The Sailor Part 11

The Old Man and the mate were the first to recognize that a change had taken place in Sailor, but the knowledge was not confined exclusively to them. It was soon shared by others. One evening, as Sailor sat sunning himself with the ship's cat on his knee, gazing with intensity now at the sky, now at the sea, one of the hands, a rough n.i.g.g.e.r named Brutus, threw a boot at him in order to amuse the company. There was a roar of laughter when it was seen that the aim was so true that the boy had been hit in the face.

Sailor laid the cat on the deck, got up quietly, and with the blood running down his cheek came over to Brutus.

"Was that you, you ----?" To the astonishment of all he addressed in terms of the sea the biggest bully aboard the ship.

"Yep," said the n.i.g.g.e.r, showing his fine teeth in a grin at the others.

"There, then, you ugly swine," said Sailor.

In an instant he had whipped out one of the cabin table knives, which he had hidden against the next attack, and struck at the n.i.g.g.e.r with all his strength. If the point of the knife had not been blunt the n.i.g.g.e.r would never have thrown another boot at anybody.

There was a fine to-do. The n.i.g.g.e.r, a thorough coward, began to howl and declared he was done. The second mate was fetched, and he reported the matter at once to the Old Man.

In a great fury the Old Man came in person to investigate. But he very soon had the rights of the matter; the boy's cheek was bleeding freely, and the n.i.g.g.e.r was more frightened than hurt.

"Get below you," said the Old Man savagely to the n.i.g.g.e.r. "I'll have you in irons. I'll larn you to throw boots."

That was all the satisfaction the n.i.g.g.e.r got out of the affair, but from then boots were not thrown lightheartedly at Sailor.

XVII

After many days of ocean tramping with an occasional discharge of cargo at an out of the way port, the ship put in at Frisco. Here, after a clean up, a new cargo was taken aboard, also a new crew. This was a pretty scratch lot; the usual complement of Yankees, Dutchmen, dagoes, and an occasional Britisher.

For a long and trying fifteen months, Sailor continued on the seas, about all the oceans of the world. At the end of that time he was quite a different boy from the one who had left his native city of Blackhampton. Dagoes and n.i.g.g.e.rs no longer did as they liked with him.

He still had a strong dislike, it was true, to going aloft in a gale, but he invariably did as he was told to the best of his ability; he no longer skulked or showed the white feather in the presence of his mates. Nevertheless, he was always miserably unhappy. There was something in his nature that could not accept the hateful discomforts of a life before the mast, although from the day of his birth he had never known what it was to lie soft. He was in h.e.l.l all the time.

Moreover, he knew it and felt it to the inmost fiber of his being; the soul of Henry Harper was no longer derelict.

The sense of the miracle which had happened off the Island of San Pedro abided with him through gale and typhoon, through sunshine and darkness, through winter and summer. It didn't matter what the sea was doing, or the wind was saying, or the Old Man was threatening, a miracle had happened to Henry Harper. He had touched bed rock. He had seen things and he had learned things; man and nature, all the terrible and mysterious forces around him could do their worst, but he no longer feared them in the old craven way. Sailor had suffered a sea change.

The things in earth and heaven he had looked upon none could share with him, not even Mr. Thompson, that strange and sinister man of the sea, to whom he owed what was called "his life"; nay, not even the Old Man himself who had lived six weeks on sh.e.l.lfish on the Island of San Pedro.

When the _Margaret Carey_ had been to Australia and round the larger half of the world, she put in at Frisco again. Here she took another cargo and signed on fresh hands for a voyage round the Pacific Coast.

Among the latter was a man called Klond.y.k.e. At least, that was the name he went by aboard the _Margaret Carey_, and was never called by any other. At first this individual puzzled Henry Harper considerably.

He shared a berth with him in the half-deck, and the boy--now a grown man rising sixteen--armed with a curiosity that was perfectly insatiable, and a faculty of taking lively and particular notice, found a great deal to interest him in this new chum.

He was about twenty-four and a Britisher, although Sailor in common with most of his shipmates thought at first that he was a Yankee. For one thing, he was a new type aboard the _Margaret Carey_. Very obviously he knew little of the sea, but that didn't seem to trouble him. From the moment he set foot aboard, he showed that he could take good care of himself. It was not obtrusive but quietly efficient care that he took of himself, yet it seemed to bear upon the att.i.tude of all with whom he had to do.

Klond.y.k.e knew nothing about a windjammer, but soon started in to learn.

And it didn't seem to matter what ticklish or unpleasant jobs he was put to--jobs for which Sailor could never overcome a great dislike--he had always a remarkable air of being in this hard and perilous business merely for the good of his health.

Klond.y.k.e said he had never been aloft before in his life, and the first time he went up it was blowing hard from the northeast, yet his chief concern before he started was to lay a bet of five dollars with anybody in the starboard watch that he didn't fall out of the rigging. But there were no takers, for there was not a man aboard who would believe that this was the first time he had gone up on a yard.

