The marriage of Captain Kettle

Contents

CHAPTER

I No Coal . •. •. w

II The Voyage of the Life-Boat

Chapter II

C^'T^HIS," said Captain Saturday Famish, "is the ■■' end of me professionall}^ I shan't be able to keep up my insurance, and if I die, it will mean workhouse for the old woman." He tried to steady himself for a moment and then hiccoughed behind his hand. " I shall apply for a chapel keeper's job with the Calvinistic Methodists when I get ashore. It's about what I'm fit for, and they ought to give it me if attendance and subscriptions are remembered in one's favor."

" Oh, things will come all right, sir, at the office when they're explained," said the mate. " You aren't a doctor. You can't be responsible for Mr. Little going off his head."

" When you have been at sea longer, Owen, me man, you'll understand that a shipmaster is expected to be doctor, lawyer, commercial agent, and clerk of the weather, and if he fails at any one of those jobs or at forty others when they come along, he's sacked (although he may have been with the firm for forty years), and there are ten men waiting in the outer office, ready to take on his billet for less pay. It's a dog'sh life, the sea, Owen, me man, and on a voyage

'^7 one is seldom able to get a full whack of sleep. That remindsh me, I think Til just have a peg and 'ndulge 'n a few minutes' snoosh. 'S nothing else to be done. Presently, when we begin to starve, I s'pose I shall have to stand round and see that the men don't eat one another."

" There's Mr. Little, sir, on the fore crosstrees. Any message, sir? "

Captain Farnish looked drearily at the broken caster of his easy-chair, and tried without success to stifle another hiccough. " If I could only get the beggar to his room."

" Aye, aye, sir," said the mate briskly, " I'll tell him you order him to go there," and with that betook himself to the outer deck, and closed the chart-house door on to the hook behind him.

On the main deck below there were gathered the whole of the Norman Towers' company — mates, engineers, the cook, the baker, stewards, the lamp man, boatswain, the idle carpenter, the grimy trimmers and firemen, the all-nation deck-hands; and high upon the steamer's drab foremast, perched ridiculously on the clumsy iron crosstrees, the white naked body of the chief engineer stood out vividly against the cobalt of the midday sky. He was preaching to the congregation in an elaborately conventicle voice, and they, with the seafarers' susceptibility to sudden, hot, religious influences, were listening with straining ears.

Mr. Kettle, the Mate, ran crisply down the ladder. " Clear a gangway here, you sons of fools," he ordered sharply. And then, " Fore crosstrees, there ! Captain's orders, sir; will you go to your room at once? "

By not so much as the flicker of an eyelash did the madman show that he had heard the interruption. He mouthed on with his discourse. The sun, staring from the hot sky above, was already beginning to scorch the skin of his w^hite back to an angry pink.

" Fast, I tell you," he thundered down at his listeners, " fast if ye would find salvation; and that there shall be no backsliders I, even I have thrust fasting upon you. There is food left upon this ship, yea and drink also, both strong and otherwise, such as may endure for the space of two weeks, and after that woe, woe to the man that shall not take to fasting with prayer and free will. Hell shall have him hungry."

"Just because you can't do arithmetic accurately, Mr. Little," said the mate acidly, " we may starve, and men- may die, but each one will have to report wherever he lands that he's got there because of an engineer who's incompetent at his job."

" I'm as capable at my profession as any engineer on all the seas. I accept criticism from no brass-edged cargo-tallier whatever, and I'll baptize you with blood, my son, when I've finished attending to the heathen. Wherefore listen, all ye that are still unregenerate and addicted to gluttony. Fast, I say unto you, fast from this day onward while food is still around you, and abstinence is not forced upon you by famine, and the greater reward in the hereafter shall be yours."

" Mr. Little, there is no getting over the fact of your incompetence. I've seen the evidence of it myself in your own shaky handwriting, and signed by your own name. Now you'll agree with me that no man that had ever been taught to write could scrawl as illiterate a signature as yours."

