The small fluffy lump of darkness saw her lord and master apparently petting another creature, and came out on the bridge, shivering with cold, yet animated by a purpose of protest. She crept up to the pair, out of sight of the man at the wheel in the pilot house and sprang on to Bill's shoulders, purring contentedly, and giving him a tentative dig of admonition with her sharp claws. Bill reached up, to pet her and bring her down—possibly to introduce her to the girl. But this was not permitted. Miss Mayhew screamed, stood up, and backed away, her eyes wide open in terror and dismay; then Bill, dimly understanding that the cat was an interloper, took it down, and tossed it toward the door of his room. Then the girl, uttering incoherent little cries, of terror, flung herself into his arms and the big fellow infolded her, kissing and comforting her, and promising protection from danger which he did not sense or understand. The man at the wheel was busy, the guests more or less asleep; no one saw but the slighted kitten. Bill kissed the frightened little face again and again, and the outraged kitten acted. With one leap she reached Miss Mayhew's shoulders, and, spitting and purring her hatred and love, she separated the two. The girl, gasping and choking, shrank back, struck the small creature a blow that sent it flying three yards away, and went insane. She turned on Bill in a fury of rage, and, while she uttered no word that could not be printed in a modern novel, yet there was enough of invective, threat, and menace in her attitude to make the big man back away from her, shocked and horrified beyond conception. The girl followed him, waving her scissors, tightly clutched in her hand, her eyes blazing, her face distorted in furious rage, and her small body quivering with the emotions that racked it.
"You cowardly dog!" she screamed. "You dared to play this trick on me? If God will help me, I will kill you."
She lunged at Bill with the scissors, and he dodged. He could not speak in protest or argument; he was too surprised and shaken. All he could do was to run to the door of his room. She followed part way, and then paused, her eyes still blazing, and her face distorted; yet she seemed to be trying to control herself.
"Don't ever, while you live," she said calmly, "speak to me again, or attempt to."
"Very well, Miss Mayhew," answered Bill gravely. "I'm sorry, but I do not understand."
He turned into his room, as the best place for him, and noticed the black kitten darting out. Then he heard a scream from the girl, and turned to look. She was making for the bridge stairs, her scissors still tightly clutched, and the wee, black cause of the trouble chasing her. Bill caught his pet, and shut it in with him, while he smoked, and thought, and deduced, with the logic of a poor man, on the never-solved problem—the inscrutability of women.
In half an hour he was aroused by a shout, and went on deck. His men were tumbling out of the forecastle; stewards, cooks, and guests were scrambling forward, and a glance down from the head of the steps showed Bill the cause. Miss Mayhew lay prone on the deck, the scissors still gripped in her small hand, but the points driven into her side, and a pool of blood drifting down to the scuppers from the wound. Bill jumped clear of every step, and, landing beside her, picked her up. She was unconscious, and her eyes were closed. It took an effort of strength, but he drew the scissors out of the wound, and looked helplessly into the face of the doctor.
"What happened?" asked the latter. "Well, never mind what happened. She has fallen down the stairs and wounded herself with her scissors. Carry her aft. We must stop this effusion of blood. Heavens"—he looked at the deck—"she has bled a quart already. Aft with her quickly."
Bill carried the limp and bleeding form back to the cabin, and, having laid it gently on the bed in her stateroom, was moved to go. He was sailing master; the agonized father was there, the doctor, a member of the family and acting the part; the doctor's wife, a motherly and practical old lady, and a group of quiet, gentlemanly, and questioning rivals, whom Bill had no love for and who invited their own destruction by the looks they gave him. Bill went to the bridge, called his mate, then, capturing the steward on his way forward to the galley, ordered him to report, as he valued his life, on the condition of the sick girl. The steward promised, and Bill waited on the bridge.
The steward went aft, and Bill watched him come up on the run and race forward. Bill again cleared the bridge stairs at a jump, and met him.
"Dying, captain," gasped the steward. "Dying from loss of blood."
Bill went aft—he never remembered whether he walked or ran—and bolted down the stairs, shoving aside the small Arsdale, the big Muggins, the athletic Parsons, and even the gentlemanly Elkins, all of them white in the face, as they hovered near the stateroom door, and burst into the room, where the grief-stricken father, the anxious doctor, and the weeping Mrs. Calkins hovered over the quiet, unconscious form on the bed. The rivals followed him in, but did not attempt to get between him and the girl. The doctor looked around at them, while Bill leaned over and raised the girl's head in the palm of his hand. He choked, but did not speak.
"Nothing but transfusion of blood will save her," said Doctor Calkins. "Who will volunteer?"
"I will," stuttered young Arsdale.
"You won't do, young man," said the doctor, coldly. "You're not big enough, and need all the blood you have for yourself."
"Then I'm the man," said Muggins, the author. "Heavens, what an experience! What a story I can make of it!"
"You won't do, sir," repeated the doctor to this aspirant. "Your blood is impregnated with alcohol, and Lord knows what. I would as soon inoculate her with vitriol." Mr. Muggins left the room.
Mr. Pearson drew back, very pale in the face, evidently impressed with the thought that he was expected to offer himself to the sacrifice; but no one seemed to notice, and Mr. Elkins, the editor, faced the doctor.
"I have mentioned to the captain," he said, "my wish to do something, be something, make something, before I die. I am a healthy man, Doctor Calkins, and I offer myself."
The doctor looked him over approvingly.
"It will take a full quart of your blood. You may not survive."
"Take it," said Elkins firmly. "I will run the chance."
Bill looked up, dazed and shaking. He had dimly recognized the drift of the talk, but now grasped the fact in its entirety that a man—another than himself—was ready to die for this girl that he loved. It was preposterous, unthinkable, and impossible. He laid the girl's head back on the pillow, and motioned Mr. Elkins out of the room. Mr. Elkins went quickly and quietly. There was that in Bill's face that induced him to obey the gesture.
Pearson and Arsdale followed as quickly, stumbling somewhat in their haste, and even the stern old father drew away from Bill.
"Does she need my blood?" asked Bill grimly. "I've plenty to spare. Take it all."
"You are needed to command this boat," said the doctor.
"I am not. My two mates can navigate. Get ready quickly, or she may die while you're talking."
Bill threw off his coat and rolled up his sleeve, showing an arm as big as an ordinary leg. The doctor rushed for his instruments, and while he was gone the owner asked brokenly of Bill how it happened.
"I do not know, sir," he answered, resolved not to describe the scene to her disadvantage. "I did not see her fall. I think nobody saw her fall."
"God grant that she lives!" said the old man, all the austerity gone from his face. "I can do nothing, willing as I am, for I am old and feeble; but you are young and strong. You see, there is much at stake beside by own grief and suffering. She is my daughter, and the real owner of this yacht, and every bond, and share, and mortgage that I control. Should she die, I would die myself—from poverty and want, while her relatives would obtain control. Still," and the old man stiffened up, "why should I speak of this? She is my daughter. I love her, for she is all I have left. Save her life, and while I live I am at your command."
"The hell you say!" said Bill. "I thought she was your ward."
"My daughter by my second wife," said the old gentleman, with dignity. "My first wife, with all her relations, is still alive and fighting me."
"I think," said Bill reflectively, "that I understand. Well," and here the doctor appeared with his appurtenances, "you don't love this little girl any more than I do, and I'll do my part."
"Lie down beside her quickly," ordered the doctor. Bill did so.
"Can you stand pain?" asked the doctor of Bill. "Or do you want an anæsthetic?"
