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

THE MUTINOUS CONDUCT OF MRS. RYDER

Although Watchett of the Battle-Axe, and Ryder of the Star of the South, were cousins, there was no great love lost between them, and all unprejudiced observers declared that this lack of mutual admiration was in no way due to Captain Ryder. That they remained friends at all was owing largely to his infinite good-nature and to the further fact that Mrs. Ryder pitied Mrs. Watchett.

'I wonder she goes to sea with him at all,' she said. 'If you were one-quarter as horrid as your cousin, Will, I should never go to sea till you came ashore.'

But she always went to sea with Will Ryder. It was their great delight to be together, and there were few men, married or single, who did not take a certain pleasure in seeing how fond they were of each other. He was a typical seaman of the best kind; he had a fine voice for singing, and for hailing the fore-topsail yard; his eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots, and his skin was as clear as the air on the Cordilleras, which peeped at them over the tops of the barren hills which surround the Bay of Valparaiso. And Mrs. Ryder was just the kind of wife for a man who was somewhat inclined to take things easily. If she was as pretty as a peach, she had, like the peach, something inside which was not altogether soft. Her brown eyes could turn black; she had resolution and courage.

'You shall not put up with it,' was a favourite expression on her tongue. And there were times, to use his own expression, when she made sail when he would have shortened it. In that sense she was certainly capable of 'carrying on.'

Both vessels were barques of about 1100 tons register, and if the Star of the South had about twenty tons to the good in size she was rather harder to work. It is the nature of ships to develop in certain ways, and though both of these barques were sister ships, it is always certain that sister ships are never quite alike. But as they belonged to the same port of London, and were owned by two branches of the same family, all of whose money was divided up in 64ths, according to the common rule with ships, they were rivals and rival beauties. But, unlike the more respectable ladies who owned them, both the vessels were fast, and it was a sore point of honour with Ryder and Watchett to prove their own the faster.

'If she only worked it a little easier I could lick his head off,' said Ryder sadly.

But there was the rub. The Star of the South needed more 'beef' in her than the Battle-Axe. She wasn't so quick in stays. By the time Ryder yelled, 'Let go and haul,' the Battle-Axe was gathering headway on a fresh tack.

'And instead of having two more hands than we are allowed, we are two short,' said his wife bitterly. 'If I were you, Will, I'd take these Greeks.'

'Not by an entire jugful,' replied Captain Ryder. 'I remember the Lennie and the Caswell, my dear. I never knew Valparaiso so bare of men.'

'And we're sailing to-morrow,' said Connie Ryder angrily, 'and you've betted him a hundred pounds we shall dock before him. It's too bad. I wonder whether he'd give us another day?'

But Ryder shook his head.

'And you've known him for years! He's spending that money in his mind.'

'But not on his wife, Will,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'If we win I'm to have it.'

'I'd give him twenty to let me off,' said Ryder.

But Connie Ryder went on board the Battle-Axe to see if she could not induce her husband's cousin to forgo the advantage he had already gained before sailing. She found him dark and grim, and as hard as adamant.

'A bet's a bet, and business is business,' said Watchett. 'We app'inted to-morrow, and bar lying out a gale from the north with two anchors down, and cables out to the bitter end, I'll sail.'

His wife, who was as meek as milk, suggested humbly that it would be more interesting if he waited.

'I ain't in this for interest. I'm in it for capital,' said Watchett, grinning gloomily. 'The more like a dead certainty it looks the better I shall be pleased.'

Mrs. Ryder darkened.

'I don't think you're a sportsman,' said she rather curtly.

'I ain't,' retorted Watchett, 'I'm a seaman, and him that'd go to sea for sport would go to hell for pastime. You can tell Bill I'll give him ten per cent. discount for cash now.'

As Mrs. Ryder knew that he never called her husband 'Bill' unless he desired to be more or less offensive, she showed unmistakable signs of temper.

'If I ever get half a chance to make you sorry, I will,' she said.

'Let it go at that,' said Watchett sulkily. 'I got on all right with Bill before you took to going to sea with him.'

'He was too soft with you,' said Bill's wife.

'And a deal softer with you than I'd be,' said Watchett.

'Oh, please, please don't,' cried Mary Watchett in great distress.

'I thought you were a gentleman,' said Connie Ryder.

'Not you,' replied Watchett, 'you never, and you know it. I'm not one, and never hankered to be. I'm rough and tough, and a seaman of the old school. I'm no sea dandy. I'm Jack Watchett, as plain as you like.'

'You're much plainer than I like,' retorted his cousin's wife; 'very much plainer.'

And though she kissed Mary Watchett, she wondered greatly how any woman could kiss Mary Watchett's husband.

'If I ever get a chance,' she said. 'But there, how can I?'

She wept a little out of pure anger as she returned to the Star of the South. When she got on board she found the mate and second mate standing by the gangway.

'Is there no chance of those men, Mr. Semple?'

'No more than if it was the year '49, and this was San Francisco,' said the mate, who was a hoary-headed old sea-dog, a great deal more like the old school than 'plain Jack Watchett.'

'Why doesna' the captain take the Greeks, ma'am?' asked M'Gill, the second mate, who had been almost long enough out of Scotland to forget his own language.

'Because he doesn't like any but Englishmen,' said Connie Ryder.

'And Scotch, of course,' she added, as she saw M'Gill's jaw fall a little. 'I've been trying to get Captain Watchett to give us another day.'

'All our ship and cargo to a paper bag of beans, he didn't,' said Semple.

'I—I hate him,' cried Connie Ryder, as she entered the cabin.

'She's as keen as mustard, as red pepper,' said Semple. 'If she'd been a man she'd have made a seaman.'

'I've never sailed wi' a skeeper's wife before,' said M'Gill, who had shipped in the Star of the South a week before, in place of the second mate, who had been given his discharge for drunkenness; 'is she at all interferin', Mr. Semple?'

Old Semple nodded.

