Hurricane Williams/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
A HARD MAN SWINGS, WRISTS UP
BY THE time the Heraldr had come up the equator into the calms and light whimsy winds, the crew had begun to smolder. Overmanned and underfed, the men forward were grumbling ill-temperedly. On top of that they were being hazed by the drunken Matt Ward.
Gorvhalsen, powerful, ungainly, at once ferocious and hilarious, stamped about all day and shouted songs most of the night. He had tremendous energy.
But the forecastle was in a sweat and bubble. Tempers were short. Oaths begun in good nature were sometimes turned into meaning curses before they cleared the lips.
Big black Sam-O slapped French Monty and in a flash had his yellow shirt ripped by a glint o' steel.
The negro went out of the forecastle with a wild whoop, snatched a capstan-bar from the rack on the bulkheads, and swinging the club around and around, dared the French son-of-a-tree-toad to “jes' put youah foot hout on dis heah deck!”
Monty spluttered curses to the jangled tinkling of his big earrings and from the depths of the forecastle warned the negro that some morning he would wake up dead.
Monty was tempestuous and emotional. Some days he was quiet and kindly; on other days he would terrorize the forecastle and have the air crackling for yards about with curses as he tried to make every word spoken to him the excuse for a fight.
A man yelled derisively at the negro, and without warning was hit from behind by Clobb and knocked unconscious clear into the scuppers.
Dicer bounced like a yelping fice at a battle of bulldogs, shrilly urging Sam-O and Clobb to go into the forecastle and kill the Frenchman. Getting close to the forecastle door to jeer at Monty, he was given a shove from the rear and sprawled headlong over the combing. Monty swooped at him. Dicer squawked in terror as he scrambled back on to deck, breathless, his thin hungry face pasty from fear.
Something of that kind, some fight or other, or a near approach to fight, was more than a daily happening. They seemed to quarrel for the tonic effect of getting excited; but one and all, they damned the ship.
The Heraldr lay becalmed. The viking blood in her, or paint that made her name, or whatever it is that gives personality to ships as to men, seemed to resent equatorial waters. She was stubbornly inert, but far from motionless. The water heaved with a massive respiratory movement as if some monster whose breast filled the horizon lay sleeping underneath.
Buckets of water thrown coolingly on the deck disappeared rapidly, leaving brine traceries. The sails, except where stained with tar streaks, were white as snow. Under the awning the women seemed to be stifling. Gorvhalsen appeared unaffected, though heat rose invisible shimmering waves. The stench of bilge-water was unescapable.
For days the sky, empty of everything but dazzling copperish fire, had pressed closer and closer. The nights were hot, and men crept about the deck, trying to find a place to sleep. The ship rose and fell on long sickening swells, with a west ward drift. She rolled in drunken unsteadiness; slowly, interminably swaying up and down, scarcely breaking the surface at stem or stern. It was as if the molten glassy water were hardening.
Far to the southwest a little puff of grayish smoke lay in the sky, and at night it glowed like a pink pearl flecked with scarlet. McGuire eyed it with drowsy patience.
The men were being doubly hazed. Matt Ward had not been sober for a month. Gorvhalsen did not care, had not seemed even to notice.
Mr. Juggins, the boatswain, a regular knuckleduster and pretty much of a bully except that he did not pick undersize men or count numbers, bellowed around with a great show of heartiness.
Matt Ward was out to show them a thing or two. He was a devil-tamer. He knew many ingenious hazing-tricks and used them; but one hot morning Mr. Juggins hauled buckets of coal that were not for the galley out of the forepeak.
Clobb, his deep-set eyes angrily aglow, said he'd be damned if he touched wet canvas to it.
The Portuguese and half-breeds chattered.
Brundage, who had become a sort of bosun's mate about the deck—and men who had no liking for him had respect—asked from whom the order came. Mr. Juggins said:
“The cap'n.”
An unidentified voice gave a contemptuous, “Bu-uah—cap'n!”
Mr. Juggins pretended not to hear. He was inside a crowding circle and could not have found who said it.
