Captain Balaam of the 'Cormorant', and other sea comedies

CAPTAIN BALAAM OF THE CORMORANT

Captain Balaam of the Cormorant was an ignorant old fool. Captain Benjamin Wood of the Scanderbeg said so. He was also obstinate, ferocious, blatant, bigoted, and given to liquor. Captain Benjamin Wood said this too. The crew of the Cormorant agreed with the crowd in the Scanderbeg that their skipper was a disagreeable personality: they phrased it differently, they said he was an adjectival 'blighter.' And yet for all that there was jealousy between the crews of the two ships, just as there was jealousy between the two skippers. The only difference between them was that the Scanderbegs believed in their ship and their skipper and the Cormorants believed in the Cormorant only. Both vessels hailed from the same port of registry; they both traded to Australia, and mostly to Melbourne; they were owned by related rivals, and manned for the most part by men who knew each others' home affairs. It was no wonder that when the Cormorant was re-masted, as she had been previously under-sparred, the Scanderbeg's crew was very greatly excited. Up to the present time their ship had made the best passages, and now Balaam had announced that he meant to lick the Scanderbeg by a ruddy ensanguined crimson month.

'You're an ignorant old ass, and can't do it,' said Captain Wood.

'I'm an ignorant old ass, am I?' retorted Balaam, who was slow at repartee. 'I'll show you!'

'I expect you will,' said Wood. 'I know you, Balaam.'

'You know me, do you?' said Balaam. 'Do you know anything against me? I despise you, Wood; I despise you. You shortened sail mighty quick that time we was in company off the Leuuwin. Oh yes, you 'anded that foretaups'l mighty quick, and I 'eld on to mine.'

'You'll not do it now the Cormorant has some real spars in her,' retorted Wood. 'You know, according to your own account, you could never put enough on her to do her any harm in a cyclone.'

'I never,' said Balaam; 'but any'ow this time I'll lick your ugly 'ead off. It don't foller because a man's full of scientific talk that 'e's a seaman. Great circles and double haltitudes and star hobservations make me sick!'

'They'd make you sick to work 'em out,' said Wood. 'When you got your ship resparred you might have got a new set of brains, Balaam.'

And he left Balaam foaming at the mouth as an old timber drogher foams under bluff bows with a whole gale behind her.

They left London River the same day, and lost sight of each other in the chops of the Channel. But since destiny was playing with them they lay close together under the Line for the best part of a fortnight in a dead calm. The Cormorant was the first to draw away in a series of light flaws, which were really the northern edge of the South-East Trade, and Balaam signalled to Wood: 'I'll report you!'

'Confound it, she's a wonder in light airs,' said Wood. 'But what she'll be in bad weather will settle it. I don't give in; not much.'

They ran across each other once more to the south of the Cape, and both ships had a first-class opportunity of showing what they could do in heavy weather.

'I'll run her under before I'll shorten sail,' said Wood.

'Blimy,' said Balaam, 'before I shorten down I'll 'ave the new sticks out of her.'

Mr. Briggs, the chief mate, implored him to go a bit easy. 'She's new to it, sir, and we're not settled down and set up the way she should be yet.'

'I'll show you,' said Balaam. 'If she ain't what she should be it's your fault. You're the mate, ain't you?'

But if the mate is responsible for the rigging the skipper is responsible for trying it, and Balaam drank hard and tried it high.

'I'd rather fetch into Hobson's Bay under jury rig than let that swine lick us,' said Balaam thickly. 'Mr. Briggs, h'ist that main-t'gall'ns'l over the reefed taups'l and let her scoot!'

If they hadn't once more lost each other in a screaming south-easter the catastrophe might have come right then. It was only when the Scanderbeg was swallowed up in thick weather and the night that Balaam got so drunk that Briggs ventured to shorten sail.

'I wish he'd keep drunk,' said Briggs bitterly to the second greaser.

'Ah, his bein' only squiffy is very tryin', sir,' replied Mr. Creak. 'It strikes me, sir, that the men are gettin' disgruntled at the way he keeps things goin'. They're beginnin' to want a lot of driving.'

'Then drive 'em,' said Briggs shortly. He was being driven himself.

The crowd for'ard were really very sore about everything. They had no particular grievance; that is, they only had seamen's grievances. The vessel was undermanned. Well, all British ships are. What's the good of an Englishman if he can't do more than any one else? They were, of course, badly fed. That was nothing: nothing even that it steadily grew worse. What hurt them was Balaam's way of looking at them. An Italian might have said he had the evil eye. They didn't mind his evil tongue. The truth is that Balaam was sand in their bearings; they got hot to think of him. They compared him with Captain Wood.

'That's a man,' said Charlie Baker; 'a real one.'

'You're over young to go so large about men, my son,' remarked Smith, a grey-haired veteran who had served his time in the Western Ocean; 'but I allow that Cap'n Wood is all there. When he was launched he was classed 100 A1 and no mistake.'

'With a broad A for iron and a Maltee Cross for built under special survey,' added Tom Paddle, who hailed from Newcastle, and had worked in a shipbuilding yard.

'I never heard of no Maltee Cross connected with ships,' said old Smith.

