Johnny Shark

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

JOHNNY SHARK

By THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

 

THAT'S what he is called, ashore and afloat—Johnny Shark. He is boatswain aboard a barquentine now; but I think he would have turned his back on the sea long ago if he had realised that he possessed any shore accomplishments. I say realised, and I mean realised; for a man who can reef and steer, scrape paint and slash it on, chip rust out of water-tanks, replace an old plank with a new on a forecastle head, patch sails, and play the accordion, is surely capable of holding down a job ashore. He is qualified for house painting, plumbing, carpentry, tailoring, and the music-hall stage—if he only thinks so. That was the trouble with Johnny Shark—he didn't think so. The fact is, he couldn't make up his mind to think so. Before I came to know him, his mind had suffered such a twist—as this tale discloses—that for years it absolutely refused to allow itself to be made up on any important question. Don't try to escape with the impression that Johnny was a fool. He wasn't. He was as sensible as you and I, except on the subject of sharks.

A shark, as you may know, is not so dangerous a thing as we were led to think when we were young—far from it. Some naturalists, and a few sailors who have never fallen overboard, would have us believe that the average shark is a dull, good-natured creature that would long ago have been accepted by humanity as a trusty companion and household pet but for its unalterable predilection for salt water, its somewhat daunting cast of countenance, and its reputation for swallowing things—a reputation, so its champions and admirers say, for which Jonah's whale is largely responsible.

I am not much of a naturalist, and very little of a sailor, though I have fallen overboard. Also I once caught a shark on a rusty iron hook, with three pounds of salt pork for bait, four feet of chain for cast, and a coil of manila rope for line. One of the able seamen made me a razor-strap out of the skin of its belly. I can show you the strap, to prove the story; but I am modest enough to admit that I am not in a position to say whether or not a shark should be admitted to the bosom of one's family. I am positive that Mr. John Chalker, familiarly known as Johnny Shark, would not advise it.

II.

This is Johnny's story.

He was twenty years of age, wise seamanship, willing, and inclined to be frolicsome. He had sailed the seas since his fourteenth year, and was now an A.B. aboard the barquentine Champion. His widowed mother lived in Heart's Content, which is on the Bay of Conception, and there lived Kate Malloy also. I'll not attempt to describe Kate's eyes. It is enough for my purpose to say that they—like her cheeks, hair, waist, lips, and arms bare to the elbow—were distressingly attractive. They proved too much for Johnny's peace of mind. So Johnny, only three weeks ashore, went to St. John's and shipped again. The Champion was towed out through the narrows on February 7. On the night of March 10 she ran into a derelict somewhere off the northern coast of Brazil. Johnny Chalker was in the watch below at the time, snoring in his bunk and dreaming of Kate Malloy.

Johnny went on deck and was astonished at the steep, persisting pitch of the barquentine forward. Then he saw that the lifeboats were gone from their places. He saw a lantern and, by the light of it, Bill Price stowing a bag in the skipper's gig, which lay just forward of the main hatch, blocked up on an even keel.

"Hey there, Bill! What be ye up to?" he cried.

Bill Price also was from Heart's Content, and he, too, knew Kate Malloy. He turned, straightened himself, and raised the lantern high.

"They's all pulled away and left us, Johnny," he replied. "Saints alive, b'y, ye give me a turn! Sure, didn't I think ye'd pulled away wid t' others and desarted me. Lend a hand here. She struck somethin' hard and hefty, b'y, and is sinkin' fast. She's goin' down by the head."

And so it came about that Johnny Chalker found himself afloat on a dark and desolate sea in the captain's gig, along with Bill Price, at a very early hour of the morning of March 11. If he had been given any voice in the selection of a companion, he would certainly not have been adrift with Bill Price.

The sun came up. The two mariners gazed east and west, north and south. Everywhere the little hills arose flashing, the narrow valleys sank darkling—everywhere ran the burnished, empty welter of the sea. The Champion had vanished as if she had never been. The boats were not in sight. No derelict wallowed in the field of their vision, and no landfall of island or mainland hung like a smoky opal on any horizon.

"Did ye stow a compass?" asked Johnny.