"Go ahead," growled Bill, between his teeth. "Work quickly."
"I am going to sever a vein in both your arms, and connect them by this tube. Miss Mayhew is unconscious, and will feel no pain. Butyouwill."
"Go ahead," yelled Bill. "What do I care for pain? Use your surgical skill, and save her life, or, by God, I'll toss you overboard. Quickly, now. Go ahead, before she dies."
"I will," answered the doctor grimly, as he picked up his lancet.
Bill felt pain; he felt that his arm was being torn from his shoulder, as the doctor severed a large vein, and dragged the upper end out from the bleeding wound. He gritted his teeth, however, and closed his eyes tightly, while the doctor ligatured the vein and bound its end around the tube; then, shivering in every muscle of his body, he waited while the same operation was performed on the arm of the girl. Then the ligatures were removed, and Bill slowly went to sleep, the pain and distress, love of the girl, and interest in life leaving him as the somnolence increased.
He awakened a few years later, as he thought, lying in his own berth abaft the pilot house, his arm bound to his side, and the black kitten nestling upon his chest. He looked at the little creature, and an ungovernable hatred overcame him. He could barely lift his free arm, but with this arm and hand he brushed the kitten off to the floor. Then he tried to pull himself together, but did not succeed; things were obscure, he could not remember, and all he felt was hatred of the cat, now glaring at him from under the chart table. There was a nautical almanac in the berth, and Bill flung it at the cat; but she dodged, and ran out on deck. Then she came back in the arms of Miss Mayhew, or, rather, in one arm, for the right was strapped to her side, as was his left; she was not exactly rosy of face, still there was color in it, and a soft light in her eyes, and a sweet smile on her lips, that robbed Bill of his resentment toward the cat. She fondled the small creature, and came toward his couch; then, bending over him, she deposited the kitten on his chest and kissed him on the lips. Bill choked and gasped.
"You mustn't mind," she said, rosy now, "if I kiss you. The doctor told me. You gave me most of your blood, and I lived. I was well in a day."
Before Bill could formulate an answer the father came in.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "you've waked up, have you? Good! We had our doubts about it; for it took three days. We're almost to Gibraltar, as the mate says."
"That's good," said Bill wearily, "but—is Miss Mayhew all right?"
"Got a hole in her side," answered the father, "and a hole in her arm; but, tell me, you folks. Something happened, and I want to know."
"It was all my fault, daddy," said the girl. "This little cat frightened me, and I think I went crazy again."
"I see," said the father, his face clouding. "I told you, Mr. Flanders, to have no cats on board. Why is this?"
"Why," said Bill, "I'm sorry now, of course, but I found the brute being tormented by a gang of toughs, and brought it with me. I never dreamed that there would be any unpleasant consequences."
"But I knew," said the owner warmly. "This little girl of mine was marked by her mother, who was frightened into insanity by a mad cat. She has gone crazy several times at the sight of a cat."
"But not any more," said the smiling girl. "Come here, kitty, and let me love you." She picked up the kitten, and fondled it. Then the doctor appeared, and looked them all over with a stern, scientific eye.
The girl placed the kitten on Bill's chest, close to his chin, and smilingly bade him pat it. But Bill, with a furious, though not profane, exclamation, struck his former pet from him. The girl picked it up, and consoled it, looking down on Bill with mild disapproval.
"Please pardon me," he said weakly, "but I hate the thing. I cannot stand it."
"Don't worry, young man," said Doctor Calkins. "You'll come around all right, and be as merciful to dumb animals as you have been, while our little girl here is relieved from the obsession of her life. It has never before come into my experience, but I have read about it in my studies—transfusion of blood carries with it transference of psychic qualities. This girl, in taking into her veins some of your blood, has taken your love of cats—I know all about it, because I talked with the mess boy—and you, in giving your blood to her, took something of her obsession. But you will both get over it. Come, Mr. Mayhew, and leave these people alone with the cat."
They went out, and the girl sat beside the weak and helpless man, stroking his face and caressing him for an hour before he spoke a vital word.
"Say," he said, at last. "Tell me, what is your first name?"
"Kitty," she answered.
My acquaintance with them began, I may say, about fifteen years before their birth; for I had played marbles with their father, made mud pies with their mother, thrashed the former through his school-days, and loved the latter from the beginning to the end—which is not yet. Finally, I had officiated as best man at the wedding.
The twins were as like as two peas, and to preserve their identity the usual expedient was tried of decorating them with ribbons of different hue. But when, at three years of age, they were detected in the very natural act of swapping ribbons, I, as the family physician, was called in; then Jack's identity was fixed with a tattooed dot of india ink on his left arm, and Jim's with a corresponding dot on his right. Their mother was mostly concerned with their pain and protesting squalls, their father with my wonderful ingenuity, and I with the rebellious, yet imperious, thought that, according to the eternal fitness of things, I should have been the father of these two beautiful boys.
Their father was about my age, twenty-five, and a weakling; one who, as a boy, could never catch a ball nor throw one straight; who never learned to swim, and preferred girls for playmates; who, as a youth, could not dress himself without assistance; who never, in his whole lackadaisical life, had an original thought or took the initiative in any proceeding; and why that splendid, healthy-minded, dark-eyed girl of seventeen should choose him out of a host of suitors was beyond my comprehension at the time. Later, I understood; somewhat weakly sexed at that age, but largely endowed with the maternal instinct (she played with dolls until within a year of her marriage), she pitied his helplessness and married him to mother and protect him. And from this pair, so utterly diverse, Mother Nature produced two perfect specimens of humanity, and rested. After their arrival the parents drifted apart, and from sheer incompatibility were divorced when the boys were seven years old. They went to their original homes at opposite sides of the town, each taking a twin; for the asinine judge, unable to decide in favor of either, had, Solomon-like, so conditioned the divorce.
Their grief was heart-rending—equaled only by that of the mother, as I, in my professional relation to each home, had full opportunity to judge. But time softened this grief in all of them, and brought about in the mother a state of mind exceedingly valuable and gratifying to me. In a year from the divorce she became my wife. So far I had observed the development of the twins as a physician, noting that the measles, mumps, croup, and other childhood ailments came to both at the same time, and, as a physician, ascribing it to bodily contagion. But now, still a physician to each, I took note of other concurrent happenings that spoke of mental contagion as well. I was called to Jim late one afternoon by the agitated father, and found him in a strange mental condition, crying and laughing, and again storming in an ecstasy of rage at the house-dog, a gentle, harmless collie and a former pet, against whom he had conceived a violent hatred. He had attacked and nearly killed him with a club.
When I reached home that evening I was regaled by the joyous Jack with an account of his successful battle that afternoon with a mad dog that had attacked him. It was a large, black mongrel, and he had brained it with his ball club. I sounded his emotions. Frightened? Of course; who would not be with a huge mad brute, frothing at the mouth, charging at him? But he had staggered the animal with the first blow, and then had come his courage, his anger, and his furious desire to kill, and save his life. Yes, he had cried, afterward, and was much ashamed of the weakness. But I reassured him on this point, convinced him that strong, brave men sometimes cried under extreme excitement, and in my desire to make the most of the incident in his development, almost overshot the mark. His self-respect became abnormal, and neighboring dogs and small boys suffered, until he was stopped by an experience more salutary than would have been the strapping which his mother and I were seriously contemplating. He attacked another dog, but a sane dog of small size and attending to his business. This dog met the assault bravely and, though suffering keenly from Jack's first blow and unable to injure any living thing larger than a rabbit, offered a strong protest of growls and barks, the moral effect of which was to send the small boy fleeing for home with the small dog snapping at his heels. The neighbors rejoiced, and it was a month before Jack recovered from the humiliation. He did not understand, nor did I until the following day, when his father informed me on the street that the collie, recovered in mind and body, had revenged himself by attacking and biting Jim, who was badly frightened and needed my attention. I could not learn that there was concomitance of time, but I knew that the twins, a mile apart,shared each other's emotions.
