Complete Works of Frank Norris Page 3

  When they were across the bar the Captain ordered the cook to give the men their food.

  “Git for’rd, sonny,” he added, fixing Wilbur with his eye. “Git for’rd, this is tawble dee hote, savvy?”

  Wilbur crawled forward on the reeling deck, holding on now to a mast, now to a belaying-pin, now to a stay, watching his chance and going on between the inebriated plunges of the schooner.

  He descended the fo’c’sle hatch. The Chinamen were already there, sitting on the edges of their bunks. On the floor, at the bottom of the ladder, punk-sticks were burning in an old tomato-can.

  Charlie brought in supper — stewed beef and pork in a bread-pan and a wooden kit — and the Chinamen ate in silence with their sheath-knives and from tin plates. A liquid that bore a distant resemblance to coffee was served. Wilbur learned afterward to know the stuff as Black Jack, and to be aware that it was made from bud barley and was sweetened with molasses. A single reeking lamp swung with the swinging of the schooner over the centre of the group, and long after Wilbur could remember the grisly scene — the punk-sticks, the bread-pan full of hunks of meat, the horrid close and oily smell, and the circle of silent, preoccupied Chinese, each sitting on his bunk-ledge, devouring stewed pork and holding his pannikin of Black Jack between his feet against the rolling of the boat.

  Wilbur looked fearfully at the mess in the pan, recalling the chocolate and stuffed olives that had been his last luncheon.

  “Well,” he muttered, clinching his teeth, “I’ve got to come to it sooner or later.” His penknife was in the pocket of his waist-coat, underneath his oilskin coat. He opened the big blade, harpooned a cube of pork, and deposited it on his tin plate. He ate it slowly and with savage determination. But the Black Jack was more than he could bear.

  “I’m not hungry enough for that just now,” he told himself. “Say, Jim,” he said, turning to the Chinaman next him on the bunk-ledge, “say, what kind of boat is this? What you do — where you go?”

  The other moved away impatiently.

  “No sabe, no sabe,” he answered, shaking his head and frowning. Throughout the whole of that strange meal these were the only words spoken.

  When Wilbur came on deck again he noted that the “Bertha Millner” had already left the whistling-buoy astern. Off to the east, her sails just showing above the waves, was a pilot-boat with the number 7 on her mainsail. The evening was closing in; the Farallones were in plain sight dead ahead. Far behind, in a mass of shadow just bluer than the sky, he could make out a few twinkling lights — San Francisco.

  Half an hour later Kitchell came on deck from his supper in the cabin aft. He glanced in the direction of the mainland, now almost out of sight, then took the wheel from one of the Chinamen and commanded, “Ease off y’r fore an’ main sheets.” The hands eased away and the schooner played off before the wind.

  The staysail was set. The “Bertha Millner” headed to southwest, bowling easily ahead of a good eight-knot breeze.

  Next came the order “All hands aft!” and Wilbur and his mates betook themselves to the quarterdeck. Charlie took the wheel, and he and Kitchell began to choose the men for their watches, just as Wilbur remembered to have chosen sides for baseball during his school days.

  “Sonny, I’ll choose you; you’re on my watch,” said the Captain to Wilbur, “and I will assoom the ree-sponsibility of your nautical eddoocation.”

  “I may as well tell you at once,” began Wilbur, “that I’m no sailor.”

  “But you will be, soon,” answered the Captain, at once soothing and threatening; “you will be, Mister Lilee of the Vallee, you kin lay to it as how you will be one of the best sailormen along the front, as our dear friend Jim says. Before I git throo with you, you’ll be a sailorman or shark-bait, I can promise you. You’re on my watch; step over here, son.”

  The watches were divided, Charlie and three other Chinamen on the port, Kitchell, Wilbur, and two Chinamen on the starboard. The men trooped forward again.

  The tiny world of the schooner had lapsed to quiet. The “Bertha Millner” was now clear of the land, that lay like a blur of faintest purple smoke — ever growing fainter — low in the east. The Farallones showed but their shoulders above the horizon. The schooner was standing well out from shore — even beyond the track of the coasters and passenger steamers — to catch the Trades from the northwest. The sun was setting royally, and the floor of the ocean shimmered like mosaic. The sea had gone down and the fury of the bar was a thing forgotten. It was perceptibly warmer.