"There bain't no compass here," said Price, staring down at the bags of bread, two small breakers of water, and odds and ends from the galley, which lay in the bottom of the boat.

Johnny stepped the short mast and hoisted the little sail.

"Sout' Ameriky lays yonder," he said, pointing. "Get the sun to yer back, Bill, and keep her at that, and we'll raise a landfall by to-morry mornin'."

Price, with one hand on the tiller and the other on the sheet, glowered at his companion and kept the boat headed south.

"I'd like to know who made ye skipper o' this here gig?" he inquired through the left-hand corner of his mouth.

That's a way he had, talking with one end of a crooked mouth whenever his temper was bad. Johnny had seen it before, on the high seas and in Heart's Content, especially in Heart's Content. He sighted trouble ahead, and was more than willing to avoid it.

"Every craft as floats has a skipper o' some kind," he replied, "unless she's empty, or got only one aboard. Sure, that's nature. So this here gig must have a skipper, b'y. and there bain't no choice but 'twixt me and you."

"Bain't that choice enough?" queried Price, his mouth slanting at a sharper angle than ever.

Johnny was a good seaman, and Bill Price was a poor one, and they both knew it. Johnny felt it to be his duty to take command of the little boat. He stooped and reluctantly picked up an oar, and at the same moment Bill Price made the sheet fast and pulled something from his pocket. Johnny straightened himself, with the oar swung high, and looked into the muzzle of a revolver. It was a small revolver, but to Johnny's astonished eyes the muzzle of it looked as big as the mouth of a harness cask.

"Cut that out!" he said, in a voice of scorn and disgust. "I'd think shame o' meself, Bill Price, to make a liar of an honest man wid the help of a pistol. But ye never was man enough to fight fair, Bill Price, wid the hands and the feet God give ye."

He laid the oar down and seated himself on the thwart just aft of the mast, facing the self-elected skipper.

"Be aisy wid yer tongue, Johnny, or I'll blow ye up," warned the other. "I don't like ye, and never did. If ye wants yer head shot off, ye won't have to ax me twice. I bain't standin' for no mutiny."

So the gig continued on her southward course, the sun climbed high, Bill Price minded tiller and sheet, with the revolver in his lap, and Johnny Chalker fumed in idleness. A black, triangular fin appeared far astern and drew up to the boat, quartering the choppy seas.

"What's yer idee?" inquired Johnny. "If ye'd head her west, ye'd make the mainland."

"Mainland be blowed!" retorted Price. "Keep yer trap shut! I'm skipper here."

"But ye wants to make land, Bill, for yer own credit," replied Johnny, in his most agreeable voice and manner. "Sure, b'y, it's a desperate poor skipper entirely what can't fetch a landfall."

"Stow yer Bills!" snarled Price. "When ye got anythin' to say to me, Johnny Chalker, put a 'sir' to the front o' it. I'm skipper of this craft, consarn ye!"

Then Johnny began to realise, with a sinking heart, that his companion's mind was slightly deranged. He remembered that the Price family, in Heart's Content, had always contributed largely to the Harbour's supply of idiots and "characters."

"Aye, aye, sir," he replied, and filled his pipe..

"No smokin' on duty," snapped Price.

Johnny stowed the pipe away and twiddled his thumbs.

"It's time for breakfast, sir," he suggested at last.

"The crew's on quarter rations, Chalker," replied Price. "One cake o' hard bread and a swig o' water for the crew. Fetch mine aft to me first—a tin o' sardines, a loaf o' soft bread, and ye'll find a bottle o' rum in the bows."

Johnny found the sardines, the soft bread, and the rum, and placed them at Price's feet. He hoped that Bill would indulge freely in the bottle, knowing that he had a weak head for liquor. Then he retired forward of the sail, and fed himself with biscuits, butter, and jam, and drank his fill of water from one of the breakers. He was putting the finishing touches on the satisfying meal when Price suddenly ordered him to lower the sail.

"Aye, aye, sir!" cried Johnny cheerily, making frantic attempts to replace the cover on the tin of butter.

"Be quick about it!" roared Price.

The cover wouldn't go on. Johnny pushed it under the thwart. The jam and the blue canister of cabin biscuits were still open and in sight, when the pistol exploded and a bullet punctured the sail and whined over Johnny's head. Johnny lowered away. Bill Price leered at him with a crooked mouth and cunning eyes.