This raised an argument which lasted for the best part of an hour and ended in Paddle being put down by a unanimous vote, though he shouted as loudly as possible.

'You must be wrong,' urged his particular mate. 'Don't you 'ear we're all agin you?'

'I'll fight on it,' said Paddle fiercely.

''Ow could a scrap settle it?' asked Smith contemptuously. 'Suppose you and Baker fo't over it and you knocked Charlie out, would that make black white?'

'Then 'ow the devil is a man to know the truth of anything,' said Paddle pathetically.

It was the first argument of his that the rest owned had some sense in it. But the row blew over, as rows do in the fo'c'sle, and they abused the skipper till eight bells.

But if the row blew over it was more than the gale did. It lasted for forty-eight hours and was followed by another. The way Balaam carried sail made every sober man shake. That year, and at that season, running down the easting was no joke. And as Balaam knew the Scanderbeg would go as far south as possible on the Composite Great Circle Track he did likewise.

'Gawd's treuth,' said Charlie Baker, who was a joker, 'I've 'eard tell of the brave west winds, but these 'ere are puffectly reckless 'eroes!'

Old Balaam stumped the weather side of the poop, or hung on to the weather mizzen rigging and bawled—

'Let her scoot; what she can't carry—hic—she may drag. Mister Briggs—hic—shake out a reef in the main taups'l; I smells the cookin' on board the Scanderbeg, what ho!'

'Good Lord,' said Briggs. And Mr. Creak said so too.

'We'll be crawlin' into Hobson's Bay yet under a jury rig,' both mates agreed. They prophesied sadly, gloomily; and they prophesied right.

'The Scanderbeg will lick us by months,' they said. Here they prophesied wrong, for the Scanderbeg was a hundred miles only to the south'ard, and the same gale that was destined to whip the sticks out of the Cormorant was worse the further south it blew. They were then in latitude 45° S. and longitude 56° W., and the Crozets were on their starboard quarter. The real gale started at N.W. like a perfect fiend, grew into a hurricane from the west with the centre of the disturbance to the south-'ard, and when it passed away with frightful squalls into a steady sou'wester, the Cormorant was lying head to wind, anchored to part of her own wreckage, and she hadn't a feather to fly with. Captain Balaam went below and called to the steward.

'Bunting, rum!' said Balaam, and Bunting, who was as white as spindrift with terror, brought it. Balaam went to sleep calmly, and left matters to Briggs and Creak. The worst having come to the worst, being left to themselves, they proved to be men. They had something to do and did it. They cut all the wreck adrift and rigged a proper sea-anchor and repaired damages as best they could. But they couldn't repair the damage done to the provisions. The whole of the front of the poop had been burst in by the sea, and a big hole driven by the mizzen-topmast into the deck right through the poop and main deck into the lazarette. Into that there went so much water that anything not in tins was unfit to eat. And now all the pork and beef, save that in the harness casks, was found to be rotten.

'Great Scott!' said Briggs. The crew of the Cormorant anticipated starvation and had huge appetites. But they bore up well. A day ahead is enough for men of the sea. Charlie Baker took hold of the boys and felt them all over to see if they were fat. The others thought it an admirable joke. The boys were not so sure that it was.

'Never mind, mates,' said Baker, 'a boy will go a long way, and we 'ave three! But I wonder 'ow the Scanderbeg is makin' it?'

There is something peculiarly diabolical at times in the way of the sea. It was a coincidence, though perhaps an ordinary one, that the poor Scanderbeg was just then wallowing at a sea-anchor a hundred miles to the south of them, with nothing but the stumps of her masts to show a rag on. But it was a far more extraordinary coincidence that her crew were in danger of starvation. As Captain Wood did not drink, his steward did. It seems necessary that some one shall at sea, and though it is usually the skipper, who has no one to control him, it excites no surprise to find that the steward does. This particular specimen of a hard-worked individual went into the lazarette with an uncovered candle, sampled some rum, which was forty over proof, and fell asleep to wake in a world where we are led to believe drink is scarce, though smoking is permitted. And the Scanderbeg was on fire just when the wind from the N.W. and a falling barometer announced the approach of a hurricane.

The fire was put out and the steward dragged out, but what with fire and smoke and water combined, the provisions he had charge of were no more likely to do their duty than he was. They put him overboard gloomily, and that night the hurricane fell on them and did its worst.

'Well,' said poor Captain Wood, 'I'm afraid the Cormorant will beat us this time!'

But he did not take to drink and camp in a wet bunk as Balaam did. He worked day and night with his two mates, and made some sort of a show with a jury rig inside of twenty-four hours. But he was very much troubled about the 'grub.' Ships are never over-provisioned, and even the stock of canned goods had been fired and fuzed.

'I'd give fifty pounds for a ton of biscuits,' said Wood.

It wasn't till they were under way again and doing nearly four knots an hour with the sou'wester behind them, that an idea struck him.

'By Jove,' said the skipper. He slapped his thigh and suddenly became cheerful. Mr. Boden, the chief mate, was very curious but did not express his curiosity.

'The old man has something in his mind,' he told the second greaser, Tom Hankin.