'She interferes some, and it would be an obstinate cook that disputed with her. She made a revolution in the galley, my word, when she first came on board. Some would say she cockered the crew over much, but I was long enough in the fo'c'sle not to forget that even a hog of a man don't do best on hog-wash,' which was a marvellous concession on the part of any of the afterguard of any ship, seeing how the notion persists among owners, and even among officers, that the worse men are treated the better they work.

'She seems a comfortable ship,' owned M'Gill.

And so every one on board of her allowed.

'Though she is a bit of a heart-breaker to handle,' said the men for'ard. 'But for that she be a daisy. And to think that the bally Battle-Axe goes about like a racing yacht.'

It made them sore to think of it. But it also made the men on board their rival sore to think how comfortable the Star of the South was in all other respects.

'The "old man" 'ere makes up for any ease wiv w'ich we ploughs the briny seas,' declared Bill Gribbs, who was a Cockney of the purest water, with a turn for reciting poetry and playing the concertina. 'For two pins I'd desert. I'm too merry for old Watchett. I'll make a new chanty for 'im speshul, exteree speshul, same as I did for the cook comin' out.'

'And it took the "doctor" the best part of a month to get over it and do the 'ash 'alf proper agin,' said the rest of the crowd sadly. 'Poetry and music will be your undoin', Gribbs. It don't pay us for'ard to guy them as is aft.'

'And didn't the "old man" stop my playin' my concertina on Sundays?' asked Gribbs. 'And all because I don't know no 'ymn tunes. As they says out 'ere, it tires me to think of it. I'll be gettin' even wiv 'im some day. I'll commit susancide and 'aunt 'im. 'Owsever, wot's the odds, for "it's 'ome, deary, 'ome; it's 'ome I wish to be," and we're sailin' in the mawnin'!'

Owing to the fact that the Battle-Axe's crowd was sulky, the Star of the South got her anchor out of the ground and stood to the north-west to round Point Angelos a good ten minutes before Watchett's vessel was under way.

'That's good,' said Connie Ryder. 'I know they're a sulky lot by now in the Battle-Axe. And our men work like dears.'

It was with difficulty she kept from tailing on to the braces as they jammed the Star close up to weather the Point. For the wind was drawing down the coast from the nor'ard, and Valparaiso harbour faces due north. She was glad when they rounded the Point and squared away, for if there was any real difference in the sailing qualities of the rival barques, the Star was best with the wind free and the Battle-Axe when she was on a bowline.

'And with any real luck,' said Mrs. Ryder, 'we may have a good, fair wind all the way till we cross the Line.'

It was so far ahead to consider the North-East Trades, which meant such mighty long stretches on a wind that she declined to think of them.

'We're doing very well, Will,' she said to her husband when the starboard watch went below, and the routine of the passage home commenced.

'It's early days,' replied Will Ryder. 'I fancy the Battle-Axe is in her best trim for a wind astern.'

But Mrs. Ryder didn't believe it.

'And if she is, she mayn't be so good when it comes to beating.'

She knew what she was talking about, and spoke good sense.

'It's going to be luck,' said Ryder. 'If either of us get a good slant that the other misses, the last will be out of it. But I wish I'd had those other two hands. The Star wants beef on the braces. Mr. Semple, as soon as possible see all the parrals greased and the blocks running as free as you can make 'em.'

And Semple did his best, as the crew did. But Mrs. Ryder had her doubts as to whether her husband was doing his. For once he seemed to think failure was a foregone conclusion.

'I think it must be his liver,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'I'll see to that at once.'

But instead of looking up the medicine-chest she came across the Pacific Directory.

'I never thought of that,' she said. 'He's never done it: now he shall.'

She took the big book down and read one part of it eagerly.

'I don't see why not,' she decided; and she went to her husband with the request that he should run through Magellan's Straits when he came to it.

'Not for dollars,' said Will Ryder. 'When I'm skipper of a Pacific Navigation boat I'll take you through, but not till then.'

'But look at all you cut off,' urged his wife, 'if you get through.'

'And how you are cut off if you don't,' retorted Ryder. 'When I was an apprentice I went through in fine weather for the Straits, and I'd rather drive a 'bus down Fleet Street in a fog than try it.'

She said he had very little enterprise, and pouted.

'Suppose the Battle-Axe does it?'

Ryder declined to suppose it.

'John wouldn't try it if you guarantee the weather. I know him.'

'You never take my advice,' said his wife.

'I love you too much,' replied Will Ryder. He put his arm about her, but she was cross, and pushed him away.

'This is mutiny,' said the captain, smiling.

'Well, I feel mutinous,' retorted Connie. 'I wanted you to steal two of your cousin's men and you wouldn't. I'm sure they would have come for what the Battle-Axe owed them. And you wouldn't. And now I want to go through the Straits and you won't. The very, very next time that I want to do anything I shall do it without asking you. Why did you bet a hundred pounds if you weren't prepared to try to win it?'

'We'll win yet,' said the skipper, cheerfully. 'We've only just started.'

The two vessels kept company right down to the Horn, and there, between Ildefonso Island and the Diego Ramirez Islands, the Star of the South lost sight of her sister and rival in a dark sou'westerly gale. With the wind astern when they squared away with Cape Horn frowning to the nor'west, the Star was a shooting star, as they said for'ard.

'If we could on'y carry a gale like this right to the Line we'd 'ave a pull over the Battle-Axe, ma'am,' said Silas Bagge, an old fo'c'sle-man, who was Mrs. Ryder's favourite among all the crew. He was a magnificent old chap, with a long white beard, which he wore tucked inside a guernsey, except in fine weather.

'But we can't; there'll be the Trades,' said the captain's wife dolorously.

'I've picked up the sou'east Trade blowin' a gale, ma'am, before now,' said Bagge; 'years ago, in '74 or thereabouts, I was in the Secunderabad, and we crossed the Line bound south, doing eleven close-'auled, and we carried 'em to 27° south latitude. There's times when it is difficult to say where the Trades begin south, too. Mebbe we'll be chased by such a gale as this nigh up to 30° south.'