"So ye've bin feedin' on jam an' cabin biscuits, have ye?" he sneered. "And butter," he added, as a lurch of the little boat brought the open yellow tin rolling into view from beneath the thwart.

Johnny was scared. The pistol still smoked in the other's hand.

"Sure, sir, there be lashin's o' grub," he faltered.

"Lashin's o' grub!" cried the other. "Not wid four months to feed, ye fool!"

"Four mouths?" queried Johnny feebly.

"Look astarn," said Price, with a tone of relish in his voice.

Two black fins cruised astern, quartering the blue, choppy seas.

"But that hain't no consarn o' yers and mine," said Johnny. "We bain't called on to feed the fishes."

"We'll feed 'em like skippers," answered Price. "And when the grub runs out, 'twill be yer turn to feed 'em, Johnny Chalker—and I'll go home to Heart's Content and marry Kate Malloy."

The hair on the back of Johnny's neck felt as if it was trying to crawl down between his shoulders.

"Now come aft o' the mast and hoist the sail," commanded Price.

And so the hot day wore on and out. Johnny hoped that night would put an end to the grotesque and dangerous position in which evil chance had placed him. Bill Price would fall asleep; then Johnny would tie him with ropes, and head the boat for the west and the coast of Brazil. It was as simple as A B C, and far more natural.

The sharks continued to cruise close astern, for Price had fed them generously with salt pork. The sun dropped in glory behind the western horizon. Big stars shone above the world of waters like white and yellow lamps. By the starshine the black fins were visible, quartering the small but choppy waves. The wind fell. Price ordered the sail to be lowered and stowed. He remained in the stern sheets, smoking his pipe. Johnny reclined in the bows and stared aft, waiting for the spark of the pipe to fade, and for the head of the insane man to nod. The coal of the pipe faded, but the head failed to nod. The fellow was lively as a cricket, and seemed to grow livelier with every passing hour. He sang to himself, he told stories to himself, he talked to the two black fins that cruised astern.

Johnny fell asleep, in spite of all he could do to keep his eyes open and watch the head of Bill Price, black and alert and mad, rocking against the stars. It was dawn when he awoke. Price still sat upright in the stern, leering at him with a crooked mouth and bright eyes. The two black fins cruised close astern. The stars were out. The revolver shone dully in Price's hand.

"Bring aft my breakfast, and then hoist the sail," said Price.

Johnny felt strong and refreshed, and very much like a fool. He had slept and let his chance slip by.

"How'd ye sleep, sir?" he inquired politely, wondering if a tin of butter weighing two pounds, and thrown with every ounce of his arm, would travel as fast as a bullet. He decided that it might not.

"Sleep!" exclaimed Price. "Ye lazy forecastle rat, ye'll never catch me asleep! Sleep? I don't need it. I don't want it. It be three weeks since last I shut my eyes. Fetch aft my breakfast and some more pork for the lads astern."

Johnny was given no chance to feed himself with soft bread, butter, and jam that day, for whenever his meal-time came around, he was ordered to lower the sail and thus forced to gnaw his one cake of hard bread and swallow his one gulp of water in full view of Bill Price. But, in return, he was allowed to watch Price feed himself and the sharks. The self-appointed skipper ate of the best, slowly and with relish. With each meal he swallowed one sparing dose of rum and water. That was all—not enough to make a fly drunk. And he fed salt pork, in junks, to the following sharks. And he smoked. Also he cleaned his revolver. Poor Johnny saw that it was a five-chambered weapon, and that there were now only four loaded cartridges. It was quite evident that the madman had brought no reserve supply of ammunition. Johnny's heart went aloft. When once the four remaining cartridges were empty, he would take command of Price and the boat, and head for the coast. So he set his brain to work to contrive some scheme by which Bill Price could be induced to discharge the weapon four times harmlessly.

"Could ye hit one o' them fish, sir?" inquired Johnny, waving his hand toward the sharks astern.