'I wish I had something in my stomach,' said Hankin.

And the skipper went below. When he came up he altered the course to E.N.E., and Boden having taken a squint at the chart, became much more cheerful. So did Hankin, though he tightened his belt. So did the crowd for'ard, though they tightened theirs.

And the next day they ran across the Cormorant in that almighty waste of grey storm.

'Blimy,' said the crew, 'maybe we'll get some toke from this 'ere 'ooker wot's 'ad the syme misforchune as ourselves. I wonder what she is?'

So did Wood, and when he found out he would have been much more than human if he had not been pleased, though he had not read La Rochefoucauld.

'She won't lick us into Melbourne after all,' said the skipper.

He hove the poor old Scanderbeg to under the lee of the Cormorant, and she lay wallowing comfortably under a rag of a faked-up trysail and the head of a staysail showing on her forestay. Wood bellowed to windward with a speaking-trumpet, 'Where's Captain Balaam?'

Poor Briggs was tired and cross and insubordinate in his mind.

'In his bunk,' came down the wind.

'Is he hurt?'

'Drunk, sir,' said the distant voice.

'What did he say?' asked Wood of his mate.

'He said Captain Balaam was drunk, sir.'

'Ah,' said the skipper. He asked no more about Balaam, but inquired if they could let him have some provisions. The answer he got was rather a blow. But it was not so much of a blow to him as the question had been to Briggs.

'We're starving already,' bellowed Briggs forlornly to the wind, and the sea and the wreck to loo'ard of him.

'When will you get sail on her, d' ye think?' asked Wood.

'To-morrow,' replied Briggs.

'Make for St. Paul,' said Wood; 'provisions are stored there, so I see in the Directory. We'll share 'em!'

'Thanks,' said the other speaking-trumpet. And then silence fell between these two partners of the sea in high misfortune.

'She's really not so badly crippled as we are,' said Wood.

And that was true; so true, that on the morrow the Cormorant crept out of the waste of tumbling seas and the gloom of the grey dawn and wallowed past them. Balaam was on deck dancing.

'Licking thunder out of you, you dog,' was his polite message of thanks to the Scanderbeg. 'Crippled or all ataunto, we can knock spots off of your old barge.'

'Oh, he's a gentleman,' said Wood. 'We won't reply.'

'I'm sorry he's likely to get to the island first, sir,' put in his mate. 'I'd not be surprised if he grabbed all there is to get, sir.'

'Oh no, surely,' said Wood. But though he said so, the notion bit into him and made him all the more anxious to get more sail on her. He worked with the men like one of them, and only slept two hours out of the twenty-four.

'He's a bully old man,' said his hungry crew: 'the best skipper we ever sailed with. Oh, but ain't we 'ungry!'

They were hungrier yet when they sighted the crater of St. Paul and rounded to on the north-east coast opposite the broken entrances to the inner crater harbour. They anchored in deep water, and so long as the wind stayed west of south were in perfect safety. But there was no Cormorant in sight.

'By Jove,' said Wood, 'she's missed it after all. I'm not surprised. Balaam's no navigator. Called me a dog, did he? Well, I've smelt my way here and he's out of it.'

The crew were joyful and excited. This was something new, something a little out of the way in the dull, dead monotony of sea-life, which as a rule is about as interesting as running a water-cart up and down a suburban road. The august and awful sea is only august and awful for those who have august minds. Seamen as a rule haven't; they have only awful language.

'Blow me tight,' said Bill Waite from Shadwell. 'I sye, this is a gyme! Sye, Tom, let's desert and live 'ere for hever and make a farm!'

'Oh, let's,' said his mate, Fred Day. 'If it's anythin' like the Canary Bird Islands, it'll be a fine farm for sulphur and cinders. What I want is the grub, and get out of it. Give me Sandridge and a pot of she-oak.'

They went ashore, pulling in through the crater entrance, and were surrounded by gloomy walls nearly a thousand feet high.

''Tain't exactly as bloomin' as the Isle of Man,' said Bill, 'at least not on a Benk 'oliday. Where's the grub, d'ye think?'

They found out where it was very soon. At least, they considered they were able to deduce from the facts in front of them where it was. The rude stone and lava hut in which it had been stored stared them almost in the face. But it was odd, they said, that the door was open.

When Mr. Briggs reached it he turned round and looked very much disturbed. So did the hut. It had been disturbed recently, and there wasn't as much as the smell of a biscuit left in it.

'The Cormorant has been here and taken it all,' said Briggs. You could have knocked the boat's crew down with much less than a belaying pin. They collapsed upon adjacent blocks of lava and said things not fit for publication except in realistic novels.

'The swine,' sighed Charlie Baker. 'Oh, ain't there nothin', sir?'

'Not a thing,' said the mate. He led the way back to the boat, and under the wondering eye of the skipper, which was just then glued to a telescope, they embarked and rowed back like a funeral procession.

'Captain Balaam has taken all the provisions, sir,' said the mate.

'All?'

'Every biscuit, sir.'

'Get the anchor up and make sail,' said the skipper. He went below, and when he came on deck again the Scanderbeg was standing out to sea.