After a fruitless attempt to get legal transfer of Jim to my own household, I fell back on my growing faith in this sympathy of mind, trusting that a careful training of Jack might have a corresponding influence upon Jim. But in this I hoped too much. No such sympathy is ever as strong as daily and personal contact, and the direct and weakening example of that father's life and words worked powerfully upon the character of the boy. His individuality lessened, and as though this lessening were an invitation, the apparently fortuitous incidents and influences of his life became such as to lessen it still further. He seemed to be looking for trouble, and would attempt feats that he failed to perform, while Jack attempted such as were just within his increasing powers. A boy that Jack had pummeled came around and took revenge on Jim. He would yield to pressure that Jack would resist.
And so they grew farther and farther apart in face, form, and disposition, Jack into a tall, straight, handsome and high-minded young gentleman, Jim into a shifty, cowardly, stoop-shouldered and cad-like sort of a youth, without friends, ambition, or ideals, whose backwardness in study brought him into the lowest class of the town's one high school as Jack entered the highest. In this year of schooling they met for the first time since the separation, but they met as strangers. They knew they were brothers, of course, but carefully avoided reference to the fact, and soon avoided each other. Between them there was no outward sympathy nor community of interest, the unwise but cast-iron pride of the mother finding expression in Jack's attitude, and the cowardice of the negative father in Jim's.
Jack graduated with honor, and, confronted with another four years of study at college, yet ardent, ambitious, anxious to begin life's battle as a man, chose a career that satisfied both conditions—a life in the navy. He arranged matters himself, secured an appointment to the Naval Academy, and left us. And on that day, Jim, friendless in school and stubborn, was dismissed from school for negligence in his studies. Then, as though his evil star were now at its zenith, his father, having lost all his inherited property in unwise speculation, took him away, where I could not learn; but a year later we read the list of lost in a coasting-steamship wreck, and in this list were the names of these two.
I now had to deal with a half-crazed woman, who spoke little and did not weep, but whose strained face and whitening hair told of the strength of that misplaced pride and outraged mother-love, suppressed for so many years. Nothing that I could say or do availed against the aroused craving for the neglected boy. She resisted my oft-repeated suggestions that Jim was gone, and that there was nothing to do but to make the best of it. She refused to be resigned, for she could not bring herself to believe that he was dead. She insisted that he was alive, and that some day he would come back.
This continued through the years, while her hair became whiter and her voice nearly silent, while Jack finished his course and sea term, to be then retired against his will because of the preponderance of officers in a wooden navy too small for them, and while my practice and my health left me under the strain of caring for the queenly woman I loved. Then Jack, a born free-lance who would have entered any navy in the world had a war been on, did the next best thing for him; he secured command of a large, new merchant ship, and made a successful voyage, perhaps the youngest and probably the best educated master in the merchant marine. When he returned my nerves were as bad as his mother's, my practice was gone, my future uncertain; and so we accepted his invitation to make a voyage with him, I with the listlessness of all neurasthenics, my wife with an avidity which surprised us. She brightened at once.
And now this story really begins.
II
She was a two-thousand-ton, double topgallant and skysail yard ship—one of the larger, slower type that succeeded the old Cape Horn clippers, but a ship that even a naval officer might feel proud to command; and Jack was certainly proud of her. And as we—his mother and myself—watched him pacing the poop-deck as sail was being made, giving an occasional quiet order to the helmsman or sending a brazen roar forward to the mate on the forecastle, we were frankly proud of him. Six feet tall to an inch, straight as a man may be, with a chest almost as deep as his shoulders were broad, sunburned and brown-eyed, with only a well-kept mustache to relieve the boyishness of his face, he presented a picture that brought light into the eyes and a smile to the face of that mother as she stood beside me. But a contrasting look of pain followed, and I knew the thought behind was of the other boy, of whom we never spoke.
The first mate was a huge, hairy, brutal sort of man, uneducated beyond the mechanical formulas of navigation, but with a large and healthy conception of his own value to the ship and her people. The second mate was like him to a lesser extent—not quite so big, nor brutal, nor profane, and with less of the art of navigation.
At eight bells of that first evening out the men were chosen into watches by the two mates much as boys choose sides in a ball game, and my wife and I drew amidships to witness the scene. They were an unkempt lot in the moonlight, mostly foreigners, and clad in greasy and tarry garments of nondescript pattern and shape. Each called out his name as he was chosen, moving to starboard or port, according to the watch he now belonged to, and when the job was half done Jack, smoking a cigar, joined us and critically scanned his crew.
"Relieve the wheel and lookout," said the mate, when the last man was chosen. "That'll do the watch."
"Wait!" said Jack sharply, tossing away his cigar and stepping toward the dispersing men. "I've something to say to you."
They halted and drew together.
"This is my second voyage in the merchant marine," he continued. "The last was my first. Before that I was in the navy, with the power of the law and the Charlestown prison behind me in every order I gave to a man. As a consequence of this condition no man-o'-war's man ever refuses to obey an order, and few of them ever get to that prison. But I brought such ideas with me when I took command of this ship. I spoke kindly to my men and treated them well. I forbade my mates to bully or strike them, and even ironed my second mate for ignoring my wishes. I took sick and injured men aft and nursed them. But I found that I had made a mistake. Merchant sailors can be jailed as easily as man-o-war's men, but they don't know it. Knowing nothing, they fear nothing until it comes to them. Orders were disobeyed on that voyage, and each man was his own boss; ropes were never coiled up without an argument, gear was rove off wrong, earings were passed farm-fashion, canvas was lost, marlinespikes, capstan-bars, and draw-buckets went overboard, tar-pots were dropped from aloft on a clean deck, and a paint-brush came down on my head. Discipline went to the dogs, and I nearly lost my ship. Now there'll be none of that here. As I won't have time nor inclination to appeal to the law if you make trouble I mean to forestall it. I've shipped mates that'll break your heads on the first provocation, and they have my instructions to do it. So watch out. You'll get plenty of grub while you deserve it, but when you don't it'll be all hands in the afternoon and the government allowance. That'll do."
"That's all right, Cappen," said a big Irishman in a voice of rage. "This is a Yankee ship, an' ye needn't ha' said all that. But I tell ye, if ye'll pick out able seamen yerself in the shippin'-office, 'stid o' lettin' a shippin'-master gi' ye barbers an' waiters that don't know port from sta'board ye'll ha' no throuble wi' yer min. Luk at this ye've gi'n us for a watchmate." He seized a man standing near, swung him at arm's length, and flung him, spinning on his feet, full against the first mate. That worthy, shocked out of his better judgment, instead of rebuking the Irishman, drew back his mighty fist and struck the staggering man in the face, sending him reeling back toward the place he had come from. He slipped, stumbled, and fell, his head striking the corner of the main hatch. They he lay quiet on the deck.