"Sure I could, but I wouldn't," replied Price. "They be friends o' mine, signed on wid me for the purpose and intention o' devourin' yerself, Johnny Chalker. Ye got a desperate poor memory, my lad. It wasn't more nor six months ago when Kate herself told me as how she'd never hand a civil word to me till Johnny Chalker was shark feed."

"Saints presarve us, b'y, but she didn't say it thataway!" exclaimed Johnny. "She bain't wantin' to say a civil word to ye, and she bain't wantin' me to be fed to the fishes. Man alive, Bill Price, she's a-goin' to marry me!"

Bill Price laughed slyly and wagged his head.

"I knows what she said, and I knows what she was meanin'," he chuckled, "and when these here sharks gets so fond o' pork, and so trustin', that they'll swally whatever I drops over to 'em, then I'll drop ye overboard, Johnny Chalker."

"She wouldn't be civil to ye if ye was the only man alive in the whole entire world, ye crack-brained, squid-hearted, knock-kneed son o' a slush bucket!" cried Johnny, his wrath getting the better of his fear and his wits.

Bill Price's face became the face of a fiend. He leaned forward and raised the pistol. Johnny tried to remember a prayer suitable for the occasion. He could not move. He could not cry out. He saw that terrible face, twisted and aflame with unholy rage and insanity, the blue sky behind it, and, as the stern of the boat slid down, the lively dance of the little waves, and the flash of the cruising fins. He felt as bad as dead already—cold of flesh, nerveless of muscle and brain, heavy and frozen of heart. His blood seemed to stand still in his veins. Only his eyes seemed to possess life.

Bill Price lowered the pistol. His face changed again suddenly—faded and softened and weakened to foolish cunning and idiotic self-satisfaction. He chuckled, and at that weird but comforting sound Johnny Chalker's heart and brain resumed their natural functions of pumping blood and thinking.

"I be too almighty smart for ye, Johnny Chalker," said Price. "Ye thought as how ye'd tease me to shoot at ye and spend all my ca'tridges, didn't ye? I bain't no fool. When I be ready for to shoot ye and feed ye to the sharks, then I'll put the muzzle o' this here little pistol right square agin yer breast an' let her go. I bain't a good enough shot wid the weapon to take no chances."

Johnny watched his companion narrowly all day, waiting vainly for the head to nod, the burning eyes to close. Night fell, and the white and yellow stars shone again. The sail was lowered and stowed; the little boat drifted and wabbled aimlessly between the sea-fires and the steady lamps of the sky, and the two black fins cruised close under the counter. Price smoked his pipe and talked to himself, and fed the sharks with small scraps of pork which he shredded with his fingers; and the revolver gleamed dully in his lap, and never a minute passed in which he did not fix his unwinking eyes upon Johnny Chalker, huddled in the bows.

Johnny managed to stay awake until long past midnight. The first uncomfortable gnawings of hunger helped to keep him awake, for he was not accustomed to a daily diet of three cakes of hard bread and three furtive gulps of water. However, he sank to sleep, to rest.

The third day passed more quietly than the second, with the sun shining, the moderate breeze fanning, Price nursing his revolver and his insane intentions, and the sharks cruising close astern. Johnny tried to think of some way of outwitting the sleepless one, but his head ached so that it hurt him to think. When supper-time came around, Price passed the bottle of rum forward to him.

"Eat hearty, lad, an' drink all ye wants," he said. "The pork is nigh all gone, and likewise the sardines, and these here sharks, seemingly, bain't fond o' cheese and bread, so I'll soon have to be feedin' ye to them. So eat and drink hearty, Johnny Chalker, so's the poor fish will find a smatch o' flavour in yer carcass."

Though the chill of death closed upon Johnny's heart for a moment, so intense was his hunger that he ate largely and eagerly, and drank off several pints of rum and water. After that he pretended to sleep, gripping the neck of the rum bottle in his right hand. If the madman should come close enough to touch him with the muzzle of the revolver before firing, then there was a chance—a chance that the bottle might reach the madman's skull before the trigger was pressed.