'Muster the men aft, Mr. Briggs,' said Captain Wood. And when they came aft the old man addressed them. The pith of his address lay in the tail of it.

'We must catch the Cormorant,' he said. And the men said they would if human hands could get enough sail on their old wreck to catch the robber and scoundrel, then somewhere to the east of them. Men and mates and the skipper took their coats off. They clapped make-shift sails on every stay till the Scanderbeg looked like a laundry drying-yard. They got up another jurymast made of the fished halves of the main topmast. They made her four knots into five, into five and a quarter, into five and a half, and then they lay down at midnight and dreamed of eating.

They sighted the Cormorant ahead of them two days later.

'There she is, the thief,' said the men. As the weather was now finer and dry, they wetted their rags of canvas so that the sails held a little more wind; they rigged up more canvas yet by lacing it to the foot of their foresail, which did most of the work. They hung out their clothes to dry, and tied them so that the very shirts held wind.

'All right, my sons,' said the crowd of the Scanderbeg, 'wait till we catch you.'

They drew up with her at dark. The weather was moderating fast, the heavy sea went down rapidly: the wind fell light, and stars shone through the breaking canopy of clouds. The Scanderbeg drew up on the Cormorant's starboard quarter slowly. It was obvious that in her present trim she could out-sail the other vessel anyhow, and this in spite of the fact that Briggs had made good use of his spare topmast. The Scanderbeg had none. It had broken from its lashings, and gone overboard like a match out of an emptied pail when she was nearly under water and came up out of the smother like a diver.

The crew of the Scanderbeg were on the fo'c'slehead.

'Will he run aboard of 'em? By crimes, there'll be ructions,' said Bill Waite dancing. 'Oh, the miserable dogs; oh, the scum o' the seas; oh, the pirates!'

'Dry up, you ass,' said his mate. 'The skipper's goin' to 'ail 'er!'

'Cormorant, ahoy!' said Captain Wood, who came for'ard to the t'gallant fo'c'sle. 'Cormorant, ahoy!'

'Hallo!' said Briggs from the poop.

'What made you take all the provisions, Mr. Briggs?'

'The captain's orders, sir,' said poor Briggs, who was obviously ashamed of himself and his ship. 'I couldn't help it, sir.'

The two moving wrecks were now almost alongside.

'Clew up the foresail, Mr. Hankin,' said Captain Wood.

The sail was clewed up, and now the Cormorant drew a little ahead.

'I want to see Captain Balaam,' said Wood. 'Is he drunk now?'

The night was suddenly dark, and the figures of the speakers barely distinguishable. Nevertheless those on the fo'c'slehead of the Scanderbeg were aware that Briggs suddenly disappeared and was replaced by some one else.

'I'm not drunk, you swab,' hiccuped Captain Balaam. It was a very obvious misstatement on his part. 'I'm not drunk, you miserable howler. There warn't enough grub for one, let alone two, so I collared the lot.'

A voice was heard from his ship which contradicted him.

'That's a lie. There was plenty for both!'

Balaam left the poop hurriedly and was heard inquiring for the mutineer who dared to put his oar in at such a time. Every man jack on the main-deck protested it was not he.

'Very well,' said Balaam, 'when I find who it is, I'll hammer him flat, flat! I'll massacre him!'

He came back to the poop and resumed his talk with Wood.

'Not enough for two—hic—and if there was you shouldn't have it. I'll give you a bag of split peas!'

The men in the Scanderbeg groaned. They had been living on split peas for three days. Bill Waite signified what he thought of the offer by taking an iron belaying pin from the rail and throwing it at old Balaam. It was a good shot, but the distance was too great. It hit the rail of the Cormorant and fell into the sea.

'Split peas,' said Fred Day; 'oh, lor'! What'll our old man say to that?'

Wood was a gentleman, and he very rarely used bad language. There are times, however, when language to do any good to the user must be bad, and Wood told Balaam what he thought of him. He ran the Scanderbeg close up alongside until Balaam thought he was going to be boarded, and then addressed him. His crew roared with applause and hissed Balaam furiously. They called him every horrible thing they could think of, and Charlie Baker said 'Hear, hear' from the Cormorant's main-deck.

'It ain't our fault, maties,' he cried. 'Old Balaam's a cock-eyed blighter!'

But Wood roared, 'Silence fore and aft,' and spoke once more.

'Will you divide the provisions, Captain Balaam? I ask you for the last time.'

'I'll see you sunk, burnt, and destroyed and doubly damned if I will,' said Balaam. 'I 'ates you, and don't hown to no obligation to you. You never was polite nor friendly. Now you're repentin'. You may go to blazes by express. My name's Balaam. I'm captain of this ship, and don't take horders from a scientific lubber like you. I ain't drunk—hic—though you say so. I'm as sober as a missionary, quite sober—hic—and hif you incites my crew to mutiny I'll sue you for damages and justice in Melbourne. Mr. Briggs, make sail, crack on!'

He retired to a hencoop and sent for the steward.

'Bunting, gimme a drop o' brandy and gin mixed with a dash o' rum in it,' said Balaam.

It was his favourite drink.