  On board, the two watches mingled forward, smoking opium and playing a game that looked like checkers. Three of them were washing down the decks with kaiar brooms. For the first time since he had come on board Wilbur heard the sound of their voices.

  The evening was magnificent. Never to Wilbur’s eyes had the Pacific appeared so vast, so radiant, so divinely beautiful. A star or two burned slowly through that part of the sky where the pink began to fade into the blue. Charlie went forward and set the side lights — red on the port rigging, green on the starboard. As he passed Wilbur, who was leaning over the rail and watching the phosphorus flashing just under the surface, he said:

  “Hey, you go talkee-talk one-piecey Boss, savvy Boss — chin-chin.”

  Wilbur went aft and came up on the poop, where Kitchell stood at the wheel, smoking an inverted “Tarrier’s Delight.”

  “Now, son,” began Kitchell, “I natch’ly love you so that I’m goin’ to do you a reel favor, do you twig? I’m goin’ to allow you to berth aft in the cabin, ‘long o’ me an’ Charlie, an’ beesides you can make free of my quarterdeck. Mebbee you ain’t used to the ways of sailormen just yet, but you can lay to it that those two are reel concessions, savvy? I ain’t a mush-head, like mee dear friend Jim. You ain’t no water-front swine, I can guess that with one hand tied beehind me. You’re a toff, that’s what you are, and your lines has been laid for toffs. I ain’t askin’ you no questions, but you got brains, an’ I figger on gettin’ more outa you by lettin’ you have y’r head a bit. But mind, now, you get gay once, sonny, or try to flimflam me, or forget that I’m the boss of the bathtub, an’ strike me blind, I’ll cut you open, an’ you can lay to that, son. Now, then, here’s the game: You work this boat ‘long with the coolies, an’ take my orders, an’ walk chalk, an’ I’ll teach you navigation, an’ make this cruise as easy as how-do-you-do. You don’t, an’ I’ll manhandle you till y’r bones come throo y’r hide.”

  “I’ve no choice in the matter,” said Wilbur. “I’ve got to make the best of a bad situation.”

  “I ree-marked as how you had brains,” muttered the Captain.

  “But there’s one thing,” continued Wilbur; “if I’m to have my head a little, as you say, you’ll find we can get along better if you put me to rights about this whole business. Why was I brought aboard, why are there only Chinese along, where are we going, what are we going to do, and how long are we going to be gone?”

  Kitchell spat over the side, and then sucked the nicotine from his mustache.

  “Well,” he said, resuming his pipe, “it’s like this, son. This ship belongs to one of the Six Chinese Companies of Chinatown in Frisco. Charlie, here, is one of the shareholders in the business. We go down here twice a year off Cape Sain’ Lucas, Lower California, an’ fish for blue sharks, or white, if we kin ketch ‘em. We get the livers of these an’ try out the oil, an’ we bring back that same oil, an’ the Chinamen sell it all over San Francisco as simon-pure cod-liver oil, savvy? An’ it pays like a nitrate bed. I come in because it’s a Custom-house regulation that no coolie can take a boat out of Frisco.”

  “And how do I come in?” asked Wilbur.

  “Mee dear friend Jim put a knock-me-out drop into your Manhattan cocktail. It’s a capsule filled with a drug. You were shanghaied, son,” said the Captain, blandly.

  About an hour later Wilbur turned in. Kitchell showed him his bunk with its “donkey’s breakfast” and single ill-smelling blanket. It was loca
ted under the companionway that led down into the cabin. Kitchell bunked on one side, Charlie on the other. A hacked deal table, covered with oilcloth and ironed to the floor, a swinging-lamp, two chairs, a rack of books, a chest or two, and a flaring picture cut from the advertisement of a ballet, was the room’s inventory in the matter of furniture and ornament.

  Wilbur sat on the edge of his bunk before undressing, reviewing the extraordinary events of the day. In a moment he was aware of a movement in one of the other two bunks, and presently made out Charlie lying on his side and holding in the flame of an alcohol lamp a skewer on which some brown and sticky stuff boiled and sizzled. He transformed the stuff to the bowl of a huge pipe and drew on it noisily once or twice. In another moment he had sunk back in his bunk, nearly senseless, but with a long breath of an almost blissful contentment.

  “Beast!” muttered Wilbur, with profound disgust.