Johnny lay awake hour after hour, in spite of the dull ache in his head—which was due to the sun—and the full and comfortable feeling of food and drink in his stomach. His eyelids were heavy, but he kept them open hour after hour. The fingers of his right hand cramped on the neck of the bottle. He was forced to change his position. The little boat wabbled on the rocking seas, between the up-bubbling showers of sea-fire and the steady lamps of the stars. The black, alert head and shoulders of the madman swayed against this background of mellow dark and white illuminations. The fins of the sharks cut black against the waves, rimmed with fire, and ever and anon their long and deadly forms shone clear, close to the boat, washed with the liquid flame.

Johnny closed his eyes just for a wink, and forgot to open them again. He slept the sleep of the full-fed and feverish. Suddenly he was awakened by a hand on his throat and something hard against his forehead. He gazed into the glowing eyes and twisted face of Bill Price.

"Keep quiet!" hissed Bill. "If ye holler, I'll shoot ye dead! I don't want that pesky steamer to know we be driftin' here."

Johnny rolled his eyes and saw, roaring past and not two hundred yards away, a great, long hull outlined and bestarred with lights. It was a boat of the R.M.S.P. line, bound northward from Bahia to Pernambuco. It passed, veiling the stars for a moment with its black trail of smoke. The upheaval of its propellers tossed the gig about like a chip. Price loosened the grip of his fingers on Johnny's throat, and stared after the boat. The muzzle of the revolver slipped aside, but the weight of him kept Johnny pressed so low that he could not raise his right hand. Then Johnny's mind awoke.

"The sharks!" he cried. "The sharks will leave us and follow the ship!"

The madman sprang aft.

"There they be!" he cried excitedly. "There they be! Sure, they wouldn't leave me now, after all the pork I'd fed to 'em—and——"

But at that moment Johnny Chalker struck with the bottle—struck hard and true, for his very life.

He stood in the rocking stern, staring down to where the sharks, in their trailing veils of sea-fire, took the feast that had so suddenly come to them.

Johnny turned the boat's head to the west. He set the sail, and tended sheet and tiller. He smoked. The fever worked in him. He glanced constantly over his shoulder, but the cruising fins had gone. He dozed now and again, always awaking with a start and the fear of ghostly fingers at his throat. The sharks reappeared at dawn and came near in for more food. They held close under the boat's counter all day.

Johnny slept fitfully. He ate, he smoked, he cursed the sharks. He discovered a leak in the boat and tried to mend it. His head ached. He threw biscuits to the sharks—biscuits and curses. Sometimes he bailed the water from the boat with an empty sardine tin. He drank a great deal of water to wet his parched throat, and a great deal of rum to steady his nerves. He looked ahead longingly for the loom of land on the crawling horizon.

Another night passed—or was it two more? And another day came up out of the sea—or was it several more days? The sharks hung to the little boat. Johnny prayed to them, then threw sardines and hard bread to them. His own appetite was gone—that is, his appetite for biscuits, jam, and cheese—but he drank rum and water. Sometimes he nodded at the tiller and dreamed of Heart's Content. And sometimes he bailed the boat and tried to mend the leak.

He talked to the sharks—he had to have something to talk to. He told them that he considered Kate Malloy to blame for the whole trouble and the death of Bill Price, for it was her remark that had put that mad idea into Bill's head. And he bailed the boat. The time came when he seemed to do nothing else but bail the boat, standing with the water well above his ankles. The sharks noticed this, of course. They hung astern, close under the counter, and waited. They showed the whites of their eyes to the staggering, frantic man in the leaking boat.

A human voice shouted to Johnny, but he thought it was his brain playing tricks with him, and did not raise his head. Then something struck the gunwale of his boat, and he thought it was the sharks trying to get aboard, and turned his face away. Then rough hands seized him and dragged him into another boat, and before he closed his eyes he saw a barquentine lying to about a hundred yards away.

III.

Now he is called Johnny Shark, because of his fear of sharks. But he continues to follow the sea, because he thinks that he could not make a living ashore. He is a smart sailor, has been a boatswain for years, and would doubtless study for his ticket if he possessed a trifle more book-learning. He talks of sharks, and he dreams of sharks, and he counts that a happy and prosperous voyage during which no black fin breaks the blue astern.

I suppose you think that he is married to Kate Malloy? Well, you are wrong! He married a girl in Harbour Grace. After recovering from that voyage in the open boat, he could never hear the name of Kate Malloy without thinking of Bill Price and sharks.