'It's hoping too much,' said Mrs. Ryder.

'Hope till ye bust, ma'am,' said Silas Bagge. 'Nothin''s lost till it's won. If we can only get out of the doldrums without breakin' our hearts working the ship, there's no knowing what'll 'appen. 'Twas a pity we didn't get them other two 'ands, though.'

And there she agreed with him.

'Me and Bob Condy could 'ave got Gribbs and Tidewell out of the Battle-Axe as easy as eat,' said Silas regretfully. ''Twas a lost hopportunity, and there you are!'

The honourable conduct of his skipper in vetoing this little game seemed no more than foolishness to Bagge.

'When we comes to the Hequator, and it's "square away" and "brace up" every five minutes till one's 'ands are raw, 'twill be a grief to every mother's son aboard,' said Bagge, as he touched his cap and went for'ard.

But now the Star of the South went booming on the outside of the Falklands with a gale that drew into the sou'-sou'-west and howled after her. She scooped up the seas at times and dipped her nose into them, and threw them apart and wallowed. The men were happy, for the fo'c'sle didn't leak, and the galley-fire was kept going every night to dry their clothes. At midnight every man got a mug of cocoa, and those that rose up called Mrs. Ryder blessed, and those that lay down agreed with them. The Star was a happy ship. There was no rule against playing the concertina on a Sunday in her fo'c'sle, and the men were not reduced to playing 'blind swaps' with their oldest rags for amusement as they were in the Battle-Axe. And yet every man in the Star knew his time for growling was coming on with every pitch and scend of the sea.

''Oly sailor, buy a knife and 'ave a shackle to it,' said Bob Condy, who was the lightest-hearted of a happy crowd, 'but when we're p'intin' all round the compass in the doldrums, won't my pore 'ands suffer! I've a notion we'll go through the 'orse latitoods flyin'. We're carryin' a good gale, and she'll draw into the eastward by and by.'

And there he was right, for they picked up the Trades in nearly 30° south, with only a few days of a light and variable breeze, and the Trades were good.

'But where's the Battle-Axe?' asked Mrs. Ryder. She kept a bright look-out for her, and deeply regretted that her petticoats prevented her going aloft to search the horizon for John Watchett. She rubbed her hands in hope.

'I do believe, Will, that we must be ahead of him,' she declared after the South-East Trade had been steady on the Star's starboard beam for a week.

'Not much ahead,' replied Will.

And just then Bob Condy, who was aloft on the fore-t'gallant yard cutting off old seizings and putting on new ones, hailed the deck.

'There's a sail on the port beam, sir.'

'Take a glass aloft and have a look at her, Mr. M'Gill,' said the skipper. 'No, never mind; I'll go myself, as you've never seen the Battle-Axe at sea. I know the cut of her jib and no mistake.'

So Will Ryder went up on the main top-gallant yard, and with his leg astride of the yard took a squint to loo'ard. He shut up the glass so quick that his wife knew at once that the distant sail was the Battle-Axe. As he came down slowly he nodded to her.

'It is?'

'Rather,' said Ryder. 'I'm sorry we've no stunsails. We're carrying all we've got and all we can.'

'And to think he's as good as we were on our own point of sailing,' said his wife with the most visible vexation. 'Can't you do anything to make her go faster, Will?'

And when Will said he couldn't, unless he got out and pushed, Mrs. Ryder sat on a hen-coop and very nearly cried. For if the Battle-Axe had done so well up to this she would do better in the dead regions of the Line, and the Star would do much worse. There the want of a few more hands would tell. The Star was no good at catching 'cat's-paws' short-handed. She worked like an unoiled gate.

'If I'd only done what Silas Bagge wanted,' she said, 'we'd have been all right. To think that the want of a couple of hands should make all the difference!'

It was cruelly hard, but when vessels are under-manned at any time, less than their complement means 'pull devil pull baker,' with the devil best at the tug of war.

For days there was nothing to choose between the vessels, save that the unusual strength of the Trades gave the Star a trifling advantage. Every night Watchett took in his royals. This Ryder declined to do, though he often expected them to take themselves in.

'What did I say, ma'am,' said old Bagge. 'I told you it could blow quite 'eavy in its way in the South-East Trades.'

And thus it happened that what the Star lost by day she pulled up by night. And presently the Battle-Axe edged up closer, and at last was within hailing distance. Watchett stood on his poop with a speaking-trumpet, and roared in sombre triumph.

'I'm as good as you this trip on your best p'int, Ryder!'

'Tell him to go to—to—thunder,' said Mrs. Ryder angrily. Nevertheless, she waved her handkerchief to her enemy's wife, who was standing by 'plain Jack Watchett.'

'You've done mighty well,' said Ryder in his turn, 'but it isn't over yet.'

Jack Watchett intimated that he thought it was. He offered to double the bet. He also undertook to sail round the Star of the South in a light wind. He offered to tow her, and made himself so disagreeable that Mrs. Ryder, who knew what became a lady, went below to prevent herself snatching the speaking-trumpet from her husband and saying things for which she would be sorry afterwards. But Ryder, though he was by no means a saint, kept his temper, and only replied with chaff, which was much more offensive to Watchett than bad language.

'And don't be too sure,' he added. 'I may do you yet.'

'Not you,' said Watchett, 'I'm cocksure.'

They sailed in company for a week, and gradually as the Trade lessened in driving power the Battle-Axe drew ahead inch by inch. And as she did Mrs. Ryder's appetite failed; she looked thin and ill.

'Don't feel it so much, chickabiddy,' said her husband.

'I can't help it,' sobbed Connie. 'I hate your cousin. Oh Will, if you'd only let me entice those two men from him. Bagge was sure that Gribbs and Tidewell would have come.'

'It wouldn't have been fair,' said Ryder.

'I—I w—wanted to win,' replied Connie, 'and it'll be calm directly, and you know what that means.'