It was not many weeks before Klond.y.k.e was the most efficient ordinary seaman aboard the _Margaret Carey_. And by that time he had become a power among the after gang. As one of the Yankees, who was about as tough as they made them but with just a streak of the right color in him, expressed it, "Klond.y.k.e was a white man from way back."

The fact was, Klond.y.k.e was a white man all through, the only one aboard the ship. It was not a rarefied or aggressively shining sort of whiteness. His language on occasion could be quite as salt as that of anybody else, even more so, perhaps, as he had a greater range of tongues, both living and dead, from which to choose. He was very partial to his meals, and growled terribly if the grub went short as it often did; he also set no store by dagoes and "sich," for he was very far from believing that all men were equal. They were, no doubt, in the sight of G.o.d, but Klond.y.k.e maintained that the English were first, Yankees and Dutchmen divided second place, and the rest of sea-going humanity were not on the chart at all. He was always extremely clear about this.

From the first day of Klond.y.k.e's coming aboard, Sailor, who was very sharp in some things, became mightily interested in the new hand in the wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears, who went about the ship as if he owned it; while after a time the new hand returned the compliment by taking a friendly interest in Sailor. But that was not at first. Klond.y.k.e, for all his go-as-you-please air, was not the kind of man who entered easily upon personal relations. Moreover, there was something about him which puzzled Henry Harper. He spoke a kind of lingo the boy had never heard before. It was that as much as anything which had made Sailor think he was a Yank. He had not been used to that sort of talk at Blackhampton, nor was it the kind in vogue on the _Margaret Carey_. If not exactly la-di-da, had it been in the mouth of some people it would have been considered a trifle thick.

Sailor's intimacy with Klond.y.k.e, which was to have an important bearing upon his life, began in quite a casual way. One afternoon, with the sea like gla.s.s, and not a puff of wind in the sails, they sat together on the deck picking oak.u.m to keep them from idleness, when Klond.y.k.e suddenly remarked: "Sailor, don't think me inquisitive, but I'm wondering what brought you to sea."

"Inquisitive" was a word Sailor had not heard before, and he could only guess at its meaning. But he thought Klond.y.k.e so little inquisitive that he said at once quite simply and frankly, "Dunno." He then added by way of an afterthought, although Klond.y.k.e was a new chum and rated the same as himself, "Mister."

"No, I expect not," said Klond.y.k.e, "but I've been wondering a bit lately"--there was something very pleasant in Klond.y.k.e's tone--"how you come to be aboard this h.e.l.l ship. One would have thought you'd have done better ash.o.r.e."

Sailor was not able to offer an opinion upon that.

"In some kind of a store or an office?"

"Can't read, can't write."

"No?" Klond.y.k.e's eyebrows went up for a fraction of an instant, then they came down as if a bit ashamed of themselves for having gone up at all. "But it's quite easy to learn, you know."

Sailor gasped in astonishment. He had always been led to believe that to learn to read and write was a task of superhuman difficulty. Some of his friends at Blackhampton had attended a night school now and again, but none of them had been able to make much of the racket of reading and writing, except one, Nick Price, who had a gift that way and was good for nothing else. Besides, as soon as he really took to the game a change came over him. Finally, he left the town.

"I'd never be able to read an' write," said Sailor.

"Why not?" said Klond.y.k.e. "Why not, like anybody else ... if you stuck it? Of course, you'd have to stick it, you know. It mightn't come very kind at first."

This idea was so entirely new that Sailor rose with quite a feeling of excitement from the upturned bucket on which he sat.

"Honest, mister," he said, gazing wistfully into the face of Klond.y.k.e, "do you _fink_ I could?"

"Sure," said Klond.y.k.e. "Sure as G.o.d made little apples."

Sailor decided that he would think it over. It was a very important step to take.

XVIII

Klond.y.k.e's library consisted of two volumes: the Bible and "Don Quixote." Sailor knew a bit about the former work. The Reverend Rogers had read it aloud on a famous occasion when Henry Harper had had the luck to be invited to a real blowout of tea and buns at the Brookfield Street Mission. That was a priceless memory, and Henry Harper always thought that to hear the Reverend Rogers read the Bible was a treat. Klond.y.k.e, who was not at all like the Reverend Rogers in word or deed, said it was "a d.a.m.ned good book," and would sometimes read in it when he was at a bit of a loose end.

It was by means of this volume that Sailor learned his alphabet.

Presently he got to spelling words of two and three letters, then he got as far as remembering them, and then came the proud day when he could write his name with a stump of pencil on a stray piece of the _Brooklyn Eagle_, in which Klond.y.k.e had packed his tooth brush, the only one aboard the _Margaret Carey_.

"What is your name, old friend?" Klond.y.k.e asked.

"Enry Arper."

"H-e-n with a Hen, ry--Henry. H-a-r with a Har, p-e-r--Harper."

"There ain't no aitch in Arper," said Sailor.

"Why not?"