Sam-O, with much rolling of eyes, puffed noisily and pulled at the collar of a red cotton shirt; it was no way to treat white men.
Old Tom, endlessly munching on a quid of tobacco, chewed with nervous quivering of chin and looked sidelong at his friend Benny. They had helped smear a dozen ships with smoke and stinking grease of the flaring try-pots; but they had never heard of anything like this. The insult of it made men bitter.
McGuire saunteringly shoved into the circle, cocked his head, peered inquiringly at the buckets, poked a pair of thumbs into the waistline of his dungarees and turned away, whistling.
“You said it, son,” Clobb whispered, hoarsely tense.
McGuire was whistling, scarcely more than humming, the tearful tune of a song that gave the defense of a mutineer as he stood on the gallows.
Dicer whined loudly; but in undertones urged the men to refuse duty, to mutiny.
Mr. Juggins tried to be hearty. The men were disturbingly quiet, looking from the buckets to one another.
“A'ter hu get goin',” said Mr. Juggins reassuringly, “yt won't be 'ard. Not ha-tall. Same thing presackly as brykedust, honly the color's not red.”
“Yees,” said French Monty, the word like a hiss, his looped earrings quivering at the nod of his head.
“Turn to, bully-boys. Hit's all in the d'y's work,” said Mr. Juggins.
Men picked up pieces of canvas, took swabs, buckets and coal. They moved off slowly.
Matt Ward laughed. His body swayed a little, and his red face was very red. He held on to the poop rail, watching, though his eyes were a little blurred.
“Get halong there,” said Juggins to Clobb.
“I'm no damn collier!”
“Hu ain't, huh? Hu ain't no syler neither. Hu didn't know a deck-'ouse frum a chicken coop when hu come ha-board. Stow hur jawtackle han' turn to,” said Mr. Juggins not unkindly, for his own heart was not in the work.
But Clobb answered:
“You go to hell!”
Juggins jumped for him, smashing to the jaw.
Clobb was a heavyweight of the bare-knuckle school, a bad man in the square ring, a worse one out of it. He fell away, staggering for a step or two, and came back with a rush. It was give and take, with Juggins's barrel-like body taking the heavier blows. They stood up to it and slugged, their big hard fists driving in blow for blow.
The crew came crowding back, eager and noisy.
Clobb was cheered. Sam-O bellowed in negroid frenzy. Dicer darted in with puny fist driven at Juggins's back; but Old Tom, a Yankee for fair play, spilled him to the deck and kicked him with a long drive from a cowhide boot. A lump of coal flew at the bosun, missed, and hit Sam-O alongside his kinky head. He did not notice.
“What's goin' on for'ard there?” Matt Ward bawled.
Swanson, second mate, was by the main hatch talking with the carpenter, and broke forward.
He sprang to the help of Juggins, driving a fist at the base of Clobb's ear and getting the backward sweep of an elbow into his face.
Swanson staggered blindly, and the encircling men gave way without reaching to support him.
The Swedish carpenter who had followed Swanson lunged with awkward embracing arms. Clobb's teeth snapped on his ear.
Swanson, unable to see, had a hand pressed to his eyes, and cried for the men to down Clobb. They hesitated uneasily. Chips was yelling as if being murdered, his ear still in Clobb's grinding mouth.
Juggins, getting a moment's relief, snatched at the fife-rail and brought an overhand blow on to Clobb's head.
Clobb relaxed, reeling back against the break of the forecastle bulkheads. He did not fall. Coming out of the daze he cursed his shipmates, blasted Sam-O, damned them all. But he was silent as he was taken aft to Matt Ward.
Swanson's nose was broken, one eye was closed and the other swollen, puffed and soon black as Sam-O's skin. Juggins's broad face was battered. Unconsciously he kept putting a hand to the lower ribs on his left side and it was some time before he assured himself that they were not broken. The carpenter with gentle fingers to his ragged ear continually turned his head in an effort to see it.