It was calm directly, and very soon every one knew what it meant. For it was a real fat streak of a calm that both vessels ran into. And as luck would have it, the Battle-Axe, which was by now almost hull down to the nor'ard, got into it first. The Star of the South carried the wind with her till she was within a mile of her rival. For a whole day they pointed their jibbooms alternately at Africa and South America, to the North Pole and the South. What little breeze there was after that day took them further still into an absolute area of no wind at all.

'This is the flattest calm I ever saw,' said Ryder. 'In such a calm as this he has no advantage.'

They boxed the compass for the best part of a week, and lay and cooked in a sun that made the deck seams bubble. At night the air was as hot as it had been by day. The men lay on deck, on the deck-house, on the fo'c'sle-head.

'This is a bally scorcher,' said the crews of both ships. 'Let's whistle!'

They whistled feebly, but the god of the winds had gone a journey, or was as fast asleep as Dagon. And day by day the two vessels drifted together. At last they had to lower the boats and tow them apart. Watchett was very sick with the whole meteorology of the universe, and being a whole-souled man incapable of more than one animosity at a time, he found no time to spare from damning a heaven of brass to damn Ryder. At the end of the week he even hailed the Star and offered to come on board and bring his wife.

'I don't want him,' said Connie Ryder. 'I won't have him.'

And as she said this she jumped as if a pin had been stuck into her.

'What's the matter?' asked her husband.

'Nothing,' said Connie. 'But let him come!'

She went for'ard to interview the cook, so she said. But she really went to interview Silas Bagge. When she came back she found Watchett and his wife on board. If she was a little stiff with Watchett he never noticed it. As a matter of fact the whims and fads and tempers of a woman were of no more account than the growling of the men for'ard. He was too much engaged in cursing the weather to pay her any attention.

'This licks me,' he said, 'in a week we ain't moved: we're stuck. 'Ow long will it last, Bill?'

'It looks as if it might last for ever,' replied Ryder. 'We've struck a bad streak.'

The women had tea and the men drank whisky and water. Although Watchett didn't know it, two of his hands left the boat and were given something to eat in the galley by Mrs. Ryder's orders. It was Bagge who conveyed the invitation with the connivance of the mate, for whom the word of the captain's wife was law.

''Ave some marmalade and butter,' said Bagge. 'Does they feed you good in the Battle-Axe, Gribbs?'

'Hog-wash,' said Gribbs with his mouth full. 'Ain't it, Tidewell?'

Tidewell, who was a youngster of a good middle-class family, who had gone to sea as an apprentice and run from his ship, agreed with many bitter words.

'As I told you, we lives like fightin'-cocks 'ere,' said Bagge. 'When you're full to the back teeth, we'll 'ave your mates up. We likes to feed the pore and 'ungry, don't we, doctor?'

The cook, to whom Bagge had confided something, said he did his best, his humble best.

'The Star's an 'appy ship,' he added. 'We know what your ship is.'

The other two men came up in their turn and were filled with tea and biscuit and butter and marmalade till they smiled.

'This is like home,' said Wat Crampe, who was from Newcastle.

'It wass petter, much petter,' said Evan Evans; 'and ass for the captain's wife, she iss a lady, whateffer.'

That evening Ryder and his wife returned the call, and were rowed to the Battle-Axe by Bagge, Bob Condy, and two more of the men. Bagge and Condy went into the fo'c'sle. They lost no time in blaspheming the Battle-Axe, and in lauding their own ship.

'This 'ere's a stinkin' 'ooker, mates,' said Silas Bagge; 'why, our fo'c'sle is a lady's droring-room compared with it. And as for the grub, ask them as came on board us this afternoon. What d 'ye say, Gribbs?'

'Toppin',' said Gribbs; 'it's spiled my happetite 'ere.'

'It wass good,' said the Welshman, 'it wass good, whateffer.'

Bagge took Billy Gribbs aside on the deck and had a talk with him.

'Oh Lord!' said Gribbs, 'eh, what?'

'Straight talk,' replied Silas, 'she said so.'

'Do you mean it?'

'Do I mean it?' returned Silas with unutterable scorn. 'In course I mean it. It will sarve them right as it sarves right.'

Gribbs held on to the rail and laughed till he ached.

'It's the rummest notion I ever 'eard tell on.'

'Not so rummy!'

'Wot!' cried Gribbs, 'not so rummy? Well, it ain't so rummy, I'm jiggered. I'll think of it.'

'Do it, and tell your mate Tidewell.'

'If I tell Ned, 'e'll do it for sure. 'E's the biggest joker 'ere!'

'Then tell him,' said Silas.

That evening Ned Tidewell and Billy Gribbs acted in a very strange way on board the Battle-Axe. Without any obvious reason they kept on bursting into violent fits of laughter.

'The poor blokes is gone dotty from the 'eat,' said the pitying crowd. 'We've 'eard of such before.'

'Why shouldn't I laugh?' asked Gribbs. 'I'm laughin' because I'm a pore silly sailorman, and my life ain't worth livin'. If I'd died early I'd ha' bin saved a pile o' trouble. I was thinkin' of my father's green fields as I looked over the side this afternoon.'

'Was you, really?' asked the oldest man on board, 'then you take my advice quick and go and ask the skipper for a real good workin' pill of the largest size.'

'Wot for?' asked Gribbs.

'Because you hobvus got a calentoor,' said the old fo'c'sleman. 'And chaps as gets a calentoor jumps overboard. Oh, but that's well known at sea by them as knows anythin'.'

But Gribbs laughed.

'The worst is as it's catchin',' said his adviser anxiously, 'it's fatally catchin'. 'I've 'eard of crews doin' it one hafter the hother till there warn't no one left. In 'eat it was and in calm.'

'Gammon,' said Gribbs. But he was observed to sigh.

'Are you 'ot in your 'ead?' asked the anxious and ancient one.

'I feels a little 'ot and rummy,' said Gribbs; 'but what I chiefly feels is a desire to eat grass.'

The old man groaned.

'Then it's got you. Mates, we ought to tie Gribbs up, or lock him in the sail-locker, or 'is clothes will be auctioned off before long.'

