Wide Courses Part 21

"So?" sneered the captain. "I won't? And why not?"

"Because I'm no friendless seafarer. And also because--here's my card.

Read it. It's the card of your boss, the man who can hire or fire you, or any other man or officer of this line. And I don't have to give you a reason unless it pleases me. But I'll give a reason at the right time--in your case. And the reason will leave you where you'll never again set foot on the deck of any ship of this line or of a good many other lines."

The captain had set his back to the rail and bared his teeth. Noyes, thinking he was about to spring, braced his feet and waited. Noyes himself was no angelic-looking creature at the moment. His jaw seemed to shoot forward, his eyes to contract and recede.

"And so that's who you are, is it? And you'd break me?"

"Break you, yes. And perhaps put you in jail before I'm done with you.

Now will you put him in irons?"

The captain did not spring. He walked to his room instead. And he gave out no order just then; but soon the mess-boy came out and whispered to the first officer, and the first officer said, "Kieran, you're to return to duty," and pocketed his irons and called off the men.

It was an hour after the fight. Kieran had had time to clean up, and now, with the pa.s.senger, he was pacing the long gangway.

"And would you have gone over the side?" the pa.s.senger had asked.

"I guess I'd had to, wouldn't I?"

"And would you have reached sh.o.r.e?"

"Why not? Five miles--it's not much in smooth water."

"But the sharks?"

"Sharks? Black boys in West Indian ports will dive all day among them for coppers. Sharks and whales--writers of sea stories certainly ought to pension them. There may have been a shark who once made a meal off a sailor, but let you or me drop over the side, and if there's one anywhere near, he wouldn't stop racing till he was a mile away, and if any harmless slob of a whale ever killed a sailor, be sure he did it through fright. But that's no matter. What does matter, though"--Kieran halted and faced the pa.s.senger--"are the men who did go over the side, and not within swimming distance of any pleasant sandy beach either.

'Tisn't every protesting seaman who finds the boss of the line on deck to back him up. And, what's harder, how about the men who never had the choice of going over the side? And think of the poor creatures who got so that in time they didn't even want to go over the side, who might have grown into honest, free men, but who, instead of that, learned only to live for the day when they too would have the power to make their inferiors stand around and cringe and whine."

They paced the length of the deck twice before Kieran spoke again.

"They wonder at the decay of our merchant marine. I wonder did they ever stop to think of what men--seamen--think of the service? In the days of sailing ships a man going to sea met with real danger and hardship, and they developed courage and skill and character of some kind. What training does he get to take the place of that now? He's a hand nowadays, a helper, a lumper--not a sailor--on a great big hulk to which disaster is almost impossible."

"But disasters do happen."

"They do, but what is the truth about them? Nine out of ten of them have a disgraceful cause. But the public doesn't hear of that, because the public doesn't go to sea--except as a saloon pa.s.senger. The public gets its story from the steamship company's office--always, and you know what kind of a story they put out--put out through newspapers that carry their advertising. You know what that chief clerk or that second clerk of yours would tell any inquiring outsider in case of a loss of life on one of these ships. He'd lie and lie and lie and lie and think he was serving a good cause at that, and the papers publishing the lie would think they were serving a good cause, too--especially the constructive organization papers, as they call themselves. Our big steamship officers these days--outside of the navy--don't get the kind of work that keeps men up to the mark, and not getting it they grow soft--their bodies and their souls become flabby. Engineer officers nowadays have the work cut out for them and they are doing good work, but the bridge officers are no longer men of the sea--they're clerks, agents in floating hotels. And the crew take their tone from the officers. When the commander's weak, your whole outfit is apt to weaken, especially under a strain."

They resumed their pacing, Kieran with head high in the air, inhaling deep breaths of the fresh salt air.

The pa.s.senger came out of a deep meditation. "Kieran, you can do a good work for us. Is there any berth with this line you'd like to have? If there is, say so. You can have it. You can have that head clerk's job if you want it. And I think that after a while I could get you mine, for I'm only there to fill a gap."

Kieran shook his head. "It wouldn't do."

"Why not? You're the man for the job."

"No, I'm not the man. You haven't got me quite right. I can point out errors, but I'm not the man to correct them. I'm not a good executive."

"You certainly were the good executive in the bosun's case."

"N-no, no. You mustn't count him. If he was a John L. Sullivan, say, in his good days, it would prove something. Besides, I don't care for fighting--for beating people up. I do hate though to see a bully or a faker getting the best of it, and maybe having had time to knock around and study people, I can pick out a bully or a faker quicker than most people, and seeing somebody getting too much the best of it, why, sometimes I can't help b.u.t.ting in."

"And because of that faculty of seeing things, once you made up your mind to settle down to it, you'd make good on this job I'm offering you."

"No, you've got me wrong again. I'm not a reformer, and never will be, I hope. Reformers, or most that ever I met, are only men who first tried to play politics and got licked at it. I'm only an observer."

"But you like a fight?"