Clobb bled from the side of his head, nose, mouth, and one eyebrow which was cut wide open and hung down. The base of his jaw was red as if a grater had scraped his face. He could see clearly from one eye only. That sparkled wickedly, but he said nothing. His clothes were torn. His shirt was rags.
Matt Ward clawed at his straw-colored over hanging mustache as he bent backward a little unsteadily; his air of mastery was very much in evidence and he regarded Clobb gloweringly. He would “show 'em.” Mocking voices, stinging through his heart, had bawled from the darkness night after night at him. “Cabin boy” was one of the mild insults flung from unidentified throats and which had sent him down to the solace of the bottle. So he had hazed them. And here was one of the truculent devils at hand to be tamed.
The men had been sent about their work; but Ward cursed loudly so they might hear how Clobb got it and be warned. His oaths were ferocious and insulting. Before he was done, he said, Clobb would be sorry to live and glad to crawl on his knees to whatever the work.
“I'll show you who's captain. I'll show you!” And he cried, “Reeve the mainyard whip! Take him away an' run him up by the wrists!”
Clobb, sullen, perhaps relieved to find that it was to be by the wrists, not neck, was with the hands of Juggins and Chips heavily on him.
From the poop rail Ward watched and bawled instructions.
Ward's voice had reached down to the cabin. But Gorvhalsen, striding about in his stateroom like a bear in a cage, was dictating to Corydon and would not permit interruptions at such times. His family knew, too well to wish to try it, the result of interfering when thoughts were being tumbled into words. Eve pressed chilled hands together and looked anxiously at her aunt.
Mrs. Gorvhalsen's face was strained, but no sign of nervousness escaped her.
Jeanne Vaughn, her morning toilet just finished, slipped up the companionway and listened. She came down frightened without having understood what it was all about and took a place by the window that opened from the cabin on to the quarter-deck.
Eve, nervously chilled, sickened by the thought of what was happening, ran to her room where she covered her head with a blanket and let the tears come.
Jeanne stared through the window, from time to time automatically touching the gold brooch which had its color dimmed and lost amid the burning brassy fire of her shortened hair, flaring in curls.
Mrs. Gorvhalsen, unable to watch though she remained quiet, sat in a deep upholstered chair and repeatedly whispered to know what they were doing now. Continually she glanced toward the open door of the stern stateroom where Gorvhalsen was. She was determined to go there and cry out if a rope was put about the man's neck.
Life on the Heraldr had been very trying for her; but Gorvhalsen rejoiced daily, saying he had never found anything so fine. Therefore she was, in a way, satisfied.
Mirrors were set in and encircled the mizzen mast as it passed through the cabin. Jeanne turned from the deck to look into them studiously, adjusted the black velvet ribbon about her neck, smoothed down her vividly blue, stiffly starched skirt. She was interested in what was going on out there, but could not long forget herself.
She had a clear view of the deck; and, as on the stage spear-bearers add to the scene impressively though scarcely noticed, she remembered afterward though hardly aware of them at the time, the sailors about the deck. Some were stooped motionless with hands in buckets; some were on hands and knees; some in attitudes of arrested movement, but their eyes were all turned in the same direction. They stood or bent or crouched like figures turned to stone and all faces wore an expression of staring solemnity and were toward the mainmast.
Overhead the morning sun glanced brilliantly on the still sails. The rays as if by dramatic guidance streamed shaft-like through rigging at the four men under the yard.
Gorvhalsen paced up and down in his stateroom. He, with the intensity that some brainworkers have and all wish for, shut out the world as completely as if he had bolted sound-proof doors behind him; and speaking through his black beard with thoughtful slowness not to outrun the boy's pencil, was rounding into a chapter the theory that might did, and was the only thing in the world that did, make right.
To Corydon, parenthetically:
“—so you see for yourself the devil would be merrily reigning in Heaven to-day but for the superior muscles of God; and what a great old world this would be if”
Clobb was quiet, as if he had been tamed. His wrists were crossed and being tied in front of him without a struggle.
Swanson, having reached a pin from the rail, shadowed his better eye in the cup of his hand and was alert to strike Clobb down.