But Gribbs kicked at that, and just then eight bells struck.

'I'm turnin' in,' said Gribbs, 'and I'm all right.'

But at six bells in the first watch he was missing, as was discovered by old Brooks, the authority on calentures. He waked up Ned Tidewell, who was extraordinarily fast asleep.

'Where's Gribbs?'

'Not in my bunk,' returned Ned, who with Gribbs was one of the few who still dossed in the fo'c'sle.

'Then 'e's gone overboard for sartin,' said Brooks in great alarm; 'there was the look of it in 'is eye, and in yours, too, youngster. These long calms is fataler than scurvy. I'll go aft and report it.'

He reported it to Mr. Seleucus Thoms, the second mate, who came for'ard and roused the scattered watch below from the deck-house and t'gallant fo'c'sle. When all hands were mustered it was certain that Gribbs was missing.

'This is a terrible catastrophe,' said Seleucus Thoms, who had a weakness for fine language derived from his rare Christian name, of which he was extremely proud; 'my name is not Seleucus Thoms if he hasn't gone overboard.'

''E was most rampagious with laughter in the second dog-watch, sir,' put in old Brooks. 'And 'e talked of green fields, the which I 've 'eard is a werry fatal symptom of calentoor.'

'Humph,' said Mr. Thoms, 'there's something in that.'

And when he went for'ard old Brooks was 'as proud as a dog with two tails.' Though he usually spent the second dog-watch daily in proving that Thoms was no sailor, this endorsement of his theory flattered him greatly.

'I've been mistook in the second,' he said, as Thoms went aft. 'He's got 'orse sense, after all. I shouldn't be surprised if 'e'd make a sailor some day.'

And Thoms reported the catastrophe to Watchett.

'Drowned himself,' roared the captain; 'drowned himself. And who's responsible if you ain't?'

He came on deck in a great rage and scanty pyjamas and mustered the crew aft, and raved at them for full ten minutes as if it were their fault. When he had relieved his mind he asked if there was any one who could throw light on the matter, and old Brooks was shoved to the front. He explained his views on calentures.

'Never 'eard of 'em,' said Watchett.

'And I thinks, sir, as Tidewell 'ere 'as the symptoms.'

'I haven't,' said Tidewell indignantly.

'Wild laughin' is a known symptom, sir, and Tidewell was laughin' 'orrid in the second dog-watch,' insisted Brooks. 'I'd put 'im in irons, sir.'

But Watchett was not prepared to go so far in prophylaxis.

'If any of you 'as any more symptoms, I'll flog 'im and take the consequences,' he declared. He went below again unhappily, for he wasn't quite a brute after all.

'This is a mighty unpleasant thing,' he said to poor Mrs. Watchett, who cried when she heard the news. 'It's a mighty unfortunate affair. Gribbs was the smartest man in the whole crowd, and worth two of the others.'

But still the great and terrible calm lasted and the morning was as hot as yesterday, and the sea shone like polished brass and lapped faintly like heavy oil against the glowing iron of the sister barques. At dawn, which came up like a swiftly opening flower out of the fertile east, the vessels were just too far apart for hailing, and Watchett signalled the news to the Star of the South.

'Lost a man overboard!' said Ryder, 'that's strange. I wish to heavens we'd found him.'

When he told his wife she seemed extraordinarily callous.

'Serves him right,' she said.

And it was wonderful how the crew of the Star took the news. They had never seemed so cheerful. They grinned when Watchett came aboard.

'This is an 'orrid circumstance,' said Watchett. 'I never lost a man before, not even when I was wrecked in the Violet. And this a dead calm!'

'Your men aren't happy,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'And you don't try to make 'em. If I give you three seven-pound tins of marmalade and some butter, will you serve it out to them?'

But Watchett shook his head angrily.

'I'll not cocker no men up,' he declared; 'not if they all goes overboard and leaves me and the missis to take 'er home. And what's marmalade against 'eat like this?'

He mopped a melancholy brow and sighed.

'It will help them to keep from gloomy thoughts,' said Mrs. Ryder. 'The Star of the South is a home for our men.'

'And two run in Valparaiso,' retorted Watchett, 'and I lost on'y one.'

He took a drink with his cousin, and went back on board the Battle-Axe, and put the horrid day through in getting a deal of unnecessary work done. And still no flaw of lightest air marred the mirror of the quiet seas. Early in the first watch the boats were lowered again to tow the vessels apart. At midnight, when the watch below came aft and answered to their names in the deep shadow of the moonless tropic night, Ned Tidewell did not answer to his name.

'Tidewell!' cried Thoms angrily and anxiously.

And still there was no answer but a groan from old Brooks.

'Wot did I tell you?' he demanded. 'I seed it in 'is eye.'

They searched the Battle-Axe from stem to stern; they overhauled the sails in the sail-locker; they hunted with a lantern in the fore-peak; they even went aloft to the fore- and main-tops, where once or twice some one who sought for coolness where no coolness could be found went up into what they jocosely called the 'attic.' But Ned had lost the number of his mess.

'More clothes for sale,' said the melancholy crew, as they looked at each other suspiciously. ''Oo'll be the next?'

Brooks declared to the other fo'c'sleman that the next would be Wat Crampe or Taffy, as they called the Welshman.

'There's an awful 'orrid look of the deep, dark knowledge o' death in their faces,' declared old Brooks. 'They thinks of the peace of it and the quiet, and smiles secret!'

Next morning Watchett hailed the Star and told the latest dreadful news. And at the end he added, in a truly pathetic roar: 'Send me them tins o' marmalade aboard. And the butter.'

And when Mrs. Ryder superintended the steward's work getting these stores out of the lazarette, she smiled very strangely. She said to her husband—

'If he loses another hand or two the Battle-Axe will be no easy ship to work, Will.'

'I wouldn't have believed the matter of a hundred pounds would have made you so hard,' said Ryder. And Connie Ryder pouted mutinously, and her pout ran off into a wicked and most charming smile.