The madman lifted his ax, and was evidently in half a mind to throw it — which was what Mr. Kettle, the Mate, was angling for. But the wandering eyes of his congregation drew him back.

" Oh, ye of little concentration," he shouted, " by what loose threads are your bits of souls tethered! By skirt ye are led ashore, by a small-sized mate ye are driven at sea, and me ye will not attend to, yea, thought I offer ye salvation. But by the sun above that now scorches me, ego, vos precedens, will drag you after me to Paradise."

" You couldn't do it," said the mate. " You're as incompetent either to lead or to drive in the straight path, as you are to make out an accurate estimate of distance run, and coal remaining in bunkers. Man, there's no getting over the evidence of your own daily engine-room reports. They'd disgrace a bigamist, sailing his first trip in a dago tramp's stoke-hold. They—"

" Whiz! " came the ax, winking as it span downward through the southern sunlight. The mate dodged it deftly, and it skated along the decks between two shrinking lines of men, and then plucking a greenheart belaying-pin from the rail, he ran forward and swung himself into the fore rigging.

He went up the ratlines at racing speed, and the naked man on the crosstrees leaped to his feet, and stood balancing there with one hand on the starboard topmost shroud, swaying to the roll of the ship.

" ,You are bringing me food," he screamed; "you shall not make me lose my high-class soul by forcing me to break my fast. I will swim to Liverpool, and report you to the Board of Trade." — And with that, waiting cannily till the Norman Tozvers rolled to starboard, and the deep blue of the Sargasso Sea lay beneath him, he jumped outward, and dived feet foremost.

Mr. Kettle's action was prompt enough. Even while the madman was in mid-air, he hailed the officer of the watch to lower away the starboard quarter-boat. Then slipping quickly down himself, he ran across the decks and looked over the rail. He knew that Mr. Little could swim, and only wished to reassure himself that he had not been stunned by his dive.

The Norman Tozvers had lost her way by this time, and lay in the trough of the great blue ocean swells leaking a thin trickle of steam. The spot where the engineer had hit the sea was marked by a patch of white which bubbled like soda-water. Mr. Kettle jumped to the rail and stood there poised. He was a poor man and always a dandy about his dress, and as he had a cat's disHke for getting his clothes wet or soiled, he did not want to jump overboard and spoil a suit that he could ill afford to replace, unless the engineer plainly showed that he wanted assistance. So when the man's white face appeared, and he spat out a mouthful of weed and water and set off swimming at a sturdy side-stroke for the northeast, the mate sang out an ironical " Good voyage," and went to the upper deck to oversee the lowering of the quarter-boat.

The davits swung outboard, the tackles squeaked like a parcel of angry cats, the boat splashed into the water, unhooked and pushed off. Oars straddled out from her and beat the water unevenly. Slowly she scratched her way over the hill and dale of the sea. The engineer, when he heard the clank of the looms against the thole-pins, swam to the farther side of an islet of the orange-yellow weed, and it looked as if they were going to have trouble with him. But words passed in the boat, and one of the rowers shipped his oar and stood up. He picked up some small line which lay on the untidy floor boards, made a running bowline on one end, arranged some coils to his satisfaction, threw, and hauled taut. The man caught the engineer round the neck with his first heave, and (after the severe methods of the sea) choked the fight out of him before he brought him up through the clogging bubbly weed to the side of the boat. Thereafter the madman was brought on board, dried, dressed, and deposited in his own room, the door of which a leisurely carpenter proceeded to decorate with hasp and padlock.

The mate marched smartly off to the chart house to report. He knocked, lifted the hook, and opened the door, and grasped the situation at a glance. Captain Saturday Farnish had indulged in that one more peg — and several others to ram it home.

The mate stepped inside, and this time shut the door closely. He drew curtains across the side windows that the curious might not look through, and then made his formal report.

" Chief engineer gone to his room, sir."

