way that made my skin creep, "are you a party to this little mutiny?"

"N-no, sir," Blodgett stammered. "I--he-it ain't no use, he _can't_ come."

The mate looked sternly at Blodgett, and I thought he was going to hit him; but instead, after a moment of hesitation, he started forward alone.

We scarcely believed our eyes.

By and by he came back again, but to us he said nothing. He went into the cabin, and when next we saw him Captain Falk was by his side.

"I don't like the looks of it," Kipping was saying, "I don't at all."

As the captain pa.s.sed me he called, "Lathrop, go to the galley and get a bucket of hot water."

Running to the deck-house, I thrust my head into the galley and made known my want with so little ceremony that the cook was exasperated. Or so at least his manner intimated.

"You boy," he roared in a voice that easily carried to where the others stood and grinned at my discomfiture, "you boy, what foh you come promulgatin' in on me with 'gimme dis' and 'gimme dat' like Ah wahn't ol'

enough to be yo' pa? Ain't you got no manners nohow? You vex me, ya.s.s, sah, you vex me. If we gotta have a boy on boa'd ship, why don' dey keep him out of de galley?"

Then with a change of voice that startled me, he demanded in an undertone that must have been inaudible a dozen feet away, "Have things broke? Is de fight on? Has de row started?"

Bewildered, I replied, "Why, no--it's only Bill Hayden."

Instantly he resumed his loud and abusive tone. "Well, if dey gwine send a boy heah foh wateh, wateh he's gotta have. Heah, you wuthless boy, git! Git out of heah!"

Filling a bucket with boiling water, he thrust it into my hand and shoved me half across the deck so roughly that I narrowly escaped scalding myself, then returned to his work, muttering imprecations on the whole race of boys. He was too much of a strategist for me.

When I took the bucket to the forecastle, I found the captain and Mr.

Kipping looking at poor old Bill.

"Dip a cloth in the water," the captain said carelessly, "and pull his clothes off and lay the cloth on where it hurts."

I obeyed as well as I could, letting the cloth cool a bit first; and although Bill cried out sharply when it touched his skin, the heat eased him of pain, and by and by he opened his eyes for all the world as if he had been asleep and looked at Captain Falk and said in a scared voice, "In heaven's name, what's happened?"

The captain and Mr. Kipping laughed coldly. It seemed to me that they didn't care whether he lived or died.

Certainly the men of the larboard watch, who were lying in their bunks at the time, didn't like the way the two behaved. I caught the word "heartless" twice repeated.

"Well," said Captain Falk at last, "either he'll live or he'll not. How about it, Mr. Kipping?"