'I'm not thinking so much of the money as of our ship being beaten,' she said.

And poor Watchett was now beginning to think the same of his ship. Like most vessels the Battle-Axe required a certain number of men to work her easily, and her luck lay in the number allowed being the number necessary. With two hands gone amissing she would not be much superior to the Star in easiness of handling, and if more went, a week of baffling winds now, or later when the North-East Trade died out, might give the Star a pull which nothing but an easterly wind from the chops of the Channel to Dover could hope to make up. He began to dance attendance on his crew as if they were patients and he their doctor. And the curious thing was that they all began to feel ill at once, so ill that they could not work in the sun. A certain uneasy terror got hold of them; they dreaded to look over the side lest in place of an oily sea they should look down on grass and daisies.

'Daisies draws a man, and buttercups draws a man,' said old Brooks.

'Don't,' said Crampe with a snigger, 'you make me feel that I must pick buttercups or die.'

'Do you now?' asked Brooks; 'do you now?'

And he sneaked aft to the skipper, who was turning all ways as if he were wondering where windward was.

'I'm very uneasy about Crampe, sir,' he said with a scrape as he crawled up the port poop-ladder. ''Is mind is set on buttercups.'

'The devil it is,' cried Watchett, and going down on the main-deck he called Crampe out.

'What's this I 'ears about you 'ankerin' after buttercups?' he demanded very anxiously.

'I did feel as if I'd like to see one, sir,' said Crampe.

'Don't let me 'ear of it again,' began Watchett angrily, but he pulled himself up with an ill grace, 'but there, go in and lie down, and you needn't come on deck in your watch. I can't afford to lose no more mad fools. And you shall 'ave butter instead of buttercups.'

'And marmalade, sir?' suggested Crampe. 'Marmalade is yellow too; yellow as buttercups.'

'Say the word agin and I'll knock you flat,' said the skipper. But nevertheless he sent the whole crowd marmalade and butter at four bells in the first dog-watch.

'Ho, but it iss fine,' said 'Efan Efans.' 'Thiss iss goot grup whateffer and moreover, yess!'

'They scoffs the like in the Star day in and day out,' said Crampe. 'If I can't roll on grass I'd like to be in her.'

And that night both Crampe and Evans disappeared.

'I believes I 'eard a splash soon after six bells,' said old Brooks. 'Mates, this is most 'orrid. I feels as if I should be drawed overboard by a mermaid in spite of myself.'

And Watchett went raving crazy. He blasphemed his mate till the man was ready to jump overboard too. He turned on Thoms and slanged him until the second greaser walked to the port rail of the poop and discharged a number of silent curses which would have done credit to the skipper of a barge, if they had been spoken aloud.

'At dark, lock the lot up in the fo'c'sle,' said Watchett, 'and not a soul comes out till daylight. If this goes on longer we'll stick in the doldrums till the Day of Judgment.'

Ryder came on board the Battle-Axe as soon as the latest news was signalled to him. Mrs. Ryder declined to go, but she gave him a timely piece of advice.

'Don't let him off the bet, Will, or I'll never forgive you.'

'I won't do that,' said her husband hastily, as if he hadn't been thinking of doing it.

'And if he asks for a man or two, you know we're short-handed already?'

'Tell me something I don't know,' said Ryder a trifle crossly. Even his sweet temper suffered in 115° in the shade.

'I dare say I could,' said his wife when he was in his boat. 'I dare say I could.'

Watchett received his cousin with an air of gloom that would have struck a damp on anything anywhere but the Equator.

'This is a terrible business,' he said. 'I never 'eard of anything like it. Every night a man, and last night two!'

Ryder was naturally very much cut up about it, and said so.

'Will you have some more marmalade?' he asked anxiously.

'Marmalade don't work,' said Watchett sadly. 'It don't work worth a cent, nor does butter. I'd give five pounds for some green cabbage.'

A brilliant idea struck Ryder.

'Why don't you paint her green, all the inside of the rail and the boats?'

'She'd be a holy show, like a blasted timber-droghing Swede,' said Watchett with great distaste. 'But d'ye think it'd work?'

'You might try,' replied Ryder.

'And now you've got the bulge on me,' sighed Watchett, 'with two 'ands missin' from both watches she'll be as 'ard in the mouth as your Star. You might let me off that bet, Bill.'

'No,' said Ryder, 'a bet's a bet.'

'But fairness is fairness,' urged Watchett. 'There should be a clause in a bet renderin' it void by the act of God or the Queen's enemies.'

'There isn't,' said his cousin. 'And you forget you wouldn't help me about those two hands I wanted.'

'Oh, if you talk like that——'

'That's the way I talk,' said Ryder remembering the wife he had left behind him. 'I'm sorry.'

'Damn your sorrow,' said Watchett. 'But I'll lose no more, and 'taint your money yet.'

'Will you and Mary come on board to tea?' asked Ryder.

'I won't tea with no unfair person with no sympathy,' returned Watchett savagely.

And when Ryder had gone he set the crowd painting his beautiful white paint a ripe grass green.

'Watch if it soothes 'em any,' he said to Seleucus Thoms. 'If it seems to work I'll paint 'er as green as a child's Noah's ark.'

And that night there was no decrease of the Battle-Axe's sad crowd, in spite of the fact that he did not keep his word and lock them up in the stuffy fo'c'sle. For soon after midnight the mate, Mr. Double, felt one side of his face cooler than the other as he stood staring at the motionless lights of the Star of the South, then lying stern on to the Battle-Axe's starboard beam.

'Eh, what? Jerusalem!' said Double. Then he let a joyous bellow out of him: 'Square the yards!'

For there was a breath of wind out of the south. Both vessels were alive in a moment, and while the Battle-Axe was squaring away the Star's foreyard was braced sharp up on the starboard tack till she fell off before the little breeze. Then she squared her yards too, and both vessels moved at least a mile towards home before they began fooling all round the compass again.

'Them hands missin' makes a difference,' said Watchett gloomily. 'Less than enough is starvation.'