But a strange thing happened—strange and inconsistent with regard to Jack's just-uttered declaration of his position. No sooner had the mate struck the man than Jack, with a muttered curse, launched himself toward his first officer, and knocked him against the fife-rail, where he clung, choking and clucking. Jack struck him twice, once in the face, once in the body. And now a stranger thing happened. It all occurred so quickly that I could hardly take note, shaky of nerve as I was and hampered by the distressed woman on my arm; but Jack, having struck the mate, and before the still erect victim of the mate and the Irishman had stumbled, had immediately bounded toward the Irishman. But as the luckless fellow's head struck the hatch combing, Jack brought up, and with a low, inarticulate whimper and a face like that of a frightened child looked this way and that, then sped aft toward the poop steps. We followed, while the second mate dispersed the men, and found Jack in a strange condition of terror, unnatural to him, or to any man of his type. His agitated mother endeavored to soothe him, but between her motherly admonitions to Jack came wifely admonitions to me to attend to the poor man who had been so brutally maltreated.
So I went forward, passing on the way the two mates, the one assisting the other. As I passed, the second mate called out that the other's jaw-bone and some ribs were broken, and that my services were needed; but, feeling enough of indignation to make the brutal first mate the last on my list of patients, I went on, and found the mistreated sailor in the port forecastle, where he had been carried by his shipmates. He was sitting on a chest, just recovering his senses, and looking about in a dazed manner out of swollen and blackened eyes. As the men parted to make way for me Jack's mighty voice sounded from amidships: "Weather main-brace, here. Where's the watch? Where's the second mate? Attend to your yards, sir." Obviously, Jack was himself again.
"I didn't mean to hit the mate wi' him, sorr," said the big Irishman deferentially, "an' it was a dom shame for the mate to slug him like that, even if he was no sailor. But the skipper's a brick. Be-gob, he'll 'tind to that bunco mate."
"Are you hurt much?" I asked of the victim. He looked into my face, then, rising, burst forth:
"Doctor, doctor, take me away from here. Take me out of this place. They hit me and curse me because I don't know things. I don't know why I am here—I don't know where I am." The broken voice became a wail. "I'm on the water again and I'll drown, I know I'll drown. Oh, doctor"—he seized my arm—"I'm Jim; don't you know me, doctor?"
"Jim?" I queried. "Jim who?" and turned him to the light.
"Look, doctor. You did this, they told me, when I was a baby." He pulled up the right sleeve of a ragged, filthy shirt, and showed me a dot of india ink just below the elbow.
"For God's sake, are you Jim, the twin brother of Jack? We all thought you were dead—drowned with your father."
"He was drowned, doctor. I floated on a piece of board and was saved. I went crazy for a while, and then—I never could get along. I couldn't get work, and things got worse and worse, and then I took to the road, and then I came to New York, and—I guess I got drunk, and got here."
"Shanghaied, that's what ye were," grunted the Celt.
I looked closely at Jim's face. Aside from the facial angle and the color of his eyes there was no resemblance to the brother who, at seven years of age, had been his counterpart. A badly kept beard added to the discrepancy, no doubt, but the whole atmosphere of the man was different. There was a slight reminder of Jack in the lower tones of the voice, but its usual note was a whine, and in his whole bearing was the slinking aspect of a vagrant of the worst kind. Certainly, I could not take this human wreck into the presence of that mother and brother.
"You must stay here for a while, Jim," I said firmly. "You must not come near the other end of the ship unless I give you permission, and I will see that you are protected and cared for. Understand? Stay here with these men, and I will see you every day. What is your name?" I asked the Irishman.
"Limerick, sorr—aboard ship."
"Limerick, you seem to be a man, and a square one. This is an old friend of mine—and of my family—but you can understand that he must stay here. See that he is well treated, and I will make it right with you."
"I will that, sorr," answered Limerick promptly, "though I belong in the other watch an' ought to be on deck now. I don't wonder ye're ashamed o' him, sorr. I'm ashamed meself. Just the same I'll break the sconce o' the first mon that lays hands on him. I'll do that for ye, sorr. I know a gintleman, an' ye're one, or ye wouldn't be here in this fo'c'sle."
I went aft and joined Jack and his mother on the poop, forgetting the mate's need of my services in the mood I was in.
"Dad," said Jack, addressing me by the name he had called me since I had become his stepfather, "you're a physician. Tell me what ails me. I'm all right now, but I went for the mate for doing just what I had told him to do, and then went into a blue funk over it—frightened out of my senses. But what at? I'm not afraid of any man aboard."
"How is the poor man that was struck?" asked my wife anxiously.
"He's all right," I answered promptly, understanding now her instinctive concern, and inclined to smile at Jack's palpable resentment of it.
"But what's the matter withme?" he demanded sharply.
"I don't know, Jack," I said. "I'll have to think it out."
His mention of the mate had recalled to me the plight he was in, and I went to him, finding that the second mate's diagnosis was correct. Two ribs and his jaw-bone were smashed as though from the kick of a mule. I bound him in plasters, and stoically endured his mumbled profanity; then, first seeing my wife to her berth in the after cabin, and thoroughly exhausted by the exciting experiences, I took a sleeping-draught to quiet my nerves and went to my own berth in the forward cabin.
But, perhaps because of the intensity of the strain upon my nervous system, perhaps because of my strong interest in the problem, the sleeping-draught merely threw me into a logical, inductive frame of mind that kept me awake all night, thinking it out. And it was daylight before the problem took shape. After years of separation the twins again shared each other's emotions.
III
With the problem still unsolved, however, I went to sleep, and awakened at eight bells of the afternoon watch. Going on deck, I found a gale of wind blowing out of the southeast, the ship hove down under the three lower topsails, spanker, spencer, and foretopmast staysail, and liquid hills of greenish-gray bombarding the weather-bow and occasionally climbing aboard. Jack, clad in yellow oilskins and sou'wester, stood on the poop in a fleeting patch of sunlight, trying to get an afternoon sight with his sextant as the sun peeped from behind the racing storm-clouds. Jim was also on the poop, but on the lee side, scurrying forward along the alley in advance of the irate second mate, who was profanely criticizing Jim's bad taste in coming to relieve the wheel without knowledge of steering or of the compass. Jack, busy with the sextant, did not witness the scene, nor hear the profanity; but I, having a personal and domestic interest in the matter, met the officer, returning after a final kick at Jim, and softly but intensely informed him that such language must cease within hearing of my wife, or I would deal with him as man to man. He apologized, in his way, and I then gave him the reasons I had given Limerick for keeping Jim out of sight, and secured his coöperation. Limerick was at the wheel, scowling in sympathy with me, and he whispered as I passed that it would not have happened had he been forward—that the men of the other watch had driven Jim aft to relieve the wheel before they had learned his status.
I joined Jack. He seemed himself, showing no sign of the night's agitation; yet he looked a little worried.
"Couldn't get a sight, dad," he said, swinging his sextant at arm's length, and smiling, rather sadly, I thought. "But the Long Island coast is about ten miles under the lee. How'd you like to drown at the end of a cable to-night?"
"Why," I asked, "is there any danger?"
"We're on the wrong tack, I think; but I expected it to veer to the east. It hangs right on from sou'-sou'east—dead on to the beach, and as it is it don't make much difference which tack we're on if we hit. If it shows the slightest sign of hauling to the west I'll wear ship and try to clear Montauk. If it don't, it's the anchors."
"Why not wear ship now?—whatever that is," I answered.
"Couldn't clear it anyway with the wind this way, and I'd only lose a full mile to leeward. Our drift under this canvas is quartering, and about three miles an hour."
"Is there no other recourse than wearing ship?"