  He threw off his oilskin coat and felt in the pocket of his waistcoat (which he had retained when he had changed his clothes in the fo’c’sle) for his watch. He drew it out. It was just nine o’clock. All at once an idea occurred to him. He fumbled in another pocket of the waistcoat and brought out one of his calling-cards.

  For a moment Wilbur remained motionless, seated on the bunk-ledge, smiling grimly, while his glance wandered now to the sordid cabin of the “Bertha Millner” and the opium-drugged coolie sprawled on the “donkey’s breakfast,” and now to the card in his hand on which a few hours ago he had written:

  “First waltz — Jo.”

  III. THE LADY LETTY

  Another day passed, then two. Before Wilbur knew it he had settled himself to his new life, and woke one morning to the realization that he was positively enjoying himself. Daily the weather grew warmer. The fifth day out from San Francisco it was actually hot. The pitch grew soft in the “Bertha Millner’s” deck seams, the masts sweated resin. The Chinamen went about the decks wearing but their jeans and blouses. Kitchell had long since abandoned his coat and vest. Wilbur’s oilskins became intolerable, and he was at last constrained to trade his pocket-knife to Charlie for a suit of jeans and wicker sandals, such as the coolies wore — and odd enough he looked in them.

  The Captain instructed him in steering, and even promised to show him the use of the sextant and how to take an observation in the fake short and easy coasting style of navigation. Furthermore, he showed him how to read the log and the manner of keeping the dead reckoning.

  During most of his watches Wilbur was engaged in painting the inside of the cabin, door panels, lintels, and the few scattered moldings; and toward the middle of the first week out, when the “Bertha Millner” was in the latitude of Point Conception, he and three Chinamen, under Kitchell’s directions, ratlined down the forerigging and affixed the crow’s nest upon the for’mast. The next morning, during Charlie’s watch on deck, a Chinaman was sent up into the crow’s nest, and from that time on there was always a lookout maintained from the masthead.

  More than once Wilbur looked around him at the empty coruscating indigo of the ocean floor, wondering at the necessity of the lookout, and finally expressed his curiosity to Kitchell. The Captain had now taken not a little to Wilbur; at first for the sake of a white man’s company, and afterward because he began to place a certain vague reliance upon Wilbur’s judgment. Kitchell had reemarked as how he had brains.

  “Well, you see, son,” Kitchell had explained to Wilbur, “os-tensiblee we are after shark-liver oil — and so we are; but also we are on any lay that turns up; ready for any game, from wrecking to barratry. Strike me, if I haven’t thought of scuttling the dough-dish for her insoorance. There’s regular trade, son, to be done in ships, and then there’s pickin’s an’ pickin’s an’ pickin’s. Lord, the ocean’s rich with pickin’s. Do you know there’s millions made out of the day-bree and refuse of a big city? How about an ocean’s day-bree, just chew on that notion a turn; an’ as fur a lookout, lemmee tell you, son, cast your eye out yon,” and he swept the sea with a forearm; “nothin’, hey, so it looks, but lemmee tell you, son, there ain’t no manner of place on the ball of dirt where you’re likely to run up afoul of so many things — unexpected things — as at sea. When you’re clear o’ land lay to this here pree-cep’, ‘A million to one on the unexpected.’”

  The next day fell almost dead calm. The hale, lusty-lunged nor’wester that had snorted them forth from the Golden Gate had lapsed to a zephyr, the schooner rolled lazily southward with the leisurely nonchalance of a grazing ox. At noon, just after dinner, a few cat’s-paws curdled the milky-blue whiteness of the glassy surface, and the water once more began to talk beneath the bow-sprit. It was very hot. The sun spun silently like a spinning brass discus over the mainmast. On the fo’c’sle head the Chinamen were asleep or smoking opium. It was Charlie’s watch. Kitchell dozed in his hammock in the shadow of the mainsheet. Wilbur was below tinkering with his paint-pot about the cabin. The stillness was profound. It was the stillness of the summer sea at high noon.

  The lookout in the crow’s nest broke the quiet.

  “Hy-yah, hy-yah!” he cried, leaning from the barrel and calling through an arched palm. “Hy-yah, one two, plenty, many tortle, topside, wattah; hy-yah, all-same tortle.”

  “Hello, hello!” cried the Captain, rolling from his hammock. “Turtle? Where-away?”