As they fought through the night for the flaws of wind which came out of all quarters, the short watches of the Battle-Axe found that out and cursed accordingly. But it was a very curious thing that the Star of the South was never so easy to handle.

'That foreyard goes round now,' said old Semple, 'as if it was hung like a balance. This is very surprising so it is.'

He mentioned the remarkable fact to M'Gill when he came on deck at four in the morning, and so long as it was dark, as it was till nearly six, M'Gill found it so too. And both watches were in a surprisingly good temper. For nothing tries men so much as 'brace up' and 'square away' every five minutes as they work their ship through a belt of calm. But as soon as the sun was up the Star worked just as badly as she did before.

'It's maist amazin',' said M'Gill.

During the day the calm renewed itself and gave every one a rest. But once more the breeze came at night, and the amazing easiness of the Star showed itself when the darkness fell across the sea. Ryder and Semple and M'Gill were full of wonder and delight.

'The character of a ship will change sometimes,' said Semple. 'It's just like a collision that will alter her deviation. This calm has worked a revolution.'

Because of this revolution the Star got ahead of the Battle-Axe every change and chance of the wind. She got ahead with such effect that on the third day the Battle-Axe was hull down to the south'ard, and when the fourth dawn broke she was out of sight. This meant much more than may appear, for the Star picked up the North-East Trade nearly four days earlier than her rival, and a better Trade at that; for when the Battle-Axe crawled into its area it was half-sister to a calm, while the Star was doing eight knots an hour. And as there was now no need to touch tack or sheet, there was no solution of the mysterious ease with which she worked in the dark. How long the mystery might have remained such no one can say, but it was owing to Mrs. Ryder's curious behaviour that it came out. She laughed in the strangest manner till Ryder got quite nervous.

'Those chaps that jumped overboard from the Battle-Axe laughed like that,' he told her in great anxiety.

And she giggled more and more.

'Shall I try marmalade?' she asked. Then she sat down by him and went off into something so like hysterics that a mere man might be excused for thinking she was crazy.

'They're not dead,' she cried, 'they're not dead!'

'Who aren't dead?' asked her husband desperately. And remembering something which had been told him years before, he took her hands and slapped with such severity that she screamed and then cried, and finally put her head upon his shoulder and confessed.

'Was it mutiny of me to do it?' she asked penitently.

Will Ryder tried to look severe, and then laughed until he cried. 'Whatever made you think of it?'

'It wasn't a what, it was a who,' said his wife; 'it was Silas Bagge.'

'The devil it was,' said Will, and with that he went on deck.

'Call all hands, and let them muster aft,' he said to M'Gill, who, much wondering, did what he was told. The watch on deck dropped their jobs, and the watch below turned out.

'Call the names over,' said Ryder sternly.

'They're all here, sir,' said M'Gill.

The skipper looked down at the upturned faces of the men and singled out Silas Bagge as if he meant to speak to him. But he checked himself, and going down on the main deck, walked for'ard to the fo'c'sle. The men turned to look after him, and there was a grin on every face which would have been ample for two. Ryder walked quickly, and pushing aside the canvas door he came on a party playing poker. He heard strange voices.

'I go one petter, moreover,' said one of them.

'I see you, and go two better,' said a man with a Newcastle burr in his speech.

Then Ryder took a hand.

'And I see you,' he remarked. They dropped their cards and jumped to their feet.

'What are you doing here?' he demanded. And there wasn't a word from one of them: they looked as sheepish as four stowaways interviewing the skipper before a crowd of passengers.

'Get on deck,' said Ryder. And much to M'Gill's astonishment, the addition to the crew appeared with the captain behind them.

'Divide this lot among the watches,' said Ryder.

Leaving M'Gill 'to tumble to the racket,' he walked to the mate's berth and explained to him that henceforth the Star of the South would go about as easy by day as by night.

'Then they're not dead?' cried Semple.

'Not by a jugful,' said Ryder, nodding.

'This is very lucky, sir,' said the mate, smiling.

'It's devilish irregular too,' replied the skipper, as he rubbed his chin. 'Are you sure you knew nothing of it, Mr. Semple?'

'Me, sir? Why, I'd look on it as mutiny,' said Semple, 'rank mutiny!'

'It was Mrs. Ryder's notion, Semple.'

'You don't say so, sir! She's a woman to be proud of.'

'So she is,' replied Ryder, 'so she is.'

He went back to his wife.

'You'll win the hundred pounds now, Will?'

'I believe I shall,' said Ryder.

'And I'll spend it,' cried his wife, coming to him and kissing him.

'I believe you will,' said Ryder.

It was a happy ship.

THE COMEDY OF THE ORIANA

If the Oriana of Liverpool was a comfortable ship, and every one who was in her said so, Captain Joseph Ticehurst was no fool. He worked his 'crowd' reasonably, but saw that they did work; and if any of them shirked or malingered, the result was unpleasant for the one who tried such a game on with the quiet and gentlemanly skipper. And his mates took their time from him.

'To put it on no higher level,' said Captain Ticehurst, 'it pays to make a ship comfortable when she visits the Pacific coast of North America. For as things are now, if we lose the crew in Portland, we shall have to pay the boarding-house masters at least a hundred and fifty dollars a man. And as like as not every man we took will be worth two and a half dollars at the most. I know the Pacific, and you don't.'

For both his mate and second mate were with him for the first time.

'Is that the "blood-money" one hears of, sir?' asked Mr. Gregg, the second 'greaser.'

'That's it,' said Ticehurst, 'and last voyage I had to pay a hundred dollars each for six men to Healy the boarding-house master. And I own I lost my temper. I swore I'd never do it again. And Healy grinned in my face, and said that he'd see I paid more next time. The scoundrel seems to have the whole city in his hands, and half the newspapers. Oh, I tell you the Pacific coast is an eye-opener to a man who has never been on it, I tell you that.'

The Oriana was then running north, with a fine south-westerly breeze. The coast of Oregon showed up clearly. With good glasses it was possible to see Mount Shasta on the starboard quarter. Its snows gleamed in the westering sun; and to the north was the range of the Siskyous.