But in the Scanderbeg Wood was talking to Mr. Boden.

'All right, Mr. Boden,' said he, 'set the foresail and let us draw ahead. I'll not put up with this. We shall be starving in reality in three days. We'll get even as soon as ever the sea goes down.'

And somehow it got to the men for'ard that the situation was not to last. They ate pease pudding with loathing and smoked heavily.

'We relies on the old man,' they said. 'Oh, what a blighter old Balaam is.'

They kept a mile or two ahead of the Cormorant all that day, and when night fell again the sea was fairly calm and the sky clear.

'We've got three boats fit to go over the side,' said the skipper to Boden. 'Get 'em ready, and now it's dark you can have 'em swung out. Belaying pins will do.'

What belaying pins would do for soon appeared, when the skipper had the men mustered aft.

'Men,' he said, 'all the food which should have been divided is now on board the Cormorant, Captain Balaam, who is no gentleman——'

'He ain't no seaman neither, sir,' said Bill Waite. The others told him to dry up, and he subsided, blushing at his own audacity.

'And I propose to board his vessel and compel him to divide it.'

'Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!' said the crowd. 'Oh, ain't this somethin' like!'

'If there is any resistance,' went on Wood, 'it must be put down. For that purpose each of you will take a belaying pin, but you will leave your knives behind. In half an hour I shall shorten sail and man the boats. You will all keep silence. I shall go with you myself to see that no unnecessary violence is used. Mr. Hankin, you will remain on board with two of the boys.'

As there were three boys it is unnecessary to state that there was an almost immediate fight to see who were to stay. Both who did were much more damaged next morning than the victim who went.

At midnight the foresail was clewed up and a few more of the make-shift sails furled. The boats were lowered safely, and in ten minutes the Scanderbeg was only manned by a sorry second mate and two sore boys. The vessel moved off slowly into the starry darkness, looking like a huge house-boat converted into a laundry. To the westward the Cormorant loomed darkly. She grew slowly as they waited in perfect silence.

'This will be a lesson to Balaam,' said Captain Wood across the quiet sea to Boden. 'I hope, I sincerely hope, that he is not drunk, Mr. Boden!'

'Gosh, we're pirates of the deep,' said Waite, and the men in his boat chuckled.

'Silence in your boat, Waite,' said the skipper. And as the Cormorant drew nearer and nearer the boats divided. The skipper's boat and Waite's lay ready to board her on the starboard side. Boden was to rush her on the port. Now they heard the very lip of the seas against her bows. Her broken spars stood up against the sky. They heard a voice aft. Some one struck one bell on board of her. The man on the look-out sleepily said that it was 'All well!' And now her bows were above them. They pulled a stroke and her sides loomed high.

'Hook on,' said the skipper, and before the Cormorant knew it she was seized by what Waite called 'the pirates of the deep.'

'She's ours,' said Waite as he jumped on deck and found no one to oppose him. In half a minute there wasn't a soul in the boats, which promptly went adrift. Mr. Briggs, who was the officer of the watch, was an unreluctant prisoner in the hands of Captain Wood.

'I couldn't stand it, you see,' said Wood, as he shook hands.

'I ain't a bit surprised,' replied Briggs; 'in fact, I rather reckoned you'd not put up with it.'

'Fetch up Balaam,' said Wood. And Balaam was brought up. By this time the two crews, who were no longer jealous of each other, were standing together on the main deck on the friendliest terms.

'You're our prisoners,' said Waite cheerfully. And the crew of the Cormorant laughed, while Balaam bellowed like a bull on the poop.

'It's piracy, rank piracy,' roared Balaam, as he struggled in the grasp of Boden and his enemy, the skipper of the Scanderbeg. 'This is piracy, and you'll be 'ung for it!'

They slammed him down upon a hencoop with considerable violence.

'Dry up, you old thief,' said Boden. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself. If you don't stop kicking I'll land you on the jaw.'

He shook Balaam till his teeth chattered and he called on Mr. Briggs for help. Briggs turned his back to him and walked to the rail on the port side of the poop.

'We've come for those provisions, Captain Balaam,' said Wood, 'and we mean to have them.'

'You're a pirate,' said Balaam thickly, 'oh, you're a pirate.'

'And you're a miserable, cowardly thief,' replied Wood. 'I don't propose to argue with you. Mr. Boden, when we come up alongside the Scanderbeg, shorten sail and we'll wait till daylight.'

'You're givin' orders in my ship,' said Balaam. 'Oh, this is horrid, it's a nightmare; it ain't real! I must be dreamin'!'

He yelled horribly, and it took three men to hold him. One of them was his own second mate, who hated him venomously.

'If you make much more row, sir,' said Creak, 'they'll put you over the side. I heard 'em say so!'

'Did they, Mr. Creak?' whispered Balaam.

'They did,' said Creak.

'This is horrid, Creak. Oh, Creak, am I dreamin'? Pinch me, so's I shall know.'

And Creak gave him a nip that drew a shriek from him.

'You've took a piece out, confound you,' said Balaam.

'I'm very sorry, sir,' said the second greaser, with a pleased smile. 'But you ain't dreamin', and the pirates down on the main-deck are very savage against you. I'd give up the grub quickly.'