The long neck of the Swedish carpenter craned over the shoulder of Juggins while the bosun made fast the wrists. Chips cursed whimperingly, touching and retouching his mutilated ear; but Juggins was silent and furtively glanced at Clobb's face.
Clobb's cut eye was blinded by the drooping brow, torn loose from his forehead, and the other was turned down steadfastly on his wrists. Sweat rolled from the edge of his matted hair and glistened over the blood-stains on his temples.
“Blast hur heyes, stan hoff,” Juggins growled at the carpenter who pressed against him, urging over and over with angry whine to lash the wrists tight.
“All fast, bosun?” Matt Ward shouted.
“Ha' fast, sir.”
“Hy-aye, sir!”
Chips jumped to have a hand on the line; and as Swanson turned away, peering about him, Juggins said quickly:
“Give hin, Clobb. 'Twere bes' for hu.”
Clobb did not move an eyelid.
Toward Brundage who stood tall, lean, motionless by the rail, Juggins said: “Bear a 'and.”
But something in Brundage's eyes reached the bosun, who added quickly, looking away:
“Hy, hur arm's bad.”
Juggins, heavy and coarse as he was, felt the crew were dangerously near mutiny; and deep down in his barrel-like body he did not blame them.
He called a Portuguese to give a haul. The little black fellow shambled forward with teeth grinning, distress in his eyes. Men cursed him mutteringly as he went by them. He took hold on the line away below the carpenter; for Chips, his body stretched, was waiting impatiently to give the pull of his whole weight.
“Two more hands there,” Ward called down.
“Two more 'ands 'ere,” Juggins repeated loudly.
No man stirred, except such as for the moment only became intent at scrubbing woodwork with coal-dust. Others stared with sullen refusal straight at the boatswain.
“'Ere, hu an' hu,” he ordered quickly, roaring, but discreetly at two Kanakas who were farther away than some of the other men.
They glanced hesitatingly at McGuire, who made not a flicker of movement, then came at a slow run without eagerness, slapping the deck heavy-footedly, and crowded their hands on to the line.
Clobb's arms were already lifted by the carpenter, who was on tiptoes to jerk them from their sockets.
Clobb kept his face toward the deck. Blood had splattered and dried on the rags of his dead black shirt torn entirely off one shoulder and half-pulled from his canvas trousers. The sleeves were rolled high on his arms, thick-muscled and covered with entwined hearts, flags, stars. His neck was short as a cask's chine. His big body seemed trying to crouch, to hold itself taut.
“All set, bosun?”
“Ha'-set, sir.”
“Haul away!”
Matt Ward was blinking down, his hands tightly gripping the poop rail. He sagged and straightened up jerkily.
“'Aul ha-way, men. Ye-ho-'eave! Ha-gain now. Ho-'eave-ha-'eave-oh!”
The men seemed willing, but there was no rhythm in the pull. Chips strained his own arms at the sockets. The Portuguese grunted noisily. The Kanakas went through the motions rather too ostentatiously; but the second mate, Swanson, was nearly blind, Matt Ward could see only hazily, and Juggins, who knew the captain's drunken tricks, had no heart in the work himself.
Clobb's heavy body cleared the deck, swinging slightly as it turned with the slow movement of dead weight, around and around. The men, grunting and jerking, pulled him up. Sometimes he slipped back a foot or two, but he was inched up and up until his head was against the yard.
His mouth was distortedly opened. Not a sound came out of it.
Ward cursed him, asking how he liked having air underfoot. There was, he said, as many ropes as necks on his ship. The next man would go up with a runnin' bowline under his jaw. He was, he said, captain of his ship. He said it many times.
He called on Clobb to tell how he liked it, and got no answer. Well, Clobb might think himself a sailor, but there was something to be learned about standing rigging that he didn't know.
With that Ward ordered the body lowered, and the men slacked away.
“Steady—steady! Not so fast there!” he bellowed. “Bosun, belay when his toes touch. His toes, mind you. Not his heels!”