"You're a very capable off'sr — Owen, me man. Given you a most unpleasant job, I'm sure. Been with you in spirit all along but couldn't get on deck. Detained chart house, severe malarial symptoms. Fatal, expose sea air. Stayed in here very much against my will, taking neshessary drugs."

" Yes, sir, quite so. Second engineer reports it's quite true about the coal. I told him it was a trifle which would cost him his ticket, and as he was saucy I had to attend to him. But that doesn't get over the coal — and the grub. One we haven't got, the other we shall have less of every day."

" 'Nless you can arrange for the sea-gulls to bring bath buns, like, wasn' it Joshua did, for the ravens? "

" My idea, sir, was that you'd like me to rig a life-boat, and go off and see if I couldn't pick up assistance. I was sure you'd think each moment was of importance, as every bit of delay means so much more food and drink consumed, and you'd want me to be off at once."

"But where to, Owen, me man? You're not likely to find boat to tow us thish side New Jerusalem."

" There's some sort of a steam lane from the Northern Ports to the West Indies about twelve degrees south of where we are now, sir, and I concluded you'd like me to sail down to cut that, and then if I didn't see anybody, hold on backward and across till I did."

" You couldn't find the old packet again, once you'd left her. Much better stay 'n let's all starve comfortably together."

" I shall take note of the current sets and the wind from day to day, sir, and shal'n't be far out in calculating your drift. They rubbed that sort of thing pretty well into one in the navigation school. I think you may expect me back with assistance inside a week."

Captain Famish applied a handkerchief to his eyes. *' You'll excuse these tears, Owen, me man, but prospect mosht distressful. I always looked forward to a high-class funeral, Birkenhead Cemetery, with you and the old woman and the kids in the wake of the hearse, a sort of poem in white pocket-handkerchiefs and crape. 'S been one of the happy dreams of my life. Mosht distressing die out here like a black beetle in a kerosene can, unmourned, unwept for. And my steward tells me whisky's running out."

" Yes, sir, the Towers' going to be a dry ship till

I get back with relief. Then I may take it to be your .wish that I should get under way at once ? "

"At onche," said Captain Farnish with much gravity. " Scheme I've outlined to you, Mr. Kettle me — Mr. Kettle, me man, is outcome much anxious delib — dolab — I should say de-lib-er-ashun, and I have full confidence your ability carry it out. Full confidence. I may say fullest. Though suffering severe attack malarious shymptoms myself, as vide entry in log, still I have fullest confidence in mate of my own upbringing " — Captain Farnish's head dropped upon his breast, and he permitted himself to snore with relief.

" Then good-by, sir."

" Goo-by. I wasn't asleep, if that's your idea, and to prove it I give you las' word. My motto is ' Leave everything to the mate.' Remarkably confident — I should sa}' com-pet-ent — man, my mate, Mis' Kell. As I said before, goo-by."

The big red velvet arm-chair in which Captain Saturday Farnish reposed jarred up and down on its broken caster with every roll of the ship, and before leaving, the mate took down Norie's Epitome of Navigation from the book-shelf, and shored it up on a steady base. Then he set his watch by the ship's chronometer, and went out once more on deck and gave crisp and lucid commands to those concerned in the rigging and victualing of the port life-boat.

His last action before leaving was to change the uniform tliat the chief engineer had slimed with oil for a fresh rig. It is not many men who would have given thought for their clothes before starting on an open boat voyage in mid-Atlantic that could only be classed as desperate, but I can merely report Mr. Kettle as I found him.

The mate's choice of crew for the life-boat was also typical of the man. Skill would be needed for the trip, strength, endurance, and above all things, obedience. And yet Mr. Kettle, knowing to the full the weakness of every member of the Norman Towers' complement, deliberately picked as his associates the five worst men on board. He even included among them the black who only that morning had tried to knife him.

I could never extract from Kettle the reason for his selection, and so can only surmise. Two theories occur to me. Perhaps he took away those particular rapscallions with him in the boat so that there should be no chance of their annoying poor, weak, old Farnish on the Norman Towers. Perhaps he took them to enjoy the risk and luxury of taming them at close quarters. Indeed, both considerations must have weighed with him. But I believe it was the last that swayed him most. He was always a man with a singular taste for what he called " trouble ".