'Would you?' asked Balaam.

'I would, sir,' said Creak. 'Paddle whispered to me just now that they had fixed it up to hang you, and Captain Wood too if he objected.'

And Balaam, whose sobriety was returning under the stress, lost his courage as his alcohol evaporated.

'I'd beg their pardon, if I was you,' said Creak. 'It's horrid being hung.'

'Yes, yes,' said Balaam. 'Tell 'em they can have the grub quite quiet. I'd—I'd like to go below. Creak, I feel cold.'

And Creak was allowed to lead him to his cabin. When he got there, he locked himself in, and piled all his possessions against the door. He fell into his bunk shivering, and when he slept he dreamed horrible dreams, which were the offspring of terror and alcohol. He sobbed and said, 'Nobody loves me!' He came near to seeing rats.

And in the meantime the two vessels lay alongside within a cable's length of each other, while Waite and Boden used one of the Cormorant's boats to pick up their own. The cook of the Cormorant was busy in the galley, and the crew of the Scanderbeg ate a square meal the first time for ten days.

'This is much better than split peas,' said Bill Waite. 'I shall loathe peas all my life. I don't know which I despise most, Balaam or pease pudding. Mates, it must be a horrid thing to have such a skipper as Balaam.'

The men of the Cormorant said it was horrid.

'He's a cock-eyed blighter,' said Tom Paddle, 'and I most willingly would see you pirates 'ang him. And as for the grub we parts with, what belongs to you comes without grudgin'.'

It was very handsome of Tom Paddle. But he was known to be generous even when he was sober. He helped to transfer the provisions to the Scanderbeg with the heartiest good-will. When the transhipment was made, all the officers of both vessels breakfasted on board the Cormorant, while Balaam lay in his bunk hungry, not daring to call for anything.

'I know Wood will 'ang me,' he whimpered. Without brandy, he had to believe it.

'While I am a pirate, Mr. Briggs,' said Captain Wood pleasantly, 'I may as well carry it out. Can you spare me a coil of three-inch manilla?'

'With pleasure,' said Briggs. 'Is there anything else, sir?'

'What do you say, Mr. Boden?' asked Wood.

'I think we could do with half a dozen stunsail booms,' said Boden.

'I rather want them myself,' said Briggs anxiously.

But Wood was a good pirate, and did not weaken.

'I think we want them more than you do,' said Wood with firmness. And he got them. Briggs was sore, but said nothing.

'Is there anything else you would like?' he asked with some natural bitterness.

'Yes,' said Wood, 'I think we'll take all Balaam's sea-stock of liquor. It will do him good.'

'I haven't the least objection to that,' said Briggs.

And half an hour afterwards the Scanderbeg made sail, and forged slowly ahead of the Cormorant on her way to Albany.

'We'll report you,' said Wood.

But when he was nearly out of sight, old Balaam pulled down his fortifications and came on deck, looking like a man who by a miracle has shaved what are known as the 'jimjams.' He sat down and wailed for Bunting.

'Yes, sir,' said Bunting.

'I think I'll have some brandy and gin with a dash of rum in it,' said Balaam.

The steward looked at Mr. Briggs and grinned.

'If you please, sir, you can't, them pirates took it all,' said Bunting.

JACK-ALL-ALONE

As it happened, I was the only passenger in the steamship Hindoo, and I found little entertainment in the company of her officers. The skipper was said never to open his mouth except upon Sundays, when he preached furiously to the assembled crowd and promised them hell as a reward for their labours on the deep sea. He was a religious maniac, much in favour with the owners because he combined religion with honesty and an unequalled degree of meanness about stores. He was little, and of a pallor that no sun could touch. He carried a hymn-book in his breast-pocket, and loose snuff in a side one. I found no comfort in him, and even less in the two mates. They were much married men with large families, and were subdued by the fear of losing their billets. They hung together and abused the skipper, and took no interest in the sea or any of its works. They pined for inland farms, where they would have been pelicans in a dry desert. I turned to the crew, and by dint of giving them tobacco and occasional nips of liquor overcame their distrust and shyness. For even though I had once been a seaman, that time was so far away that I had lost all look of it. And even when they knew it, they took it for granted I had been an officer, which put me out of their range. It was only my loneliness and my low cunning with rare whisky that made me free of their company, and at last loosened their tongues. I often sat with them in the dog-watches and set them yarning when I could by yarning myself. But only one story that I heard remains in my memory. It remains, not so much by its strangeness as by the strange way it was told, and the difficulty I had in getting it told at all. It was one of the younger seamen that put me on the tracks of the man who had it to tell.

'Why don't you try old Silent for a yarn, sir?' he said one day, when I was on the fo'castlehead with him on the look-out; 'he that says nought could say a lot. He might open up with you. With us he's as close as a water-tight compartment. But they do say in this vessel that he came out of one ship the honly survivor.'