"Clubhauling, if the wind shifts too late to wear. You see, wearing is putting a ship on the other tack by squaring away before the wind and then rounding to. Clubhauling is going about head to wind with the help of the lee anchor. It's about the most difficult operation in seamanship. We did it once in theMonocacy, but few merchant skippers learn the trick."
All this was unintelligible to me at the time, and I went down to my wife. I found her as comfortable as a woman may be in her first storm at sea, and then paid a professional visit to the first officer. Then I went forward on the reeling main-deck to see and encourage the unfortunate Jim. On the way I thought seriously of taking Jack into my confidence, but gave it up when I considered that the shock and mental agitation might not be well for him with his ship in danger. Then I thought of the alternative—could I not arouse a little courage in Jim, so that if a critical moment arrived Jack would not be obsessed with his cowardice, as he was the preceding evening? It was worth trying—at least worth thinking of. In any event Jim would be none the worse for a little bracing up.
I found him shivering in his wet garments, crouching from the blast of cold rain and spindrift under the weather-rail near the fore-rigging.
"Doctor," he sobbed, "take me away from these fellers. They hit me and kick me, and I'm afraid. I haven't a friend here but you."
"Jim," I asked kindly, "do you really believe me to be your friend? Have you full confidence that I can help you?"
"Yes, yes, doctor. You were always good to me, in the old days. And you married mother. Where is she, and Jack? Jack never cared for me, but I'd like to see mother 'fore I die."
"You shall see her sometime, Jim, but not yet—not for a long time, perhaps. You are worn out and want sleep. You want dry clothes and a good, long sleep, and you'll feel all right when you wake up. Stay here and when I beckon to you, come."
I had made up my mind. Going aft, I found my wife in the forward companionway, where she had been watching me. Her first question was of the poor fellow forward, and I said what I could to quiet the instinctive mother-love that she herself could not analyze. I told her that the man needed only a little care, which I was giving him. Then, when I had led her aft to her quarters, I sought the cabin steward, adjured him to silence, and arranged for exclusive possession of the forward cabin stateroom that adjoined my own. Going on deck, I imposed the same condition upon the second mate (who was beginning to respect me), and beckoned to the expectant Jim. He came on the run, and I soon had him in that room, with his wet rags exchanged for a dry suit of my own, and no one the wiser but the second mate and the steward, both of whom considered him a sick man taken aft for treatment. Which was more or less the truth.
Giving Jim a stimulant, I put him into the berth and covered him, for he still shivered from the chill of the storm. Then, holding his hand, I began a gentle, soothing flow of words in which I assured him that I was his friend, that I would so continue, that he was in no danger while I was with him, but that he must go to sleep, and rest, and that when he wakened he would feel braver and stronger, like his brother Jack, whom he surely must remember. In a few moments his eyelids had ceased to flutter, and soon after they closed under the steady, monotonous lullaby of my voice; but he was not yet asleep, and I continued, enjoining upon the weary, homeless, and desolate waif again and again—speaking more emphatically as his breathing grew heavier—that he must be like Jack, as he was when they were little boys together and shared the same impulses; that he must hark back to that time, and rouse up the strong, brave soul, common to each, which had developed in Jack, but which in him had been suppressed by years of continued defeat. Strongly insisting upon this toward the last, I finally left him, having actually talked him to sleep.
On deck I found Jack really worried. "If it would only shift," he said, "one way or the other. But here it is, hanging on out of the same quarter, and blowing harder. The storm-center is inland, and coming right at us. See the land yonder?"
A dim line of yellowish brown showed faintly through the dense blanket of gray to leeward—the only visible border between sea and sky. Two hours more would bring us perilously close.
Supper was served, and I ate, hurriedly and ravenously, my first meal in twenty-four hours; then I prepared my wife for what might come, saw that she was dressed warmly, and brought her on deck, where Jack supperless and anxious paced the deck abaft the house and watched the wind and compass. Forward, all hands, under the second mate, worked at the two chain cables in the lessening light of the evening, hauling them up from the lockers and ranging them ready for use. Occasionally, in the intervals of work, the men would look keenly aft and to leeward at the approaching line of coast. Every face wore a look of anxiety; all knew of the danger.
When the cables were ranged a quiet order from Jack brought a cast of the lead. Twelve fathoms was the finding.
"Lord grant we hit close to a life-saving station," said Jack, looking fondly at his mother. "No boats could live a minute in this sea. We're not far from the storm center. It's got to shift six points at least to clear us, now. I'll get ready to clubhaul, anyway."
An order to the tired but very efficient second mate resulted in two strong hawsers being brought up from the forepeak, coiled one each side on the poop abaft the house, and the ends led forward outside of all rigging to the hawsepipes in the bow, into which they were passed. Then another sounding was taken, showing ten fathoms of water.
"About half an hour more," said Jack to the second mate. "Fake your braces down for going about, and have the carpenter stand by at the windlass with a top-maul and a punch to slip the chain at any shackle." The officer stared in amazement, but went forward to execute the orders. Evidently, he knew as little of their portent as did I.
He reported in time, "All ready for stays, sir," and we waited. There was nothing more to do, it seemed, with the ship blowing almost straight on to a lee shore. Again was the lead cast, and nine fathoms was the result called out.
"All hands on deck, and stand by on the poop," roared Jack through his hands. The men trooped aft and crowded the weather alley.
A tall, unkempt figure with face tied up in cloths lumbered up the poop steps and approached Jack. "I b'long on deck, Cappen," he mumbled. "Can I be any good?"
"No, sir," answered Jack kindly, but sharply; "you cannot; but stay on deck and be ready for swimming."
The injured mate bowed his head and, first looking at the compass, then painfully aloft at the wind-vane, seated himself on the wheel-box. His chance of swimming was poor; he could hardly stand.
The steward came up, muffled to the chin in a long overcoat, and the sight of him brought to my mind poor Jim, lying asleep in a cabin berth. Down the after companionway I rushed, but was hardly clear of the stairs before I felt the ship heel still farther under a furious blast of wind, then straighten nearly upright; and over and above the sound of rattling canvas came Jack's thundering roar: "Keep full. Hard up your wheel. Stand by for stays. Down off—" Something had interrupted the order. I heard my wife scream, but I hurried into the forward cabin after Jim, just in time to see him leave the stateroom and dart out through the forward door.
I followed him out, but he was not in sight on the main deck, nor was he among the men floundering down the poop steps to stations. So I mounted to the poop; and there, prone upon his back in the alley, was the unconscious form of Jack, with blood upon his face, and his mother bending over him.
"The wind shifted, and the mizzen royal-yard shook out of her," said the second mate from near the wheel, "and something came down and hit him on the head."
Lifting my wife to her feet, I examined him hurriedly, but found no cause for alarm. He was simply stunned by some falling object. "Let him lie where he is, and he'll come to directly," I said, and, leaving him to his mother, I joined the second mate to ask of Jim.
But a voice from the top of the house interrupted my query—a voice like the blast of a speaking-trumpet, strangely like Jack's. And there was Jim beside the mizzenmast, bareheaded and erect, his stoop-shoulders squared, his eyes staring straight before him into the horizontal rain and drift from the combers. "Ready about," he had said in that borrowed voice. "Hard alee!"
My wife screamed again, stood up, and stared at the figure on the house, and in a bound I had reached her.
"It's your boy Jim," I said in her ear, "but keep quiet. He's asleep." She knew what I meant, and stood still, staring with wide-open, hungry eyes at Jim, with an occasional downward glance at Jack.
"Get down off that house," sang out the second mate angrily.