When the life-boat was ready, Mr. Kettle looked up at the row of worried faces that stared down at him from the steamer's rail, gave a curt wave, and ordered his men to shove off.

" And now," said he, " do anj^ of you farmers know how to sail a boat ? "

It appeared that none of them did. They were steamer sailors all of them, able to drive a winch, paint and clean paint, take a wheel, or rig a derrick.

" Well," said the mate with an unkind grin, " I'll teach you, and when you next step ashore, if ever you get there, you'll be smart enough fore-and-afters to sail as deck-hands in an American Cup race. But dead or alive, you've just one use at present — and that's as ballast. Pile yourselves up to windward."

They did it sullenly.

" You with the bald head there, smile. D'ye hear me, you son of a can-opener? Smile, or by James, I'll knock your yellow teeth down your throat. Don't you dare to throw black looks at me. Now we'll just call watches. I'm captain, and I'll take the port. Jenkins, as you've the only clean face at your end of the boat, I'll appoint you chief officer, and you take the starboard watch. Let me see! I'll give you the Dutchman, and Baldy here, with the winning smile. And that leaves me Olsen and the Senegambian, who still thinks he's going to get that pig-knife of his into my ribs before we're through with this boat trip. Well, Mr. Jenkins, as we're shipping a good deal of water you can set your starbowlines to bail, and the port watch can shake out a reef. She'll carry a bit more canvas, if she's humored, and time's the essence pf the contract just now if we're to save the Towers."

Rapidly behind them the disabled steamer dipped out of sight below the sierra of the horizon, and presently they had the heaving circus of ocean to themselves. Great orange-yellow islets of the Sargasso weed sprawled here and there over the rich blue of the water, and these, when possible, they avoided; iridescent flying-fish scuttered along beside them and before their bows; and astern a brace of sea-fowl that had detached themselves from the steamer's convoy, kept accurate station. The blackguardly crew found something vaguely disquieting in the presence of these birds, and at first observed their coming with gloomy silence, and then with articulate grumblings.

" Not here for nothing, them birds," said Baldhead. "They know a thing or two. It isn't for galley scraps they're following this boat."

" Dey say dose gulls is de ghosts of ole sailors trowned at sea," said Olsen. " I vonders vhat it feels like to fly?"

" They picks yo' eyes out befo' yo' daid," said the Carolina black. " I sho' don' like the neb of that bird dere to stabboard. He's mos' as bigs's a Tampico turkey-buzzard."

A puff of squall poured down against them. Kettle luffed not an inch but kept the boat rigidly on her course. The wave-tops (as he intended) poured in over the lee gunwale.

" Bail, you sinful malingerers," he bawled at them. " Bail and keep your legs dry and the ship afloat. I'll attend to your souls when the time comes. Mr. Jenkins, you come aft and take the lee tiller beside me. You've got to learn to handle the boat sometime, and a nice light breeze like this is just the time to begin. There you are! Now you've got her all by your shivering self, and mind you keep her ramping full. Don't you dare to luff for a foot of wavetop."

The men were scared and sullen, and the method of their schooling was brutal, but they improved hour by hour. There was a spare tiller in the boat, a lusty cudgel of oak, and this the mate used vigorously over their heads and shoulders whenever they were slow, or dense, or in any way short of the perfect seaman. Discipline was carried on big-ship fashion. They fed at appointed hours on a sparing ration; they drank lime-juice in their musty water, as ordained by the British Board of Trade; and bells were struck every half-hour on a tin bucket with ding-dong regularity.

Twice they passed derelicts, stuck in the Sargasso eddy. The first was a steamboat with only her forepart showing, green with sea-grasses. The other was a four-masted schooner spruce with new paint, obviously a new arrival. Here was a sea mystery that would have tempted the most incurious. Here also would be some very obvious pickings. But the crew were by this time under a good discipline and did no more than look longingly at her. They rose her over the horizon, drove past her, and dropped her under the horizon astern, and as Mr. Kettle, the Mate, made no suggestion of boarding, no one else dared to voice a hint in that direction.