  “I tink-um ‘bout quallah mile, mebbee, four-piecee tortle all-same weatha bow.”

  “Turtle, hey? Down y’r wheel, Jim, haul y’r jib to win’ward,” he commanded the man at the wheel; then to the men forward: “Get the dory overboard. Son, Charlie, and you, Wing, tumble in. Wake up now and see you stay so.”

  The dory was swung over the side, and the men dropped into her and took their places at the oars. “Give way,” cried the Captain, settling himself in the bow with the gaff in his hand. “Hey, Jim!” he shouted to the lookout far above, “hey, lay our course for us.” The lookout nodded, the oars fell, and the dory shot forward in the direction indicated by the lookout.

  “Kin you row, son? asked Kitchell, with sudden suspicion. Wilbur smiled.

  “You ask Charlie and Wing to ship their oars and give me a pair.” The Captain complied, hesitating.

  “Now, what,” he said grimly, “now, what do you think you’re going to do, sonny?”

  “I’m going to show you the Bob Cook stroke we used in our boat in ‘95, when we beat Harvard,” answered Wilbur.

  Kitchell gazed doubtfully at the first few strokes, then with growing interest watched the tremendous reach, the powerful knee-drive, the swing, the easy catch, and the perfect recover. The dory was cutting the water like a gasoline launch, and between strokes there was the least possible diminishing of the speed.

  “I’m a bit out of form just now,” remarked Wilbur, “and I’m used to the sliding seat; but I guess it’ll do.” Kitchell glanced at the human machine that once was No. 5 in the Yale boat and then at the water hissing from the dory’s bows. “My Gawd!” he said, under his breath. He spat over the bows and sucked the nicotine from his mustache, thoughtfully.

  “I ree-marked,” he observed, “as how you had brains, my son.”

  A few minutes later the Captain, who was standing in the dory’s bow and alternately conning the ocean’s surface and looking back to the Chinaman standing on the schooner’s masthead, uttered an exclamation:

  “Steady, ship your oars, quiet now, quiet, you damn fools! We’re right on ’em — four, by Gawd, an’ big as dinin’ tables!”

  The oars were shipped. The dory’s speed dwindled. “Out your paddles, sit on the gun’l, and paddle ee-asy.” The hands obeyed. The Captain’s voice dropped to a whisper. His back was toward them and he gestured with one free hand. Looking out over the water from his seat on the gun’l, Wilbur could make out a round, greenish mass like a patch of floating seaweed, just under the surface, some sixty yards ahead.

  “Easy sta’board,” whispered the Captain under his elbow. “Go ahead, port; e-e-easy all, steady, steady.”
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  The affair began to assume the intensity of a little drama — a little drama of midocean. In spite of himself, Wilbur was excited. He even found occasion to observe that the life was not so bad, after all. This was as good fun as stalking deer. The dory moved forward by inches. Kitchell’s whisper was as faint as a dying infant’s: “Steady all, s-stead-ee, sh-stead—”

  He lunged forward sharply with the gaff, and shouted aloud: “I got him — grab holt his tail flippers, you fool swabs; grab holt quick — don’t you leggo — got him there, Charlie? If he gets away, you swine, I’ll rip y’ open with the gaff — heave now — heave — there — there — soh, stand clear his nippers. Strike me! he’s a whacker. I thought he was going to get away. Saw me just as I swung the gaff, an’ ducked his nut.”

  Over the side, bundled without ceremony into the boat, clawing, thrashing, clattering, and blowing like the exhaust of a donkey-engine, tumbled the great green turtle, his wet, green shield of shell three feet from edge to edge, the gaff firmly transfixed in his body, just under the fore-flipper. From under his shell protruded his snake-like head and neck, withered like that of an old man. He was waving his head from side to side, the jaws snapping like a snapped silk handkerchief. Kitchell thrust him away with a paddle. The turtle craned his neck, and catching the bit of wood in his jaw, bit it in two in a single grip.

  “I tol’ you so, I tol’ you to stand clear his snapper. If that had been your shin now, eh? Hello, what’s that?”

  Faintly across the water came a prolonged hallooing from the schooner. Kitchell stood up in the dory, shading his eyes with his hat.

  “What’s biting ’em now?” he muttered, with the uneasiness of a captain away from his ship. “Oughta left Charlie on board — or you, son. Who’s doin’ that yellin’, I can’t make out.”