"Let him alone," I shouted, "and do what he orders. Do you hear? Obey his orders to the letter. They will be correct."
I hardly knew this myself, but the second mate believed me. He motioned to the helmsman, who ground the wheel hard down. Forward, the forecastle men had let go the foretopmast staysail sheet, and this sail flapped furiously as the ship came slowly up to the wind. I hastened to the compass and looked. Though I could not have named the points, I could see that the wind was now blowing from the southwest, and that the shiphadbeen heading nearly straight for that line of sand. I went back to my wife, and Jim turned his expressionless face and sleepy eyes toward the second mate, who had nervously followed me.
"Go forward," Jim commanded; "cockbill and stand by the lee anchor to let go at the word; then stand by with the carpenter to make fast the spring-line to the chain forward of the windlass, and to slip the chain at the first shackle abaft. And send two men aft to attend this line at the quarter-bitt."
"Aye, aye, sir," answered the astounded officer, hastening to obey.
Limerick was one of the men sent aft to the spring-line, and his amazement exceeded that of the other. "Goin' to clubhaul her," he said to me, "an' he don't know the compass, he's only a barber man an' no sailor. It beats my goin' to sea."
With my arm about my wife I watched the somnambulist, ready to speak to him if I thought the occasion warranted it, ready to prevent others from speaking; for the sleepy mind of Jim—or the soul of the unconscious Jack, if you like—might obey an unwise or misleading word, even now.
Slowly and more slowly the great ship came up against the pounding of the southerly seas, wavered, and stopped with the weather leech of the maintopsail just lifting.
"Let go the lee anchor," thundered Jim. The anchor was dropped, and the chain rattled out of the hawse-pipe.
"Maintopsail haul," came the next order from Jim in the same vibrant voice. The lee main- and weather cro'-jack braces were cast off, and the after yards came around with a swing and a crash that threatened to take them out of her; but they held, and the opposite braces were tautened.
"Is Jim a sailor, too?" my wife whispered.
"No," I answered gently. "He is doing Jack's work for him. Thank God for your boy to-night. He is saving our lives."
Slowly the ship's head sagged away from the wind; then it stopped and a tremor went through her. The anchor had bit, but was dragging.
"Pay out on that chain," roared Jim to the forecastle, then to Limerick he said quietly, "Catch a turn with that spring and stand by to slack away."
"Very good, sorr," answered Limerick, as he took a turn with the line around the bitt. "Oh, he's a navy officer, all right, sorr," he said joyously, but softly to me. "I've been there an' I know 'em."
Again the ship's nose drew up into the wind under the strain of the still dragging anchor, and when head to it, with the foretopsail aback and tending to throw her still farther, Jim called out: "Hang on to your chain. Make fast the spring to the chain, and knock out the shackle-pin." Then he waited a moment or two, until the heaving ship unmistakably pointed to the southward of the wind's eye, and shouted: "All hands on the forebraces. Fore bowline. Let go and haul. Slip the chain." Then quietly to Limerick: "Handsomely on that spring when the strain comes. Don't part it."
"Aye, aye, sir," laughed Limerick. "I've been in the service, sorr."
"Not a word to him," I said, bounding toward Limerick. "Not a word. He knows what he is doing."
The end of the chain had rattled out of the hawse-pipe and under the tension of the line to the quarter the big ship was paying off to the southward, while the men slowly hauled the foreyard around. When it finally filled and was steadied, and the ship brought up as high as she would lay, the last of the spring-line slipped out of Limerick's hands and went overboard. And now the big first mate, who had quietly watched the whole operation from the wheel-box, approached and studied the compass.
"The wind is hauling all the time," he said through his swollen jaws, "and we'll have a fair wind to the open sea. But who is that man? He kept her off the beach. She'd 'a' hit in a few minutes more."
"He's captain of the ship," I answered.
But Jim was not acting like a captain now. He ran to the monkey-rail at the side of the house, and partly climbed over to descend. Then he went back and resumed his position at the mizzenmast. Then he made another attempt, succeeded, and, gaining the alley, sped forward to the steps and went down them. A groan from Jack, followed by his mother's cry of sympathy, apprised me of the reason. Jack was recovering consciousness, and after assuring myself that he was in his right mind, I left him, still dazed and stupid, in the care of his mother, and leisurely followed Jim, finding him just where I expected to—sound asleep in the stateroom berth. I wakened him, and he sat up, blinking at me.
"Lordy, what a dream, doctor. Mother and Jack—oh, I forget," he said sleepily. "And something hit me on the head—here." He felt of the spot on his head where Jack had been struck.
"Come out on deck, Jim," I said, and he followed me.
"How do you feel now, Jim?"
"Fine, doctor, but where's this boat going, I'd like to know?"
"Feel afraid of the water, now?"
"Not a bit. Why, it can't hurt anyone, can it—unless you fall into it?"
"Afraid of those men forward, Jim?"
"No, I'm not." His face took on a look of defiance. "Why, doctor, I could lick most o' that crowd, couldn't I? I feel different, somehow. But that dream, doctor, about mother and Jack. That dream meant something. Where are they, and how are they?"
"Come below, Jim."
This is not a story of sentiment, so that reunion will not be described. This story is a question, with a large interrogation point. The question is: What is the human soul? Is it an entity, or a possible merging of entities? Is it a collection of memory clusters, any of which may assume an individuality, or is it a series of mental planes or concentric spheres? Jack is Jack and Jim is Jim, and there is a separate ego to each. But what part of Jim's soul left him to obsess Jack during the fracas forward when Jack was awake, and why did it not come again before Jack was struck down, and when he was but normally disturbed over the ship's peril. And how much or how little of Jack went into Jim under my suggestion to the latter to be like him, which waited until Jack was unconscious before acting, and which left him when Jack awoke to claim it?
We are sailing south with a crew and a first mate that think Jim a fugitive from justice, protected by the skipper, and with a second mate who thinks me the devil and Jim my familiar. There is a white-haired, happy woman growing young in her aroused mother-love; and there is a former very promising hobo developing surprising qualities of mind and seamanship under mine and Jack's tutelage. But from none of these can I get any light. I am only a village practitioner, and I submit the question to others: What is the human soul?
It is popularly believed that twins grow up in mutual love and loyalty—and, when properly reared, this is not only probable, but almost imperative—but these two grew up in mutual hatred and antagonism; even though in face, form, brain, mind, and soul they were as alike as the proverbial peas in a pod. They received the same limited education in the same schools and classes, and up to the period of this story were never apart; not because either so chose, but because of the common influences of their environment, which decreed the same paths and channels of thought and initiative.
They were orphans, and had their home with an illiterate stepfather, whose early mistake of punishing one child for the fault of the other raised the first barrier between them. The guilty boy was amused at the mistake; but the victim, smarting with pain and a sense of injustice, could not appreciate the humor of the situation, and waited for a reversal of conditions, which, not happening immediately, he brought about by a deliberate offense and an accusation of the other.
Then followed reprisal met with reprisal and in time each boy hated the other with a hatred that dominated all other emotions, and, inspired by previous grievance, would hesitate at no dishonorable and unboyish trick whereby he might create trouble for him. It was genuine community of soul; for it manifested itself in other and more pleasing ways, and without mutual prompting. If one felt like playing hooky, the other felt the impulse, and they would come together; but only to separate with snarls. If one liked another boy, the twin shared the liking; and, conversely, each disliked the enemy of the other, though never to the point of defending him. They fought each other often; but never was victory given to either. Each battle was a draw, and supremacy could not be established; for neither would surrender until the other was ready to.