They made their southing and got to the far side of the steam lane without seeing smoke or spar of traffic, and then after beating tediously back and forth for another day, were overtaken by a gale which was too heavy for even the mate's hard daring to carry sail in. He held on, it is true, till his men were three parts dead with terror, and then with his boat half water-logged, rounded her to, and rode out the breeze to a sea-anchor of spars.

Twice during this blow they saw steamers to windward of them heading for the islands, and three brinewashed boats plunging eastward, but all were out of hail, or, what is more to the point, made no response to any signals Mr. Kettle or his men could fly.

Rain pelted down on them during the squalls, and they caught it in the sails, and decanted the grimy brackish proceeds into their water beakers. Flying-fish blew on board in the spindrift, and these they ate raw and wished there were more of them. And once a brace of bonitos followed the smaller fry, and they gorged on these and for once were pleasantly filled. The small amount of food they had brought from the Norman Tozvers had run out by this time, and they were all looking thin and miserable and wolfish.

When once more the gale ceased, and the boat under snugged-down canvas was again thrashing her way up to the steam lane which now lay to the northward, the crew were unwise enough to plan mutiny. They collected up forward and put their heads together, and from among them presently came Jenkins, halfshamefaced, half-defiant, and sat down aft.

" I stand by yoit, sir," he said to the mate.

" Of course," said Kettle, " you have to, since I made you an officer. And it will be good practice for you, though if I had been put to it, I could have handled the whole outfit without straining myself."

The others heard and their courage oozed; and when it came to the point they put as a request what they had intended to dish up as a command.

They were hungry, thirsty, miserable ; the Sargasso was a desert ; they were one and all covered with saltwater boils; provisions and water were all gone; and presently they would all die, and the boat would blow about on that unkind sea, a water-logged derelict full of corpses, li they ran for the nearest land, which would offer food, drink, shelter, warmth, they might yet escape with bare life. But it must be now, without a moment's delay . . . now . . . now.

Baldhead was the speaker. He was quite a young man, with a fine emotional touch to his oratory.

" Really finished? " the mate inquired when he had talked himself to a standstill.

" Yes, sir, that is what we have to say."

" And you said it very well. I wish I'd brought along the accordion. I should like to set that tale to music and hear you sing it — you son of a playactress. You're overfed and underworked, that's what's the matter with you. You're spoiling for the want of a job, and, by James, I'm the man to give you one! This boat wants smartening up. So to begin with, you take your knife and scrape spars.

The Senegambian, who has also a knife which he's aching to use, will help you. Now jump, you sweep, or, by the living James, I'll knock more stars out of you with the tiller than ever were stuck up in the sky!"

They jumped. The others, unbidden, set about coiling ropes and cleaning the floor boards of unconsidered trifles of litter, and Mr. Kettle, the Mate, watched proceedings with an acid smile.

The men were all hollow-eyed and, with the exception of Baldhead, shaggy beyond belief. The hair of the rest had grown to an incredible length. Their beards bristled uncouthly. Their cheeks were streaked salt-white in the wrinkles. Their clothes, shabby and darned and rotten to start with, were shrunk and sea-bleached, and moreover torn to fantastic fluttering rags. The men had no heart among them for patching and mending on that desperate boat voyage.