What can one do on board a lonely steamer where there is no one to talk to and nothing to read, and there are so many unoccupied hours in front of one? The days were grey, the sea was grey, and as flat as last year's news. I set out yarn-hunting, and went for old Silent as they called him. I went for him warily. To ask him a question would be to cheat oneself of any expectation. I ceased to attempt to talk with him. But having fallen into his mood, I added to the compliment by giving him more tobacco on the quiet than I gave any one else. I called him into my deck cabin, and gave him a drink of whisky without a word. He drank it without a word, wiped his lips, scraped a sort of bow, and withdrew.

He was a melancholy man, downcast, ragged-bearded, with a glazed, yellow skin on his face, and shining scales upon the backs of his hands. His teeth were black with tobacco-chewing. His ears had been pierced for earrings, though he wore none. His eyes were deep-set, black; his mouth was a mere slit, his ears large and outstanding, like a couple of stunsails. He was obviously strong even yet. But he assuredly bore the marks of certain disastrous hours upon him, and his nerves betrayed him at times. I saw his hand shake when he lifted the drink to his lips.

'You've been through something, my friend,' I said to myself. 'I wonder what it is. It's not only "D.T."'

Life to my mind is a series of fights, and one is mostly knocked out. I could see that old Silent had been knocked out. Well, so had I, many a time, and his gloomy face appealed to me as a man of like disasters to myself. I saw (ay, and see) so many who seem to have no kind of insight into things. They are mere children, and one pities them as one does young recruits going to war. I've known men to die without suspecting it. For the most part, men live without suspecting any of the dangers, traps, pitfalls, and disasters that surround them. There was an uneasy alertness at times in this old seaman's eye which suggested that he knew Death was close at hand. I watched him keenly enough, for I had a great curiosity about him. What was the story of this poor inhabitant of this strange globe? What had he in common with those who see through illusion, who can pierce the hollow earth and see the fires, who can foretell storms, who can scent immediate and irremediable death?

This was folly, no doubt. I was in a bad state of mind, and had disaster behind me, and the shadow of it before me. There have been hours in many a man's life when the thought that he could end it was his only comfort. Without being in that state, my frame of mind was not wholly enviable, and I wanted some kind of help that I could not find. What was it that sent me to old Silent, if not the intuition that he had known worse than I?

We talked at last, at midnight, for I had found the clue to his heart in some inscrutable way beyond my knowledge. Perhaps he saw something in me that invited confidence. Oddly enough, strangers have often enough opened their hearts to me, when I least expected it. There is some deep necessity of confession in men's hearts, and in speech they compel sympathy—or at least they can plead their own cause.

''Tis a black night, sir,' said the old man, whose real name was Gilby, ''tis a black enough night.'

He was on the look-out, and it was the first hour after midnight. I climbed up and stood beside him close against the windlass, which looked in the dark like a stiff, distorted corpse covered with merciful canvas. The heavens were low and there was not one star visible. Wind there was none, and the sea was a dulled plate of pale dark steel. What air blew on the fo'castlehead we made ourselves. The cargo derricks on their platforms held watch with us: they looked diabolical and all alert. Under the straight stem of the Hindoo the sea hissed lightly like water escaping from a cock. The vibration of the engines was muffled for'ard; but it beat like a steady pulse.

'Ay, it's a very dark night,' I answered, as I stood alongside him in the very eyes of her.

I glanced up at the mast-head light, and what glow came to me blinded me still more. But the light was a kind of comfort. And so were the side lights. One could believe with the Chinese that a vessel might see with painted eyes on the bow. Neither of us spoke a word for full ten minutes.

'You've been a seaman, sir?' he asked presently.

'Twenty years ago.'

I went back twenty years, and was no more than a boy. Now was my 'Twenty Years After.' My old companions were dead or lost in the years.

'Twenty years you say, sir?'

There was something strange in his voice, an eagerness, a sharp pain.

'Full twenty,' I answered, dreaming.

'When I was young it seemed as if a man would forget anything in twenty years, sir.'

There were things one couldn't forget. I knew that, and I knew that here was an unforgetful heart of pain. My curiosity seemed most unworthy, and I was ashamed of it. But the old man spoke, and I knew he was not old.

'It's yesterday, sir,' he said in a low voice, 'and this very night in November—twenty years ago! A dark night enough, and yet a strange light in it. Did you ever play Jack-all-alone at sea, sir? was you ever by yourself at sea? That's the terror of the sea, sir. A sticky, wet, clammy terror. For we've mates in ships, even if we don't speak. Have you ever felt the big sea and the sky, sir, spread out and spread over for you alone?'

I had spent one night at sea alone in the English Channel in the fine but foolhardy game of single-handed sailing. He brought it back to me now, and I sat in a little fifteen-foot cutter-rigged open boat in a great and gorgeous calm to the south and east of Dungeness Point. At sunset the wind failed, and left me at the will of the tides. For a long hour the golden west was a wonder of fine colour, and the sky overhead a most heavenly pale blue. The low coast towards Romney was a faint dark line, submerged in the sea. Elms ashore looked like massed shipping; a church-tower was dark against the sunset. Dungeness light glared over me, and I drifted on the last of the north-west curve of the tide into its red sector shining like blood on the lip of the moving water. An infinite and most infinitely deep silence oppressed and purified me. This was the purification of the ancient and immortal tragedy of the sea. I sat in a red flood and the day died. The piety of the great darkness buried the earth. Till midnight came I was alone and was nothing; a mere fleck of foam; I was all things; I was the world itself. Then a great fishing-smack drifted to me. I spoke to a dim shadow in the heavy shadow of great sails that hung motionless. I lost that voice again in the drifting of the tide and in a faint light air. Then at last the dawn broke, and the winking lights of land died down and the day and the land arose, and I was no longer alone.