So conditioned, physically, mentally, and morally, the cumulative effect of the vicarious suffering of each brought them to the murder mind when, at nineteen, they fell in love with the same maiden. The episode need only be mentioned. They made love in the same way, and the maiden repulsed each with the same catholic impartiality. Neither might have won her alone; but both thought so, and in the furious battle with fists, stones, and clubs that followed they received injuries which, with the stepfatherly horse-whipping that came to them, laid them up for a week. Had they been endowed with a sense of humor, or had they been separated long enough to acquire one, they might have been spared the soul-consuming malignancy that now possessed them; as it was, each rose from bed while hardly able to walk, and, resolved to get away from the other, ran away from home, stowing away in the same ship, a three-skysail yarder bound to Sydney.
These things I learned from the maiden referred to, whose father commanded the big ship, and from later inquiry in their native village. From now on, however, they were more or less under my immediate attention; for I was second mate of that ship.
Mr. Butterell, the first mate, hauled Bill out of the paint locker about the same time that I found Tom in the lazarette, and we brought the two together under the break of the poop for the captain's inspection and decision. It was plain from their faces as they eyed each other that neither had expected to find the other on board; but, after glaring at each other for a moment, they assumed a moody indifference, which left them only for an instant when a low voice on the poop above said, "Why, Papa! The Landon boys!"
I was surprised myself—though agreeably so—for I did not know that Mabel was to make the voyage with us, and, looking up to where she stood with her father, I received a nod and a smile.
A little here, in parenthesis, about myself. I was twenty-four, and had sailed four voyages with Captain Merwin, the last two as second mate, mainly to keep in touch with this girl who, as a child of fourteen, had been my shipmate on the first. And because of this I felt a secret disappointment that the captain had not signed me first mate on this occasion instead of second; for I had entertained a youthful hope and ambition to present myself to her as her father's first officer when we met again. But the highly efficient, handsome, and self-confident Mr. Butterell had forestalled me in this; though I did not dream at the time that he would also forestall me with Mabel, or that the two loutish stowaways had attempted to.
They were tall, well built, and with a look of crafty intelligence in their faces, which, with their embarrassment and their ill-fitting clothes, bespoke the village loafer. Only by these clothes could they be told apart. They were exactly alike, each with the same red hair, high cheekbones, and squinting green eyes, and each chewed tobacco and spat on the deck in a way to bring disapproval to the face of the gray old skipper.
"You are stowaways," he said, "and, as my daughter informs me, brothers, from my own home town. Why have you done this?"
"To get away from him," grunted Tom, jerking his thumb toward Bill. "I hate him like so much pizen."
"And you?" asked the skipper of Bill.
"I didn't know I'd find him here," answered Bill with a vindictive squint at Tom, "or I wouldn't ha' come."
"Twin brothers," commented the captain, "and on bad terms! Well, you will have little time to quarrel aboard this ship, and plenty of time to make friends. It is too late to get rid of you; so you must work. Put them in separate watches, Mr. Butterell."
"Yes, sir," answered Mr. Butterell, reaching for Bill. "I choose you," he added, as his grip closed on Bill's collar. Then he swung him at arm's length aft toward the poop then forward with all his strength, hurling him, rolling and scrambling wildly, fully thirty feet along the deck. Then, with a quick, self-satisfied smirk up at those on the poop, he repeated the feat upon Tom.
Now a few words about Mr. Butterell. He was, all in all, the most efficient executive officer I had ever sailed with. He knew his business, from knotting a rope yarn up to masting a ship. In shortening sail he could get canvas in as though it obeyed an intelligent knowledge of his wish; but it was really because of his wonderful voice and vocabulary. He never missed or repeated an order, and could send his words against a gale from the poop to the weather fore earing as distinctly and articulately as he would read off morning sights to the skipper.
Unlike myself, a graduate of the schoolship St. Mary, he had worked his way up from the forecastle; yet he had mastered more of navigation than do most merchant skippers, and could figure great circle sailing and take star and lunar sights. Besides, as I learned on further association with him, he possessed a conversational power rare in seafaring men, but developed in him by wide reading and wide-open eyes. Added to this, he had the build and strength of a giant, the agility of a panther, the fistic skill of a prize-fighter—and the vanity of a spoiled child.
He seemed unable to perform the most commonplace action without a half-involuntary and quick look around to notice some possible token of approval, and in the absence of his social or professional equals would seek it from the men, even from the Chinese cook. And with this weakness was allied another, still more incompatible with his assured mental and physical strength—an active hatred for the class of men from which he had risen. It was the first of these that had prompted that quick smirk toward the poop, and the second that impelled him to follow the two human projectiles and, with kicks, clouts, and forceful language, hasten their progress forward.
It was nearly four bells of the first dog-watch, or, more explicitly, about ten minutes to six in the evening, of the first day out, and though the watches had not yet been chosen half the crew had gone to supper at three bells, when the day's work was done, and now, having finished, had struggled out of the forecastle lighting their pipes. Also the captain, his daughter, and Mr. Butterell had eaten supper; but the rest of the men and myself would not have ours until four bells. Hence, for the time, all hands were on deck to witness the breaking in of the stowaways.
I could see no approval in the faces of the men as they watched the brutal spectacle, and in Mabel's, as I glanced upward, I saw horror and fright; but in Captain Merwin's face was nothing to indicate approval or disapproval. My own, however, must have reflected the strong disgust that I felt; for the captain, seizing his daughter's arm, said, "Come, Mabel," and led her aft.
"Afraid," I muttered bitterly, "to antagonize his fancy first mate!" For Captain Merwin was a kindly man, and I had often heard him correct his officers for assaulting the men.
The exhibition of prowess went merrily on, Mr. Butterell using the helpless youths like billiard balls, knocking one against the other and frequently making a carom against the rail. But at the main hatch, after a peculiarly successful fist play in which both brothers struck the rail and clung to it, Mr. Butterell turned his head quickly, looked aft with the smirking expectancy of his face, and, finding the audience for which he had performed no longer at the break of the poop, gave over the play, and started aft with his face as sober as my own.
And before he had taken three steps one of the brothers—I could not tell which at the distance—wrenched an iron belaying pin from the rail and hurled it at his head. It missed; but continued on a flat trajectory to the cabin, from which it rebounded after making an inch dent and whirled forward again and over the lee rail. Had Mr. Butterell's head stopped it, he would never have moved or spoken again.
He wheeled when the pin whizzed by him, and with a bound put himself between the two and the forecastle; for each had turned forward.
"Who threw that belaying pin?" he said quietly but menacingly.
"He throwed it; I didn't," answered one, pointing to the other.
"He lies!" retorted the accused one. "He throwed it himself."
"I lie, do I?"
"Yes, you lie!"
And then they were at each other's throats. Forgetting the common enemy, they clenched tightly and whirled about the deck, bending this way and that, striving to trip each other, striking with short uppercuts, and even attempting to bite. But at this the interested men forward crowed aft with sober faces, and Mr. Butterell, sensing their mood, stepped jauntily past the fighters and came aft with an amused smile on his face. Before he reached my vicinity I saw the men part the two and lead them forward.
"Did you," said Mr. Butterell to me, his smile leaving him as he looked at me, "did you, I say, see which one threw that pin?"
"I saw it thrown, sir," I answered; "but I could not tell which one threw it."
"And wouldn't tell me if you could!" he sneered. "I can see that in your face."