Even Mr. Kettle, the usually immaculate mate, was little better than the others. The blue serge of his uniform was so impregnated with salt that no hand brushing would unbleach it; the brass buttons and gold lace were tarnished to a dingy green; a pocket was torn and dangled limply; and in more places than one, threads had rotted and the seams gaped. But worst of all were his cheeks and chin. These it had been his pride to shave " a day below ". He had brought a razor with him in the boat, wrapped in an oiled rag to shelter it from rust. But the scour-

THE VOYAGE OF THE LIFE-BOAT Z3

ing of the seas had been too much for the flimsy safeguard. The boat was sodden with sea water for days together, and the blade succumbed to the brine. Its surface discolored; its edge grew gapped, till to use it meant gory torment; and finally it refused even the semblance of duty. Mr. Kettle cursed and flung it savagely into a pursuing wave crest. And thereafter red bristles sprouted over his haggard face, and he loathed the sight of himself whenever he used the inside of his watchcase as a mirror when he combed his hair.

Baldhead, at these moments of the toilet, felt that he got a little of his own back. He would rub his smooth cheeks and chin, and smile thoughtfully at the horizon; and although the mate was quick to resent his insolence in practical shape, Baldhead always licked his salt-cracked lips appreciatively when the chance came round for his little play.

Luck, in the way of picking up a steamboat, was certainly hard with them; but luck decidedly came to their aid more than once when starvation seemed certain. I have mentioned the full meal they had on the big bonitos. Another day the impossible happened, and their two attendant sea-fowl altered course too suddenly, steered into one another, and dropped, disabled, into the water. Their bodies were eaten down to the last fiber, and the starving men cursed a mean heaven that had left the bones hollow instead of packing them with marrow.

But the great windfall was a crate of bananas,^ washed overboard from some fruit-boat's deckload. They were big, coarse, West Indian bananas, but to the starved palates they were ambrosia. The men ate six apiece for the first meal, and felt that any hardships were worth going through to know a bliss like that.

It was at the next midday, while Jenkins sailed the boat and the mate was standing up with his sextant in the stern-sheets, that they saw a steamer's smoke over the saucer-rim of the horizon.

Presently they were able to make out the trucks of her masts, and thereafter they rose her rapidly. They were right in her track. Here was rescue at last.

The ragged crew in their joy stood up and danced, but Mr. Kettle, the Mate, had a fine sense of discipline. When he wanted baboon tricks he would let them know. In the meanwhile he wished them to carry on duty as before. " And send aft the Senegambian," said he.

"Sar?"

" Weren't you in a barber shop once, before shore got too hot and you had to come to sea ? "

" Yes, sar. I'se a sure 'nuf tonsorial artist."

" Good. Not got the usual nigger's razor concealed about your person ? "

" No, sar. Never carry such a thing."

" First United States nigger I ever met who didn't. Well, take that pig-knife you're so fond of, and borrow Baldy's, and sharpen yours against his. Savvy ? "

" Yes, sar."

JHE VOYAGE OF THE LIFE-BOAT 35

It

That's right. Now use one blade against the other, scissor fashion, and trim my beard. FU have it cHpped torpedo shape."

The big evil-faced negro gasped. " Trim yo' beard?"

" That's what I said. If you do it well, Fll give you threepence. If you make a hash of it, I'm lam you with the tiller."

For an instant murder peeped out from the black man's onyx eyes. Mr. Kettle expected it, looked for it, and nodded acknowledgment. " You won't try and cut my throat, because you know I'd have those two eyes of yours gouged out before you got even started. Come now, my lad, get a move on, or we'll have that steamboat alongside."

The mate put out his chin, and the ex-tonsorial artist plied his trade. The other men watched with the eyes of fascination.

Chapter III The Charity Of The Seas

/"^ OB ALT sky above, and the deep blue of the ^^ Sargasso Sea patched with islets of orange-yellow weed. On it a black steamer, high-bowed and stump-masted, surging along with a bone In her teeth toward the south and west. Also a white ship's life-boat, rigged with mildewed lug-sail and jib, and manned by a crew of gaunt scarecrows. The life-boat is lying-to across the steamer's track, and the steamer wears her standard compass on the top of a ten-foot mast painted banana-green. That is the picture to carry in mind.

Mr. Kettle, the Mate, after regarding the truculent look of his red torpedo beard at many angles in the back of his watchcase, finally approved, dived in his pocket, and produced three green-stained pennies which he presented to his barber.