So Clobb was strung up and left.
A phantom ship lay underneath, bend to bend, and crept slowly out of sight with the rise of the sun that by noon came down as a plummet falls. All morning the sails were lifeless, stirred lazily by swells; and with the slow rolling of the ship, Clobb dangled unsteadily, swaying clear. Sometimes he threw his head back, but the glare was tormenting. He made no sound.
“I'll keep you there till sundown, then keelhaul you if you don't give in, you blasted soldier!” Ward bawled at him.
Gorvhalsen came up. His wife, unable to endure the thing longer, had gone to her room without speaking; so he came up with only idle interest and regarded Clobb.
He was telling Corydon, who peered with strained hurt eyes, that rebellious sailors, tough animals, needed sharp punishment, when he broke off in surprised oaths and backed away from the skylight where his hand had rested on the metal grating. It was hot.
With the casual command of speaking to the Jap cabin boy, he told Matt Ward, captain, to get that awning set again and be quick about it.
Ward yelled angrily at Swanson.
All about the ship calloused hands flinched from exposed woodwork. Paint rose in blisters. Little amber-like beads appeared on the masts. Tar softened on the standing rigging. Hands stuck that grasped it and came away blackened. Men got into boots or hopped when bare feet were put down on to the baked boards, corrugated by the rising seams.
Matt Ward sprawled in a deck-chair and stayed on deck until nearly noon. From time to time he dozed. The women stayed below in their hot quarters. He would stir out of his dozings and call to Clobb, asking if he'd had enough. Clobb seemed an unusually hard devil to tame. Ward said he would be damned if the lousy soldier came down until he had spoken proper and respectfully.
Gorvhalsen had a sail put over the side and went swimming. He was taking no more chances with sharks, but was still interested in them and often called out toward the forecastle to know if any had been seen. He wanted to be notified when one appeared, and he would toss a gold coin into the air, catching it easily on his broad palm, tempting the men to keep their eyes opened.
Matt Ward disappeared around noon. Swanson too. Adams came up from the lazarette where he had been checking stores and had found there were less than should have been for so numerous a crew. There might be trouble before the voyage was over if men went on to short rations.
He walked about heavily, his eyes searching for a wind, and often went toward the companionway from which Jeanne Vaughn did not appear. The vane wisp hung like the tail of a dead rat. He unconsciously turned his face toward it, though a breeze would have marked the water long before it reached the ship.
Clobb hung like a dummy. His bruised lips, darkly discolored, were swollen. His mouth was stretched wide, fixedly.
All the men breathed with open mouths. They had absorbed their two-quart allowance of drinking water—a further hazing-measure—as though they had been lined with dry sand.
Around noon McGuire started across the deck with a businesslike air, seemingly intent on some work though all morning he had been lazily loafing, “sodgeering” with an artistry that was remarkable. He paused before Clobb abruptly, as though spoken to; and stood for a moment, attentively listening. Then he hurried forward.
“Bosun, I just happened to pass along by him. He says he's got enough—can't hardly talk—but he's ready to do what he's told. Says he knows who's captain, all right.”
McGuire, having delivered his message, walked away. Juggins eyed him as he left.
Then Juggins went to the poop and spoke to the mate. 'Dams was getting ready to take the sun. He listened to the bosun but did not answer at once, walking first to the forward then to the after sky light, peering below.
“You say he's ready to turn to, bosun?”
“Yice, sir. 'E's willin' as how 'e says t' do what's wanted. 'E wants the cap'n to know.”
“Ua-yes, yes, bosun. But never mind speaking to the captain. Not now.”
Ward was drunk and probably asleep.
Juggins waited, questioningly.
“Go ahead, bosun, an' let him off.”
“Hy-aye, sir.”
Juggins, saying, “Hawl right, Clobb. Hu've stood hur watch,” let go the line from where it had been belayed at the fife-rail.
Clobb fell to the deck, stiffly toppling over on to his face as a piece of wood falls. His body was cold. He was unconscious. He had been unconscious for an hour.