'I knew it for a night,' I said. It is the rarest thing for any seaman to know. In this was his disastrous story. 'How did it happen to you? Would it hurt you to tell me, or would it help?'

There was no more unworthy curiosity in me, and that I was purified of it he must have felt. For this was a man who could feel and remember. God's great gift of forgetfulness is mostly given to the highest and to the lowest only. I drifted for a moment on my own sea of memory, and when I came back I heard him speaking. Those who have been long silent come some day to an hour of strange and easy speech.

'I and my brothers——'

I heard his voice catch on the word and get over it with a bitter jar, as a vessel might slide over a shoal in uncharted waters. Yet he knew those waters of Marah well.

'We was in a rotten old steamer, sir, them and me. Jack was my elder, and a fine big chap, good as gold, and as brave and strong as a lion; a real seaman, such as one don't meet nowadays. He mostly sailed in windjammers, but he was one of those that like to see things, and he had a fancy to potter round the Mediterranean once in a way. He'd read a lot at sea one passage in a Green's ship that had a fair pile of books in her for the crowd for'ard, and he'd a fancy to see Italy and Greece. He'd talk by the hour of old Romans, and a strange character that was at Syracuse some time back; I disremember his name, but he was for science and arithmetic; and he knew the name of a score of Roman emperors quite pat; and he said once when we was at the port of Athens that a hill plain to be seen was the home of the gods in the days before Christianity came to the fore. He was a first-class man at whatever he took to, that he was, and might have been high up if he'd had a chance to be properly eddicated. And Billy, my young brother, was a fine boy of quite another guess sort. He cared for nothing but fun, and he was good-looking, and a rare youngster with his dooks. I've seen him down a Dutchman twice his weight, and do it laughing. He was bright as the day, sir, bright as sunlight, and there we was, the three of us, in this rotten old tramp, built in the year one of steamships, and much the shape and size of a biscuit-tin, and not much to her that was better material. And so we mucked about the Mediterranean looking for cargo, like the sea-tramps we was, and every time it blew a capful of wind we had to turn her nose to it and keep bobbing. For if there was any kind of a sea on the beam, she'd roll so cruel that our hearts was in our mouths. And Billy's joke was always the old sea-joke that she had rolled right over in the night, and done it so quick that no one knew it. But, I own, she put the fear of God into most of us, and some of us got that narvous, we couldn't sit quiet unless there was a flat calm, and her just joggin' on ahead like an old hay-wagon. We went down from Barcelona with some sort of truck to Constant, and there Jack did talk a lot about emperors, and he was pleased as Punch to see things, saying that history grew rank thereabouts; and he would ask the old skipper about things dead and gone thousands of years, so that the old man, never liking to own he wasn't chock-a-block with knowledge, used to fidget like one o'clock, and get that cross with dodging 'twas a game to hear him. And then we went humping up the Black Sea, and brought out wheat from Ibrail, and we got stuck down at Sulina, and lightered her clear and had a holy time, so that Jack said making history in the wheat trade was no joke. And we came out from Constant for home. But home we never got, sir, and to say the truth, I've never been home since, and never shall go. Do you know the Mediterranean, sir?'

Did I know it? Even as he talked I had been thinking of Crete on our starboard beam at night, and of Etna right ahead at dawn, and the white cities of the Straits, of lava-bound Catania, of old historic Syracuse, of the sickle-shaped harbour of Messina, of high Taormina, and the day breaking in the hollows of the grey Calabrian hills. Then smoking Stromboli, a cinder peak of the seas. And afterwards singing, roaring Naples and atmospheric Capri sunk in sweet blue air. Oh, did I know it?

'Ay, I know it.'

'We came up with Sicily, and went in by the Straits to drop some truck or another at Messina, and then out again to the north, and when we were near alongside Volcano, it was looking bad and grey and hard as it does when a levanter threatens. The sea got up, and it was short and steep and hard, sir. And for a while we battered among the islands and Volcano smoking and, I dessay, Stromboli too, but the smother of the weather was too thick to see it. And I was on the lookout, as I am now, and Jack he was relieved at the wheel as I came up on the fo'c'slehead. He laughed up at me, and said, "This top-heavy old hay-wagon will be doin' a roll directly." And just as he went below, the skipper, who was as afraid of her as he had a right to be, turned her about and put her nose into the wind. There she stayed, uneasy and sawin' with her 'ead like a swell carriage-'orse. And they just went ahead with the old scrap-engines, and stayed so, reckoning to ride the gale out. And she rode it right enough till night, and we three brothers 'ad supper and passed our jokes. And poor Billy was as bright a kid as ever—oh, I can think of things 'e said now.'