'We shall be off the mouth of the Columbia by noon to-morrow with any luck, and if the breeze holds,' said Ticehurst to himself. 'And in the morning, I'll have a talk to the men. If I could only knock a little sense into a sailor, I'd try to do it. As one can't, I'll try talk.'

He leant his back against the weather-rail, and took a broad view of Oregon.

'"Different ship, different fash," as the Dutchman said when he went aft to haul down the jib,' thought the captain, 'and it's the same with countries. I know I'm in for trouble with my friend Healy. He'll move heaven and earth and the other place to get the men out of my ship. I'll fight him to a finish this time; and rather than pay him for men, I'll take her to sea by myself and drift her home.'

He rubbed his smoothly-shaven chin and took a thoughtful pull at his port whiskers, as if he were checking in the weather braces.

'After all, the men would be crazy to quit; there's hardly one of them with less than fifteen pounds to take. I think I see how to manage it. I'll try anyhow.'

That night he had a long talk with the mate. He astonished Mr. Williams considerably. For Williams by nature belonged to the school which considers a sailor in the light of a punching-bag. It had required one or two private interviews with his skipper to induce him to relinquish practices to which he was wedded.

'Well, sir, this is a revolution,' he declared rather glumly.

'I'm a radical,' said Ticehurst, 'and believe in revolutions when required. I'll speak to the men to-morrow when they've had their breakfast. I'm no believer in coddling men, Mr. Williams, but if I have to ask you and Mr. Gregg to carry them hot shaving-water every morning while we are in Portland River, in order to do this Healy, I shall expect you to carry it.'

'Oh, very well, sir,' said Williams, and he retired to his cabin in some dudgeon.

'It's the principle I'm thinkin' of,' he declared, as he turned in.

The principle he believed in was that sailors should expect nothing, and that he was to see they got it. His prejudices broke through his discretion when he turned out at midnight to take the middle watch.

'Has the old man bin letten' you into his sailor-cockerin' scheme for doin' this Healy in the eye?' he asked.

'No,' replied Gregg.

'His notion is to feed 'em on the fat of Oregon, and give them hot whisky and water before they turn in. And you and I have got to tuck the dears up, and bring them shavin'-water in the mornin'!'

'Who are you getting at?' asked the incredulous second greaser.

'You'll see,' said the mate, 'it's as near that as a toucher. And there'll be a dance on board every night, and private theatricals every other day, and every day Sunday with no work in between.'

And though his imagination did run away with him, the skipper's notions as he expounded them to the assembled crowd next morning were certainly novel.

'I've sent for you, men, to tell you that to-night we shall be in Portland River,' he began.

The men stared at him eagerly. They wondered 'what kind of a game was up.'

And Ticehurst leant over the rail at the break of the poop.

'How many of you have been in Portland before?'

Five men held up their hands.

'And how many more in Pacific Coast ports, such as 'Frisco or Tacoma?'

Three more said that they had. The skipper nodded.

'I want to know how many of you left your ships there. Speak up and tell the truth.'

The eight men shuffled about a bit, and finally a seaman called Jacobs opened his mouth.

'Yes, Jacobs?' said Ticehurst.

'I reckon we all, more or less, skipped out, sir,' said Jacobs. And no one contradicted him.

'I thought so,' said the skipper. 'And I'll tell you what happened. You left a ship and left from ten to twenty pounds behind, and you went to Healy's or to Sant's at Tacoma, and were drunk on bad liquor for a week, and then found yourselves without any clothes to speak of in a homeward-bounder, with an advance of thirty dollars to work out, didn't you?'

'That's about it, sir,' said the shamefaced Jacobs.

'Yes, sir,' said the rest.

'And when you got home you had two months' pay or thereabouts to draw, less what you paid for clothes out of the slop chest. That is, you spent six months at sea and a week ashore for about ten pounds and a bad headache. Whereas if you had stayed by your ships you might have saved yourselves the headache, saved your clothes, and have got back to England with a pay-day of twenty pounds. Jacobs, what is the worst kind of a fool you know?'

And Jacobs answered promptly—

'If you please, sir, it's a sailor.'

'I don't say that it is always your fault if you desert,' went on Ticehurst, after he had drawn the reply which was the moral of his tale. 'I know some of you may have been run out of your ships; and I know that some captains are too careful about giving the men any of the money due to them. But this is a comfortable ship.'

'It is,' said the men with a unanimous hum.

'And I propose to keep it so,' said the 'old man.' 'And what I want is to keep you on board. I'm going to take no precautions against your skipping, I'm going to treat you like men. I'm going to allow you a pound a week each out of your wages for the month we shall be in Portland, and at six o'clock every man-jack of you not absolutely required can go ashore and stay ashore all night so long as you turn up in the morning.'

This was Williams's revolution. The mate gave a disgusted grunt and walked away to the lee rail. But the men raised a cheer. The skipper lifted his hand.

'I know this is going a long way beyond the custom of any ship,' he said, 'and I don't mind owning I'm doing it, partly to prevent the biggest boarding-house master in Portland getting hold of you. It's true that so far as I've worked it out your staying by the ship will save the owners in wages about five pounds a man. But that's not the reason I'm doing it. I'm on this lay because I shall have to pay Healy' (muffled groans from the men) 'a hundred and fifty dollars a head for every fresh man I ship. I had a row with him last voyage, and don't propose to put money in his pocket again. And if he gets so much from me, as you know, he'll get your advance note besides. Think it over. That'll do.'

And the watch below went forward.

'The old man talks sense,' said Jacobs. 'And as for Healy, he's a most notorious daylight robber, as lives on sailor-men and the p'isonin' of 'em. I stayed in 'is 'ouse for ten days, and was 'oofed, fair 'oofed, on board of a most notorious American ship where we lived on belayin' pin soup, and was tickled with 'and-spikes, tickled just to death. I'll stay by the old hooker. What d' ye say, mates?'