"M-m-m-n not me. And I never did. Any man, of course, likes the excitement once he's into it, but what man enjoys smashing another man in the face? What fights I've been into I couldn't side-step--not without crawling, I mean. No, no, I wouldn't make good on your job. I'd go along all right in your office back in New York for awhile,--for a month, two months, six months,--who knows, maybe a year, and then one day I'd look out the window, take a look down on the Battery, say at the elevated railroad or the Aquarium Building, and the Coney Island steamer dock with the barkers yelling and gesturing, and the loafers on the benches in between, and from that I'd look down the bay and see the Statue of Liberty--some morning that would be, maybe, when the sun was lighting up New York Bay as it does some mornings, or maybe it would be on a late afternoon, with the sun setting over on the Jersey sh.o.r.e, the dark smoke from a hundred chimneys smooching across the pink and purple of it, and, if 'twas summer, a haze like a bridal veil over it all, and between that and the Battery the life of a hundred craft--ferry-boats, tow-boats, lighters, windjammers, steam-yachts, ocean-liners, harbor, coastwise and foreign bound, a hundred different kinds coming and going, the Lord knows where, but to where no four walls will bound 'em for a time, be sure of that. And if ever I did look and looked long enough, be sure the earth would look like it was rolling by too slow and I'd want to get out and give it a push to speed it up. No, no. That"--he looked up at the serene blue--"for my ceiling. And that"--he pointed to the dimpling green sea--"for my office floor. And that"--he waved a hand to s.p.a.ce--"for a window. And let all the bruising bosuns and bucko ship's officers afloat jump on me, but give me that and I'll take a chance.

And--"

He stopped short and sighed. "I do get going sometimes, don't I?" He looked around the deck. In a bucket of water by the rail the bosun was bathing his battered features. "The bosun reminds me. To-day I promised him I'd finish my Flying Walrus song."

"Go ahead and finish it--that first verse was pretty good."

"The second's better--or I think so. And"--he grinned at the pa.s.senger--"I composed it myself, too, to an air running in my head. And I suppose I ought to finish it. And yet"--the bosun was pouring, very quietly, his bucket of wash water into the scuppers--"that would be sort of rubbing it in, wouldn't it?"

"What of it? It will do them all good."

"I don't know about that. If it"--and just then three bells struck, and three bells on the _Rapidan_ meant supper for the watch below.

Kieran left to go to supper, and the pa.s.senger noted the deference of the crew toward him. Not one who found himself in his way but hopped swiftly aside to give him gangway.

"How conducive to high judgment, how accelerating to respect is success," mused the pa.s.senger. "Two hours ago hardly one of them who did not set him down for a half-crazy, or, at least, an over-sanguine visionary--but now--they bound like stags before him, and none more propitiatingly agile than the former satellites of our deposed bosun. A Don Quixote"--murmured the pa.s.senger--"maybe, but a 20th century Don Quixote--with a wallop in each hand. If the Don Quixotes generally had his equipment, it would not be windmills alone which would suffer, and some joy then for honest men to watch the tilting."

Jan Tingloff

THE LODGING HOUSE

Jan Tingloff, not wishing to get too far away from the dry dock, turned up a side street near the water-front, and there, in a bas.e.m.e.nt window of a narrow four-story brick building, he saw the sign "Furnished Room to Rent."

A second look showed Jan that the bas.e.m.e.nt also afforded an entrance to a not too well lit pool-room and that a not overclean alley ran up one side of the building. Jan, with no prejudices against alleys or pool-rooms, entered the pool-room to inquire. "Yeh," said the man behind the cigar-case--"second floor--a week in advance--ring the front-door bell--a woman will come and show you."

A woman who preceded him like a discouraged shadow showed him the room, but it was to the man in the bas.e.m.e.nt that she told Jan to pay the week's rent when he said he would take the room. "Yes; I take the rent--always," this man said; and his eyes brightened as Jan pushed the money across the cigar-case at him. And he wore finger-rings out of all keeping with the dark little place; but he had a pleasant smile for Jan and Jan smiled back at him; for Jan was one of those friendly natures who prefer to be pleasant, even to men whose looks they do not like.

Jan Tingloff slept in his new quarters that night. He saw n.o.body connected with the house as he pa.s.sed out in the morning; but that evening as he entered the front-door he heard a cough. It was a woman's cough and dimly he saw a woman's form--a rather slender form. Jan's senses were the kind which see a thing large at first and then go back for details. He hurried to close the door so that the cold November wind would not endanger the poor creature further. As he closed the door she said:

"Good evening."

Jan hurried to take off his hat.

"Good evening, ma'am."

"You go off early mornings, captain?"

"Yes, ma'am." He peered into the twilight of the hall and saw a hand lighting the suspension lamp. "But I'm not a captain, ma'am. I was a seafaring man one time; but I am a ship-carpenter now in a repairing job on a big coaster in the dry dock, and I have to be over there early to get my gang started."