"Mr. Butterell," I said as calmly as was possible, "if I knew which one threw it, I should tell you; for their unbrotherly conduct just now destroyed what sympathy I may have felt for them."
"Sympathy for them!" he exploded. And now I knew the animus of his heckling of me—his audience was again looking down at us. "Sympathy for them!" He shook one finger under my nose. "Now I'll tell you, young fellow," he continued, "before we go any further, that I'm first mate of this craft and I'll dictate the sympathies of any man under me!"
"And I'm second," I retorted hotly, "with a right to sympathize with whom I like! And take your hand away from my face, Mr. Butterell!"
Let me forestall any sympathy I may have aroused for myself. I am not the hero of this story. There is a heroine, but no hero; for neither the mild-natured Captain Merwin, half hypnotized by the dashing Mr. Butterell into a surrender of his principles, Mr. Butterell, actuated by the cheapest motives of vanity and self-love, nor myself, embittered by disappointment, jealousy, and other unworthy emotions—none of us, I say, acted a heroic part from beginning to end. Mr. Butterell took his hand away from my face, as I had demanded; but it became a fist and came back.
I parried the blow and struck back at his face; but it was like parrying a battering ram and striking a stone wall. It was the only blow I struck in that fight, if fight it may be called. He was larger, heavier, and quicker than myself, and soon I felt his fist crashing between my eyes, and my world went out in a blinding flash of light. I came to in a few moments, I think, and found myself in the lee scuppers with Mabel bending over me, her face all sympathy and kindliness. I could barely see it between my closing eyelids; but could also see Mr. Butterell standing up to windward with Captain Merwin, laughingly explaining his code of ethics. "Yes, sir," he was saying. "I consider that there's less difference between your second mate and the dubs I kicked forward than between myself and a captain. That goes, Captain Merwin, or you can put me aboard the first inbound ship!"
I struggled to my feet and, pushing past Mabel, approached the two as the captain answered, "Yes, yes, Mr. Butterell, I understand; but I am sorry, very sorry. I had hoped—I hope there will be no more fighting."
"No, sir," I broke in rather insanely, "there'll be no more fighting with fists, I promise you that. But let me say to you, sir," I faced Mr. Butterell, "that there's less difference between you and a dead man than there is between you and a captain. If you ever strike me again, I'll kill you, if I have to knife you through your window while you are asleep."
Then, as though it were a deathknell, four bells struck at the wheel.
I spoke loudly in my rage, and pain, and blindness—for I could not see them now—and I know my words rang through the ship from end to end, and must have been heard by the listening crew, for a few responsive whoops came from forward. But also came a shivery "Oh, oh!" from Mabel, and stern words from the captain.
"Tut, tut, Mr. Rogers!" he said. "That will do! You are setting a bad example to the men. Go to your room, bathe your eyes, and get your supper. If you cannot stand watch at eight bells, I will stand watch for you; but no more of this talk of killing! I did not think it of you!"
And, to the sound of Mr. Butterell's soft, derisive chuckling, he half led, half pushed me into the companion to my room on the starboard side of the passage. With the exception of the log desk in the mate's room, the two apartments were similar, each with a window looking out on the main deck, and another, over the berth opening into the alley. I could not eat, and as I crawled blindly into the berth, like a bad boy sent supperless to bed, and opened the window to let air in on my fevered face, I could not help thinking how easy it would be to carry out my threat. In imagination I did so; but I was not yet sane.
While few men pass through life without at least one sound thrashing from schoolmate or fellow man, still fewer, I think, receive that thrashing under such peculiarly humiliating conditions as those attending mine, and fewer yet, at my age, know that vengeance, properly disregarded, will take care of itself. So I fumed through the dog-watch, listening to the hateful sound of the mate's voice—now chatting with Mabel, again raised in a roaring behest to the men—and to the still more hateful sound of Mabel's musical laughter at his sallies, until seven bells, when he called the men to the pumps, which, whether the ship leaks or not, are manned at this time of day. Then the captain came with the steward, prescribed remedies from the medicine chest, and gave me such fatherly, grieved, and reprehensive admonishment as to irritate me past all silence and endurance.
"Look out, sir," I said at last, "that you don't get yours!"
"What do you mean, sir?" he asked sternly as he drew back from me. "Do you threaten me, Mr. Rogers?"
"No, captain, I do not," I answered. "I mean that he has practically threatened you. I heard him claim equality with you in your presence, after picking this quarrel with me and then likening me to the stowaways. I am your second mate. He will treat you the same, sir, when it suits him."
"Nonsense, young man!"
"No nonsense about it, captain!" I raved. "There'll be trouble aboard this ship yet, trouble that'll be none o' my making. Why didn't you ship a Bengal tiger and be done with it? You could ha' got one cheaper than a mate's pay for the passage."
"I begin to think you resent my shipping any kind of mate, except yourself."
"Or why didn't you go to a drygoods store, if you wanted a ladykiller to fool your daughter," I continued, forgetting the "sir" in my anger and jealousy.
"My daughter? What do you mean, sir, by such reference to my daughter?"
"Oh, haven't you caught on yet, Captain Merwin?" I asked, as recklessly and sarcastically as an unlicked schoolboy. "Not twelve hours on board, and he not only knocks me out, but makes love over my window to the girl I've worked and waited for since I saw her as a child. What d'you s'pose, captain, that I've stuck to this ship for? To have everything taken by him, and then remain satisfied? Well, I s'pose I'll have to be satisfied. He's evidently just the kind of man she likes. Some women prefer a brute to a man."
I paused for lack of breath, and Captain Merwin remained silent for a moment or two; then he said quietly, "You are unfit to talk or to think, much less to work. I will choose your men and stand your watch until you are well. Meanwhile, go to sleep. I will apprise my daughter of your opinion of her."
But as he left my room I felt that he would not need to. Through my open window came Mr. Butterell's gleeful snicker and the soft murmur of Mabel's voice as they moved away.
I was able to see in three days, and returned to duty, first offering to Captain Merwin from my cooler and saner viewpoint an apology for my manner, which he graciously accepted. But I made no apology to Mr. Butterell, nor even a withdrawal of my threat, preferring to let it hang over him as a possible deterrent. As it was a "watch and watch" ship, we met only at eight bells, to report the course, distance run, and the happenings of the last four hours, so that our strained relations did not matter. And that these relations should not suffer further straining, Captain Merwin, seeing me hopeless, decreed that the mate's log desk be placed in the passage between our rooms, so that I could enter up the log slate at the end of my watch without trespassing upon his atmosphere.
As for Mabel, she had partaken of my blindness; she did not see me, even when she looked at me. But this gave me a larger opportunity to look at her, a dismal pleasure which I enjoyed to the utmost.
I cannot describe in detail the peculiar grace, and charm, and beauty with which this girl appealed to me. All men know, and all men at some time in their lives invest some one woman with such attributes, which, perhaps, others cannot see. As a child, with yellow hair and sea-blue eyes, Mabel Merwin had seemed to me a creature lent from Heaven to lead me upward; now matured to perfect womanhood, her sea-blue eyes the same, but her hair darkened to a golden bronze and her creamy complexion to an orange tint by sun and wind, she was more than ever one of another world, unable to descend to my own. For mine was a world of outer and under darkness, of watch and worry, of work and dirt, of profane, hateful, jealous, and murderous thought which, without knowing it, I shared with the twin brothers. I could understand the baleful glitter in their eyes when they looked at the mate; but, uninformed at the time, nothing of the hungry adoration with which they regarded the girl.